it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Blistering performances.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The Younger family are a working class black family with three generations, five people, living in a cramped apartment. However, it appears their fortunes are about to change as grandmother Younger is about to receive a large insurance payout. However, there is considerable disagreement within the household on how the money will be spent, resulting in friction within the Younger family.Powerful and profound, but takes forever to make its point - overwrought and unnecessarily protracted. The ultimate theme is very admirable, and very necessary, especially in the 1960s. Well set up too, in getting to the punchline.Too well set up. You have to wait for about 90 minutes for anything like a degree of focus or for a payoff for everything that came before. Until then the movie seemed to drift.Worst of all, the dialogue is incredibly padded. The writer's reasoning seemed to be - why use 10 words when 100 will do? Every bit of dialogue is long-winded and feels like a speech, enough to make even Shakespeare seem succinct. So many times I caught myself thinking "Geez, just get to the point!".Some brevity and this would have been a superb movie. Instead it is a bit of an ordeal, with a good payoff at the end.

A RAISIN IN THE SUN gives us the happy accident of the complete original Broadway cast delivering the very performances that made the stage play so memorable. This is a masterpiece.Chicago's South side, 1961. We are introduced to the Younger family: Lena (Claudia McNeil), the matriarch, her son Walter Lee (Poitier), his wife Ruth (Dee) and their son Travis (Stephen Perry). Also crammed into the tiny apartment is Walter Lee's sister Beneatha (Sands).The family has been crammed into their small apartment for as long as Walter Lee has been alive. As a result, he is a young man with big dreams. As the play opens, the family is waiting on an insurance check for $10,000.00 left by Walter's father. There is some conflict about the money: Beneatha considers the windfall to be her mother's property, a position that Walter Lee does not exactly share. He has dreams, as we noted before, and one of these dreams is opening a liquor store. The problems with this idea are: 1) Mama is not happy about the idea; and 2) Walter Lee has teamed up and placed his trust in a couple of shady characters.Mama decides to take matters into her all too capable hands: she goes out and comes back to announce that she has put down a down payment on a house for the family.Everyone is thrilled except for Walter, who feels betrayed by his mother and resents her lack of trust in him. Unfortunately, Mama turns out to be right. Walter takes the rest of the money and gives it to one of his associates, who skips town and leaves him stunned, grieving, and penniless. Walter now must face his mother with what he has done, in a climactic and almost violent scene that takes the breath away.Meantime, a fly has found its way into Mama's ointment: a White man named Lindner (John Fiedler) from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association (Clybourne Park being the White neighborhood in which Mama purchased the house). Lindner comes armed with a check for more money than Mama has paid for the house, the motive being to keep the Black family out of their lily White enclave.At the climax of the play it falls to Walter Lee to inform Lindner that they intend to occupy the home. It is one of the most powerful scenes ever put on film. Lindner attempts to "reason with" Mrs Younger but she won't have it; her son is now the head of the family.And as the play winds down, the family packs their things and heads out for their new home. Mama picks up a plant that has come to symbolize the family's struggles, and she, perhaps appropriately, is the last to leave.It's a brilliant film, with brilliant performances and a carefully crafted script. Unforgettable.

One of the first major plays to deal with the frustrations and economic plight of lower-class black families in urban America, from author Lorraine Hansberry, makes an emotional tour de force film for a terrific cast, led by Sidney Poitier as the sole-surviving adult male of the family, Walter Lee Younger. He shares a small two-bedroom tenement apartment in Chicago with his wife, his son, who is forced to sleep on the couch, and his mother and sister, who share the other bedroom.Even though he has a steady job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family, the other adults are forced to engage in part-time work in stereotypical jobs, such as kitchen, maid and laundry work. His sister, a part-time student, has dreams of becoming a doctor, while Sidney has dreams of making it big in some emerging business opportunity, as a friend did in dry cleaning.Most of the film takes place in the small apartment, so we feel both the claustrophobia and despair of their situation. The mother immigrated there from the deep south when a teen, in order to escape racism and to find some opportunity for advancement out of poverty, which until her husband's death has been an elusive and unattainable dream.The play and film begin as a glimmer of hope is on its way in the form of a life insurance check for ten thousand following the death of his father, who also lived in the apartment for most of his adult life as well. His mother, played by Claudia McNeil in a Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated performance as the new head of the family, hasn't decided yet what to do with all the money, while the rest of the family dreams what it could mean to each of them. Along the way we get to see a very young Lou Gossett, Jr., and Ivan Dixon in small parts as romantic interests of the sister.It may seem a little stagy, but it's obvious that director Petrie wanted to keep the feel and intimacy of the play. At times it seems a bit overemotional perhaps, with some acting bordering on histrionics; nevertheless, the entire cast turns in excellent, heart-rending performances, led by Poitier and Ruby Dee as his wife. This is a tough pill to swallow, but if you've grown up poor or within a minority, it feels right on target and gives honest expression to the plight of the economically deprived in this over-abundant yet unequal nation. Given the current economic climate, it truly seems that some things never change.

A raisin in the Sun is a fantastic movie, it is old but still useful. Every family should watch it because the greatest message it carries (which I don't think has been filmed this well ever) is that in a family one supports the other not only when they are doing good but also when they are at their lowest. The movie has different facets, relationship between siblings, racism, ethics (the liquor business) etc. The movie certainly swings between the feel of a movie and a stage play especially in Poitier's character. The mother role has also been performed well, almost unbending on issues related to family and ethics. Another very important message that one can pick from the movie and which might come handy for anyone at anytime is: RIGHT IS WHAT YOU CAN TELL YOUR CHILDREN. I guess this can make life lot simpler.