Every Spike Lee Movie, Ranked
Updated 9/11/20 to add American Utopia.
Spike Lee's new Netflix film Da 5 Bloods has been earning mostly terrific reviews, but where does it rank among the veteran director's best films? In the gallery above, we rank every feature directed by Lee in order by Metascore (reflecting the consensus of top professional film critics) from worst to best.
Note that a few made-for-television films are not included because there were not enough reviews available to calculate a Metascore. These include Spike Lee & Company: Do It a Cappella (1990), Sucker Free City (2004), Kobe Doin' Work (2009), and 2 Fists Up (2016).
Spike Lee’s first collaboration with Denzel Washington came on the heels of Do the Right Thing and suffered for it. In what amounts to a beautifully photographed, well-acted, but slightly clunky character study, Washington plays Bleek Gilliam, a jazz trumpeter saddled with a bad manager (Lee) and a love for two women. The Branford Marsalis quartet featuring Terence Blanchard on trumpet dubs the music for Bleek’s band.
“Spike Lee is too passionate and distinctive a film maker to make a lousy movie. So although Mo' Better Blues, his latest, is a misfire, there is a personality behind every camera shot. An audience is willing to go farther down the road with Lee than with another film maker, and even when, as in this case, the road leads nowhere, it's hard to resent the trip.” —Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
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