To Sleep With Anger review

A box-office disappointment on its initial 1990 release, To Sleep With Anger cuts against the ghetto grain of early `90s African-American cinema. Both a naturalistic domestic drama and a mystical fable, it focuses on a middle-class black household in South Central LA. Boyz N The Hood this ain't.

Gideon (Paul Butler) and his wife Suzie (Mary Alice) are visited by the superstitious Harry (Danny Glover), an old travelling friend who's quick to make himself at home. With this unexpected guest comes bad luck and misfortune: Gideon is bed-ridden by a mysterious illness, while a quarrel between his grown-up sons turns nasty...

Beginning with Gideon's vivid nightmare of his own burning, writer-director Charles Burnett spins a powerful yarn around the collision between present and past. This is a movie that deserves to be discovered: Glover's blend of malevolence and charm is magnetic, the supporting turns are uniformly top-notch and the movie's emotional impact is impossible to deny.