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).

33 of 36 photo by HBO

89 #3: When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

Lee’s four-hour documentary on Katrina and its aftermath is a heartbreaking journey through a tragedy. Lee stays off camera and lets the voices of New Orleans citizens carry the film. Lee’s longtime collaborator, New Orleans-born trumpeter Terence Blanchard, supplies the score and appears in the film, returning with his mother and aunt to their flooded home. Levees won multiple awards at the 63rd Venice Film festival as well as a Peabody Award.

“As a film, 'Levees' is a significant and exhaustive achievement. Although it can be argued that it might have been even more effective if it had been edited down a bit, the power of its human stories compensates for whatever minor flaws it has.” —David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle

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