Quincy Jones

[7] Sidney Poitier plays a black Northern detective who reluctantly aides a white Southern sheriff (Rod Steiger) in solving a murder case. The mystery itself is a bit thin, but it’s bolstered by good performances from the leads and a commendable handling of volatile subject matter. (Though the film takes place in Mississippi, the film’s crew decided to shoot no further south than Tennessee for …

[7] An ex-con and his wife are on the lam after a heist goes bad in this flick from Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch). Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw star as the central couple. She has to sleep with supporting baddie Ben Johnson to get McQueen’s character released from prison, and when McQueen finds out about it at the movie’s mid-point, it makes …

[9] There’s this thing called the “elasticity of human emotion”, where the harder down you throw people, the higher up they’ll rise. I haven’t seen many movies demonstrate this principle better than The Color Purple.  Whoopi Goldberg plays Celie, who we see having two children by her own father before being married off to Mister (Danny Glover), who beats her and convinces her she is …