Spike Lee demanded immediate attention with his 1986 debut feature She’s Gotta Have It, and filmgoers have not been able to look away since. Not only has Lee established himself as one of the most distinctive filmmakers in cinema history—known for signatures such as his double dolly shot and declaring each work “A Spike Lee Joint”—but he’s continued to innovate, pushing the form forward even 40 years into his career.With so many entries in his filmography, ranking Spike Lee will always be a daunting task. And to help, we are just looking at his narrative features, which excludes some incredible documentaries (4 Little Girls, When the Levees Broke) and great concert films (The Original Kings of Comedy, American Utopia). From those features, here are the 10 most formally exhilarating, thematically challenging, and ultimately unabashedly human works from this modern American virtuoso.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});10. BlackKklansman (2018)BlackKkKlansman finally gave Lee the Oscars attention he had long deserved, with six nominations and a win for Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s not hard to see why this was the movie that mainstream institutions decided to award, and not just because it boasts a producing credit from Jordan Peele. BlackKklansman tells an irresistible true story about a Black police officer (John David Washington) who with the help of his Jewish partner (Adam Driver) goes undercover to infiltrate the KKK in 1970s Colorado Springs.Most directors would take the opportunity to turn in a crowd-pleasing blockbuster, but not Lee. Instead he uses BlackKklansman as an opportunity to comment on the relationship between popular culture and American racism, from an opening that features Alec Baldwin playing a racist choking on his rhetoric while Gone With the Wind projects behind him to a formally thrilling sequence in which enpratued Black faces dissolve onto the screen to punctuate a speech by Black Panther Kwame Ture (an electric Corey Hawkins) about Black beauty. 9. He Got Game (1998)Akira Kurosawa had Toshiro Mifune. Martin Scorsese has Robert De Niro, and Spike Lee found his perfect muse in Denzel Washington. Washington, of course, is one of the greatest actors of his generation and has done excellent work with a variety of filmmakers. But time and again, he’s proven himself perfectly suited to embodying sometimes contradictory emotions, playing ragged and cool at the same time, often while maintaining a sense of humor. And with the basketball drama He Got Game, Lee gives Washington one of his most complicated characters.In He Got Game, Washington plays Jake Shuttlesworth, whose son Jesus (played by Jade Yorker as a boy and by NBA star Ray Allen as an adult) is on the verge of a starting a phenomenal college basketball career, sure to lead to professional stardom. Hoping to sway Jesus’ decision toward the local state university, the governor has released Jake from prison where he’s been serving a sentence for killing Jesus’ mother. Despite the messy political and legal entanglements that set up the story, He Got Game tells a rich and complicated tale about family ties and the possibilities of forgiveness, all anchored by Washington bringing humanity to a troubling person.8. Mo’ Better Blues (1990)Music has always been a major part of Lee’s movies, from the rich Terence Blanchard scores that fill most of his movies to pop music inserts, such as Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” opening Do the Right Thing. So it’s no surprise that one of Lee’s best movies would put the focus on musicians, namely the members of the jazz combo the Bleek Quintet, led by trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (Washington). The Quintet starts the fracture when saxophonist Shadow (Wesley Snipes) begins demanding more attention, and problems with girlfriends cause tensions between the members. It’s all noise that threatens to disrupt the music.Mo’ Better Blues revisits some of Lee’s favorite themes, including the spiritual nature of art and the inability of men and women to communicate with one another. Yet the pairing of Washington and Snipes infuses those themes with a new energy, as does the fact that the movie focuses on artists themselves. Rarely has Lee made himself so present in his work, not so much in his character, the Bleek Quintet’s manager Giant, but in the struggles of artists trying to make their way throughout society.7. Inside Man (2006)Here’s the shocking thing about Spike Lee: yes, he’s an incredible stylist with a clear, unmistakable voice, but he’s also a perfect blockbuster filmmaker. In another world, Lee could have just devoted himself to making big budget movies about cops and robbers doing exciting adventures. Instead he just occasionally reminds us what an effective crowd-pleaser he can be by occasionally doing straightforward genre pieces like Inside Man.Inside Man begins with a delicious caper hook, in which detective Keith Frazier (Washington) and his partner Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) try to defuse a hostage situation that arises when criminal Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) and his team rob a bank. From that starting point, Inside Man unfolds a twisty narrative about war criminals and dirty secrets, complete with appearances by stars such as Willem Dafoe, Jodie Foster, and Christopher Plummer. In the end, Inside Man isn’t a big, glossy Hollywood blockbuster; it’s a big, glossy Hollywood blockbuster of the highest quality.6. School Daze (1988)Although it doesn’t happen until the very end of his second feature, Spike Lee properly arrives as an artist when Dap (Laurence Fishburne) looks directly at the camera and shouts to the audience, “Please, wake up!” The fact that the militant Dap gets the last word in School Daze underscores the importance of his worldview for the movie. But School Daze has room for a range of personalities and perspectives, making it one of Lee’s most vibrant entries, setting the stage for the often messy but always exhilarating work he’d do throughout his career.School Daze takes place at the Atlanta HBCU Mission College, a fictional stand in for Lee’s own alma mater Morehouse College. While Dap tries to draw attention to South African apartheid, his classmates focus their attention on more collegiate concerns. For Half-Pint (Lee), that means pledging in the Gamma Phi Gamma; for the fraternity president Dean Big Brother Almighty (Giancarlo Esposito), that means