![]() There was simply nothing else like it anywhere. While not a perfect film - it suffered from what I’ve always believed has been Spike’s greatest strength and weakness, too many ideas - it was bold, electric, and often thrilling. A film about the gang violence in Chicago melded with the Greek play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata (where the women withhold their charms until the men lay down their weapons of war), and spoken almost entirely in iambic pentameter. Then in 2015 he made the Spikeiest Spike Lee film in ages. It’s not that any of these movies were terrible, or that his skill level had diminished. It might be a stretch to say Lee had lost his way, but he had seemingly lost his relevance. All of them barely seen and with the exception of Passing Strange, not well considered. The concert film Passing Strange, two micro-budgeted indies (Da Sweet Blood of Jesus and Redhook Summer), and a failed remake of Chan wook-Park’s South Korean classic Old Boy. From 2009 to 2014, he made four films that were released in theaters. On film though, his output became less certain. ![]() Whether its music videos, commercials, television, or on theaters, he let no moss grow underfoot. One thing about Spike Lee is he is always working. While I wouldn’t describe the next few years of his career as “Spike in the wilderness,” let’s just say he was in the meadows for a bit. A complete wash out at the box office and with critics. Sure, he Spikeified the film with his unmistakable style, but it felt a bit like a movie that a great director makes to keep the tools sharp while he figures out what he really wants to do.Ĭoming off the largest commercial success of his career, and the majestic Hurricane Katrina documentary When The Levees Broke, Spike followed up with the ambitious World War II epic Miracle at St. While the Denzel starrer had plenty of Spike’s stylistic flourishes, it was a film that didn’t exactly feel like it came from the gut. Spike followed that commercial and critical bust with his most straightforward commercial film. The failure of the latter did lead to a less certain period of film-making. He made a sports film (He Got Game), a concert film (The Original Kings of Comedy), a remarkable documentary (4 Little Girls), a relationship drama (Jungle Fever), an insane film (Bamboozled), and the genre defying Do The Right Thing.Įven the two lonely misfires of this era, Girl 6 and She Hate Me, were more interesting than most filmmakers’ successes. The breadth of the pictures he created over that stretch is astonishing. Even adaptations like Clockers and The 25th Hour, as well as his version of a serial killer movie, The Summer of Sam, felt like movies that could have only come from one source. While the quality varied, every single picture was unmistakably Spike. The thing I loved about both was the fact that their films had fingerprints all over them. ![]() Coincidentally, Spike’s breakthrough with She’s Gotta Have It came in the same year as Oliver’s with Platoon in 1986. Of his era the only major director I can think of who was nearly as polarizing is Oliver Stone. Sometimes his brash nature overwhelmed the media coverage of his films. ![]() His very particular sense of humor, near constant saturation of music, camera work that broke convention, fearless exploration of race in society, and unusual tonal shifts changed the language of cinema. He was telling stories filmgoers had never seen before in ways that were unrecognizable. His powerful sense of style mixed with his fearless attention to hot button issues announced a major new presence in cinema. ![]() When Spike Lee first started making movies in the mid-80s, he was a one-man revolution. ![]()
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