Spike Lee: RANKED
- Aug 21
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 26
In honor of the release of Spike Lee’s brilliant new movie Highest 2 Lowest , a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, I’ve decided to do something I’ve never done before: rank every single one of his theatrical narrative films in order of preference.
NOTE: Highest 2 Lowest is not included on this list. I just saw it...I have to let it ruminate for a while.
This is strictly narrative, dramatic, fiction-based Spike Lee. That means no television work, no documentaries, no concert films, no music performance movies. Just the straight, theatrical, narrative features that he’s released since the beginning of his career.
Spike Lee is, and has been for nearly 40 years, one of the most fascinating filmmakers on the planet. Still alive, still relevant, still doing vibrant, challenging, and exciting work.
Sure, there have been dips, he’s had a few movies that missed the mark, and a stretch or two where the quality wavered, but when you look at the whole body of work, it’s one of the most varied, unique, and singular careers in modern cinema.
From the very first time he burst onto the scene in 1986 with She’s Gotta Have It, he has consistently been one of the most distinctive voices in American film.
Spike is controversial, both in his work and in his life, and unapologetically outspoken about politics, race, relationships, pop culture, and Hollywood itself.
Remember 1989? Do the Right Thing comes out, it’s nominated for an Oscar, but doesn’t win. Best Picture goes to Driving Miss Daisy... which is about as far away from Do the Right Thing as you could possibly get.
It was exactly the kind of thing Spike was railing against: the outdated, patronizing Hollywood portrayal of Black life, winning over something raw, urgent, and real. And he’s never been shy about saying so.
Born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, he moved to Brooklyn at a young age, and that borough became part of his DNA. His father was a jazz musician, his mother a school teacher, he grew up in an artistic and intellectually grounded home.
Spike went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, started making short films at Clark Atlanta University, and then graduated from Morehouse before moving on to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for graduate film studies.
He made The Answer, a controversial short reworking of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, and then the 45-minute Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads in 1983, which won a Student Academy Award.
Then came the debut: She’s Gotta Have It. Made for $175,000, it earned $7 million at the box office and put Spike Lee on the map instantly. It also launched his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, which has been the base for everything he’s done since.
From there, he’s given us everything from Malcolm X to 25th Hour to BlacKkKlansman, and even the movies that don’t entirely work are still worth seeing, talking about, and arguing over. He’s that kind of filmmaker. You can’t ignore him.
Off-screen, he’s a pop culture figure: courtside at Knicks games, all over talk shows, deeply involved in politics, and never afraid to say exactly what’s on his mind. Love him or not, he’s a vital personality in film, culture, and society. And his work? Always worth engaging with.
He’s made some brilliant documentaries (4 Little Girls, When the Levees Broke, Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall), and terrific concert films, and some solid TV work. But for this ranking, I’m focusing exclusively on his narrative theatrical features.
These are my rankings. My personal order of preference. I’m not including descriptions this time. Just the titles, the release years, and for each, a scene or trailer you can check out.
This is how I feel about Spike Lee’s narrative films, from best to worst, in my opinion.
Here we go…
SPIKE LEE: RANKED (in order of my preference):
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