![]() ![]() It’s a difficult sit, with a beguiling lead performance from Stephen Tyrone Williams to recommend it and not much else. A vampire movie without vampires, Lee is trying to say something about race and class and the battle of the sexes, and it’s also a remake of an experimental, revered-by-some blaxploitation film that seems to assume the audience is as familiar with the film as Lee is. Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri called this “the strangest film Lee’s ever made,” and while that’s true, it’s also overselling it: The movie isn’t ever quite exciting enough to let you truly deep dive into its weirdness. This is Lee in film-professor mode - he has been teaching film at NYU for more than 20 years - with occasional moments of full-out-crazy sex and gore. ![]() It features, somewhat ridiculously, cameos from Naomi Campbell, Halle Berry, Quentin Tarantino, and Madonna, in case you were wondering just how vast a misfire this was. Lee has been accused of struggling with female characters, and while that’s generally not fair, it’s hard not to understand the criticism in this dead-on-arrival phone sex “comedy.” The first film Lee directed but didn’t write, it has a particularly slapdash, almost flippant attitude, as if Lee wasn’t fully invested in the material. A satire on corporate greed and sexual politics, She Hate Me is misogynistic and shrill, capped by John Turturro’s WTF cameo as a Brando-impersonating Mafia don. In one of his first major film roles, Anthony Mackie plays a newly unemployed executive who, desperate for money, agrees to impregnate his lesbian ex-girlfriend (Kerry Washington) and all her friends. But this low-budget 2004 curio is nothing but half-formulated, provocative notions that refuse to congeal. At 63, he remains committed to shaping that history.Įven Lee’s biggest duds have a blazing volatility to them, their unfocused ideas bouncing around with an insistence that they need to be heard. The nation’s pain, joy, and aspirations are writ large across these movies. We included only his theatrical releases - Lee has made several television documentaries and even a TV pilot - with one notable exception (his Katrina documentary for HBO, When the Levees Broke), because it’s one of his masterworks.Īnyone who wants to write a cultural history of America since the 1980s would do well to study Spike Lee’s films. With Da 5 Bloods arriving on Netflix, we offer this ranking of his formidable oeuvre. Even his bad movies seem energized by his daring - he has never doubted his enormous talent, never questioned the importance of his unique voice. Sometimes his movies fall short, but you never doubt that he’s giving his all to every one of them. He’s made biopics ( Malcolm X) and 9/11 elegies ( 25th Hour). Not that those obstacles have slowed him: Here’s a man as comfortable working in documentaries ( 4 Little Girls), filmed theater ( Passing Strange), crime thrillers ( Inside Man), and outlandish satire ( Bamboozled). He emerged at a time when the American indie scene was thriving thanks to mavericks like John Sayles and Jim Jarmusch, but although Lee has made his share of studio movies, he has found that path to be difficult, unable to get passion projects off the ground and, instead, shooting films on a shoestring in order to tell provocative stories. How many 31-year-old films are still so ahead of their time?īorn in Atlanta but forever devoted to Brooklyn, Lee has learned to thrive as an independent filmmaker at a time when that proposition is becoming increasingly fraught. And, sadly, his voice is as necessary as ever: The recent murders of George Floyd and other black men and women at the hands of the police prove that Do the Right Thing’s racial injustice is still very much with us. Although a respected elder statesman with two Oscars - one honorary, one for co-writing the screenplay for BlacKkKlansman - he has refused to blunt his criticism of a society that imperils people of color. Remarkably, his passion and bravura haven’t diminished an iota with age. How can an artist of such vitality now be a senior citizen? For those of us who came of age with his movies, watching Mookie throw that trash can through Sal’s window in Do the Right Thing or witnessing Flipper confront his drug-addicted brother Gator in Jungle Fever, Lee has been our political conscience, talking about race and class in America in a way no other filmmaker has over the past four decades. It is hard to fathom that Spike Lee is 63 years old. This article originally ran in August 2012 and has been updated to include the director’s most recent films. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |