From Eddie Murphy in Top Comedic Form to O.J. Simpson Uncovered: 10 Essential Movies for Black History Month

Check out classics like ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’ ‘Boomerang,’ ‘Malcolm X’ and more

Everett; Paramount Pictures/Everett; Courtesy of ESPN Films

In honor of Black History Month, check out these movies, both educational and insightful.

From Spike Lee’s 1992 drama Malcolm X to Jordan Peele’s horror hit Get Out, this list offers a range of genres and titles recent and retro.

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Black Orpheus (aka Orfeu Negro), 1959

Everett Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello in Black Orpheus.

A romantic tragedy, Black Orpheus adapts the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, switching settings from ancient Thrace to Rio de Janeiro.

Young lovers Orfeu and Eurydice dash through the favelas during Carnival to escape a hitman dressed like Death and also Orfeu’s scored fiancée. The impressionistic update sees the protagonists go back and forth from moments of ethereal fantasy to stark reality — but some critics have taken issue with how the film exoticizes Brazilian poverty and reinforces racial stereotypes.

Nonetheless, Black Orpheus won the 1959 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. And it introduced the world to the sound of bossa nova and the genre’s pioneers Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The Learning Tree, 1969

Everett From left: Carter Vinnegar, Bobby Goss, Stephen Perry, Alex Clarke and Kyle Johnson in The Learning Tree.

Conceived by the prodigious auteur Gordon Parks, The Learning Tree is a semi-autobiographical story of his coming of age as a Black teen in east Kansas during the 1920s.

Parks not only wrote the novel on which the story was based, he also wrote, directed, produced and composed the music for the film — which the New York Times praised for telegraphing and draining each crisis. The first film directed by a Black filmmaker for a major American studio (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts), The Learning Tree was one of 25 initial movies selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 1971

Mary Evans/YEAH/Ronald Grant/Everett Melvin Van Peebles (center) in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

A landmark film for the culture, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song almost never made it to the box office. No studio would finance the feature, about a whorehouse exhibitionist who lams it after being framed for murder — so director Melvin Van Peebles financed it himself with a boost from Bill Cosby, who gave him a $50,000 loan.

Van Peebles filmed it over 19 days while starring in the titular role, performing all his own stunts and sex scenes — some of them not acted. Despite its X rating, the movie went on to make $15.2 million at the box office and launch the Blaxploitation genre as well as film marketing via soundtrack. Sweetback’s came courtesy of a largely unknown funk group named Earth, Wind & Fire.

Beverly Hills Cop, 1984

Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop.

Eddie Murphy shines as a flashy Detroit cop who treks to Los Angeles to solve the murder of a childhood friend. The film, a high-water mark for the buddy-cop genre, proved to be an immediate blockbuster (topping the box office that year) and made an international superstar out of Murphy, still in his early 20s and not far removed from his stint on Saturday Night Live.

It was also a hit with Entertainment Weekly (which, in 2009 declared Beverly Hills Cop the third best comedy film of the previous 25 years) and with the estimable poet Kingsley Amis, who pronounced the film “a flawless masterpiece.”

Hollywood Shuffle, 1987

Samuel Goldwyn/courtesy Everett Robert Townsend (center) in Hollywood Shuffle.

Comedian Robert Townsend maxed out his credit cards to make Hollywood Shuffle, the story of an aspiring actor’s fight to make it in an industry that defaults to racial typecasting.

Townsend co-wrote the script with Keenen Ivory Wayans, who poured his own early experiences with rejection in Hollywood into the story. But it’s Townsend’s wild imagination that’s responsible for the film’s fantastical asides, which are meant to send up the stereotypical roles Black actors are forced to play (the slave, the pimp). Which is to say: The film just gets more relevant with time.

Hollywood Shuffle didn’t just prove to be a box office success ($5.2 million on a $100,000 budget) that established Wayans as a comedy producing powerhouse (and also introduced the world to his brother, Damon). It announced Townsend as a force to be reckoned with in the industry. In fact, his very next project was directing the seminal Eddie Murphy stand-up special, Raw.

Boomerang, 1992

Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock Eddie Murphy in Boomerang.

Directed by comic nerd turned BET exec Reggie Hudlin (who also shot House Party), Boomerang is the quintessential ’90s rom-com.

Eddie Murphy stars as a smooth ad executive who never met a woman he couldn’t seduce. Martin Lawrence and David Allen Grier are his partners in crime. Robin Givens is the ultimate prize, and Halle Berry is her best friend. If that isn’t a laughable formula, even more comic relief comes from Grace Jones (the sex-crazed supermodel), Eartha Kitt (a late-stage cosmetics mogul with her own formidable sexual appetite) and a young Chris Rock (the mail guy who wants in). There’s just as much star power on the film’s top-selling soundtrack — which features songs from Jones, Toni Braxton and TLC.

Malcom X, 1992

Everett Denzel Washington as Malcolm X.

In perhaps the finest Spike Lee joint, Denzel Washington fully embodies the controversial brother-minister — to the point where it doesn’t even seem like he’s acting at times.

In a recent interview with Democracy Now!, Lee explained just how staggered he was by how completely consumed Washington was in the role — which should have earned him an Oscar. (He was nominated for Best Actor, but lost to Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.)

“There’s one scene where you see Al Freeman Jr. as Honorable Elijah Muhammad behind him,” Lee said. “And so, we’re looking at this — Denzel is talking. I’m next to my great cameraman, Ernest Dickerson. And we’re shooting film. So, there’s only 10 minutes in a roll of film. We were shooting 35 millimeter. So Denzel is going. I’m turning a page. He’s killing it, killing it, killing it. And Ernest is telling me, ‘Spike, we’re about to roll out.’ And then I see that — I’m reading the script, and this is where the scene is supposed to end, and he keeps going. And the stuff — we were all mesmerized. And finally, Ernest said, ‘We rolled out.’ So I went over to Denzel, and his eyes were glazed over. His eyes were glazed over. Anybody who was there, we saw the spirit of Malcolm. The spirit of Malcolm came over Denzel.”

O.J.: Made in America, 2016

Courtesy of ESPN Films O.J. Simpson in O.J.: Made in America.

Some might scoff at the thought of watching a docuseries that stretches on for nearly eight hours, but O.J.: Made in America more than justifies its runtime.

The ESPN 30 for 30 production, directed by Ezra Edelman, tells the definitive story of America’s first post-racial sports star — from his hardscrabble upbringing in San Francisco housing projects to his gridiron-aided star turn to his blood-soaked downfall. NFL legend Jim Brown, murder case prosecutor Marcia Clark, and disgraced L.A. cop Mark Fuhrman are among the 72 expert witnesses featured in the film — which took home Oscar, Emmy and Peabody awards.

Get Out, 2017

Moviestore/Shutterstock Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out.

In a stunning authorial debut, funnyman Jordan Peele wrote and directed this psychological thriller, about an interracial couple whose relationship is tested when the White girlfriend (Allison Williams) takes her Black boyfriend (Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet her parents. The drama that follows launched a thousand memes and meditations on modern race relations in the post-Obama era, while announcing Peele (who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, one of the film’s four nominations) as a serious creator.

Black Panther, 2018

Marvel/Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock Lupita Nyong’o (left), Chadwick Boseman and Danai Gurira in Black Panther.

Black Panther was such an important film for the culture. It didn’t just showcase Black excellence in its full splendor, it disproved the idea that films with Black leads wouldn’t translate with global audiences on the way to becoming the ninth-highest grossing film all-time, earning $1.3 billion at the box office.

The film, directed by Fruitvale Station auteur Ryan Coogler, was also a resounding critical success that earned seven Oscar nominations and won for Original Score, production design and costume design — with Ruth E. Carter making history as the first Black person to be so honored in the latter category.

The Marvel Studios production, which sees African prince (Chadwick Boseman) grapple with a powerful infiltrator (Michael B. Jordan) determined to turn the world upside down, is the notable comic book fantasy that engages with a bigger idea — in this case, Black American identity and its relationship to Africa.

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