Toward the beginning of Jay-Z’s “The Story of O.J.,” the rapper-cum-boardroom fixture adlibs a lament about a missed opportunity in real estate. “I coulda bought…
When Malcolm X, the epic biographical drama about the titular civil rights figure, hit theaters in November 1992, it came off the heels of a…
For some time, and even still, the accepted critical narrative regarding Spike Lee’s 25th Hour positioned the film as one of the significant peaks in…
Spike Lee’s 1991 Jungle Fever, a work with a title and subject matter seemingly designed to court — indeed, demand — controversy, is at its…
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, summer of 1973. A kid yells from the fire escape outside a brownstone window to his friends on the street below. A swooping…
Spike Lee is doing pretty great these days, so much so that he’s been recast as a beloved elder statesman in the cultural memory. Not…
From our Honorable Mentions post: It goes without saying that 2020 was a year like none other in recent history. Significantly, by virtue of living through…
It goes without saying that 2020 was a year like none other in recent history. Significantly, by virtue of living through such times, it’s also…
American Utopia provides a brief respite from reality and leaves the viewer hopeful for what’s to come. In the midst of the annus horribilis of…
Another week, another festival. For this year’s BFI London Film Festival, it’s business as usual, which is to say the unusual business of 2020 film…
The fall festival season has looked far different this year, limited both in its ability to exhibit films and in the breadth of selection available.…
In the midst of the annus horribilis of 2020, with the US still being ravaged by a global pandemic, all manner of racial strife, a…
Nomadland Having just taken the top prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Nomadland begins its journey towards Oscar gold. That’s admittedly a flip assessment…
Spike Lee’s newest joint, Da 5 Bloods, makes perfectly clear its influences when, within the first five minutes, the camera pans out from a giant…
Toxic masculinity had a year; scan the top three titles on this list and you’ll find three films about self-involved men belaboring the value of…
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman tells the story of a black police officer in 1970s Colorado who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. But Lee is also telling…