Highest 2 Lowest

Posted on August 14, 2025 at 5:22 pm

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Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for brief drug use and language throughout
Profanity:	Constant very strong language including the n-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including guns, characters injured
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 15, 2025

Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the first time since 2006’s “Inside Man” for an elegiac but vibrant story that is complicated and messy. Like life. It is an engrossing crime drama, a family story, a commentary on culture and society, bursting with ideas, masterfully acted by Washington, who just keeps getting better.

The movie begins with Washington’s character, notably called David King, on top of the world. Soaring shots of New York City’s skyline at its most glamorous and inviting are accompanied by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” from “Oklahoma.” We end on a spectacular penthouse balcony, with King greeting the day. We will see his Architectural Digest-ready apartment, filled with fine art and elegant furnishings.

It may not be a beautiful day for King. His company is about to be purchased by a conglomerate with no special background or interest in music or in supporting the emerging Black artists who are so important to King. He predicts that what they want to do is dismiss all of the newer talent and monetize the archive by licensing it for commercials. His plan is to raise the money to buy back enough of a share from a board member, Patrick (Michael Potts), so he will be able to veto the deal. Putting this deal together causes him to let down his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), who was about to make a large contribution to charity, and break a promise to his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), to watch him at a basketball camp led by former Boston Celtic Rick Fox. Trey is disappointed, but happy to meet up at the camp with his best friend, Kyle (Elijah Wright), King’s godson, and the son of widower, ex-con, and King’s chauffeur, Paul Christopher (played by Elijah Wright’s real-life dad).

Then, King gets a call that Trey has been kidnapped for ransom and they are demanding $17,500,000 in Swiss francs. The reason it has to be in francs, not dollars, is clever, like many of the details of the crime, but for some reason this kidnapper makes no effort to stop King from calling the police. The kidnapper also makes another mistake. He mistook Kyle for Trey. Will King continue with plans to take the money he needs to keep his company to pay ransom for someone else’s son?

The way the ransom exchange and subsequent events play out, including a subway train filled with excited Yankees fans and a Puerto Rican Day festival featuring “Do the Right Thing’s” Rosie Perez is tightly constructed. We may think we are in the middle of a gritty first-class thriller, but it turns out there is more. As often happens in Spike Lee movies, the world before us is heightened and the storyline becomes less linear. Is this the story of a crime? Is it about the moral assignment of responsibility? About money? About mistakes? About forgiveness? About risk? About art? About family? All of the above. Like life.

There are winks at the audience, references to Lee’s well-known love of basketball and the Yankees (look for a cheeky sign in the subway car), and a door labeled A24, the name of the film’s studio, to remind us what a personal statement it is. The score by Howard Drossin is arresting but unexpected, a Celtic tone that contrasts with what we might expect for a suspenseful moment.

Washington is utterly mesmerizing as King, crafty, calculating, but essentially a good man, devoted to his wife and son and to music and the people who make it. He knows that what made his company great (there are framed magazine covers with his face on them in his office and references to his many Grammy awards) was his “best ears in the business.” And he knows that the business is not as great as it once was. The supporting cast is superb, with stand-out performances by A$AP Rocky as rapper Yung Felon and Princess Nokia as a young mother. The highlights of this magnificent film, even more than the crime thriller section, are the (mostly) quiet conversations King has with both characters.

Lee and Washington know, as King tells an aspiring singer, that “the hard times will come from the money and the mayhem follows.” They know that “all money isn’t good money” and how to tell the difference. This is a literal masterpiece, based on the term’s origin as work that shows all of the mastery of an experienced creator. It is a crowning achievement by men who have put in the work, learned the lessons over decades, and bring out the best in one another.

Parents should know that this film has extended strong language including many uses of the n-word and a crude and sexist term for a body part. Characters smoke weed and drink alcohol. The story involves a violent crime. Most of the violence occurs off-screen, but there are guns and shooting and characters are injured.

