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If you're in NY, Spike Lee will be appearing at tomorrow's 7pm screening (Sat., Aug. 18) at BAM Rose Cinema. You can buy tickets online too, and it doesn't cost anything extra.

Saw it last week - rough around the edges, but otherwise I thought it was good. Very mixed reactions from the critics, but I liked it. Not sure if this is the best way to put it, but what worked best was context. I thought it captured a mood perfectly, specifically what it feels like to be a part of society that really feels marginalized after everything that's happened in the last decade. The rise of gentrification (obviously in Brooklyn, but you saw it in every major city, definitely Chicago when you think about what's happened with the projects there, its displaced residents, etc.), the ongoing financial crisis, the hope of change and how that's either deflated or turned into anger, a feeling that the poorest will only be poorer and that so many things like the bank bailouts really help the rich and not many else. The fact that each is tied to the other (gentrification was tied to the housing boom, and what drove that is strongly tied to the causes of the financial meltdown, etc.) makes it all feel apiece.

A lot of this is spelled out in one key scene, but I kind of feel like that mood is built up before we even get to that scene. Virtually the entire film takes place in public housing or in the local church, and as the little details of each character pile on, I thought it really captured what it's like when you're trying to make it in a poor community. When you think about how most people live there their entire lives, how communal bonds become more important if you want to get by, I thought it did a great job of portraying all that. Definitely not a perfect film, I wouldn't call it a great film, but it had plenty of merit.

I'm a bit surprised this hasn't had any discussion since Lee always gives the audience something to talk about and this one packs a wallop of talking points. Mostly due to the low budget the film is a hell of a ride to get into, but once its grooves are met it proves, at least to me, to be Lee's most effective since The 25th Hour. Even just the visual invention is the best since he stopped working with Ernest Dickerson in part probably because of the budget. It's a film that sweats orange, purple, and white to the point where it looks like 16mm that has bubbled into DV. Everything is shot with old tricks transformed into a new face. Even the talk to the camera shots stolen under the shadow of Do the Right Thing are rendered via an entirely new effect that involves except in two effective cases with no dialogue at all. It's just this most amazing evidence of experience where all of his social ideas are perfectly conveyed in silence.

It's not with silence though as the dialogue very carefully outlines how the makeup of America has changed. Some are pronounced such as Flik speaking 'like a white man' and others not so much leaving a strong documentary experience. It's like everyone is essentially playing a face of themselves leaving the disturbing text all the more shocking. The most interesting thing for me, especially from an old crank like Lee, is how his giant conversation with the borough reflects positively on the new generation. Looking back at his previous portraits the youth here is so much more polite even in its acts of rebellion then previous generations. This I think is where Lee most effectively makes his statement for this decade with this new definer. The horror of the '80s and the fear filled anger of the '00s has been replaced with a grand melancholy that offers no answers as the problems of the society have now become entirely insular and thus indescribable.

A mental disorder fills the air and is not as easily prevented as the aids one off-screen character dies of. This makes the twist of the film, the character who it happens to, and how the film reacts to it all the more appropriate (necessary even). It also leads with the most thrilling in terms of disturbing feelings scene in a Lee film since Radio died. The cuts between the accused playing silent and the accuser gliding forward are as tense as humanly possible. I'd say even more than the confession flashback here is where the film bursts emotionally to prove the film as a great one.