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The Color Purple

The Color Purple

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Movies wonderful DVD have not purchase yet
Review: Whomever rated this movie below a four star need to watch it again and read between the line. You are very small mined if you can't see the plot of this movie. Speilberg you have done a wonderful job. Keep up the good work.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Purple like a bunch of flowers on the way to freedom
Review: Alice Walker is a great pioneer. She is one of those Afro-American women who deserves all our love and adoration. She explores in this film, and behind it in the book, the slow and progressive liberation of black women from their ancillary slavery. It must all start in their heads. They must find the courage to develop their own personalities and freedom in the closed jail of their skulls, and then, little by little they find the strength and the power to resist men, and then society, and then to excell. Liberatiion is a mental process that finds its total power when it gets public and looks at society as the natural field of its realization. The film is touching, poignant, sensitive, intelligent, sentimental and tremendously potent, if not even pregnant with the most universal language we can imagine, the language of the liberation of women seen as the first step of the liberation of humanity. Alice Walker is universal in this story and she deals with the whole world, and with every single human being. What's more, no one is lost, no one is abandoned on the side of the road, no one is forever wasted to the cause of liberation. Even the worst tyrant will find in his or her moral depth the idea and the initiative that will make him or her free along with the others, along with those he or she has ensalved for decades. The husband pays for the immigration of his wife's sister's own African husband and family. And he does it for nothing at all, because he stays on the side and does not claim his due. Salvation is for everyone or it will not be. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Film That Improves With Age
Review: I hadn't seen this film in many years and when it was released on DVD I was curious to see if the story and the performances had the impact I remembered. Let me assure you, they have. Alice Walker's novel (a masterpiece) is faithfully translated by director Spielberg and a perfect cast. It tells the story of two poor sisters, Celie and Nettie, growing up in the South of the early 1900's. All these girls have is one another having been abused and torn apart first by a monstrous stepfather and then by the manacing Mister, who marries Celie when he is forbidden to have Nettie. When Nettie refuses Mister's advances, he separates the sisters and Celie is doomed to spend a lifetime caring for her husband and his wild children, all the time waiting for word from her beloved Nettie which never seems to come. Enter Mister's mistress, the singer Shug Avery, at first Celie's nemesis and then her champion who helps reunite the sisters. Whoopi Goldberg delivers a soulful, devastating performance developing Celie from downtrodden girl to proud, strong woman. Danny Glover's Mister is a fully realized portrait of an abusive alcoholic who turns out to be not as evil as we suspected. Oprah Winfrey, Margarey Avery, Dana Ivey and Adolph Caeser complete the superlative ensemble, and Spielberg wisely focuses on storyline and character, giving us just enough visual beauty to make this a modern classic on all levels. Ms. Walker's message is universal: all things want love, even, as Shug Avery tells Celie, the color purple. Ultimately it is a celebration of life and the human spirit, something with which each of us can connect.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very moving
Review: I can remember watching The Colour Purple with my grandad when i was a child and it touched me so much much that i can still remember it now. The Colour Purple still remains one of my favourite films as it is so powerfull and moving. The film contains quite a few well known names but tey all mean nothing in respect to the film. You will learn to love Whoopie Goldberg in a way you have never befpre as she acts out her best performance ever. I recommend this film to everyone as it touches humanity in a way hardley any other film does

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Movie!..Bad DVD!
Review: When I purchased my DVD system,this was one of the first movies that I ran out and bought. It is a classic,..I have view it at least once a year on VHS. Now that I own it on DVD,...I was very surprised to find out that I had to flip the disc over to finish this great movie. Warner Brothers!...what a bummer. I give the movie 5 stars,...but I take away one because of the hassle of turning over the movie right where Celi kisses Shug. Bad DVD.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Please consider this...
Review: I read the words of my fellow reviewers and wondered if I had seen the same movie. "The best movie ever"? "Cannot fail to move you"? There are some good things about this film, but I'm not reading anything BUT the good, so I'd like you to consider what's being left out -- especially if you plan to let your children watch it.