Family discussion: What made King change his mind about paying the ransom? What does he mean about “trying to be practical?” When were the police helpful and when were they not helpful? What does it mean to say “attention is the biggest form of currency,” and do you agree?

If you like this, try: “Inside Man,” “Malcom X,” “Do the Right Thing,” “Chi-Raq,” and “He Got Game”

Spike Lee’s New Movie about Black Soldiers in Vietnam

Posted on May 24, 2020 at 9:55 pm

Spike Lee’s new movie is “Da 5 Bloods,” the story of black soldiers in the Vietnam War.

In an interview with Mark Leepson of VVA Veterans, Lee said that the movie was originally written with white characters. But when he was brought in to direct, he reworked it to focus on black soldiers, and he brought in experts to advise him and showed the film to black Vietnam veterans to get their feedback.

The veterans were not shy about telling Spike Lee what didn’t look right in the movie—and what did. And Lee took heed. “Those guys helped us,” he said. “I listened to them. They were there while I was in high school. They really, really helped us. And I knew that if they liked the film, then I had done my job. No way would I make a Vietnam War film and not let those guys look at it. They were there. Brothers died in their arms.

“I made the film for them,” he said. “I made the film for those guys who were 18 years old, boys who were trained to be killers and went overseas and never were the same. And they were the ones who were lucky; they came back. That was much of the justification for this film, that we had those four screenings for those vets and they loved it.”

That said, Lee said, “this film is not just for black Vietnam vets. There’s an adventure segment to this film that can be captivating, too. It’s not made exclusively for black Vietnam vets.”

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Movies in 2015 — Best, Worst, and Final Thoughts

Posted on December 30, 2015 at 3:02 pm

A final round-up on the movies of 2015

The best:

Tied For First: “The Big Short” and “Chi-raq,” both all the more ferocious for being as funny and purely entertaining as they are angry
Tied For Second:
“Brooklyn”
“Carol”
“Ex Machina”
“Inside Out”
“Mad Max: Fury Road”
“The Martian”
“Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens”
“Bridge of Spies”

Runners-up: “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Creed,” “Trumbo,’ “Spotlight,” “Son of Saul,” “Mustang,” “The Shaun the Sheep Movie,” “Mustang,” “Girlhood,” “Straight Outta Compton”

A good year for: movies by and about women: “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Miss You Already,” “Chi-Raq,” “Carol,” “Brooklyn,” “Inside Out,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Infinitely Polar Bear,” “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Pitch Perfect 2,” “Suffragette,” “Sisters”

Not such a good year for: romance, comedies, or romantic comedies

Popcorn pleasures: “Furious 7,” “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation,” “Magic Mike: XXL,” “What We Do in the Shadows”

Chi-Raq

Posted on December 3, 2015 at 3:37 pm

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Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong sexual content including dialogue, nudity, language, some violence and drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	A theme of the film is gang-related violence, guns, shooting, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Race and gender issues are the theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	December 4, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	January 25, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B017W1P79I

“WAKE UP!” Laurence Fishburne pleads at the end of Spike Lee’s incendiary movie, “School Daze,” not just one of Lee’s best films but one of the most important films of the 1980’s. He was not talking to his fellow students. He was not talking to the camera. He was talking to us in the audience. He was telling all of us to rise above fear and petty differences — and fear of petty differences and stop hurting each other.

That message is even more urgent now, and so “Chi-Raq” is an even more powerful call for all of us to wake up, and it is Lee’s best non-documentary film in many years. It is more than a film; it is an anguished wail of grief and fury and the most important film of 2015.

We call the great Illinois city on the shores of Lake Michigan Chicago, but as the opening lines of the movie explain, for the residents of a South Side community with more violent deaths than the US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is Chi-Raq. In the film a little girl is killed by a stray bullet in a gang-related shooting. She is collateral damage. The week I saw the film, there was a funeral in the very community where it is set for a nine-year-old boy who was a deliberate murder target as an act of reprisal against his father. Even the ultimate symbol of Chicago gangster violence, Al Capone, never went that far. This is not a documentary and the mode of storytelling here is heightened, but there can be no credible claims that what it portrays is unfair or exaggerated.

