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Spike Lee is a New York City director known for writing and directing several of the greatest summer movies of all-time – lyrics poems that ooze of place and culture. The setting: One or all of New York City’s big-five boroughs. The time: either now or a period in the not-so-distant past.

Spike Lee’s movies are consumed with racial tension, predominately as it exists from an African-American perspective. Most of his screenplays operate like a springboard, immersing central characters into conflicts rife with faith, ethnicity, ideology and derision. The five Spike Lee “Joints” that are listed below – set during the summers of 1977, 1989, 1994, 2005 and 2011 – represent some of the richest social commentary ever put on film, both highly entertaining and emotionally charged. They symbolize a high-end fraction of what Mr. Lee has had to offer, being, as they are, his top five summer movies of all-time:

5. Red Hook Summer (2012). In May of 1977 Spike Lee traveled north from Morehouse College in Atlanta to spend the summer in New York. For lack of any ongoing employment, Lee borrowed a video camera from a friend, then spent the bulk of his vacation filming everything around him. That footage would provide the foundation for Spike Lee’s first student picture, Last Hustle In Brooklyn. It would also provide the impetus for what would eventually become Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam.

And so here we find Mr. Lee, 35 years down the line, filming a coming-of-age tale set in Brooklyn, during Summer, the central character a boy named Flik who’s up from Atlanta, documenting his experience via iPad. This is Spike Lee riffing on himself, in what turns out to be a vibrant-looking motion picture. Having said that, Red Hook Summer also demonstrates just how far Spike Lee has fallen from the tree. Lee is revisiting the stomping grounds of Do The Right Thing here, but he’s doing so in a time and era that no longer belongs to him. Despite a miniscule budget and a slew of substandard acting, Red Hook Summer still manages to feel honest, but not about anything particularly enthralling. As a director, Spike Lee winds up looking like an elder-statesman – an acclaimed auteur pushing 60 who no longer resembles us so much as them (and I am speaking here in terms of generation).

Notable Members of The Ensemble: Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Jackson Lee, Spike Lee, Clarke Peters, James Ransone.

4. Clockers (1995). Spike Lee is adapting original material written by Richard Price here, and it proves to be one of this movie’s many limitations. There are plot holes, particularly toward the end, and some questionable casting choices (It’s worth noting that Mekhi Phifer, who cut his teeth as the lead character in Clockers, never appeared in a Spike Lee movie again), but there are also several Spike Lee staples, including: Jesus (pronounced Hay-Zeus), Brooklyn, life in the projects, a black man chiding a white man for using racial epitaphs, John Turturro, the double-dolly and the sudden cut.

Best-selling novelist Richard Price went on to become a writer for HBO’s The Wire, and more than half the actors from the Clockers‘ housing crew went on to portray key members of the Barksdale organization on that show. There are early hints of The Wire throughout Clockers, particularly regarding the way crack is sold inside the ghetto. Spike Lee nails that aspect, while failing to account for several foregone realities as the story lingers on.

Notable Members of The Ensemble: Michael Badalucco, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Keith David, Michael Imperioli, Hassan Johnson, Harvey Keitel, Spike Lee, Delroy Lindo, Arthur Nascarella, Mekhi Phifer, Fredro Starr, Mike Starr, John Turturro, Isaiah Washington.

3. Inside Man (2006). What’s that you say? Inside Man is not a summer movie. Well, on that count, my friend, I beg to differ. Inside Man was filmed during the summer, set during the summer, and it opens on a panoramic shot of Coney Island after dawn.The costumes feature short sleeves, pastels and cream, suit jackets carelessly slung over shoulders. Viewers can feel the August daylight breaking hard against stone walls. Twilight shadows drift to orange and the cast members are sweating. Not exactly a summer movie upon the order of, say, The Wackness, but a summer movie, all the same.

Inside Man was not written by Spike Lee, but it most certainly retains his imprint. The majority of Caucasians are white-collar criminals, the two hero detectives are black, and the “Inside Man” is a masked vigilante with a Herculean axe to grind. Lee sneaks in references to some of the all-time New York crime thrillers along the way, including (but not limited to): Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather and Kojak. He even throws a bone to Dirty Harry, a west coast hero who made an impact way back east.

