- Adapted from the novel, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" written by Alex Haley, this is an amazing biopic of one of the most influential African American leaders to date. It follows the life and times of Malcolm Little through his transformation to Malcolm X and his departure from the Nation of Islam. Spike Lee's epic film captures the internal struggles, the spiritual, political and structural ch
Spike Lee directs this sizzling satire on race and racism within the modern media world. Starring Damon Wayons (Major Payne TV's In Living Color) and Jada Pinkett-Smith (Set It Off Scream 2 The Nutty Professor)Running Time: 136 min.System Requirements:Starring: Damon Wayans Jada Pinkett-Smith Michael Rapaport Tommy Davidson and Savion Glover. Directed By: Spike Lee. Running Time: 136 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2000 Warner Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Gen! re:Â COMEDY Rating:Â R UPC:Â 794043519727Spike Lee directs this sizzling satire on race and racism within the modern media world. Starring Damon Wayons (Major Payne TV's In Living Color) and Jada Pinkett-Smith (Set It Off Scream 2 The Nutty Professor)Running Time: 136 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â COMEDY UPC:Â 794043527821Spike Lee is one of the most acclaimed and controversial directors of all time. Now five of his most provocative, thought-provoking films are available in one collection. From the breakout hit dramedy DO THE RIGHT THING to the gritty, urban CLOCKERS, Lee peels away life's layers, exposing the ironies, brutalities, rhythms and prejudices of the naked city in this powerful collector's set.
Clockers Based on the riveting bestseller by Richard Price, this 1995 crime drama was directed by Spike Lee with such authority and authenticity that it has the hyper-real quality of a stylized documentary. Fully capturing the thoroughly researched detail of Pric! e's novel, the film focuses on Strike (newcomer Mekhi Phifer),! a young , ambitious "clocker"--or drug dealer--who works the streets of his New York housing project, selling drugs for a local supplier named Rodney (played with ferocious charisma by Delroy Lindo). Just as Strike is struggling to get away from his dead-end life of crime, another dealer is murdered in a fast-food restaurant and local detectives (Harvey Keitel, John Turturro) consider Strike the primary suspect. In cowriting the script with novelist Price, Lee uses this murder mystery to explore the plague of guns and black-on-black crime in America's inner cities, in which drugs and death are familiar routines of daily life. The film doesn't pretend to offer solutions, nor does it dwell on the problem with numbing insistence. Rather, this taut, well-acted film takes the viewer into a world often hidden in plain sight--a world where options seem nonexistent for youth conditioned to have little or no expectation beyond a probable early death. Lee and Price are deadly serious in handl! ing this volatile subject (which incorporates racism, powerless law enforcement, and political indifference), but
Clockers is also blessed with humor, insight, and humanity. It's one of Lee's most confidently directed films, signaling a creative maturity that Lee continued to develop throughout the 1990s.
--Jeff Shannon Jungle Fever
Spike Lee's 1991 story about an interracial relationship and its consequences on the lives and communities of the lovers (Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra) is one of his most captivating and focused films. Snipes and Sciorra are very good as individuals trying to reach beyond the limits imposed upon them for reasons of race, tradition, sexism, and such. Lee makes an interesting and subtle case that they are driven to one another out of frustration with social obstacles as well as pure attraction--but is that enough for love to survive? John Turturro is featured in a subplot as an Italian American who grows attracted! to a black woman and takes heat from his numbskull buddies. --Tom Keogh
Do the Right Thing
Spike Lee's incendiary look at race relations in America, circa 1989, is so colorful and exuberant for its first three-quarters that you can almost forget the terrible confrontation that the movie inexorably builds toward. Do the Right Thing is a joyful, tumultuous masterpiece--maybe the best film ever made about race in America, revealing racial prejudices and stereotypes in all their guises and demonstrating how a deadly riot can erupt out of a series of small misunderstandings. Set on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer, the movie shows the whole spectrum of life in this neighborhood and then leaves it up to us to decide if, in the end, anybody actually does the "right thing." Featuring Danny Aiello as Sal, the pizza parlor owner; Lee himself as Mookie, the lazy pizza-delivery guy; John Turturro and Richard Edson as Sal's sons; Lee's sister Joie as Mookie's sister Jade; Rosie Perez as Mookie's! girlfriend Tina; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the block elders, Da Mayor and Mother Sister; Giancarlo Esposito as Mookie's hot-headed friend Buggin' Out; Bill Nunn as the boom-box toting Radio Raheem; and Samuel L. Jackson as deejay Mister Señor Love Daddy. A rich and nuanced film to watch, treasure, and learn from--over and over again. --Jim Emerson
Mo' Better Blues
With Mo' Better Blues, the story of a young trumpeter's rise to jazz-world stardom, Spike Lee set out to counter Clint Eastwood's cliché-ridden biopic of Charlie Parker in Bird. But the final product, a slick, glossy drama (with hip-hop jazz provided by Gangstarr no less), is just as superficial as the numerous Alger-esque stories of music stardom to which movie audiences are accustomed.
