‘Da 5 Bloods’ Review: A Potent, if Indulgent Affair from Spike Lee

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After watching BlacKkKlansman, the images that Spike Lee brings you at the film’s end stick with you. In many ways, Da 5 Bloods is as perfect a follow-up to said film as one can imagine, now starting with the hard-hitting footage of history leading up to the Vietnam War. As these bits of history lead into a story about African American veterans coming back together, Da 5 Bloods makes itself out to be Spike Lee retaining that sense of urgency – even at the cost of some pretty evident self-indulgence on his own end. Yet there’s still something worth looking into as Spike Lee doesn’t ever let go of that same energy as he continuously finds ways to adapt it into the days coming by.

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Malcolm X – Review

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The closest that Spike Lee has ever gotten to touching what he managed to leave behind in Do the Right Thing was his own presentation in Malcolm X, a biopic about the famous Afro-American activist. I still remember when I first watched Malcolm X quite vividly, I was only reading about him during one of my history classes and in order to prepare for an essay, I turned on Spike Lee’s feature about the man, for I didn’t see only what I would have thought I could learn about Malcolm X only from reading a textbook. By the time I came out, I still found it hard enough even attempting to finish the essay although it seemed I knew what Malcolm X was like and I got a greater understanding of how he succeeded. He was not a man without his controversies but it’s amazing to see what Spike Lee made of his own life story in here: arguably one of the most important American films of its time, and still a subject worth noting in the present.

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