Oscar® nominee Spike Lee arrives on the red carpet of The 91st Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre in Hollywood, CA on Sunday, February 24, 2019. Credit/Provider: Kyusung Gong / ©A.M.P.A.S. Copyright: ©A.M.P.A.S.
Spike Lee is one of the most accomplished and important filmmakers of his generation.
Lee began his career with such acclaimed films as ‘Do the Right Thing‘, ‘Mo’ Better Blues‘, ‘Jungle Fever‘, ‘Clockers‘, and ‘Malcolm X‘, and in recent years as helmed modern classics like ‘Inside Man‘, ‘Da 5 Bloods‘ and ‘BlacKkKlansman‘, for which he won Best Adapted Screenplay.
His latest movie, ‘Highest 2 Lowest‘, which marks his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington, opens in theaters on August 15th before debuting on Apple TV+ on September 15th.
In honor of ‘Highest 2 Lowest’, Moviefone is counting down every film Spike Lee has ever directed from worst to best, including his latest.
Let’s begin!
Damon Wayans in ‘Bamboozled’. Photo: New Line Cinema.
Frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea, producer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) pitches the worst idea he can think of in an attempt to get fired: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.
“A Spectacular Film by Mr. Spike Lee”
Release Date: Oct 20, 2000
Run Time: 2 hr 16 min
Budget: $10,000,000
Zack Homer (Monty Ross) takes over managing the barbershop after Joe (Horace Long) is killed for trying to rip off his “investor”, Mr. Lovejoy (Tommy Redmond Hicks). All Zack wants to do is run a traditional barbershop giving traditional haircuts, but modern styles have passed him by and business is slow. One evening, Mr. Lovejoy shows up to offer Zack the same deal he gave to Joe. It could turn his business around, but what will he have to give in return?
A modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, set against the backdrop of gang violence in Chicago.
Release Date: Dec 4, 2015
Run Time: 2 hr 7 min
Dr. Hess Green (Stephen Tyrone Williams) becomes cursed by a mysterious ancient African artifact and is overwhelmed with a newfound thirst for blood. Soon after his transformation he enters into a dangerous romance with Ganja Hightower (Zaraah Abrahams) that questions the very nature of love, addiction, sex, and status.
Release Date: Feb 13, 2015
Run Time: 2 hr 3 min
Budget: $1,420,000
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik (Jules Brown) may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch (Clarke Peters), a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz (Toni Lysaith), the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
Release Date: Aug 10, 2012
Run Time: 2 hr 5 min
A scene from ‘Get on the Bus’. Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing.
Several Black men take a cross-country bus trip to attend the Million Man March in Washington, DC in 1995. On the bus are an eclectic set of characters including a laid-off aircraft worker, a man whose at-risk son is handcuffed to him, a black Republican, a former gangsta, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, and a white bus driver. All make the trek discussing issues surrounding the march, including manhood, religion, politics, and race.
“On October 16, 1996, the one year anniversary of the Million Man March, Spike Lee invites you to lift your head, raise your voice, and…get on the bus.”
Release Date: Oct 16, 1996
Run Time: 2 hr 1 min
Budget: $2,400,000
Miracle at St. Anna chronicles the story of four American soldiers who are members of the all-black 92nd “Buffalo Soldier” Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II.
“World War II had its heroes and its miracles.”
Release Date: Sep 15, 2008
Run Time: 2 hr 40 min
Budget: $45,000,000
Fired from his job, a former executive (Anthony Mackie) turns to impregnating wealthy lesbians for profit.
“One heterosexual male. 18 lesbians. His fee $10,000… each.”
Release Date: Jul 30, 2004
Run Time: 2 hr 19 min
Budget: $8,000,000
17. ‘Girl 6‘ (1996)
A struggling actress (Theresa Randle) in New York City takes a job as a phone sex operator.
“She’s the only thing better than being there.”
Release Date: Mar 22, 1996
Run Time: 1 hr 48 min
Budget: $12,000,000
During the summer of 1977, a killer known as the Son of Sam (Michael Badalucco) keeps all of New York City on edge with a series of brutal murders.
“No one is safe from Son of Sam.”
Release Date: Jul 2, 1999
Run Time: 2 hr 22 min
Budget: $22,000,000
15. ‘Oldboy‘ (2013)
Josh Brolin in ‘Oldboy’. Photo: FilmDistrict.