They feel completely isolated from any kind of help from the outside. Businesses are afraid to come into their community, so there are not jobs or services. The government does not help. The newspapers do not tell their story. Their news is reported by rappers, and in a sensationally dynamic scene in a club a rapper known as Chi-Raq (a fierce Nick Cannon) tells the truth about what they see all around them.

Lee, working with co-screenwriter Kevin Willmott, brilliantly positions this vitally contemporary story as an updated version of a play written in 411 BC, “Lysistrata,” by Aristophanes. Just as the savvy strategist of almost 25 centuries ago plotted with the other women of her community to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War by withholding sexual favors from all of the men, “Chi-Raq’s” Lysistrata (a sizzling performance by “Mad Men’s” Teyonah Parris) sits down with the women from the opposing gang (to continue the classical themes, the gangs are the Trojans and the Spartans) to get them to pledge that there will be no loving until there is no more shooting. The heightened classical overtones include a narrator/chorus who has a Greek-sounding name Dolmedes — inspired by the Blaxploitation hero Dolemite and played by Samuel L. Jackson in a series of natty, brightly colored suits. And then there is the dialog, all in verse, somewhere between rap and iambic pentameter, which actually have a pretty broad overlap.

Lee makes it clear that this is a widespread, even universal problem as women around the world join forces with Lysistrata. And no one escapes responsibility for the carnage, with a searing climax of tragedy and redemption. We see a mother (Jennifer Hudson) scrubbing her little girl’s blood off the street. We see people tweeting the details of a shooting as it happens. Lysistrata is inspired not just by her namesake but by the real-life Nobel Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, who brought the Christian and Moslem women of Liberia together to stop the fighting in their country. Lee is very clear about who is to blame and who is responsible for making it better: all of us.

And when we see mothers holding pictures of their children killed by guns, we are seeing real mothers, holding pictures of their real children. All of the flash, music, sex, and spectacle are balanced with moments of intimacy, connection, and poignancy, and all are anchored in Lee’s passion for his community. That reality makes this a rare movie that can change the conversation.

Parents should know that this film features gang-related and other violence with tragic outcomes including characters injured and killed, explicit sexual references and situations with nudity, smoking, drinking, and drug use.

Family discussion: What is the best way for the community, the government, and business to stop gang-related violence? How can a movie like this make a difference?

If you like this, try: “School Days,” “Do the Right Thing,” and “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” and read “Lysistrata”

Interview: Teyonah Parris and Spike Lee on “Chi-Raq”

Posted on December 3, 2015 at 1:01 pm

“Chi-Raq” is one of the best films of the year and one of the most important films of many years. It is a searing wail of love, grief, and fury inspired by “Lysistrata,” a play written in 411 BC. A small group of reporters spoke to star Teyonah Parris and co-writer/director Spike Lee.

Parris told us that she actually performed in the original Lysistrata when she attended Juilliard. “I did not get to play Lysistrata but I have always studied Shakespeare and Greek plays and Chekhov and I love working on that sort of text. There is so much to mine from it. And so when I got this script for ‘Chi-Raq’ and I realized this was a modern retelling of that story I was all in. And then to hear Spike talk about what he was doing with the movie — the first thing he said is, ‘I’m trying to save lives. We have to save lives,’ and I was all in, there was no question about it. Spike certainly has an out of the box approach to his work but I think that’s why people gravitate towards him. He gives us another way to look at things. It is a bit more unconventional but I certainly think that it will resonate with our current generation because it’s Spike. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is he does that makes it hit right here but I think that people will watch this movie and certainly understand what we’re seeing and what the message is.” She acknowledged that the film is bound to be controversial. “The title has gotten a lot of flak but the no one has actually seen it and heard the message and seen what we’re trying to say but I know that Spike’s intentions and mine and everyone that is a part of this film, our intentions are pure and were trying to make a difference and get this conversation started so that people can actively make some changes. The issue that we’re dealing with in the film with our young brothers killing each other — to talk about that I don’t think eliminates the conversation which has been on everyone’s minds and hearts with the police brutality against particularly young black men and women. I think that those conversations can be had simultaneously. There is a lot more at play and we talk about it in the movie, the fact that there are no jobs in these places. People are trying to feed their families who are given no other way out.”

