TheArchive: Reviewing the Rare, Retro, and Restored

Settling in with a cozy blanket, a warm drink, and a feel-good Christmas movie is an essential part of celebrating the holidays. But if you’ve watched your usual favorites a million times already, this year might be the perfect year to switch it up and add in a few overlooked films into your holiday movie marathon. Christmas Lilies of the Field (1979) Christmas Lilies of the Field was released in 1979 as a sequel to the classic Lilies of the Field , where handyman Homer Smith ( Billy Dee Williams) returns to visit the chapel he once built for a group of nuns. But things have changed, dozens of children have taken refuge with the sisters, and Mother Maria wants Homer to build an orphanage before the government relocates the kids into foster care. This movie is a touching story about stepping up when you’re needed most. It’s a reminder that the holidays are about generosity, community, and showing up for each other. Unlikely Angel (1996) Dolly Parton plays a country music singer who...

  There will be no other. Sidney Poitier, "paved the way for Black actors in film," but it is all too apparent he paved the way for ALL actors and helped shaped a humanity that without him, may still be longing for such a changemaker and pathfinder. Poitier was the first Black performer to win the Oscar for best actor for “Lilies of the Field,” and is well known for saying he felt “as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made.” I believe with all my heart that Mr. Poitier was as crucial in the odyssey of freedom and equality for Black Americans — for personhood — as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as Martin Luther King Jr. A clear descendant of Douglass’s rhetorical brilliance, he spoke the words of white people but from his own mouth. His projected image begot what is now a galaxy of other Black actors. - Wesley Morris, The New York Times Sidney Poitier, born in 1927 in Miami and grew up  in the Bahamas,  rose to distinction at the outset...