A man (Josh Brolin) has only three and a half days and limited resources to discover why he was imprisoned in a nondescript room for 20 years without any explanation.
“Ask not why you were imprisoned. Ask why you were set free.”
Release Date: Nov 27, 2013
Run Time: 1 hr 44 min
Budget: $30,000,000
From Spike Lee comes this vibrant semi-autobiographical portrait of a school-teacher (Alfre Woodard), her stubborn jazz-musician husband (Delroy Lindo) and their five kids living in ’70s Brooklyn.
“A new look at the old neighborhood.”
Release Date: May 13, 1994
Run Time: 1 hr 54 min
Budget: $14,000,000
Fraternity and sorority members clash with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend.
“A new comedy with music.”
Release Date: Feb 12, 1988
Run Time: 2 hr 1 min
Talented but self-centered trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) is obsessed with his music and indecisiveness about his girlfriends Indigo (Joie Lee) and Clarke (Cynda Williams). But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend, Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined.
Release Date: Aug 3, 1990
Run Time: 2 hr 9 min
Budget: $10,000,000
The story of Nola Darling’s (Tracy Camilla Johns) 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.
“A seriously sexy comedy.”
Release Date: Aug 8, 1986
Run Time: 1 hr 24 min
Budget: $175,000
Denzel Washington in ‘Highest 2 Lowest’. Photo Credit: David Lee.
When a titan music mogul (Denzel Washington), widely known as having the “best ears in the business”, is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
Release Date: Aug 15, 2025
Run Time: 2 hr 13 min
Four African-American Vietnam veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) return to Vietnam. They are in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader and the promise of buried treasure. These heroes battle forces of humanity and nature while confronted by the lasting ravages of the immorality of the Vietnam War.
Release Date: Jun 12, 2020
Run Time: 2 hr 35 min
Budget: $45,000,000
A basketball player’s father (Denzel Washington) must try to convince him to go to a college so he can get a shorter prison sentence.
“The father, the son and the holy game.”
Release Date: May 1, 1998
Run Time: 2 hr 16 min
Budget: $25,000,000
Strike (Mekhi Phifer) is a young city drug pusher under the tutelage of drug lord Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo). When a night manager at a fast-food restaurant is found with four bullets in his body, Strike’s older brother (Isaiah Washington) turns himself in as the killer. Detective Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) doesn’t buy the story, however, setting out to find the truth, and it seems that all the fingers point toward Strike & Rodney.
“When there’s murder on the streets, everyone is a suspect.”
Release Date: Sep 15, 1995
Run Time: 2 hr 8 min
Budget: $25,000,000
A successful and married black man (Wesley Snipes) contemplates having an affair with a white girl (Annabella Sciorra) from work. He’s quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Release Date: Jun 7, 1991
Run Time: 2 hr 12 min
Budget: $14,000,000
(L to R) Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster in ‘Inside Man’. Photo: Universal Pictures.
When an armed, masked gang enter a Manhattan bank, lock the doors and take hostages, the detective (Denzel Washington) assigned to effect their release enters negotiations preoccupied with corruption charges he is facing.
“It looked like the perfect bank robbery. But you can’t judge a crime by its cover.”
Release Date: Mar 24, 2006
Run Time: 2 hr 9 min
Budget: $45,000,000
Colorado Springs, late 1970s. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African American police officer, and Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), his Jewish colleague, run an undercover operation to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.
Release Date: Aug 10, 2018
Run Time: 2 hr 16 min
Budget: $15,000,000
In New York City in the days following the events of 9/11, Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) is a convicted drug dealer about to start a seven-year prison sentence, and his final hours of freedom are devoted to hanging out with his closest buddies and trying to prepare his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) for his extended absence.
“Can you change your whole life in one day?”
Release Date: Jan 10, 2003
Run Time: 2 hr 15 min
Budget: $5,000,000
A tribute to Malcolm X (Denzel Washington), the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the ’50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
“Scholar, convict, leader, disciple, hipster, father, hustler, minister, black man, every man.”
Release Date: Nov 18, 1992
Run Time: 3 hr 22 min
Budget: $34,000,000
(L to R) Richard Edson, John Turturro and Spike Lee in ‘Do the Right Thing’. Photo: Universal Pictures.
Salvatore “Sal” Fragione (Danny Aiello) is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin’ Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin’ Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
“It’s the hottest day of the summer. You can do nothing, you can do something, or you can…”
Release Date: Jul 21, 1989
Run Time: 2 hr
Budget: $6,500,000
