A couple of Summers ago I said that I was gonna curb my Netflix queue so that I could watch all of Spike Lee's films. I never completed the task but I unearthed some gems that I had slept on: "She Hate Me", "Mo Better Blues" and "Girl 6" among them.
My parents never got babysitters for me so I saw all of those Spike Lee classics that, debateably, a pre-teen shouldn't see. Yeah I saw the "bonin" on the desk in "Jungle Fever". Mmmmmookie in "Do the Right Thing". And Denzel floating along while "whooah ooo whoah, change gon' come" played in the background in "Malcolm X".
I'll never forget sitting in the backseat of the Accord after Malcolm X, full of energy after sitting still for three hours, ready to talk talk talk only to be met with discerning silence by my parents.
I didn't grasp the concepts in that film completely at the time, but I knew that they were heavier than anything I'd fathomed to that point of my life. Later, when I revisited the film in my adulthood it all clicked. The gravity of it all created one of those seminal moments in my life. Most of Spike Lee's films are like that for me. He may not kill it at the box office but he always challenges us to think about ourselves and laugh at ourselves. A true auteur, leader and revolutionary.
The goods: http://www.okayplayer.com/content/view/5938/60/
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