Tag: Spike Lee

audio review : Jungle Fever [ Music From The Movie ] ( album ) … Stevie Wonder

Songs From The Movie would be a better subtitle as Stevie Wonder not only provides the music to Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever but also the vocals. This is, in effect, a Stevie Wonder album. That it’s also presented as the official soundtrack to the movie, which it also is, undermines that fact. The singer should’ve let the director have the title track, which is the worst song anyway, and save the others for himself. A new Stevie Wonder album with no connection to a movie would make more sense, especially considering it’s been four years since his previous one.

Characters doesn’t sound this good though. From the very first song, a summer bop entitled Fun Day, Stevie Wonder parades his knack for composing wonderful vocal melodies. The not-so-obvious drawback is that the verses sometimes outshine the hooks; Queen In The Black is probably the best example; when it should be the other way around. If She Breaks Your Heart, the lead vocals of which are actually provided by Kimberly Brewer; Stevie Wonder is no homo; gets it right though. Make Sure You’re Sure, a romantic jazz ballad, is also gorgeous.

my rating : 4 of 5

1991

video review : Do The Right Thing

video review : Do The Right Thing

There are plenty of stupid things in this movie, beginning with the opening dance sequence, but the stupidest or at least most annoying are Smiley and Buggin Out. They’re characters who live in Brooklyn and are obsessively infatuated with the black race like seemingly every other black character in this movie. Smiley, who stutters whenever he speaks, is a retard. Buggin Out just acts like one. The problem with the two is that their annoying ways are played-out almost to the point of caricaturization. They come across as virtual cartoons in a movie that’s supposed to be about real life.

It’s a hot summer day and Mookie, who works as a delivery man for an Italian pizzeria, is just trying to get thru life. That’s the gist of a plot that cares more about observing characters in their everyday environment; the neighborhood of Bedford–Stuyvesant; than telling a cohesive story. At one point, the story is temporarily abandoned for an impromptu insult session. That bit too is, of course, all about race. “Tawana (Brawley) told the truth,” reads a graffiti message in a another scene. All this racial tension peaks at the end when a guy named Radio Raheem becomes the victim of police brutality.

my rating : 3 of 5

1989

video review : Red Hook Summer

video review : Red Hook Summer

This is an epilogue to Do The Right Thing, a movie many people consider Spike Lee’s magnum opus, only in the sense that he uses it to reprise his role as Mookie. It’s a brief cameo feature but a touch of nostalgia nonetheless. Both movies focus on black people in the city of Brooklyn. I just happen to like this one a little more.

The acting on the part of the two child stars is surprisingly amateurish, especially the girl’s; her voice inflections are consistently wrong; but Red Hook Summer, as desultory as its plot may be, is never boring. That has mostly to do with the boy’s grandfather, a Bible-gripping bishop who preaches the gospel even when he’s not preaching.

He’s determined to introduce his grandson to “God”. And even if his cultic sermons fall on deaf ears, the church song performances he leads are enjoyable. The non-diegetic music, which plays even during scenes it shouldn’t play during; Spike Lee appears at the end wearing a “No Music” shirt, oddly enough; sounds good too.

Then there’s a major plot twist. It’s a sudden character reveal near the level of The Sixth Sense. The way it happens is, like the fire riot scene in Do The Right Thing, overdramatic and even a bit silly, but it sets the tone for an ending that, whether you can feel compassionate for the protagonist or not, is somber and moving.

my rating : 3 of 5

2012

video review : Get On The Bus

video review : Get On The Bus

Spike Lee invites you to Get On The Bus. Its passengers consist of about twenty men and a teenager, played De’Aundre Bonds overacting his role, headed to The Million (black) Man March; a potentially historic civil rights event held by Louis Farrakhan in Washington DC.

You don’t have to support the cause to enjoy the ride. There’s enough dynamic characterization to hold your attention for the most part. It’s when we start leaving the bus for conflict and drama during the movie’s second half that things go from good to not-so-good.

It soon becomes an emotional wreck. Imagine fist fights and father-son therapy sessions over contemporary soul music. Spike Lee deserves praise for including a new Michael Jackson song as the theme, but They Don’t Care About Us would’ve been a better fit.

my rating : 3 of 5

1996

video review : She Hate Me

video review : She Hate Me

A lot of, perhaps most, so-called lesbians are actually bisexual. A lot of, perhaps most, women who claim to be straight are too. Fatima’s fiancé Jack; the vice president of a corporate firm; caught her in bed having sex with another woman. She claims it was her first time and that the reason she did it is because she “had to find-out” her sexual orientation, either unaware or unwilling to admit that the curiosity alone told her everything she needed to know. It’s not who you have sex with that determines your sexual orientation, in other words, it’s who you’re sexually attracted to.

When Fatima’s new girlfriend and several other “lesbian” women have sex with Jack, her now ex-fiancé, it’s strictly business. They want babies, women can’t give each other babies and sperm banks are too unreliable and it’s hard for women couples to adopt. That makes Jack the man of choice. After losing his job during a Watergate-like job scandal, he needs the money; ten-thousand dollars per woman, minus Fatima’s ten-percent finder’s fee. That’s the deal and the hook of the plot. The fact that Fatima still has heteromantic feelings for him is supposed to be beside the point.

If it all seems silly, that’s because it is. The overall tone of this Spike Lee “joint” is that of a serious drama, as the orchestral score so often suggests, but the lesbian baby bits come across as some sort of comical hyperbole. That might be fine if the movie were just about that, but it rocks back and forth between that and Jack’s unrelated job scandal, which lacks any real sense of suspense despite threatening to land him in prison for a long time. There’s even a big courtroom scene near the end. But the sex scenes, which at times cross over into softcore porn, are much more appealing.

my rating : 3 of 5

2004

video review : Malcolm X

video review : Malcolm X

If this Spike Lee Joint, which plays as a neutral biography for three hours before suddenly transitioning into a propaganda piece, presents an accurate portrayal of Malcolm X, I don’t think his legacy deserves celebration. His mission, to lift the social oppression of the black race, was a commendable one. Racism, primarily by white people toward black people, which remains an issue today, was even more of a problem during his lifetime; the end of which happened to coincide with the end of The Civil Rights Movement; but he too was a racist. He was a brainwashed follower of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, The Nation Of Islam and all their anti-white philosophies for a long time.

That Malcolm X may have began to shed his bias during his final chapters; it wasn’t until he made his pilgrimage to Mecca that he realized not all white people are devils; isn’t good enough. Accurate or not, Spike Lee has done a remarkable job of visually depicting the life of a man I may not have otherwise cared enough to learn about, but the man we’re supposed to be praising comes across as not much more than a buffoon. As educated as he is when it comes to the English language; he studied every word in “the white man’s” dictionary; he doesn’t seem to be much of a thinker in the way of general logic; the kind Martin Luther King had that says you can’t end racism with racism.

my rating : 4 of 5

1992