Inside Man features a slew of unexpected twists and turns, a brilliant screenplay (“Respect is the ultimate currency.”) written by Russell Gewirtz, and a traditional dramatic score provided by perennial Spike Lee collab, Terence Blanchard. It all adds up to one engaging two-hour heist film, the likes of which we’ve never known.

Notable Members of The Ensemble: Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jodie Foster, Peter Gerety, Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer, James Ransone, Denzel Washington.

2. Summer of Sam (1999). Mr. Lee is toiling in his wheelhouse here, exploring an epoch of New York’s history so steeped in controversy the ripples would be felt for decades. The punk scene, the fag scene, the disco scene and Son of Sam, all of them converging and then filtering out in unison. Toss in record heat and rising tensions, rolling blackouts marred by riots, and you find Spike Lee’s approach to New York City throughout Summer of Sam laid the groundwork for David Fincher’s approach to San Francisco throughout Zodiac. Both films provide a classic treatise in the butterfly effect, the various ways in which a single person or event can reverberate throughout a community, refracting back in shades of chaos.

The Zodiac and Son of Sam shared a similar pathology. The primary difference – at least in terms of cinema – being one was never caught and the other came and went in less than a year. That minor concentration makes Summer of Sam feel like a powder keg, perennially waiting to explode. By the time the opening notes of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” hit, it’s already too late. The Bronx is not only burning, it’s smouldering out of control.

Notable Members of The Ensemble: Michael Badalucco, Jimmy Breslin, Adrien Brody, Jennifer Esposito, Ben Gazzara, Evander Holyfield, Michael Imperioli, Anthony LaPaglia, Spike Lee, John Leguizamo, Patti LuPone, Bebe Neuwirth, Michael Rispoli, Michael Sorvino, Mira Sorvino, Mike Starr, John Turturro.

1. Do The Right Thing (1989). 1989, A number, another summer. One block, one day, one hood in Brooklyn. A hot day. A scorcher, a snow-cone day (no, Mister Softee), a day for buckets and cold beer, a day for beach umbrellas and unplugged hydrants, midday showers and Love Daddy; a day for Buggin’ Out and Mother Sister, Da Mayor and his doctors, M-M-Mookie, Booboo the Fool, Radio Raheem and Night of the Hunter, Famous Sal and Sweet Dick Willie, Alberta Hunter, Dexter Gordon, Oliver Nelson, Dana Dane, Marley Marl, Marcus Miller, Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam, McCoy Tyner, Fred Wesley, Wayne Shorter, Roland Kirk, Monk and Ellington, Armstrong and Basie, Wynton and Branford, Mahalia and Janet, Whitney and Dionne, Miles Davis and Coltrane; Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha and Pendergrass; Al Jarreau, Little Richard, Sam Cooke and James Brown; Keith Sweat, Big Daddy, Rob Base, Salt-n-Pepa, Sugar Bear, Biz Markie, Kool Moe Dee, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Public Enemy, Bobby Bland, The Isley Brothers, Tracy Chapman, Bobby McFerrin, Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie, Bob Marley, George Clinton, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson, Prince, Anita and Sade; Quincy Jones and Vic Damone, Frank and Dean, Bruce Springsteen; Perry Como, Pavarotti, Al Pacino, Bobby D., Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta; Bird and Magic, Tyson/Ali, Cain and Abel, Kunta Kinte, Tawana Brawley, Eleanor Bumpurs, Jesus Christ and Pope John Paul, Louis Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad, Jesse Jackson and Mandela, Malcolm X and MLK; Donald Trump and Mayor Koch, Bull Connor and the Reverend Moon. Just another day in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, here today and gone too soon.

Notable Members of The Ensemble: Danny Aiello, Rick Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Frankie Faison, Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Lawrence, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, Roger Guenveur Smith, John Turturro, Frank Vincent.

“That’s what you’ve to tell yourself, to completely relax, able to see everything that’s going on, your sense of anticipation is sharp. That can’t happen unless you relax. A man who’s worrying about getting hit is not going to have a good sense of anticipation. He will, in fact, get hit. And, most important, when you get hit, you get excited … when you get hit, that’s when you’ve got to be calmest. A professional fighter has got to learn how to hit and not get hit, and at the same time be exciting. That’s what professional boxing is about. You’ve got to be clever, you’ve got to be smart, and not get hit.
When you’re able to do this, you’re a fighter.” 

