User reviews

What a strange, powerful, unsettling and unique film. If you want to experience the tingling of terror, than over the course of 97 minutes becomes more and more apparent, this might be the film for you. Some of it is more ambition than execution. Sometimes it tries to be a bit too profound, and some of the acting is a bit low key, but I have never seen anything like this in my life.

We first she him in the shape of an old friend. We hear a knock on the door and in comes Harry, the family friend who hasn't set a foot in the town for 30 years. He makes it clear that he was heading somewhere else, but needed a rest after a long bus ride. The old married couple invites him to stay, but our friend Harry never leave. He seems so friendly, but one on one he can make the most unsettling remarks that would crawl under the skin of anybody.

His past could very well be covered with blood, and his present surroundings starts to descend into hell. Danny Glover plays the magnetic and devilish persona, and this is certainly his magnum opus. Never seen such an enigmatic and bigger than life performance from him, and few could match it. Some become his disciples, others look at his with hate. It's built around, or perhaps within the mystique between old folklore, superstition and religion Some of it is slightly simple minded. And it's allusions to the devil and the battle between good and evil might seem a tad forced. But this is certainly one for the books.

For the last several visits to the video store, I've been drawn to this film, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I finally rented it. And I'm really glad I did.

This film glows with delicately-drawn character studies. It is a testament to the effectiveness of subtle storytelling. The story is good, and the characters are gentle but passionate. They are middle class folks who live in a pleasant neighborhood in LA. They have left the hardscrabble life of the South -- with all the attendant superstitions and fears -- behind. Or so they hope...

The responses that the characters have to the presence of evil in their midst are refreshing and true. Though the film is subtle, it never drags, gets sentimental, or sloshes into easy cliches.

Danny Glover is wonderful, but so are most of the other actors. Oh, it's about family, but in a way that attracts us. There are no tried and true gimmicks, no diseases du jour, no soapy interludes. Just people. Doing the best they can. They are sometimes funny, sometimes foolish, sometimes predictable. One thing we notice: they can seem excessively patient with out-of- town visitors...

This film involves a black family in southern California. They have a rather autocratic father who is impatient but also kind. There are two brothers who are polar opposites. One is shiftless and married and searching for a place in the world. The other is hard working and settled but also rather dull. Then an old friend named Harry shows up. He is played by the gregarious Danny Glover. The problem is this guy is evil but charming. Soon bad things happen. I rented this blindly and am glad I got a chance to watch it. It has a wonderful cast with Richard Brooks as the wayward son and several other fine actors.

One good role for Danny Glover can erase the memory of several 'Lethal Weapon' and 'Predator' sequels, but it took a small, independently produced feature to bring the best out of one of Hollywood's hardest working actors. In this modest comedy Glover plays an enigmatic travelin' man named Harry, arriving unannounced at the home of some old friends and adding a subtle tension to the domestic friction already eroding three generations of family ties. But the trouble with Harry is less what he is than what he represents: the ghost of old traditions lurking in the cultural closet, and for a family already sensitive to portents and omens he might be the embodiment of all their superstitions. Writer director Charles Burnett keeps the viewer on guard with his elusive plot and complex characters, but the film is understated almost to a fault. The metaphors and hidden meanings (better suited to a stage play) help create a portentous mood, but in the end leave a lot unexplained.

. . . as I have ever seen on film. Danny Glover is an incredibly convincing devilish character - tossed into the midst of your average, striving African-American family. To see his interplay with the parents - who thought they had left their small town ways and superstitions behind - as well as with the two sons - an almost classical prodigal son story - was to witness what surely was one of the best movies of a great movie decade. This movie cemented my status as an ardent admirer of the work of Charles Burnett, surely the cream of the new crop of talented American directors. This is a very suspenseful film, one that will enlighten those with a desire to learn more about the Black experience in America.

Charles Burnett is the unsung vanguard of African-American cinema, who starts his career years before Spike Lee, yet whose output is far less prolific, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER is only his third feature, after KILLER OF SHEEP (1978) and MY BROTHER'S WEDDING (1983).

The life of South Los Angeles inhabitants Gideon and Suzie (Butler and Alice) starts to unravel when an old friend from the South, Harry (Glover) blows in one day, out of hospitality and bonhomie, they invite Harry to stay as long as he wishes. After backhanded remarks questioning the philanthropic work of Gideon and Suzie's elder son Junior (Lumbly) and his wife Pat (McGee), who is gravid with a baby number two, Harry finds his perfect target in Gideon and Suzie's younger son Samuel aka. Baby Brother (Brooks), whose immaturity, trivial grievance and maladaptive fatherhood gives the access of Harry's macho, wheedling male-bonding of going back to the South, which brings tension between Baby Brother and his family, especially with his wife Linda (Ralph), who is haplessly juggling between her career and traditional drudgery assigned to a wife, child-rearing and domestic chores.

Bad omen foreshadows Harry's arrival, the opening surreal self-combusted metaphor and the breaking of Gideon's charm all presage that it is a hostage to fortune to allow Harry overstaying his welcome. In Burnett's progressive thinking, there isn't much gray zone in the tradition versus urbanization tug-of-war, Harry, an incarnation of the vileness of a hidebound mindset (characterized by male chauvinism and superstition), is a menace with an elusive ulterior motive, and Danny Glover submerses deeply into Harry's dark side with a simian, hail-fellow-well-met expansiveness that is only betrayed by his piercing, menacing glint, shrouded in a mystical aura, he is mesmeric enough to hold our attention, but we have no idea what is he up to, because gradually Harry is reduced to a symbol, an unequivocal bad influence, which makes his comeuppance a bit blunt, if there is any redeeming feature in him, it is totally under our radar.

Above all, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER is an ensemble piece, great performances are actualized, barring the top-billing Glover, also by its distaff players: Mary Alice, who is not just a devoted wife, a capable ob-gyn doctor, but also a witty and sensible mother, and knows how to live up to be the pillar of the household when the crunch befalls; Sheryl Lee Ralph, whose suffering wife of a man-child is mostly poignant, and Ethel Ayler, who plays Hattie, an old acquaintance whose newborn faith projects a searing antagonism against Harry even before he reveals his true colors. Good impression is dwindled on the man's front, Paul Butler's Gideon is taken to his bed most of the time, Carl Lumbly is prone to be an empty vessel (by making the most noise) and Richard Brooks has the juiciest role, but is squandered by a script which portrays him as the good-for-nothing every has to condone with.

That said, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER deserves to be seen by a larger demography (it is a 4-times Independent Spirit winner if that doesn't mean nothing), for its steady deconstruction-and-reconstruction of familial bonds, for its unpretentious ethnic portrayal, and most prominently, for Burnett's unorthodox, pragmatic perspective on African-Americans' assimilation and adjustment in a modern society.

Danny Glover shows up at the door of his old friends and moves in. Over the next few weeks, a lot of stuff happens.

Charles Burnett's movie seems to be a slice of life piece, showing the variety and contradictions of a small Black community, nominally in Los Angeles. There are tough guys and weak guys, but it's a solid working-class community where the choir sings polite gospel, and the preacher comes to visit the visit and chide them for using "old-fashioned" obeah cures instead of prayer.

This isn't the world of rap or youth, but of the older, settled community. In some ways it seems idyllic, with no drug dealers or gang violence, the standard modern cinematic image of Black communities. There's no rap music, but there is the blues and a small boy playing a trumpet very loudly.

It's warm and frequently silly, and beneath it is a had recognition of being unregarded. I found it very familiar, and if the older folks had been speaking Yiddish, i might have been, if not my own home growing up, then a cousin's, or that of one of my father's old friends.

This movie is undeniably well crafted but it didn't particularly click with me. Perhaps it requires a rewatch in order to hit the mark, but it was not striking enough to make want to revisit it.

A quiet family is upset by the arrival of an old acquaintance whose nasty personality slowly seeps throughout the household. I've found the acting generally solid, especially Glover who plays his character so naturally that it feels unintentionally evil.

It feels a bit too dragged towards the end, and the whole figurative thing of the mutual exclusion between father and acquaintance seems a bit of a stretch, but I wouldn't pan this film too much.

This film reminded me a bit of some of Toni Morrison's novels-about the shared heritage of American descendants of slaves, the grief and the magic. The film begins in a Black neighborhood that is if anything a more virtuous reflection of postwar middle-class white neighborhoods: neatly-kept bungalows with big yards, kids playing in the street (and with pigeons on the rooftop) and practicing musical instruments (a trumpet, in this case), a paterfamilias who keeps chickens and irons his own slacks, a mother who supplements her shopping with produce from her own garden and works as a midwife, two handsome sons with wives and a (quiet, respectful) child each.... The main problem is that the younger son's wife is bored silly by the agricultural table-talk at Sunday dinner: she sells real estate, and that is what land is to her. Also, the roof leaks, and the two sons can't get together to fix it.

Then Gideon remarks that he can't find his "toby" (thank you, subtitles, and also Wikipedia for mentioning this as a synonym of a mojo), a teapot with marbles in it falls to the floor and breaks, and Harry arrives. Harry is from that place in the South from which Gideon and Suzie emigrated when their sons were children. Harry is the drinking, gambling, womanizing friend who keeps his possessions in a few cardboard boxes instead of a bungalow. He draws to him a whole crowd of Gideon's fellow emigrés, mostly men, and with them comes fierce misogyny and the potential for violence.

