Red Hook Summer 2012

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Peters brings a magical energy to the movie's most laggard moments, infusing a so-what drama with a must-see performance. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: [The movie] isn't a smooth slow jam... but one doesn't go to Spike Lee pictures in order to solicit a complacent experience anyway. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Spike Lee's messy, meandering, bluntly polemical "Red Hook Summer" has one crucial ingredient: a raw vitality. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Lee's latest film feels like several intriguing ideas in search of an over-arching story. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Red Hook Summer oscillates between extremes: it's borderline amateurish one moment and heartbreaking the next, a god-fearing and god-forsaken mess that could only have come from Lee, whose strengths have always been inextricable from his weaknesses. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: For the most part it's all rather pleasant, if somewhat aimless. Read more

Drew Hunt, Chicago Reader: Lee's typically paradoxical statements on race and religion muddle the narrative, and his old stylistic tricks -- saturated color schemes, characters addressing the camera -- aren't exactly inspired. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It's a scramble, marked by the unruly variety of visual strategies Lee prefers. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: When Spike Lee fails he fails big, and he goes down in flames with "Red Hook Summer." Read more

Eric D. Snider, Film.com: Reflects the artist Lee is now: a little less angry, a little more self-indulgent and still fascinating even when he's not totally on his game. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: Rambles through almost two hours of unfocused drama, burdened with endless didactic editorializing, before lurching out of nowhere into ugly revelations and violence. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: In truth, the film fizzles as much as it fumes. There is a kind of lassitude that sets in, even as it builds toward some kind of reckoning. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: A clear failure, yet Lee is getting at things that mystify him. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Welcome back, Spike. It's good to see you again. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, NPR: From a storytelling perspective, Red Hook Summer is an absolute mess. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Lee grapples with a number of urgent themes, but his approaches are often either too direct (we are repeatedly pummeled by the bishop's fiery preaching) or too circuitous (the verbal and visual meanderings are sometimes valuable, and sometimes not). Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Spike Lee now seems to be trying to be the world's oldest student filmmaker. Take out the rookie mistakes from "Red Hook Summer," and there'd be nothing left. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Here is Lee at his most spontaneous and sincere, but he could have used another screenplay draft, and perhaps a few more transitional scenes. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The story is static for about 90 minutes, then rises to action, but in a way that seems impromptu, either made up on the spot or ill-considered. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: A movie that's alive and spontaneous and surprising is a rare enough thing to encounter-especially one that manages to address subjects as divisive and painful as inner-city black poverty without getting maudlin or preachy. Read more

Robert Levin, The Atlantic: This is an illustrated lecture - a jumbled, rushed cinematic rant. The ideas are there. The story is not. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Isn't it valuable that Lee refuses to make that gentle church movie we expected? He has to grab the live wire of referendum, go deeper into his Breslinesque outrage. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Beneath every scene, powerful music enhances the film's resonance in much the same way its hyper-saturated colors do visually. Read more

Aaron Hillis, Village Voice: Ambitious, uncompromising, and musically charged... the generational and ideological clashes become palpable, as do the community's frustrations after the darkest of plot twists. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: Potently expresses, both aesthetically and narratively, a sense of inclusiveness and diversity. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: This coming-of-age portrait provides one more instance of Lee as one of this country's finest cinematic regionalists. Read more