Re: Spike Lee's "Inside Man"...I have never seen such mixed reviews.

[henslee]

Ebert skewers it. My sis liked it... said it was a trad. thriller. It seems very stock. In my gut, I think Spike Lee is an egotistical hack.....though I did like She's Gotta Have it and Malcom X.

[peekaloo]

1. I was surprised to learn that was a Spike Lee film, er, joint.

I think 'Bamboozled' is his ballsiest effort but I liked 'The 25th Hour' a lot.

[henslee]

2. I havent seen those. I will check them out.

[tjdee]

5. That's because they have tried to hide that fact.

His films have not done so well commercially for a while now. This film is being marketed in a way that diminishes his involvement so that people who want to see a traditional thriller won't go "Oh, but it's by that crazy black guy Spike Lee who makes all the racial movies."

It's a shame.

[henslee]

7. Nothing better than a traditional crazy black guy racial thriller.

:popcorn"

[RandomKoolzip]

3. Spike Lee's been such a disappointment since "Malcolm X."

"Do the Right Thing" is one of the greatest movies ever made, IMO. "Malcolm X" is a consummate biopic with an intese performance by Denzel Washington.

His films since then have been but minor annoyances at best or disasters at worst. "Summer of Sam?" Ugh, what a piece of shit. (For someone who could portray the hiphop scene of late 80's New York so accurately and with such sustained sense of place, he sure didn't seem to care about doing the same for New York's punk rock scene of the late 70's. The characters were all caricatures)

[henslee]

4. That was one whacky trainwreck of a movie. The Adrian Brody character

was a freak. Wasn't Leguzamo in it? I did like the scenes of Berkowitz screaming and going nuts in his apartment though... remember those?

[RandomKoolzip]

6. Yeah, it was interesting, but ultimately a failure.

A good 3 quarters of the film was given over to Leguizamo's sex problems with Mira Sorvino (sure we got to see her in red lingerie. But that's not important right now. :evilgrin:), which wasn't NEARLY as interesting as an actual re-telling of the Son of Sam case would have been.

Plus, the shreiking gay character was straight out of a homophobic fantasy, the punk rocker (who was actually a Who fanatic - since when is the Who a punk group?!- BIG snafu, Spike) would have been more interesting had Spike chosen to smooth out the detail errors and center the movie around HIM, etc.

[mitchum]

8. I'm glad to see Lee branch into yet another genre...

because it bolsters my argument that he is a consummate filmmaker. He has worked in many genres: musical, comedy, biopic, absurdist, social commentary, documentary etc... and now a thriller.
Sure, there are some clunkers, but he has a huge body of work.
He may be "a guy with some nutty ideas", but he is a filmmaker first. And a damned good one.