Jerry Rubin Movies

This controversial political drama semi-fictionalizes the history of the radical Black Panther Party, an African-American organization that polarized America from 1966-70. Huey Newton (Marcus Chong) and Bobby Seale (Courtney B. Vance) are a pair of Oakland, California, men who form a new political party dedicated to protecting Blacks from bigoted cops through violent means. Their "Black Panther Party for Self-Protection" serves free lunch to kids, educates the community in African-American awareness, gets drug dealers off the streets, and has gun battles with the Oakland police. Two members of the Panther Party are Tyrone (Bokeem Woodbine) and Judge (Kadeem Hardison). When FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Richard Dysart) suspects that the Black Panthers' leftist leanings are an indication of communist involvement, Judge, an affable Vietnam vet, agrees to become a double agent, reporting to both the Feds and the Panthers. After the Panthers storm the State Assembly in Sacramento, political paranoia grows, and Hoover conspires with the mafia to flood urban streets with cheap heroin, thus destroying the party. Director Mario Van Peebles, who also appears in the role of Stokely Carmichael, worked from a script written by his father, Melvin Van Peebles, based on his book about his real-life experiences with the Black Panthers. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Director Morley Markson interviews political radicals of the 1960s in this informative social documentary. Twenty years after riots were sparked by anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the same activists take a retrospective look at the turbulent times. Newsreel clips are inserted in between interviews with Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, John Sinclair, Fred Hampton Jr., poet Allan Ginsberg, and LSD guru Timothy Leary. Also interviewed are Chicago Seven defense attorney William Kunstler, John Cox, and Deborah Russell. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In 1972, John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, made a strategic and historic week-long guest appearance on the hit talk/variety television program The Mike Douglas Show hoping to get their counterculture message across to middle America. Day two, February 15, 1972, features yippie political provocateur Jerry Rubin alienating Douglas with an antiwar, anti-Nixon diatribe. Douglas sings "With a Little Help From My Friends" and Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and the Plastic Ono Band With Elephant's Memory sing "Midsummer New York," with Rubin and filmmaker Barbara Loden accompanying on vocals and bongos. Other guests include Dr. Jesse Steinfeld, who was the U.S. Surgeon General, and Yellow Pearl, an Asian-American folk/protest musical duo. Highlights include a music video of "Oh My Love" from Lennon's Imagine LP, and several performance art pieces, including "Audience Shouts Spontaneously," "Unfinished Painting," and "Mend Piece," the latter two continuing from the previous day. ~ Steve Blackburn, All Movie Guide

Eliot Ness may have gotten lots of publicity (especially long after the fact) for breaking the Capone mob, but as Joseph H. Lewis' The Undercover Man reminds us, it was the accountants and the numbers-crunchers that brought down Capone and his mob. Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) started out as an accountant, but now serves as an investigator for the Treasury Department. His job has frequently required him to go undercover, masquerading as a criminal to get the goods on the top-level tax-law violators that his unit targets. But now his assignment is to gather evidence on the operations of the nation's number-one crime boss and get proof of the income that he and his lieutenants are not declaring, and this proves not only frustrating but dangerous. Potential stoolies are murdered and witnesses intimidated, and when one otherwise "respectable" lawyer (Barry Kelley) starts mentioning Warren's wife (Nina Foch) in casual conversation, he takes the hint. He's ready to quit until the mother (Esther Minciotti) of a witness-turned-victim tells him about what life was like in Italy under the Black Hand, and why she came to America to raise her sons. Warren and his men (James Whitmore, David Wolfe) make one last attempt to get the proof they need, tracing signatures and handwriting to get evidence implicating a small man in the operation, using it to turn him and going for bigger fish. Finally, even the shyster lawyer who has been dogging Warren every step of the way ends up in the sights of the feds, and the mob turns its attention to getting rid of this new "liability" and taking care of Warren as well. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide