Spike Lee

That's a nice and easy way to honor the work of Stallworth, but it also makes for a slightly duller film. You don't need to know the history to predict how it all pans out and without Lee's stylistic flourish it's little more than a plot moving from beginning to end, at a pretty consistent pace.

Performances are nice though and while predictable, it's still quite fun to see how it all comes together. BlacKkKlansman isn't a bad film, it's just a little basic and by the numbers. The references to BLM and America's current political climate at the end of the film don't do much to change that.

The first part is mostly focused on the actual disaster, the second part digs around in past failings and the long-lasting impact on the people who suffered through this event. Lee is smart enough to let different people give their version of the story, so it's not just endless complaining/blaming, though in my opinion the balance still felt a little off.

There's also an addendum for those who really love this doc, after four hours though I figured I had a pretty good idea of how this documentary framed the disaster. I would've preferred a slightly more balanced approach and the runtime really is quite excessive, but overall it was a pretty interesting film that is a must for people looking for a thorough look at Hurricane Katrina's history and its aftermath.

Performances are decent but not good enough to carry the film, the characters are somewhat annoying, the film is too long and the soundtrack is lazy. Lee's direction is a notch above Scorsese's (who I think could've been in the running for this script too), but in the end Summer of Sam is overly long and just not interesting enough.

With four black veterans returning to Vietnam to honor their fallen friend, the film has a perfect setup to revisit the Vietnam War and tell it from a black perspective. Throw in some gold hunting plot for a little adventure and suspense, and you have all the ingredients for a great film. Why then did it feel like a bad comedy, something that holds the middle between a bad Apocalypse Now rip-off and a subpar jungle-set JCVD action flick.

Performances are poor, the action scenes are drab, the dramatic moments are laughable and the political inserts are completely overshadowed by the incompetence surrounding them. The entire film is such a big mess that it is actually quite amusing to watch (at least to see where it is going), but in the end if feels like Lee overreached tremendously and couldn't stop himself from falling flat on his face. This wasn't any good.