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).
Shot in 12 days without enough money to finish post-production, Lee’s 1986 debut feature, like his future films, bursts with ideas in telling the story of Nola Darling, an independent, artistic woman, and the three men (one being Lee’s Mars Blackmon) who want to control her. In 2017, Lee brought the film into contemporary times, adapting it into a well-reviewed TV series for Netflix starring DeWanda Wise as Nola Darling that ran for two seasons.
“Made for less than $30,000, Lee's first feature poses him as a rival to Woody Allen, nearly equaling him in psychological authenticity, perhaps bettering him in virtuosity and sheer creative glee.” —Peter Keough, Chicago Reader
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