It had to be Spike Lee in August, right? Lee's best-known work (and best work, for that matter) is Do The Right Thing which is basically the movie version of the month of August. It's hot, it's sweaty, fuses are short and tempers flare. It had to be Lee in August. Do The Right Thing is an incredibly important movie to me. It had a way of showing people with real faults, mistrusting one another despite living in tight spaces. It showed racial divides without being ham-fisted (like Crash and so many other movies that have tried to address race problems come off). Plus it's like a time capsule- the music, the clothes, the language... and say what you will about Spike Lee casting himself in most of his movies (early on, anyways) but Mookie is a fantastic and relatable character.
Other than DTRT I had also seen (and very much enjoyed) 25th Hour and Inside Man. Very different movies, but both had qualities that I appreciated. For this project I wanted to go back to Spike Lee's early days when he was making such a huge splash on independent cinema. Dude has made a ton of movies, so I chose the ones that I thought were most famous: Summer of Sam, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Clockers, She's Gotta Have It, and Crooklyn. I chose... mostly well. I didn't need Clockers (although it is Mekhi Phifer's first movie) and I probably should've added Jungle Fever and maybe one more, Bamboozled or Mo' Better Blues or something. Also Netflix didn't have Crooklyn dangit.
I started with Summer of Sam, which is a helluva ride. I love Adrien Brody and John Leguizamo's characters but the film was all over the place. Murder, drugs, clubs, sex... those aren't bad elements to have in a film but it felt awfully disjointed. Malcolm X was probably longer than it needed to be and the beginning felt like a very weird West Side Story-esque musical; not based in reality at all. But over the course of the 3.5 hour epic the story really came together. I didn't know much about Malcolm X going into the movie and by the end I was curious to learn even more. Crooklyn was underwhelming, as I mentioned, although Harvey Keitel puts in some good work in the "white cop with an idea" role and the twist did catch me off-guard. She's Gotta Have It is Lee's first "joint" and I can see why it put him on the map. It was unflinching and it looked at sexuality and responsibility in an engaging way- with black three-dimensional characters in lead roles! I didn't love it but I liked it and can see why it was pretty ground-breaking for the era (and budget!). Lastly I watched He Got Game and loved it! Ray Allen and Denzel Washington are both incredible in this father-son story, and the basketball star cameos are all great. This movie takes place in a universe where convicted murderers are set free and universities can tempt prospective students with sex and cars, but ignoring all that this movie is very fun.
Spike Lee has always tried to keep pace with Woody Allen in terms of movie outputs, and just like that old New Yorker Lee has struck movie gold many times. But maybe (t)he(y) should focus a bit more on the quality of each one rather than putting >1 out every year.
- She's Gotta Have It (1986) - 7
- Malcolm X (1992) - 7
- Clockers (1995) - 5
- He Got Game (1998) - 7.5
- Summer of Sam (1999) - 5.5
September brings us the bleak world of Michael Haneke, and I'm finally caught up with the present!
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