She's Gotta Have It (1986)
Directed by Spike Lee
The story of Nola Darling's simultaneous sexual relationships with three different men is told by her and by her partners and other friends. All three men wanted her to commit solely to them; Nola resists being "owned" by a single partner.
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What critics compared She's Gotta Have It to
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.”
That film, inspired by Spike Lee's “She's Gotta Have It,” was more of a comedy, but with “Hate,” also about characters who are not ethnically French, he has painted a much darker vision.
It calls to mind the raggedy energy of the 1980s New York independent film explosion, most notably Spike Lee’s debut “She’s Gotta Have It” in the way it showcases an underrepresented minority in a no-big-deal fashion, with a good amount of raunchy humor instead of any special pleading or self-importance on the filmmaker’s behalf.
If it were possible to time-warp "Tangerine" back a few decades, it could be part of that wave of indies that redefined American cinema in the eighties and nineties, with features like " Go Fish ," "The Living End," "Clerks," "The Brother from Another Planet" and "She's Gotta Have It"— works that, acting- and storytelling-wise, were rough around the edges, but compensated by depicting worlds rarely seen onscreen, with warmth and confidence.
In “Someone Great,” the liminal space is the last full day and night of debauchery Jenny (Gina Rodriguez), fresh off a break-up with long-term boyfriend Nate (LaKeith Stanfield), spends in New York with her two best friends, Erin (“She’s Gotta Have It” star DeWanda Wise) and Blair (“Pitch Perfect” alum Brittany Snow).
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Christopher Jackson (“Moana”) is commanding as George Washington, Anthony Ramos (“She’s Gotta Have It”) is charming as John Laurens, Jonathan Groff (“Glee”) provides hilarious comic relief as King George III, and Daveed Diggs (“Blindspotting”) steals the show as both a suave Marquis de Lafayette and a cocky, strutting Thomas Jefferson.
He romantically whisks her away from her day job — along with her best friend (Anthony Ramos, from Broadway's Hamilton and Spike Lee's Netflix series She's Gotta Have It) — in a private jet and limo and then plunked backstage.
When I did promotions in Baltimore, I helped champion his first film, "She's Gotta Have It."
Spike Lee's ("She's Gotta Have It") newest "joint" revives the now stale bank heist-hostage situation genre (a Hollywood staple) once made with glee in such films as "Dog Day Afternoon."
Ever since "She's Gotta Have It" in 1986, Spike Lee has been recognized as a director who likes to get below the surface of a subject, even if it means making his audience uncomfortable.
But then this impossibility is at the heart of the film, and gives it an edgy interest, a touch of suspense after all, and links it to other Lee works like Do the Right Thing and She’s Gotta Have It.
His two previous commercial efforts, "She's Gotta Have It" and "School Daze," had the same energy, but were choppy and slightly amateurish.
Do the Right Thing was Lee's third motion picture (following She's Gotta Have It and School Daze), but this was the movie that put him on the proverbial map.
In She’s Gotta Have It, Lee himself portrays the fast-talking Mars Blackmon, who won’t let anything so small as sexual jealousy come between him and a fellow African-American.
Lee's two previous films -- She's Gotta Have It and School Daze -- made some piercing stabs at social commentary.