Spike Lee has enjoyed an illustrious career, and here's every one of his movies ranked from worst to best. Over the course of 35 years, Spike Lee has defined himself as one of America’s best, most influential, and often most divisive filmmakers. One of the leading figures in Black cinema, Lee’s work is impossible to ignore, even at its creatively weakest. He’s a true provocateur who sparks heated conversations with each new movie and he continues to be a jolt of life to the American film industry well into his 60s.
Lee never does the same thing twice. Intensely prolific, he often makes a movie a year, all while working as a professor at NYU and making documentaries, stand-up specials, commercials, and much more. All these years since his fiery debut, Lee has lost none of his ion or righteous fury at the ills of the world. His latest film, Da 5 Bloods, now available to watch on Netflix, sees him on fine furious form and receiving some of his best reviews in years, but where does the drama stack up against the other fascinating and varied movies in his back-catalog?
This article focuses specifically on Spike Lee’s 23 feature films and not include his extensive and incredible work as a documentarian and director of filmed theater. If you are interested in those works then be sure to watch When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, his four-part documentary of the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, and ing Strange, his movie of the Broadway musical of the same name.
23. Oldboy
Park Chan-wook's Oldboy is a radical thriller that brought a new era of Korean cinema to Hollywood. To this day, the movie casts a large shadow over the industry and has provided influence for a whole generation of directors. It didn't need to be remade. How could you capture that magic twice? Even Spike Lee couldn't pull it off and the end result is a lifeless and oddly perfunctory affair that descends into the laughable where the original made us wide-eyed with shock. The Oldboy remake was heavily recut by the studio, so the blame can't be placed entirely on Lee for this mess. It's all too depressingly conventional in the end, and that may be the worst thing any movie directed by Spike Lee can be.
22. Girl 6
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks penned the screenplay for Girl 6, the story of a sweet innocent young woman who falls into the world of phone sex operators, and it's sort of hard to believe that a woman wrote this film that seems to wholly misunderstand the female gender at every turn. The potential complexities of this topic are reduced to an oddly black-and-white virgin-whore complex. Neither Spike Lee nor Lori-Parks seems to like their protagonist much, and she is often side-lined by bad dialogue, a lack of focus on her arc, and some truly weird celebrity cameos, including Madonna and Quentin Tarantino. Its only saving grace is a soundtrack composed by Prince.
21. She Hate Me
When Spike Lee misses the mark, he does so in near-spectacular fashion. She Hate Me follows a disgraced executive who decides to make money by offering his services as a sperm donor to lesbian couples. Lee has faced criticism over the years for his ham-fisted take on gender politics and She Hate Me may be the most egregious example of how bad his takes can be. It's not provocative or conveying a larger societal message; it's just offensive and kind of gross. It's a shame to see such talented actresses like Kerry Washington be saddled with this borderline-hateful material.
20. Get On The Bus
In 1995, the Million Man March took place in Washington D.C., a gathering of Black men from across America as part of a grassroots movement to garner attention from politicians and the media at large regarding issues of Black voters. Lee uses this occasion to dramatize those very issues in Get On the Bus, Mostly comprised of conversations between some top-notch actors as they offer differing opinions on topics of race, masculinity, politics, and more, the movie is a minor effort but one that stands as an interesting time capsule of a highly specific moment in time in America of the 1990s. One for Lee completionists only.
19. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
Lee took to Kickstarter to fund his semi-remake of the experimental horror Ganja and Hess. It's fascinating to see a Black vampire movie given how overwhelmingly white the genre is and there's an impressively nightmarish tone to the entire piece that effectively captures the suffocating experience of lacking control over one's body. Sadly, it's just not scary enough to truly work. For a vampire movie, it's curiously bloodless. The best vampire movies use that central metaphor to explore wider issues and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus feels oddly bereft of that. Bonus points, however, for evil butler Rami Malek.
18. Miracle at St. Anna
Spike Lee making a World War II movie felt like a great decision at the time, but Miracle at St. Anna shows a director out of his depth. Based on the story of a group of Black soldiers who sought refuge in a Tuscan village, the movie is overstuffed and overlong and feels oddly tentative in a way that simply does not befit Lee’s talents. It’s a film that somehow feels simultaneously too much and not enough, and not in the ways that Lee can often wield for emotional and stylistic force. Miracle at St. Anna has great intentions but he would go on to make a far better war movie this year.
17. Summer of Sam
Nobody would ever accuse Spike Lee of trying to copy another auteur's style, but Summer of Sam is probably the closest he'll ever get to making a Martin Scorsese movie, for better or worse. Set during the Summer of 1977 when New York was plagued by both an epic blackout and the killings of David Berkowitz, the movie is knowingly trashy and stark in a way that Lee often avoids. His outsider take on an Italian-American neighborhood lacks the layers and warmth of his other films and borders on offensive at times. It's certainly a movie that makes an impact, and the cast are excellent as expected (John Leguizamo is especially strong), but Summer of Sam feels like a movie where you're not entirely sure what the point of it all was.
16. Red Hook Summer
Red Hook Summer saw Spike Lee return to his low-budget roots, free of big studio interference and free to tell whatever story he desired. Shot guerrilla-style and often with the use of iPads, this family drama has the ferociousness of a director off the leash. Clarke Peters, perhaps best-known for The Wire, gives a stellar performance as a preacher of a crumbling church trying to keep the good word alive. There's a wonderful energy to Red Hook Summer but it's so unwieldy that you wouldn't be shocked to hear that Lee was making it up as he went. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it exposes how Red Hook Summer was only a few screenplay drafts away from being something truly special.
15. Crooklyn
One of only two Spike Lee movies with a PG-13 rating, Crooklyn is a semi-autobiographical family portrait that is one of the director's warmest efforts. Bolstered by a superb cast that includes Zelda Harris, Alfre Woodard, and Delroy Lindo, Crooklyn allows its story to quietly unfolds by having its young female protagonist observe the world around her. It’s a softer effort from Lee and one that may prove enticing to viewers who are less inclined towards the director’s usual style, but its inconsistent tone sends it off the rails by the third act.
14. Chi-Raq
The first film to be produced by Amazon Studios, 2015's Chi-Raq sees Lee veer wildly between razor-sharp entertainment and awkward social satire. Based on Lysistrata, a classic Greek comedy from 411 BC, Chi-Raq imagines a riotous solution to gang violence in Chicago's south side - until the fighting ends, the women of the city will withhold sex indefinitely. Lee has seldom been more ambitious, taking on Greek satire and combining it with music, comedy, satire, and a level of anger that feels palpable on every scene. It’s gloriously over-the-top but often difficult to keep up with, as it seems like even Lee doesn’t know what he wants to say or do with this story. The final act is especially messy, but what a wonderful mess it all is. After a few years of quieter, less acclaimed efforts, Chi-Raq felt like Lee was announcing his return to the forefront with a boom.
