Do the Right Thing

One of the most aesthetically accomplished and intentionally incendiary American films, Spike Lee’s full-throttle portrait of a particularly eventful, hot summer day in the life of a Bed-Stuy neighborhood is a remarkable and ambivalent dramatization of race relations in America. The phenomenal cast (including Aiello as pizza man Sal, Lee as delivery boy Mookie, and Davis as an apartment-stoop prophet), the endlessly inventive visuals, and the charged political discussion made this an epochal cultural moment that retains its power to this day. Screening as part of a 30th Anniversary re-release from NBC Universal.