keeping a low profile; meanwhile others like Jane Toussaint (Tisha Campbell) deal with issues of beauty standards and colorism. Sometimes a comedy, sometimes a drama, and sometimes a musical, School Daze gives plenty of attention to the varieties of human experience, making Dap’s closing plea all the more urgent.5. Jungle Fever (1991)On the surface, Jungle Fever plays like an average upper-middle-class drama, the sort of thing that Hollywood has been producing for centuries. Wesley Snipes portrays architect Flipper Purify, who lives a quiet life with his wife Drew (Lonette McKee) and their daughter, despite his frustrations with bosses who won’t advance his career. When Flipper begins an affair with his new secretary Angie (Annabella Sciorra), he faces judgment from his friends and family, not the least of which includes his respected father, the Good Reverend Doctor Purify (Ossie Davis).However, Lee uses that plot to explore assumptions about race, as Flipper and Angie’s respective friend and family groups object less to the fact of an affair than they do the fact that Flipper is Black and Angie is white. As the film’s title suggests, Jungle Fever doesn’t shy away from the cultural forces that influence our perceptions and desires. Instead it allows the viewers to sit in the various discomforts raised by Flipper and Angie’s relationship, making Jungle Fever a unique addition to Hollywood’s love affair with love affairs.4. Da 5 Bloods (2020)Spike Lee is as much a student of cinema as he is a filmmaker, and he often works references to classic movies into his own projects. Unsurprisingly, Da 5 Bloods does feature nods to war flicks like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Apocalypse Now. However, it finds most inspiration in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, as it follows a group of four Vietnam veterans—Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.)—and Paul’s son David (Jonathan Majors) returning to Vietnam to find gold bars they buried during the war.Old grudges and past hurt resurface as the men make their way to the treasure. And at the center of it all is their one missing member, their leader Stormin’ Norman Earl Holloway, who was killed in action and is played by Chadwick Boseman. Having already portrayed historical figures such as James Brown, Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall, to say nothing of the superhero Black Panther, Boseman comes to the role well-suited to play a legendary soldier. That quality only intensified with Boseman’s shocking death, mere months after the release of Da 5 Bloods.3. 25th Hour (2002)In the 25 years since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, many movies have tried to capture that surreal moment of fear and fragile community. None have done it better than the first proper post-9/11 movie, 25th Hour. Although the film only occasionally references the attacks, having already been in pre-production on Sept. 11, it displays a self-destructive nation full of anger against itself, which refuses to accept its diversity, even as it realizes that diversity has always been a part of it.Based on the novel by David Benioff, who wrote the screenplay and would later be half of Game of Thrones showrunning duo, 25th Hour stars Edward Norton as small-time drug dealer Monty Brogan. Busted for possession, Monty has one last day before he must report to prison, which he chooses to spend with his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), and his best friends Frank (Barry Pepper), an aggressive stock trader, and Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a private school English teacher. As he considers leaving the city for good, or spending the next seven years in Hell, Monty must face everything he loves and hates about America in general and New York City in particular, culminating a visceral monologue that is among the best scenes in Lee’s career.2. Malcolm X (1992)Only Spike Lee could make a Hollywood biopic about Malcom X. That was especially true in 1992 when most of America still found his message too painful to consider. Yet Lee had not only the sway to get Warner Bros. to fund the picture (often by forcing the studio’s hand, following tactics he learned from his friend and mentor Francis Ford Coppola), but had the vision to ensure that the picture was faithful Malcolm X’s story. Moreover, only Lee had the filmmaking chops to turn the life of Malcom X into an epic and, it must be said, entertaining movie.Of course, it helps that Lee had his greatest collaborator Denzel Washington in the lead, an actor capable of moving past the icon to find the human being. Co-written by Lee and Arnold Perl, themselves following The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley, the film traces Malcom Little’s days as a hustler living in Boston during World War II to his conversion to Islam after meeting Elijah Muhammad (Al Freeman Jr.) to becoming the Civil Rights leader we know today. Despite coming in at more than three and a half hours, Malcom X plays like old-school Hollywood spectacle without sacrificing any of the power of the man’s message.1. Do the Right Thing (1989)Spike Lee has never stopped innovating and experimenting. Still, there’s no denying that one of his earliest movies remains his greatest: 1989’s Do the Right Thing. The story of tensions breaking in a Brooklyn neighborhood during an extremely hot day, Do the Right Thing demonstrates everything great about Lee as a filmmaker: his formal restlessness, his love of classic Hollywood, his fearless depiction of American racism, and his interest in communal life.Lee takes the starring role as Mookie, a young man who supports the son he has with his girlfiend Tina (Rosie Perez) by delivering pizzas for Italian-American Sal (Danny Aiello). As Mookie makes his deliveries and deals with the heat, always serenaded by the records played by the all-seeing DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), he encounters all manner of citizen, including the high-strung Buggin’ Out (Esposito), Sal’s racist son Pino (John Turturro), the mysterious Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), and older on again/ff again couple Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) and Da Mayor (Davis). Lee draws the characters with such love that the movie’s explosion of violence at the end still feels inevitable, heartbreaking, and necessary, all these years later.The post The 10 Best Spike Lee Movies Ranked appeared first on Den of Geek.