Spike Lee
121 connections found
Filmography
Jungle Fever 1991 
Do the Right Thing 1989 
BlacKkKlansman 2018 
25th Hour 2002 
Oldboy 2013 
Malcolm X 1992 
Da 5 Bloods 2020 
Chi-Raq 2015 
The Original Kings of Comedy 2000 
Inside Man 2006 
Summer of Sam 1999 
Mo' Better Blues 1990 
Clockers 1995 
Get on the Bus 1996 
She's Gotta Have It 1986 
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus 2015 
Bamboozled 2000 
School Daze 1988 
He Got Game 1998 
She Hate Me 2004 
Highest 2 Lowest 2025 
Girl 6 1996 
Crooklyn 1994 View:
Connections, in both directions
Dear White People (2014)
Directed by Justin Simien
influenced by Do the Right Thing (1989)
Themes Visuals
But in terms of an authorial voice, Simien is like a composite of the best of early Spike Lee; Dear White People has the insider’s view of campus and interracial politics of School Daze, crossed with the tension of Do The Right Thing (and its satire is thankfully free of the dictionary-definition underlining of Bamboozled).
It works because — like Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing and even Jean-Luc Godard back in the 1960s — he knows to playfully challenge his characters’ stridency.
And while Simien also frequently draws upon the confrontational mise en scene of Spike Lee – especially with groups of people facing the camera while voicing a communal complaint – Dear White People is distinct from something like Do the Right Thing in that you never sense its primary aim is to provoke outrage.
Throughout the movie, he steals from the best: Shots are taken from The Shining, Persona, Network, Barry Lyndon, The Warriors, Do the Right Thing; everywhere.
Spike Lee 's "School Daze" may have been one of the filmmaker's influences, but the shape of the movie is broader, more akin to "Do the Right Thing."
If Dear White People is Simien’s School Daze, complete with academic setting and DIY scrappiness, does that mean he has a Do The Right Thing in him, too?
Chon’s scattershot, semi-impressionistic plotting tends to make “Gook” feel like it’s ping-ponging between moments of truth and moments of grace (the film, which borrows so much from “Do the Right Thing,” is sorely missing Spike Lee’s ability to combine the two), but one character strikes the right balance.
“Do the Right Thing” is an obvious inspiration (Chon has also cited the hard-hitting French film “La Haine” and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, he throws in a blatant nod to “Clerks”), and as in Spike Lee’s landmark feature, the action revolves around a neighborhood store.
Their families are linked by a past tragedy that continues to haunt them all, and, as things come to a head, the film also nods firmly in the direction of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”
From an aesthetic and setting similar to Kevin Smith’s Clerks to a socially-minded tragi-narrative that’s reminiscent of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing , Chon has clear influences in mind.
Playing out like some sort of imaginatively structured combination of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing , Kevin Smith’s Clerks , Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank , Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and August Wilson’s Fences , Chon does a grand job of crafting a piece of spirited pop entertainment that also plays just as well as dynamically scripted social commentary in the exact same breath.
Keith gets a pager message: “Free stuff South Central,” and though everyone (except Mr. Kim) seems to expect the mayhem to stay in that neighborhood, the viewer senses (much like in Do the Right Thing , which will be explicitly referenced later) that something’s simmering here as well.
This entertaining trick requires the moral sophistication evident in his moody and underrated 25th Hour and is reminiscent of two classic New York crime films from the 1970s -- Dog Day Afternoon, referred to by Frazier, and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Spike Lee's riveting bank heist/hostage film breaks all the rules and comes across as a reworking of a very tired genre that started with Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon.
The script, written by first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, is a clever little potboiler that combines the keep-you-guessing psychological element of Alfred Hitchcock with the socio-political tension of Sidney Lumet’s “Dog Day Afternoon” (one of Lee’s favorite films, and mentioned by Washington in this film).
Multiple references are made throughout to Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975).
It also pays tribute to the Sidney Lumet classics Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico.
As much a mystery as it is a suspense-thriller, this bank-heist film combines elements from both "Dog Day Afternoon" and "The Usual Suspects."
However, its more derivative elements, borrowed from films like Training Day, End of Watch and Do The Right Thing , make it fall well short of becoming this generation’s answer to Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 masterpiece.
Critics have been quick to compare the film to Do the Right Thing, but Spike Lee’s classic never made the cops into anything more than supporting characters, an omnipresent, ever-observant presence on the periphery of a tense existence.