(Excerpted from Watch Me Now)

(Good Pictures/Bad Camera is a regular feature on IFB.)

George Whitmore, Jr. was standing in front of a Laundromat on Sutter Avenue just off of Amboy Street in Brooklyn. He was talking to a patrolman named Isola for the second day in a row. Only this time the patrolman arrived flanked by a detective, one who kept insisting Whitmore take a ride with them downtown.

Whitmore stood 5’5, 19, dark-skinned with pockmarked acne. He had been living in the Brownsville section of East Brooklyn for two years now … first with relatives, then on his own.

Whitmore was escorted to the 73^rd Precinct, where he was asked to stand in front of an eyehole and repeat the following: “I’m gonna rape you, lady. I’m gonna rape you, and then I’m gonna kill you.” Unbeknownst to Whitmore, there was a sexual assault victim standing on the opposite side of that wall, and she emerged feigning hysterics, identifying Whitmore as the man who had assaulted her. Whitmore was held over for questioning, a 24-hour interrogation during which he was denied the right to an attorney, along with ongoing requests to submit his answers via polygraph.

At some point it became apparent that Whitmore was not only being questioned in connection with an attempted rape, but also a trio of homicides, two of which had occurred in an apartment on the Upper East Side. Whitmore maintained his innocence, insisting that not only had he never been to the Upper East Side, but that he and several others could account for his whereabouts throughout the day in question. Whitmore could be sure of it, he contended, because the murders took place on August 28^th, 1963, an afternoon during which he was seated in a vast and empty catering hall at the Ivy Hotel in Wildwood, New Jersey, watching Martin Luther King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech on a black-and-white TV. Continue reading →

“In the old system of broadcasting, you were fundamentally limited by the amount of space in the airwaves. You could only send out 10 channels over the airwaves for television, right? Or even with cable, you had 500 channels. On the internet everybody can have a channel. Everyone can get a blog or a Myspace page. Everyone has a way of expressing themselves. And so what you see now is not a question of who gets access to the airwaves, it’s a question of who gets control over the ways you find people. You start seeing power centralizing on sites like Google. These are sort of gatekeepers that tell you where on the internet you want to go, the people who provide you your sources of news and information. So it’s not only certain people who have a license to speak. Now everyone has a license to speak. It’s a question of who gets heard.”

(Excerpted From Steal This Film II)

IFB’s Quotations Page, General Index

Ask any number of film buffs who the greatest movie critic of all-time is and 80% of them will answer Pauline Kael. Ask any number of average moviegoers that same question, and 75% of them will answer Roger Ebert. Ask any random sample of people from either group who the top three film critics of all-time are, and Roger Ebert will be the only name that consistently appears across both lists.

Therein lies his strength.

Roger Ebert is the everyman, the glutton, the philosopher and the drunkard. He is the Pulitzer-Prize winner and the terminal cancer patient. He represents the intolerable and the cherished, the physically handicapped and the triumphant, the down-but-never-out, the raging underdog within us. Roger Ebert is the barroom poet, the wise, old sage, the blue-collar hero and the hometown troubadour. He is the reporter, the author, the screenwriter and the satirist. He is the celebrity, the TV star, the loyal father, friend and husband. He is our champion and our legend. He is our worker and our icon.

Like most champions, Roger Ebert found a way of maneuvering over whenever circumstances prevented him from moving up. When he hit the ceiling of the newspaper business, he found a new gig on TV. When he bottomed out on television, he reinvented his celebrity online. When Ebert became physically incapacitated, he found a way to inhabit a more vivid space entirely, using the same four basic tools – his eyes, his ears, his brains and fingers – that got him hooked on this whole gambit to begin with.

The beauty of it was – and is – that the closer Roger Ebert came to passing, the more untethered he became in terms of what he would and wouldn’t write. His life, as it remains, represents nothing short of a symphony, the type of thing – much like his memoir – you can return to time and again, like a warm blanket or a handwritten letter. Roger Ebert fell into film criticism by accident and he wound up reimagining it as an industry. He stuck with the gig, he stuck with his woman, his woman stuck with him, and Roger Ebert stuck with us. No jaw, no voice, no problem – Roger Ebert’s got it covered. He went through periods during which he could neither sleep nor eat nor drink, and through it all he just kept writing, writing posts in brilliant spurts until two days before he died.

