Eric Wilkins Movies
Spike Lee's breakthrough independent feature, shot in fifteen days on a budget of $175,000, ushered in (along with Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise) the American independent film movement of the 1980s. It was also a groundbreaking film for African-American filmmakers and a welcome change in the representation of blacks in American cinema, depicting men and women of color not as pimps and whores, but as intelligent, upscale urbanites. Lee's slight tale, which carries much psychological and historical baggage, concerns Nola Darling (Tracy Camila Johns), a young, self-assured Brooklyn woman who juggles three boyfriends -- the polite and well-meaning Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks), the self-obsessed male model Greer Childs (John Canada Terrell), and the comical bicycle messenger Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee). Nola doesn't want to commit to any of her boyfriends, cherishing her personal freedom. But as their relationships with Nola grow, each man wants her for himself. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks, (more)
- 1983
Maybe you sweated over a typewriter or word processor when you worked on your master's thesis in college. But Spike Lee attended the film school of New York University (under the tutelage of Martin Scorsese, by the way), and was thus required to submit a completed film as his thesis. Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads was filmed in and around Lee's Brooklyn neighborhood. Traces of the controversy and outrageousness of Lee's later feature-length projects will be found herein; it's a fascinating up-close-and-personal look at a black-owned business, and the unvarnished views of a racially polarized society as delivered by the shop's customers and employees. The film won Spike Lee the Student Award of the Motion Picture Academy, setting in motion a still thriving, still dazzling career. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Monty Ross, Donna Bailey, (more)
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