Spike Lee Movies on Netflix: What Else Is There Besides ‘Da 5 Bloods’?

Lee’s feature-length debut, She’s Gotta Have It, shows his indelible style from the very beginning. It follows Nola, a beautiful and sexually liberated young woman in Brooklyn juggling the attention of three very different suitors. It was groundbreaking at the time — a rare feature film willing to depict African-Americans as sophisticated urbanites and not negative stereotypes. It also introduced one of Lee’s most lasting characters, the motor-mouthed Mars Blackmon (played by Lee himself), who would go on to feature in a series of memorable Nike ads with Michael Jordan. The movie was also adapted into a Netflix series of the same name in 2017.

Watch She's Gotta Have It on Netflix

If She’s Gotta Have It was groundbreaking as a major film showing African-American characters in ways unfamiliar to white audiences, his next film, School Daze, was similarly fresh in its portrayal of the African-American community not as a monolith, but as complex and conflicted as any other segment of society. It centers on Homecoming weekend at Atlanta’s Morehouse College — Lee’s own alma mater — as divisions are laid bare between fraternities and sororities with sharply different values and agendas. In reviewing it at the time, critic Roger Ebert noted it was “the first movie in a long time where the black characters seem to be relating to one another, instead of to a hypothetical white audience.”

Watch School Daze on Netflix

While many of Lee’s early films were independent ventures with a small-scale view, in 1992 he was launched into the world of big-budget biopics when he took over the production of Malcolm X, the film adaption of the controversial civil rights leader’s autobiography. The production had started prior to Lee’s involvement with the project, but he was chosen to take over after a public outcry over the production originally being helmed by a white director.

Paired up with stars Denzel Washington and Angela Bassett, Malcolm X would show a wider audience Lee’s chops as a filmmaker taking on a weighty and well-known story.and received widespread critical acclaim upon its release.

Watch Malcolm X on Netflix

In 1995, the Million Man March — a mass gathering of African-American men organized by activist and preacher Louis Farrakhan — drew huge crowds to Washington DC’s National Mall with the stated goal of showing the world “a different picture of the Black male”. A year later, Lee memorialized this event with his fictionalized portrayal of a group journeying to the event.

The film follows fifteen men from different backgrounds, political persuasions and belief systems as they ride on a single bus traveling to the nation’s capitol before the March. Using a documentarian character as a plot device, each rider is interviewed about their own — often conflicting — views. The film was widely praised by critics, recognized for giving a narrative and entertaining portrayal of current political events.

Watch Get On The Bus on Netflix

While many of Lee’s films have serious political and social undertones, he’s demonstrated throughout his career that he can excel in any genre or subject matter. This is made more than clear by Inside Man, a taut bank-heist caper that reunited him with Washington, who played a hostage negotiator dealing with a complex standoff at a Wall Street bank.

While it eschews many of Lee’s more personal flourishes, it succeeds on pure tension, skill and focus. Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor round out a deep and talented cast in what amounts to a top-tier thriller.

Watch Inside Man on Netflix

Roger Guenveur Smith has been a long-time collaborator of Lee, appearing in School Daze, Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, Get On The Bus, He Got Game and Summer of Sam. In this one-man show, he takes center stage in a powerful and electric spoken-word performance.

Guenveur Smith tells the story of Rodney King, the man who became famous after his savage on-camera beating at the hands of four LAPD officers — and their subsequent acquittal for the incident — precipitated the massive 1992 civil uprising in Los Angeles. He does so without narrating, without explaining, but instead with flow, poetry, and lyrical power, slipping from persona to persona without warning or interruption as he tells King’s story from his own perspective, from that of others affected by the events, and by the public at large.

A brisk 53 minutes, the show feels as fresh as a freestyle but is delivered with surgical precision, Guenveur Smith barely wasting a second or a breath as he takes a story many of us know the facts of and pumps it full of fresh emotion.

Watch Rodney King on Netflix

For all his skill as a filmmaker, Lee’s larger impact may be that of a tastemaker, someone who’s irrevocably changed American cinema, both in how it’s created and the things it talks about. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule, has allowed a whole new generation of filmmakers to tell their own stories. One terrific example of this is the science-fiction tale See You Yesterday, by Fredrica Bailey and Stefon Bristol.

The film follows a clever young scientist who develops a working time machine, one she uses in an attempt to travel back and prevent her brother’s death at the hands of police. The film’s deft combination of sci-fi storytelling and social consciousness helped it win an Independent Spirit Award and universally positive reviews.

It’s the sort of fresh filmmaking we need these days, and it’s the sort of story that wouldn’t have been possible to put on film before Lee’s career paved the way. He’s far from done yet, though.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Watch See You Yesterday on Netflix