Enough with the plot summary. This is a rich and entertaining film. I see that many of the other reviews are from this very month, so I guess it has just started streaming.

This was probably a nice night at the live theatre back in the day. And as a quiet movie with a killer music bed, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I'm grateful it got made at all. A movie about people. Real people. It certainly illustrates the massive talent of Danny Glover. I'm ashamed to say that as soon as I hear his name, those juvenile Lethal Weapon movies pop into my head. Yet as of this writing he's got more than 200 credits on IMDB, and appears to be busier than ever.

Am I the only viewer who fell in love with Ethyl Ayler? I don't know whether it was the glorious white hair. The way she sang that torch song at the house party. Or just her general cheekiness. But that was one s3xy 59-year-old woman.

"To Sleep with Anger" It is one of the richest film experiences I've had in a very long time. Since I saw it in 1993, no other American film has seemed as winning and varied as this one. It is a film I return to again and again, for the brilliant ensemble cast, the witty writing and the blend of humor, folklore and tragedy. There are no cinematic pyrotechnics. Mr. Burnett's approach to filmmaking is deceptively simple and yet his film seems far richer and more cinematic than many a more "sophisticated filmmaker". Mr. Burnett has taste and economy. He knows where to place his camera for the greatest effect and how to edit his films in a way that enhances the drama of each scene, rather than using edits to manufacture drama in a scene that is dramatically inert. He is a filmmaker of integrity and genius. This is his masterpiece.

Or The Triumph Of The Black Yuppies. Did not care for it. Good performances from a wonderful ensemble cast saves it from utter perdition. C plus.

You'll get a good idea from the opening credits that this movie is a little creepy. A man sits in a chair, and as the credits progress, parts of him catch on fire. The synopsis tells you that a charismatic old friend returns to town and stirs up trouble, but that's putting it mildly. Danny Glover plays the old friend, and while he's all smiles and laughter upon his entrance, he clearly has an odd aura about him. Wherever he goes, arguments follow. True, the family he visits was already having some problems before he got there (which makes you wonder what would happen if he visited a truly innocent family), but they escalate in his presence.

If you're paying attention, you'll notice some clues. Danny stays at home while the rest of the family goes to church. He resists shaking the hand of a pregnant woman; is he avoiding the innocent vibes of the unborn? While nothing ever gets really spelled out, you can guess what's going on. To Sleep with Anger could have been a whole lot scarier or creepier, but it's pretty tame, especially compared to modern movies. If you're expecting satanic cults and animal sacrifices, you're going to be disappointed. Just keep in mind that it's a domestic drama that's extremely vague and still manages to make you feel uncomfortable. It's not one I'd choose to watch again, but I'm usually up for watching a Danny Glover movie. The members of the family are played by Mary Alice, DeVaughn Nixon, Paul Butler, Carl Lumbly, Richard Brooks, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Vonetta McGee, Reina King, and Cory Curtis.

To Sleep with Anger is probably the most low-key kind of film that is about a man with a malevolent spirit about him who turns a fairly average middle class African American family's lives upside down. Charles Burnett means to show a sort of story of how folklore is manifested in a sort of realistic setting (this is in a sense the same LA that he shot Killer of Sheep, only now shot in color instead of black and white, though it still looks really good), and I think I was struck by how this is, even with the appearance of Harry (Glover, in a great performance mostly for how subtle he largely is), and slice of life about this family's familial and relationship issues.

There is some surreal and abstract imagery notably in the opening where we see a cursed man on fire without his "Tobey" (that's the good luck charm of a sort, which is what makes Gideon in trouble for much if the film), but it is mostly a fairly typical family drama and it isn't a bad thing but I perhaps expected a little more out of the film. Maybe it comes with that expectation of something a little more special from Burnett, or (and this is my problem not yours) I just wasn't in a great headspace for something as nuanced as this.

What does make this remarkable then? How about some excellent supporting work from Carl Lumbly, Vonetta McGee and Sheryl Lee Ralph (the latter in one of those hair styles that says 1989 and I love that about its specific time and place), or how Burnett adds some mystery that keeps you guessing in a good way about how pervasive Harry will make his influence on the family. I most appreciated that there wasn't one particular thing that made him seem so sinister, it's more like not even a passive-aggressive tone but a sort of simple way of commenting to the characters about this or that, the insinuations that tradition should be paid heed. But when it comes time to have a big drink of some really hard alcohol? He's first in line to pour out to all the house guests around.

