In honor of Black History month, Amazon’s running a big sale in the Instant Video store! The sale includes such titles as:
Note: all descriptions are from IMDB; “SD” means Standard Definition.
Good Hair (PG-13, 4.5/5 stars, closed captions available, currently priced at $5.99 to own in SD)
Chris Rock, a man with two daughters, asks about good hair, as defined by Black Americans, mostly Black women. He visits Bronner Brothers’ annual hair convention in Atlanta. He tells us about sodium hydroxide, a toxin used to relax hair. He looks at weaves, and he travels to India where tonsure ceremonies produce much of the hair sold in America.
A weave is expensive: he asks who makes the money. We visit salons and barbershops, central to the Black community. Rock asks men if they can touch their mates’ hair – no, it’s decoration. Various talking heads (many of them women with good hair) comment.
It’s about self image. Maya Angelou and Tracie Thoms provide perspective.
– Written by jhailey
Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls (PG-13, 4.5/5 stars, closed captions available, currently priced at $3.99 to own in SD)
A mechanic (Idris Elba) enlists the help of a successful-but-lonely attorney (Gabrielle Union) while trying to wrest custody of his three daughters from his treacherous ex-wife and her larcenous boy friend.
Along the way, the working relationship between the blue collar dad and his uptown attorney grows into something more.
This is a simple, touching story of two people trying to overcome their different backgrounds to find love, a down-on-his-luck man struggling to protect his children from abuse and neglect, and a community looking to purge itself from the criminals terrorizing their neighborhood.
– Written by edhuds0n
The Pursuit of Happyness (PG-13, 4.5/5 stars, closed captions available, currently priced at $7.99 to own in SD)
Based on a true story about a man named Christopher Gardner. Gardner has invested heavily in a device known as a “Bone Density scanner”. He feels like he has [it] made [with] these devices.
However, they do not sell as they are marginally better than the current technology at a much higher price. As Gardner tries to figure out how to sell them, his wife leaves him, he loses his house, his bank account, and credit cards.
Forced to live out in the streets with his son, Gardner is now desperate to find a steady job; he takes on a job as a stockbroker, but before he can receive pay, he needs to go through 6 months of training [without pay].
– Written by John Wiggins
Click here to browse the full Black History Month Amazon Instant Video Sale.