Denzel Washington gives a typically charismatic performance as the trumpeter in question, as does Wesley Snipes as his sax-playing rival. And as with most Spike Lee films, there are numerous ! solid performers in small roles such as Bill Nunn, Latin-music! star Ru bén Blades, and comedian Robin Harris. One character, however, attracted unwanted attention: John Turturro's role as an unscrupulous music-industry exec. Critics called the Turturro character, who is at once money hungry, swarthy, and perpetually shrouded in darkness, a classic anti-Semitic caricature. But the charge seems almost irrelevant in Spike Lee's cartoonish, overstylized world of impossibly hunky jazzmen, curvaceous hangers-on, and incessant bebop. --Ethan Brown
Crooklyn
Spike Lee's semiautobiographical, 1994 film about the good and bad times for a Brooklyn family in the '70s has passion and nostalgic good feeling, but it is also a mess of random reflections and arbitrary storytelling. The centerpiece of the movie is a little girl (Zelda Harris) who views the ups and downs of her parents' experiences (mom and dad are played by Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard), and who navigates the life of her neighborhood. Lee tosses in a lot of '70s detail ! (watching The Partridge Family) and other diversions (Harris's journey through suburbia), but he has no master sensibility controlling the flow of it all. The film is more wearying than anything, although bright spots include Lindo's fine performance as a talented man suffering from irrelevance. --Tom KeoghHard-hitting and chock-full of original interviews with some of America's biggest political players and insiders, Angela McGlowan exposes liberals' 50 year SCHEME to bamboozle the poor and minorities into supporting a party that sells them out. McGlowan, a Democrat-turned-Republican, reveals how the GOP better represents the values and interests of women, Latinos, and blacks.The first feature by filmmaker Spike Lee, a witty, gritty comedy about black life in New York, centers around a free-spirited young woman who gets what she wants from her three boyfriends and is unwilling to commit to any one of them. Lee co-stars as paramour Mars Blackmon ("Please, B! aby. Please, Baby. Please..."); with Tracy Camilla Johns, Tomm! y Redmon d Hicks, and John Canada Terrell. 85 min. Widescreen; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, French, Spanish.Spike Lee made a splash in the independent film world with his debut feature, an inventive low-budget romance with a strong-willed heroine. Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) can't decide among her three boyfriends: serious but sweet Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), self-centered clotheshorse Greer (John Canada Terrell), and goofy, wisecracking bike messenger Mars Blackmon (Lee). Within this loose story line Lee launches into a character study of Darling and offers a slice of black urban life rarely seen on the screen. According to Lee's published diary, he interviewed dozens of women and gathered feedback on screenplay from female friends, and his efforts show. Nola is an unapologetic, sexually independent character who resists the efforts of the men in her life to change who she is to please them--the wonderful concluding twist t! humbs its nose at romantic conventions and gives Nola her due. Lee combines direct address and documentary techniques with a simple, often elegant narrative style to create a multilayered portrait of Nola and her men and question perceptions and conventions of sex, sexuality, and relationships in the modern world. Though somewhat primitive in the light of his more accomplished works, this first feature introduces Lee as a fresh voice and a creative force to be reckoned with. --Sean AxmakerSpike Lee made a splash in the independent film world with his debut feature, an inventive low-budget romance with a strong-willed heroine. Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) can't decide among her three boyfriends: serious but sweet Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), self-centered clotheshorse Greer (John Canada Terrell), and goofy, wisecracking bike messenger Mars Blackmon (Lee). Within this loose story line Lee launches into a character study of Darling and offers a slice of black urba! n life rarely seen on the screen. According to Lee's published! diary, he interviewed dozens of women and gathered feedback on screenplay from female friends, and his efforts show. Nola is an unapologetic, sexually independent character who resists the efforts of the men in her life to change who she is to please them--the wonderful concluding twist thumbs its nose at romantic conventions and gives Nola her due. Lee combines direct address and documentary techniques with a simple, often elegant narrative style to create a multilayered portrait of Nola and her men and question perceptions and conventions of sex, sexuality, and relationships in the modern world. Though somewhat primitive in the light of his more accomplished works, this first feature introduces Lee as a fresh voice and a creative force to be reckoned with. --Sean Axmaker
Beyond She's Gotta Have It
Spike Lee's epic biography features Denzel Washington in a dynamic performance as the black revolutionary leader. The film follows Malcolm's early days as a Harlem hepcat, his time in prison and conversion there to Islam, his family life, and his crusades to further the black race. Angela Bassett, Al Freeman, Jr., Albert Hall, and Lee co-star. 3 1/3 hrs. ! Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1,! French Dolby Digital Surround stereo; English, French, Spanish; audio commentary by Lee, others; deleted scenes; "making of" documentary; bonus documentary "Malcolm X" (1972). Two-disc set.Just as
Do the Right Thing was the capstone of Spike Lee's earlier career,
Malcolm X marked the next milestone in the filmmaker's artistic maturity. It seemed everything Lee had done up to that point was to prepare him for this epic biography of America's fiery civil-rights leader, who is superbly played by Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington, from his early days as a zoot-suited hustler known as "Detroit Red" to his spiritual maturity after his pilgrimage to Mecca, as a Black Muslim by the name of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz.
Do the Right Thing climaxed with the photographic images of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King engulfed by flames of rage;
Malcolm X explores the genesis and evolution of that rage over Malcolm's lifetime, and how these two great figures--held up to! the public as polar-opposites within the African American human rights movement (King for nonviolent civil disobedience, Malcolm for achieving equality "by any means necessary")--were each essential to the agenda of the other. Lee careens from the hedonistic ebullience of Malcolm's early days to the stark despair of prison, from his life-changing conversion to Islam to his emergence as a dynamic political leader--all with an epic sweep and vitality that illuminates personal details as well as political ideology. Angela Bassett is also terrific as Malcolm's wife, Betty Shabazz.
--Jim Emerson
