Based on his play of the same title, Ossie Davis stars as the title character, a preacher who returns with his fiancé Ruby Dee to the plantation where he grew up to secure the inheritance his family was promised. I had a hard time placing when the story was supposed to be set. The politics as discussed felt more contemporary to the time it was made, but Visually and thematically seemed from a much earlier time. Regardless, it’s sharply written and quite humorous with great, committed performances, including from Sorrell Booke, Beah Richards, Godfrey Cambridge, and Alan Alda in his film debut.

With German operatives on her tail, secret agent Madeleine Carroll surreptitiously enlists the help of vaudeville performer Bob Hope to transport classified plans out of New York City. A riff on the type of films Hitchcock made during this era, it’s not as funny as I would have expected but not without its delights especially in its quick paced jaunt across the country using planes, trains, and automobiles. Hope’s penguin companion steals every scene he’s in as does Carl Switzer in his one scene as an unruly child. 

Asked to help the cops with a series of gruesome murders, paralyzed former criminologist Denzel Washington teams up with rookie patrol officer Angelina Jolie to solve the crimes. It’s always equal parts amusing and interesting watching people work within the limits of obsolete technology. The partner pairing, brutal crimes, and central mystery are all intriguingly laid out in the film, but ruined somewhat by an unexpected ending and a forced romantic angle, neither of which make a lot of sense to the story. Even laying immobile in a hospital bed, Denzel acts his pants off.    

Occasionally chronicling the often dry nature of legislative discourse, this film follows the life of William Wilberforce, portrayed by Ioan Gruffudd, who repeatedly tried to pass anti-slavery laws through the British parliament. Despite the strains it caused on his health, he continued to push forward on what was at the time a very unpopular idea due to the number of vested interests various MPs had in continuing the slave trade. A little slow in its narrative, the film doesn’t shy from providing evidence of the horrors of slavery even as witnessed from far across the ocean and Gruffudd offers a sympathetic character in the fight for abolition.