A cross between The Wire, Do the Right Thing and Training Day, Les Misérables is brilliantly paced, unbearably tense and a reminder that there are so many great actors who go under the radar.
The touchstones for Les Misérables besides Victor Hugo‘s classic, are La Haine , Do the Right Thing , and Training Day .
“Les Miserables,” in which the SCU’s tactics come to a head with the impoverished community evokes “Training Day” or “Do the Right Thing” as much as it does Hugo.
Nominated for best international feature at the 92nd Oscars (it lost out to Parasite ), it presents a powder-keg portrait of broiling tensions, recalling both the pressure-cooker structure of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and even-handed vérité grit of David Simon’s monumental TV series The Wire.
That neither party knows what the evening will bring; that first they’ll take in an Afrocentric art exhibit, then a showing of Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” then become the world’s most powerful couple.
But as the two wend their way through a day that will include an art exhibit, a community meeting at a church, a screening of “Do the Right Thing” and a fateful ice cream cone, her intransigence begins to soften.
She feels that any romantic relationship between them would be a bad idea—she says she has to work hard to be taken seriously at the office as a woman, and doubly so as a black woman--and a growing recognition of the appeal offered by this practical idealist with the beat-up car taking her to the Art Institute, to a community meeting at church (which apparently may not have happened on the first date) and to see “Do the Right Thing.”
The setting is Chicago's South Side, and the year is 1989, which justifies the Janet Jackson on the soundtrack and a fascinating scene in which Michelle and Barack attend a controversial new film, "Do the Right Thing"; Spike Lee's provocative movie mirrors, in expressionistic fashion, the hourslong debate over racial identity, social responsibility and "Afrocentric" art that runs through Barack and Michelle's day together.
That night they take in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”
Even the beloved founder of this site, Roger Ebert , gets a shout-out for championing “ Do the Right Thing ," the movie Barack and Michelle attend in the closing hours of their date.
(A lifetime cinephile, Lee also references or cites Apocalypse Now, Rambo, Missing in Action, and other Vietnam War-related films).
Eddie rightly scoffs at “those Hollyweird motherfuckers trying to go back and win the Vietnam War,” meaning Sylvester Stallone, in the second “Rambo” flick (1985), and the strangely smiling Chuck Norris, in “Missing in Action” (1984).
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Directed by Boots Riley
influenced by Bamboozled (2000), She's Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Chi-Raq (2015)
Themes
With its wide-ranging political targets and aggressive sense of humor—to say nothing of the bold use of color—Sorry to Bother You recalls some of Spike Lee’s most agitated efforts, Chi-Raq and Bamboozled in particular.
Flat as all the inane art-world parody may fall, when Cash is coerced into rapping for his new white friends Riley conjures an incendiary, catch-in-your-throat comic set-piece to rival anything in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled.”
Instead, it’s a gleeful kitchen sink throwback to the satiric, absurdist, wildly inventive indies of the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s like “Repo Man”, “Being John Malkovich”, “Bamboozled”, and “Fight Club” combined with a dash of Mike Judge’s 2006 comic (yet eerily prescient) dystopic fantasia, “Idiocracy”.
Most of the film, which also has links to Spike Jonze’s "Being John Malkovich," plays like a variation on some of Spike Lee’s more scabrous racial fantasias like “Bamboozled.”
Detroit’s artistic and revolutionary sensibilities remind me of the current incarnation of Nola Darling in Spike Lee’s Netflix series reboot of his 1986 classic She’s Gotta Have It .
I haven’t seen anything like this since the days of She’s Gotta Have It.”
Newcomer Shameik Moore shines with geeky gusto in a breakthrough role in the coming-of-age comedy/drama, which tackles racial stereotypes and 1990s culture as a kind of spiritual descendant of Friday and Do the Right Thing while still featuring a singular voice.
By invoking said nostalgia, Rick Famuyiwa harkens back to films like Do The Right Thing, in which racial tensions are explored expertly through what would normally pass itself off as a typical piece of entertainment.
It’s all of those things and none of them, never finding a reliable through line and both favorably and unfavorably evoking Spike Lee’s race relations classic “Do The Right Thing.”
There’s a little bit of Mookie, Spike Lee’s character in “Do the Right Thing,” in Malcolm’s observer-participant role, and maybe also a little bit of that Prince of Denmark that white dude wrote about that one time.
"Dope" isn’t exactly "The Breakfast Club," "Risky Business" or "Do the Right Thing," and yet in many ways it is.
