The best Spike Lee’s drama movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Spike Lee’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Spike Lee.
Crooklyn
7/10
From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher, her stubborn jazz-musician husband and their five kids living in '70s Brooklyn.
Jungle Fever
6.6/10
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Malcolm X
7.7/10
A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
Do the Right Thing
8/10
Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
Clockers
6.9/10
Strike is a young city drug pusher under the tutelage of drug lord Rodney Little. When a night manager at a fast-food restaurant is found with four bullets in his body, Strike’s older brother turns himself in as the killer. Det. Rocco Klein doesn’t buy the story, however, setting out to find the truth, and it seems that all the fingers point toward Strike & Rodney.
Summer of Sam
6.7/10
Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American South Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.
Mo' Better Blues
6.7/10
Opens with Bleek as a child learning to play the trumpet, his friends want him to come out and play but mother insists he finish his lessons. Bleek grows into adulthood and forms his own band - The Bleek Gilliam Quartet. The story of Bleek's and Shadow's friendly rivalry on stage which spills into their professional relationship and threatens to tear apart the quartet.
Red Hook Summer
5.3/10
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
School Daze
6.1/10
Fraternity and sorority members clash with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend.
3 A.M.
5.8/10
The feature film directing debut of Spike Lee protege Lee Davis takes the viewer into the world of taxi drivers. Developed in the Sundance Laboratory, this film offers dove-tailing stories centering on the lives of individual taxi drivers as they reflect on and experience romance, politics, sociology, and spirituality.
Lisa Picard Is Famous
5.5/10
A documentarian decides to follow the career of New York actress Lisa Picard, believing she is on the brink of fame. Instead, he bears witness to Lisa's continued, humorous, struggles as an actress, as well as the conflict that arises when Lisa's best friend Tate hits it big with an off-Broadway one-man show.
Farewell, Babylon!
5.9/10
Arrabal's sixth film based on his novel from 1969 with the same name as the movie.
