Crooklyn (1994)
Director: Spike Lee
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
This semi-comic look at middle-class family life in Brooklyn, New York, in the mid-'70s was written by Spike Lee and his siblings Joie and Cinqué. As well as hanging out on the stoop and battling with four idle brothers, ten-year-old Troy (Harris) - from whose point of view the story is told - witnesses the tensions between her mother (Woodard) and father (Lindo). While Lee's customary visual style and sense of street vitality are much in evidence, it's easy to see why this fond, semi-autobiographical evocation of a largely vanished lifestyle bombed in the US. It's not just the misjudgment of depicting Troy's lengthy visit to an aunt in Virginia through the squeezed perspective of an anamorphic lens, nor even the final scenes in which the story lurches from comedy to half-hearted melodrama: the key problem is that the film is simply a ragged series of anecdotal sketches.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Spike Lee
Producer: Spike Lee
Cast: Alfred Woodard, Delroy Lindo, David Patrick Kelly, Zelda Harris, Carlton Williams, Sharif Rashed, Tse-Mach Washington full cast
Duration: 114 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now