At the movies, horrible real-life events (whether directly inspired or not) often come in the form of searing dramas like Do the Right Thing, Elephant or United 93, which in their own ways all try to make sense of tragedy.
Spike Lee’s incendiary Do The Right Thing left its indelible mark on the cinematic landscape in 1989, eerily predicting the L.A. riots of 1992.
The deeper we get into the movie, however, the clearer it becomes that this is less an homage to films like Apocalypse Now (which is explicitly referenced) and a criticism of things like First Blood, than a reworking of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
The characters themselves discuss Hollywood’s take on Vietnam vets with Rambo in First Blood .
It's in conversation with the years of media that has painted the North Vietnamese in broadly evil strokes, even name-checking the Rambo franchise.
The touchstones range from Rambo to Apocalypse Now , with some obvious quotes, and some more veiled references.
When the finale explodes in a standoff, Bloods becomes like any other overkill, trigger-happy action film — or like the Rambo movies that our guys in Bloods mock early on .
Eddie also has something to show them all, a photograph of Stormin' Norman ("Black Panther" himself, Chadwick Boseman), their squad and spiritual leader whose remains they have come to bring home.
Boseman’s star-making, Marvel hero “Black Panther”, is nothing compared to Stormin’ Norman’s sanctified icon.
Their objective is told through flashbacks where we find out squad leader “Stormin’ Norman” (“Black Panther” himself Chadwick Boseman) died in combat after stumbling upon a treasure trove of gold bricks.
There’s Otis (Clarke Peters, The Wire ), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr., BlacKkKlansman ), Eddie (Norm Lewis, Sex and the City 2 ), and Paul (Delroy Lindo, Get Shorty ), who are officially in the country to recover the body of their fifth compadre, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther ) who served with them but was killed when the Bloods were defending a downed plane in 1971.
Their squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther), suggests they bury the gold and come back for it when things have cooled down, but then he’s killed and the plan is put off several decades.
Blindspotting (2018)
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
influenced by Do the Right Thing (1989)
Themes Visuals
Like “Do the Right Thing” some 30 years ago, “Get Out” last year and “Sorry to Bother You” right now, “Blindspotting” is a searing, intense, sometimes wickedly funny and boldly honest look at race relations, and how we perceive one another — and the horrible mistakes we make based on certain stereotypes that are formulated from the time we are children.
Whether it's Do the Right Thing in Brooklyn, or the Watts portrayed in Killer of Sheep, or Friday and South Central, or Magnolia's journey through L.A.'s aspirational neighborhoods, they become cinematic landmarks.
That is, Blindspotting is the freshest commentary on race relations since Black Lives Matter, and in a film sense, since Do the Right Thing .
Movies are almost always better when they’re about a specific place, and Blindspotting has a facility and familiarity with local slang and archetypes an outsider couldn’t fake, explained in broad character vignettes reminiscent of Spike Lee’s equally loving portrait of Bed-Stuy in Do The Right Thing .
“Do the Right Thing” will likely come to some moviegoers' minds as “Blindspotting” tailspins into its fraught confrontation between Collin and Miles, but the Lee joint it more closely resembles is “Jungle Fever,” with its dexterously handled shifts between humor and pathos.
In the long history of energetic films mixing up heavy drama and stylistic humor, Blindspotting has much in common with something like Do The Right Thing .
Belfast (2021)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
influenced by Crooklyn (1994), Do the Right Thing (1989)
Themes
It may seem like having a child protagonist might restrict the themes and subject matter that you would explore, but just take a quick look through an array of films of this kind to see the depth that’s possible: Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants (a favorite of Branagh’s) handles the shame and complicity of bystanders during the Holocaust, Spike Lee’s Crooklyn celebrates a Brooklyn childhood without once losing perspective of race and class, Terrence Davies’ The Long Day Closes is a blossoming poem to the childhood memories that we carry with us for life, Abbas Kiarostami’s Where is the Friends House?
François Truffaut may have started off with “The 400 Blows,” but typically films like Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord,” Woody Allen’s “Radio Days” and Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn” arrive a little later in the careers, after they're lauded enough to start feeling reflective.
But as far as thematic storytelling goes, this is like if A Christmas Story was directed by Richard Linklater with a dash of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing ; it primarily centers on nine-year-old Buddy in a series of snapshot vignettes doing child-like activities, such as playing, having first crushes at school, and getting into trouble.
