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Inflammatory rabble-rouser or cinematic visionary? Opinions vary wildly on Spike Lee, a film-maker who has been completely unafraid of chronicling modern-day America. Over the past fifteen years, only Oliver Stone has matched Lee’s politically explosive cinema, and controversy is never far away when a Lee film is released.
Lee’s first two films – She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze – garnered some interest among film fans, but it wasn’t until 1989’s Do The Right Thing that Spike Lee really made a name for himself. A real hand grenade of a film, Do The Right Thing alerted many to a major talent. The incendiary nature of the film led many to expect every Lee film to be an instant classic, but it wasn’t until four years later and the epic Malcolm X that Lee again found top gear. Many of his subsequent efforts seemed to get buried in the fallout from Malcolm X, but in 1997 he produced the outstanding documentary 4 Little Girls, a work that seemed to spur him onto knife-edge films such as Summer of Sam and Bamboozled.
The Pocket Essential Spike Lee contains an analysis of every Lee feature film, plus a look at some of his early efforts such as the award-winning student film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, and the importance of sport in Lee’s life and work.
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