While Spielberg does wonderful things with the visual design of the film and the female leads give powerful performances, the film left me feeling dirty. No black male in the film has a single socially redeeming quality of any type. The black man is portrayed as drunken, lazy, violent and sexually immoral. (Whites don't have a whole lot going for them either, but you can trash whites in a movie and it doesn't matter, so I won't worry about that issue.) At one point, Goldberg's character is asked for advice by her son who is having trouble getting his wife to obey him. Her answer is "beat her." Yeah, I know what all the movie's fans are saying: "this shows us how tragically her perspective on relationships has been twisted." But what's it say about the young black man who follows the advice and has the tar beat out of him for his trouble?!

Oh, I know this sort of brutality actually happens and we cannot ignore the tragic situation of these women. But the African-American men in The Color Purple made those in The Birth of a Nation look like saints - and I don't see anyone lining up to praise TBoaN for the way the characters move us and bring us to tears. I wouldn't want you to buy this tape without considering the way it stereotypes an entire social group. Is it something you want to add to you're home video collection?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Saddest Film I've Ever Seen
Review: "The Color Purple" ranks as one of the saddest films in the entire history of cinema. Directed by legendary director "Steven Spielberg," this was the film that marked the film debuts of some of today's most notable African-American celebrities, notably Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.

While many felt that Spielberg shouldn't have been selected to direct this tale of life in the South because of his religion and California upbringing, Mr. Spielberg's work stands as one of the best films of the 1980's. His style and sensibility to the novel's characters and actions gave him the respect that he deserved and dispelled his critics. A pioneer, Mr. Spielberg refused to edit out the lesbian kiss that Shug (Margaret Avery) and Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) share towards the middle of the film. Keeping true to Alice Walker's original vision, Mr. Spielberg's decision to keep the scene was a breakthrough for gay characters and plots in today's cinema.

This film will make anyone cry, and I can't watch the final scene where Celie's happiness to see her loved ones after so many years is so intense without crying. Whoopi's performance in this film can't ever be repeated, especially after she went the comedy route in her later films. It was her first film performance and it was her best.

Oprah Winfrey's performance is also one of the most stirring. The scene where she is beaten unconsciously by an angry white mob is both disturbing and tragic, and her physical state after being released from prison will break your heart. Danny Glover is truly amazing as Celie's abusive husband, and so is Margaret Avery as Shug. I find it so upsetting that Rae Dawn Chong was given credit in the cast list seeing that her appearance in the film was one of the shortest in the film (at most only 12 minutes out of 2 hours). I guess the producers felt that Chong's name would attract more filmgoers, especially after the success of her film "Soul Man".

Quincy Jones gospel and African-inspired score is one of the best scores in the past ten years. The scenes where we are transported to Africa to see a sacrifice will keep your suspense up, as well as the gospel performance at the end where Shug reconciles with her father at the church.

Overall this is one of the greatest films to be ever made. It represents the life so many African-Americans had to go through after Reconstruction and during the Great Depression. If you must see a film of the African-American experience in the Deep South, this is it. "The Color Purple" is a film gem for all times.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best movie ever
Review: No movie has moved me with so much inspiration and hope like this movie did...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Reaches the core of the human soul!
Review: This movie is a masterpiece. You will weep, wail, laugh. This is one of the top 10 movies ever released in the twentieth century.

If i am ever feeling very low which is rare because I am always on a natural high, I simply put this movie in and watch it.

I am rejuvenated.

This film humbles me even MORE so then I already am.

The ending is the best ending of any movie I've ever seen. It reaches the core of the human soul: Freedom, happiness, Love and Harmony.

Celie and Nettie Best Friends for life. They will always have a place in my heart I hope yours as well!

Eugene Ramirez

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Color Purple
Review: This was one of the few movies that are destine to become a classic. It is so true to life that I had to have it in our film Libery. I watched it years ago but would niot mind watching it again and again.


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