If I'm honest with myself, I found some of the interactions midway through sort of dry, this despite there being some conflict involving the parenting (or lack thereof) with some in this family, which leads to a boiling point in the last act. Another positive is that it also comes together as the conflicts come to a head, and the sinister influence of Harry is finally too much especially for Suzie (Mary Alice, also quite moving in her subtle way).

There's a fantastic pay-off involving some items that the boy had earlier, and it shows that Burnett understands giving an audience some conventional pleasures even as he is mostly content to have us hang out with the characters. At the same time, this could improve for me on another viewing (or in a theater with no distractions where Burnett's blues guitar and the lightning effects pay off), and it's certainly a unique effort for its time or any time.

Maybe it was the bizarre photo of a smirking, card-holding Danny Glover that always gave me the wrong impression of this film. I'm not entirely sure what I expected it to be, but I'm relatively certain I wasn't expecting a quiet family drama.

Writer/director Charles Burnett doesn't reach hard for big statements. The film appears to take place in the 1950s-60s (I couldn't be sure), but the time period isn't chosen out of a desire to create a plot focused on race relations. In fact, the drama is entirely centered around a single small family, and a wild friend from way in the past (Harry, played by Danny Glover). Cinematographer Walt Lloyd creates a familiar environment, whether or not it happens to be personally familiar to the viewer. Everything feels warm and slightly worn, including personalities and ways of speaking.

Although my personal family history couldn't be more different than the family depicted in this film, the character of Samuel "Babe Brother" (Richard Brooks) really hit home for me. His attitude on life and relationship with his father mirrors my own all too closely. It's the honestly of character depiction and interaction that brings out so much truth from Charles Burnett's writing. Everything comes together to make a perfectly realized story of absolute truth. This may just be a great film.

This movie is very deep...you have to really pay attention in order to get the seriousness of the underlying message. If you pay attention and apply the lessons to your own life you may be able to identify people like the character that Danny Glover portrayed. It has a very deeply religious appreciation for the fact that love covers a multitude of sin. The mother's love brought her family back together and her husband back to life. The garden died and the man of the house fell ill after Danny Glover's character arrived uninvited, unannounced and undermining everything that the family's values were based upon. The mother was a God fearing woman, but she turned to old wives tales remedies rather than standing firmly on her faith in God. Until she remembered that God was the only one that could help her she suffered from lack of faith not knowledge. The man of the house was the spiritual gate keeper for the family, but he allowed his guard down due to misplaced loyalty to an old friend...or at least what he thought was an old friend. He nearly lost his life and his family behind the thoughtless decision to allow a stranger to stay in his home. Danny Glover's character explained to the woman of the house that just as she has a purpose in life he did as well, regardless to the fact that their purposes were in direct opposition to one another. A lesson in life to choose your friends carefully and always know who and what you are dealing with. Pay close attention to the movie and even closer attention to your acquaintances and your surroundings.

Charles Burnett is an excellent director, he knows how to make a unique film. Danny Glover is the best part of this film, followed by a string of fine performances. There is no shootings or people getting killed, just happy family life. This film is very unforgettable in the way that there is no other film like it,and that's always a good thing. I am so sick of seeing Hollywood trash, all they care about is money and fame. This film is a genius, you never get tired of the film because of it's caring message. The other thing that is great about this film, is that it is totally free from B-movie material, this film has A-movie material in it. Charles Burnett is defenity a talented director, I just hope he can make more films like this gem. I give this film a 10 out of a 10 grade.:::::::::: top movie"

Movies always are experienced differently. Depending on your own background and life experience you will see things different than and the other way around too. In this case someone not just from America, but also someone of color (not necessarily from that time period, but doesn't hurt) will have more insight on certain things than I did.

Having said, there are many universal themes here, that anyone who grew up with more than just having his or her parents around will recognize. This is family time, this comprehensible for the majority. And the character studies in here ... the struggle, the pain, the connections, the dreams and the relationships all do feel quite "real". Danny Glover apparently was the one that helped the movie get of the ground - his Lethal Weapon fame came to good use. And he was not too old for that ... no pun intended.

So if you are into family drama and no cliches about hoods and black on black crime - you will get a movie you will appreciate a lot.

It's clear that this movie is rife with symbolism. The question is: what did it all mean? As for me, I don't know.

A man named Harry (Danny Glover) whisks into town and it upsets the balance of the house he visited. He stopped by, presumably, to visit and his brief visit stretched into a long term stay. During that time he seemed to have a bad influence on everybody. Was he temptation? Was he the devil? Was he everything bad about back home (the South)? What was his goal, what was his motivation? Who knows. The movie started, some things happened, and the movie ended. That's what I got out of it all.