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).
A musical satire of college life at a Black university, Spike Lee’s sophomore film might not be the slump the majority of critics thought it was upon its release in 1988. Ambitiously weaving together comedy, social commentary, and musical numbers, the film feels like a model for the confrontational cinema (“Wake up!”) Lee would produce throughout his career and proved to be an influence on directors like John Singleton (Higher Learning) and Justin Simien (Dear White People).
“Despite a few high-spirited sequences, School Daze succumbs to preachiness and choppiness. It's a movie with too much to say and not enough style to say it with.” —Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune
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