Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee’s third feature marked nothing less than a revolution in American cinema, and endures today as not only a seminal portrait of New York City but also as an urgent work of art about race relations, gentrification, and the meaning of community. Over the course of the hottest day of the year in New York City, a pizza delivery boy navigates through racial, generational, and class conflicts as tensions intensify and reach their boiling point around a pizza joint in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The film—which earned Lee his first Oscar nomination, for his original screenplay—captures, with a spellbinding blend of humor and political seriousness, the tensions, ecstasies, and agonies among a large ensemble of characters, played unforgettably by Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nunn and Danny Aiello.

‘★★★★★ Spike Lee’s towering, timeless tour de force… a masterwork whose relevance remains starker than ever.’ - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

‘He has cemented his legacy as one of the boldest and most provocative filmmakers of our time.’ - Tambay Obenson, IndieWire