Crooklyn

Nearly a decade into his career as one of America’s most important filmmakers, Spike Lee decided to take a step back. After the Oscar-nominated scale of his political biopic Malcolm X in 1992, he went back to NYC for the deeply intimate Crooklyn, a story drawing directly from his own childhood in Bed-Stuy but not told from his perspective. Instead, he worked from a script co-written with two of his siblings, Joie Susannah and Cinqué, for a rounded, female-driven depiction of Black life in 1973’s Brooklyn. – Richard Whittaker Read a full review of Crooklyn.