My Five Favorite Movies With A Predominantly African-American Cast

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to create some lists honoring African-Americans in pop culture, and I figured I would start with movies. In trying to run down this list, I was tabulating all the movies I've seen that are predominantly African-American, I realized I've seen a lot more than I thought I had. And I haven't even seen Precious yet. And frankly, I've enjoyed nearly all of them. There were some judgment calls that I left off, movies like Jackie Brown, White Men Can't Jump and Mr. 3000, whose casts probably can't be classified as "predominantly African-American." There are also tons of movies that I've never seen or never seen in full, like Do The Right Thing, Juice, New Jack City and Trespass. And finally, there are a lot of movies from before my time from the heydey of blaxploitation that I haven't seen, like the original Shaft, Super Fly, Foxy Brown and Dolemite. But I've still seen my fair share. So with my apologies to Above The Rim, Ali, Belly, Boyz n The Hood, Dead Presidents, Deliver Us From Eva, First Sunday, Friday After Next, Harlem Nights, Next Friday, Notorious, Poetic Justice, Ray, Shaft (2000), The Ladies Man, The Nutty Professor (I & II), The Wood, Who's The Man? and probably a bunch of other movies I've forgotten, here are my five favorite movies with a predominantly African-American cast:

5. Barbershop - This flick manages to impart important lessons about community without stemming the flow of laughter. A true ensemble cast, Ice Cube disappears from the screen for long stretches and it seems natural. Anthony Anderson, Eve and Cedric the Entertainer all steal scenes, and I love that I still see Leonard Earl Howze (Dinka) popping up in commercials these days.

4. The Best Man - Taye Diggs tries to manage all the crazy around him, and survives intact except for a black eye in this story about losing, finding and keeping love in your life.

3. Menace II Society - One day when I was in high school, I went to the video store and was going to rent this or Boyz N The Hood. The box for Menace had a quote from a critic that read something like "even better than Boyz N The Hood." So I rented Menace. And agreed. "You know you done fu**ed up now, right?"

2. Coming To America - "This is beautiful. What is that? Velvet?"

1. Friday - Fun fact: "Tiny" Lister has more items on his iMDB page than Samuel L. Jackson. And despite memorable performances in The Fifth Element, The Dark Knight and others, he will ALWAYS be Deebo. My best friend and I have been relentlessly quoting this movie about a day in the life of two good friends for the past 15 years. It's one of my favorite movies of all-time, and taught me, among other things, that you can get fired on your day off, that it's tough to sell weed if you smoke it and that you can make a lot of money for a slip and fall in a store!