dir. Spike Lee
year. 2006
country. USA
run-time. 129 mins
rating. 15
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors: 7.00pm
Film: 7.30pm
October in Britain is Black History Month, and for Deptford Cinema that means a sweeping retrospective of director Spike Lee’s joints. Since his breakout first feature She's Gotta Have It back in 1986, African-American filmmaker Spike Lee has built an incredibly diverse, politically-charged, and hugely respected filmography that is famed for its pull-no-punches focus on the Black American experience in a society still infused with racism, from his vital early feature Do the Right Thing to the recent Cannes-winning police drama BlackKklansman. Lee’s films hungrily fuse satire, anger, provocative ideological positions, and plenty of humour into compelling expressionistic rockets. Lee’s films dance freely between being realistic and symbolic, lighthearted and tragic, funny and savage, sometimes all within the same scene. Identity, racial prejudice, and the struggles to compromise and co-exist as a minority in the modern world all come under his microscope, even as his 2006 film Inside Man showed him more than capable of switching to more mainstream genre fare. His expressive visual approaches means certain ‘Spike-isms’ are now an immediately recognisable cinematographic flourishes: such as his love of free-floating dolly shots. His longstanding collaboration with Denzel Washington, in films such as Malcolm X and He Got Game, remains one of the most rewarding actor-director collaborations in recent film history. There is so much to be angered by, to be moved by, and to laugh at, in Lee’s filmography that you surely can’t afford to miss out on this retrospective.
INSIDE MAN
Who said Lee can’t do mainstream? His biggest commercial hit to date, Inside Man sees Lee turn Russel Gerwitz’s twisty and shamelessly fun heist/hostage drama script into an exciting, well-acted and often very funny thriller with a great sense of location. Denzel Washington is Lee’s choice of leading man again as veteran police detective Keith Frazier, facing off against a mysterious bank robber with a room full of hostages in a plush Wall Street bank, a mastermind who just might have the perfect bank heist plan. With a high-power broker manoeuvring in the background, Detective Frazier has his work cut out for him. Watch carefully for the twists!
Doors Open 7pm*
*Programme Start 7.30pm*
*Age Restriction over 15