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).
Written by Lee with siblings Joie and Cinqué, this intimate family drama from 1994 follows the sweeping epic Malcolm X. Set in the 1970s, the very personal film (the siblings pulled from their childhoods, including their mother’s illness) focuses on the coming-of-age of Troy Carmichael (Zelda Harris), the only daughter of five children born to a Woody (Delroy Lindo), a struggling musician, and Carolyn (Alfre Woodard), a schoolteacher. One directorial flourish confused audiences: When Troy stays with her more affluent uncle and aunt, the image appears squeezed because Lee shot the film with anamorphic lenses but projected them in the same aspect ratio as the rest of the film.
“Messy as the semiautobiographical Crooklyn often is, it succeeds in becoming a touching and generous family portrait, a film that exposes welcome new aspects of this director's talent.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
| Stream On |
|
| Buy on |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|