![]() ![]() So, to keep it simple, this is a ranking of Lee’s 24 best theatrical narrative features (or, as he’d refer to them, joints). This list doesn’t feature Lee’s commercials (like his collaboration with Michael Jordan for Nike), docuseries ( When the Levees Broke), thesis film ( Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads), TV movies ( Jim Brown: All American), concert films ( American Utopia) or filmed performances of plays ( Pass Over), because it would be too long. So, in honor of the filmmaker, we’re highlighting his best movies.īut before we get started, here are a few ground rules. It’s to the point that Black cinema and the name Spike Lee are nearly synonymous. They tell the stories of the people who inhabit the singular fabric of the metropolis, and the way its history, institutions, and community explain the past, present, and future of Black life. Lee’s films are unabashedly Black and proudly New York. No Black American filmmaker comes close to his output of work, and few have defined American life through several generations like him. On a systemically unequal movie landscape, where the creative lifespan for a Black filmmaker is all too short, Lee has persisted. He often operates outside of the Hollywood system, consistently searching and finding budgets for unpredictable projects. His films are critical, ambitious, impish, imaginative, and almost always boldly political. He rarely employs a classic three-act structure and isn’t afraid to play with form - leaning on freeze frames, montages, and his signature double dolly shot - to remind the viewer they’re watching a movie. Fiercely independent and artistically unique, Lee rarely bends to conventional Hollywood storytelling. It’d be so easy to think of Spike Lee as his generation’s Orson Welles. ![]() In honor of the famed filmmaker, we’ve ranked his 24 best movies. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lee’s Mars Blackmon character became the pitchman for Air Jordan basketball shoes.You can’t talk about Black movies without mentioning Spike Lee. In addition to his film work, Lee has had a successful career directing television commercials, perhaps most notably for Nike. It won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2018, he directed and co-wrote the feature film BlacKkKlansman, starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier and Topher Grace. In 2017, Lee adapted She's Gotta Have It into a Netflix series of the same name. The film won three Emmy Awards, including one for Outstanding Directing for Lee. In 2006, he produced and directed the documentary miniseries When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, about the devastation wrought on the city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and the local and federal government’s flawed response to it. Lee’s later directed 25th Hour (2002), starring Edward Norton, and Inside Man (2006), starring Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster. Lee directed a steady stream of films in the 1990s, including Mo’ Better Blues (1990), in which he co-starred with Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes Jungle Fever (1991), about a combustive affair between a Black man (Snipes) and a white woman (Annabella Sciorra) the biopic Malcolm X (1992), starring Washington in the title role Clockers (1995), based on the novel by Richard Price 4 Little Girls (1997), a documentary about the notorious 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama that received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary and Summer of Sam (1999), a thriller based on the infamous 1977 “Son of Sam” serial murders in New York City. Do the Right Thing earned Lee an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Following the success of She’s Gotta Have It, he went on to write and direct 1988’s School Daze, about fraternity and sorority members at a Black college, and 1989’s Do the Right Thing, about racial conflicts in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. He graduated from Morehouse College and received a master’s degree in film and television from New York University. Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee was born March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Lee also co-starred in the film, playing an annoying bike messenger named Mars Blackmon. The movie launched Lee’s career and established his reputation as an outspoken filmmaker who often tackled controversial subjects such as sex and race relations. ![]() Made on a shoestring budget, She’s Gotta Have It was a comedy about a young African American woman in Brooklyn, New York, and her three suitors. On August 8, 1986, actor, writer and director Spike Lee’s first feature-length movie, She’s Gotta Have It, opens in theaters around the United States.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |