Every Spike Lee Movie, Ranked

by Keith Kimbell, Metacritic Film Editor – June 23, 2020

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).

18 of 36 photo by HBO

72 #18: If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise

Five years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Lee returned to catch up with some of the people he interviewed in When the Levees Broke. Surveying the rebuilding effort, he finds tiny glimmers of hope in the city’s slow recovery, but the film meanders a bit, spending time with Brad Pitt and even encompassing the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

“Lee has sacrificed some clarity for inclusiveness; this is the document as monument, artful and rough by turns, and determined to be as big as its subject.” —Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

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