To Sleep with Anger · reception & legacy
1990 · Charles Burnett
How To Sleep with Anger has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 1990 and swept the Independent Spirit Awards, then died in theaters — Burnett has said it was never properly marketed to Black audiences. Now it's National Film Registry (2017), Criterion Collection (2019), and a fixture on best-of-the-90s lists.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile debate: is this actually Burnett's masterpiece over the more famous Killer of Sheep — and why does almost nobody see either?
Its footprint
Danny Glover's Harry Mention is regularly cited as one of American cinema's great trickster figures, and the film itself has become the go-to exhibit whenever critics argue about brilliant Black independent films that distributors failed.
Where it stands
A canon climber — the 'best American film you haven't seen' of its era, now a Criterion-era rediscovery that Letterboxd reviewers love to evangelize.