I think about this every now and again, as I have occasion to attend various film screenings around the city. These screenings, they take place in tiny cushioned rooms. Prior to the house lights going down, there is a great deal of one-ups-man-ship going on (“I find his work a bit pretentious,” “I sat next to her one night in Cannes.”). For the most part, I keep to myself. In a room full of critics with its even greater share of hangers-on, I lack the interest or initiative to discuss why I post my criticism via a very small personal website. My work is good. I know that. I see no need for name-dropping as a means of getting over. And yet I mention this because I routinely find myself scanning the room, yet lacking any urge to wander over and humbly compliment any critic on her work.

Vincent Canby is dead. Pauline Kael is dead. And so now, too, is Roger Ebert.

Cancer. Parkinson’s. Cancer, respectively.

The good news is Roger Ebert is once again alive up on the screen, in what can only be referred to as the most triumphant coup of his career. If you were a fan, and if, like me, you read Roger Ebert’s memoir, then you really should go see this documentary. If you weren’t a fan, or, worse yet, if you are completely unaware of Roger Ebert, that’s all the more reason you should buy the ticket, take the ride. I quote directly here from Roger Ebert’s Life Itself (the book and not the film): “The main thing wrong with a movie that is 10 years old is that it isn’t 30 years old. After the hairstyles and the costumes stop being dated and start being history, we can tell if the movie itself is timeless.” The same can be said for a life. And looking back upon more than 50 years of brilliant living, it is clear now, perhaps more so than ever, that Roger Ebert was – and is – a classic. He changed the way film marketing was done.

(Life Itself opens in limited release this Friday.)

1.  “We open on an aerial shot of New York City”
2. “It’s almost like New York City represents another character in our story.”
3. “I know this might sound crazy”
4. “What ever happened to just good, old-fashioned coffee?”
5. “This is all happening so fast.”
6. “No, I can’t.”
7. The passing-of-seasons montage
8. The trying-on-new-clothes montage
9. The rabid-first-time-sex montage
10. The waking-up-the-morning-after-totally-clothed scene
11. The use of fake-real product names
12. The carefree younger brother
13. The asshole boss
14. The illegitimate son who’s searching for a father figure
15. The lousy rebound
16. The nosy older sister
17. The overbearing father-in-law
18. The psycho ex
19. The rival colleague
20. The runaway bride
21. The seductive mother
22. The token black
23. The two-timing fiance
24. The well-meaning group of male cohorts
25. The chance meeting in a bookstore
26. The corporate walk-out
27. The double date inside an intimate café
28. The earnest advice
29. The interrupted wedding 
30. The New Years countdown
31. The storybook romance
32. The Hollywood ending

(Editor’s Note: They Came Together is a fun and fantastic and highly-recommended motion picture. It arrives in limited release and OnDemand this Friday.)

“Superheroes fill a gap in the pop-culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn’t really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He’s not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he’s a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.”

IFB’s Quotations Page: General Index

“In this locomotive we call home there is one thing left between our warm hearts and the bitter cold. Clothing? Shields? No. Order. Order is the barrier that holds back the frozen death. We must all of us on this train of life remain in our altar’d station, we must each of us occupy our preordained particulate position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn’t wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn’t belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat, you are a shoe. I belong on the head, you belong on the foot.”

That monologue – delivered by Tilda Swinton approximately 20 minutes into Snowpiercer – is one of several reasons why this film may be the most thought-provoking science fiction movie in years. Brilliant, bloody, inventive … Snowpiercer has a great deal to say about social structure, class, fascism, capitalism, theism, man-made atrocities, and why wars are being fought and lost over controlling the means of production. Korean director Joon-ho Bong includes fitting nods to Oldboy, 2001, The Matrix, Blade Runner, Children of Men, The Empire Strikes Back and Battle Royale (among others). Bong’s assembled a solid cast here, as well. Chris Evans (Captain America) is very good. Tilda Swinton (all things Wes Anderson) is even better. Octavia Spencer, unfortunately, not so much.

Anyway, the point being, Snowpiercer is a warm tonic for a bitter day. And it is highly recommended. So it is.

(Snowpiercer opens in limited release this Friday.)