Dann Gire: 10 films to promote understanding during these trying times

The late Roger Ebert famously referred to the movies as “empathy machines” capable of fostering common understanding between people of different races, religions, politics, cultures and genders.

In that spirit, I offer 10 “empathy machines” designed by their makers to break down barriers, sidestep stereotypes, dissipate bigotry, and promote social justice and understanding between all American citizens. I have ranked them in order of my perceived importance as of this moment when we are engaged in national debates over systemic racism in our culture.

1. “Get Out” (2017)

Years from now, film scholars will officially confirm Jordan Peele's Twilight-Zoned horror comedy as one of the 21st century's most significant social and political works of cinema, for it enables white viewers to empathize with Daniel Kaluuya's black protagonist to such a refined extent that they transcend their whiteness and begin to see the world - and themselves ­­- as they are seen through the black perspective.

The scarily prescient ending involves the timely arrival of a police car, an image that inspires a sigh of relief in most white-oriented thrillers.

Here, it inspires fear and dread in a disturbing work of fiction that laces hard truths with sly comedy.

2. “Within Our Gates” (1920)

This complex silent tale of love, betrayal, rape, murder, gambling, lynching, miscegenation, bigotry and black migration to the urban North during the Jim Crow era runs 80 dense minutes.

Cinematic pioneer Oscar Micheaux, the first major African-American filmmaker (and a Chicago businessman), answered D.W. Griffith's overtly racist epic “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) with a motion picture designed to encourage northern whites to look past southern white bigotry to see blacks as American citizens worthy of both rights and respect.

3. “Do the Right Thing” (1989)

A critic at the Cannes Film Festival predicted that Spike Lee's masterpiece could never be released in America because it would inspire massive race riots. Instead, it inspired honest debate and controversy (especially over its ambiguous finale). Lee plays Mookie, a 25-year-old pizza delivery guy, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with his sister Jade (Joie Lee) and girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez). When the summer heat rises, so do racial tensions and cultural differences as neighbors turn on each other, and the cops don't help.

4. “In the Heat of the Night” (1967)

Sidney Poitier's Philadelphia police detective didn't just solve a murder in a small Mississippi town in Norman Jewison's tension-filled drama, he established a strong, moral, professional black hero who knocked down stereotypical preconceptions and opened doors for later black actors. Poitier's famous demand for respect - “They call me Mister Tibbs!” - made No. 16 on the American Film Institute's “100 Years ... 100 Movie Quotes.”

5. “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?” (1967)

About two weeks after Spencer Tracy filmed his final scene in Stanley Kramer's controversial and commanding drama (and two days after Tracy died), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the landmark Loving v. Virginia case. A fitting finale for an endearing story of two well-off white parents (Katharine Hepburn and Tracy) whose liberalism becomes tested when their daughter (Katharine Houghton) announces she's getting married to a black doctor (Sidney Poitier). At the time, 17 states outlawed interracial marriages.

6. “Fruitvale Station” (2013)

Ryan Coogler's dynamic feature directorial debut depicts the fact-based story of Oscar Grant, 22, (Michael B. Jordan), shot in the back by a white Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) policeman who claimed he mistook his gun for a Taser. The death occurred when Coogler was a grad student at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and it compelled him to create a film that humanized Grant on his last day. “When you know somebody as a human being, you know that life means something,” Coogler said.

7. “The Defiant Ones” (1958)

This Stanley Kramer drama can easily be a metaphorical lesson for whites and blacks to cooperate and work together for their own benefit, even their survival. Two southern prisoners (Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier) escape during a truck accident but are shackled together. Their mutual hatred for each other eventually gives way to understanding and trust, despite the warden's prediction that authorities won't have much trouble finding them, as “they will probably kill each other in the first five miles.”

8. “The Hate U Give” (2018)

Another eerily prescient drama, this one directed by Chicago's own George Tillman Jr. At the end, teenage main character Starr Carter (an incandescent Amandla Stenberg) vows to keep alive the memory of her childhood best friend, killed by a white police officer who mistook a hairbrush for a gun. Starr pledges to continue her advocacy against police violence by “any means necessary.” It's a sobering counterpart to the YA genre overstuffed with romance and magical realism.

9. “Hidden Figures” (2016)

The lively and insightful true story of three African-American women (as played by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe) who used their advanced science and math skills to help launch NASA's space program in the 1950s and 1960s. Funny in parts. Inspiring in others. Upsetting in NASA's racist, dismissive treatment of nonwhites. Henson's superb rendering of her nerdy genius, Katherine Johnson, mixes humor, sympathy and grit. The real Johnson died on Feb. 24 at the age of 101.

10. “Just Mercy” (2019)

A world-renowned civil rights defense attorney, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), takes on Alabama's wildly out-of-kilter judicial system when he defends a death-row prisoner (Jamie Foxx) convicted in 1987 for killing a teenager, despite overwhelming evidence proving his innocence. A tense and tight drama from Destin Daniel Cretton, director of a little-seen 2013 gem titled “Short Term 12.” And you can stream “Just Mercy” for free all month.