This “appropriately classy” film explores the life and career of the late Sidney Poitier, said Alistair Harkness in The Scotsman. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, it features contributions from the likes of Denzel Washington and Spike Lee, as well as interviews with the great man himself (it was made just before his death earlier this year).
The latter provide “fascinating” insights into how Poitier’s upbringing in the Bahamas gave him “the fortitude to become not just the first black leading man in Hollywood history, but one of the film industry’s top box-office draws”.
Sidney is not only a reminder of Poitier’s immense charisma – palpable in films such as In the Heat of the Night and To Sir, with Love – but of his immense contribution to civil rights and the advancement of black actors, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. It’ll leave you “desperate to revisit at least half-a-dozen of his best films”.
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“Painstakingly thorough” though this documentary is, said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times, it is rather “a compendium of hero worship”. The film was produced by Poitier’s friend Oprah Winfrey, and it feels a bit “peak Oprah Winfrey”. Still, there are moments where it shrugs off its “hagiographic shackles”, such as when Poitier’s first wife discusses the breakdown of their marriage following his affair with Diahann Carroll.
These scenes “act like lemon juice squirted on heavy cream, brief reagents in a movie that, despite the meticulousness of its making, seems a peculiarly orthodox tribute to a revolutionary life”.