The character she plays in the film is confident, forthright, and very capable of weaponizing her sexuality. She is a long way from the more realistic characters she played in “Mad Men” and “Dear White People,” and the distinction is clear in her physicality as well as her dialog and responses to other characters. She spoke about the costume designer and movement coach who helped her create the character. “I call the costume designer Master Ruth Carter. I remember being in those fittings saying ‘Ruth, don’t you want to add a little bit more fabric, a little more here and there?” but I loved it. I thought it certainly was a physical representation of who this woman was and the confidence that she has and how she moves about the world and finding her physicality. It felt very theatrical which is no surprise because it’s from a play. So finding who this woman was and how she walks into a room or walks down the street, I certainly had lots of assistance from a wonderful woman name Maija Garcia who was our movement director, and we worked on just finding her strength and, how does she stand and how does she command a room simply by being there without walking around or whatever. It took some work. I didn’t just show up to set; I had to explore it before getting there and I definitely had the assistance of Maija Garcia. We just did little exercises, exploring what does it feel like to walk in 6 inch heels and how that changes you.”

Parris was excited to work with Lee and to play the central role. “She’s the hero. She comes in and she sees the issue. There has to be a strength and a determination not only for her to carry on her mission but for me also the actress to figure out what she’s trying to do and how she has to do it and in such a very short time. We shot this in five weeks, the entire thing. And I had to use every bit of my artistic being in this film from the dancing to just finding my center and my strength and how do I affect people and how to effectively lead people. Yes, I think those are some of the things that made it a challenge for me but they are a welcome challenge.”

Lee emphasized that this movie is not for any particular demographic. “The film talks strongly about guns and that affects everybody, all Americans.” But it was not easy for him to get it into production, in part because it is so unusual to have an entire screenplay in verse. “I’ve never done this before so it was a challenge to get this made. I think that one of the reasons why everybody said no in the process is because of the verse, because it’s hard to read, and that’s why before Amazon said yes we had two readings. They wanted to hear it, they want their ears to hear it, and I don’t blame them because even when I write my own scripts reading it and hearing the actors say the lines is two different universes. And that doesn’t even happen till you hear bits and parts during casting. I do a lot of rewriting during that period because I hear it for the first time.”

The training Parris got at Juilliard helped prepare her for speaking in verse as though it was natural conversation. “Essentially the idea is that the structure is different but your intentions are still the same. You are trying to affect something. You are trying to get something out of someone. So what are you doing? And you have to continuously remember and remind yourself that you don’t get lost in the sing-song or the verse of it. Nick Cannon] and I frequently had conversations about that, just reminding ourselves and each other what is the scene about, like what are we trying to do so that we don’t get lost in the sound of it, so to speak.”

Like Lee’s earlier film, “School Daze,” this film ends with someone calling on us in the audience to “wake up.” Lee said, “We’ve been using those two words, that’s the last two words of ‘School Daze:’ wake up, from Laurence Fishburne. ‘Do The Right Thing’ begins with Samuel Jackson saying ‘wake up’ and closes with him saying ‘wake up’ as Mister Senor Love Daddy because consciousness is not something that is at use all the time.”

Parris added, “I agree with what Spike said. I think our role as artists is to show, to be a reflection of our community and the world in a way that even though it may not be comfortable to watch or to receive its truthful and makes you think about the state of our community.”