The Hate U Give (2018)
Directed by George Tillman Jr.
influenced by Do the Right Thing (1989)
Themes
While Tillman doesn't show the stylistic flair of Spike Lee, the movie embraces human complexity in a way reminiscent of his ground-breaking Do the Right Thing.
Similar to 1989’s “Do the Right Thing” or 2009’s “Fruitvale Station,” “The Hate U Give” is the kind of movie that comes along once every few years.
With all of that wrapped together, The Hate U Give could be remembered as this generation's Do The Right Thing.
Gandhi's astonishingly dimensional examination of racial conflict recalls Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, with one key difference.
And Gandhi also reveals the divide separating Barry’s experiences from those of his white mother (Ashley Judd); whereas Southside With You utilized footage of Do The Right Thing, which the Obamas saw on their first date, Barry plucks an anecdote about Black Orpheus from the president’s best-selling memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story Of Race And Inheritance.
In "Southside" we see him reading Toni Morrison and watching Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing"; in "Barry" it's "Invisible Man" and "Black Orpheus."
Add in a few dirty jokes, including one about a woman asking a gent to stick both his hands up her vagina and clap (well, that one was needed to avoid a PG rating), plus pertinent news clips from each era, and you have The Cosby Show meets Forrest Gump meets Do the Right Thing .
Gaines’ voice is so quiet that it takes him until the 1980s to make a stand for equal pay for blacks on the White House staff — a moment Daniels treats as a watershed, but which seems more like a sad reflection on the slow crawl of racial progress at the seat of government and, by extension, in Hollywood, too, where “Driving Miss Daisy” (which “The Butler” also resembles) was trumping “Do the Right Thing” at the Oscars around the same time Gaines would have been asking for that raise.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Chi-Raq (2015)
It’d be hard to fault Chi-Raq for fixating so hard on the battle-of-the-sexes angle and on jokes about the Greek classics (plus Dr. Strangelove, still the standard for putting an Aristophanes-esque sensibility on film), since that’s also true of the source material.
Lysistrata and her women occupy the National Guard Armory by seducing the staff (including David Patrick Kelly's Confederate apologist, General King Kong (a nod to " Dr. Strangelove ") and move the local chapter of a fez-wearing, African-American fraternal organization (led by the great Steve Harris of "The Practice") to lead a counter-protest and plan an insurgency to end what they believe to be an unconscionable dry spell.
In a film crowded with colorful cameos — Wesley Snipes as a one-eyed gangster, Angela Bassett as a community leader and Samuel L. Jackson as a combination of stand-up comedian, street prophet and Greek chorus, just for starters — and loaded up with film-school winks and nods to “Doctor Strangelove” and “Patton” and whatever else I didn’t notice on first viewing, it’s tough for one actor to stand out.
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Directed by Charles Laughton
influenced Do the Right Thing (1989)
Visuals
A flop when released, it's only grown in stature and influence over the ensuing years — for starters, Spike Lee would pay homage to Powell's tattooed knuckles via the character of Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing.
Zodiac (2007)
Directed by David Fincher
influenced by Summer of Sam (1999), BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Plot Themes
Fincher & Vanderbilt may have been trying to pull off the same trick that Spike Lee did with Summer of Sam; focusing on those affected by the serial murderer, but there�s absolutely zero sense of fear from the big, bad city down to the smallest of neighborhoods.
There was more menace and atmosphere in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam , another film about a real-life serial killer.
And unlike, say, Spike Lee’s very good “Summer of Sam,” there is darned little fun to be had in Fincher’s film.
Since "Zodiac" is a movie about the famed serial killer of the title, other comparisons follow, such as Spike Lee's excellent "Summer of Sam," the 1999 film that followed the murders left in the wake of David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, who took New York City by storm in 1977.
The more the culprit eludes the protagonists, the more obsessive they become in uncloaking him -- Spike Lee in Summer of Sam was content to tag his own zeitgeist-defining killer a "sick fuck," but the Zodiac becomes Moby Dick to the polyester-clad Ahabs, and in Fincher's grand joke the Great Beast is revealed (or is it?)
Zodiac is more Summer of Sam than Silence of the Lambs and, for this die-hard movie fan, that proves more distressing than a phantom killer on the loose.
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced Do the Right Thing (1989)
Visuals
And something in the beautiful camera work of Ernest Dickerson, Lee's customary cinematographer, may recall the opening of "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," or moments from "New York, New York."