Crooklyn
Director: Spike Lee
Year Released: 1994
Rating: 2.0
Personal but flawed picture by Lee loosely based on his growing up in Brooklyn, complete with cramped living situations, disgusting and/or nosy neighbors and financial problems. The family scenes in the beginning are energetic if disorganized - with Lee trying to get in a little information about everybody (but focusing mostly on his one and only sister) - only for the film to shift focus (literally) when it gets to the South, with Zelda Harris' character living with her Aunt and Uncle and experiencing the 'weirdness' that is living in suburbia. The visual distortion is intended to render the suburbs 'unreal' as opposed to the urban 'real' - maybe it's just me, but mowing lawns and listening to cicadas and having space to yourself doesn't seem to be all that bad. But at least the scenes in suburbia have a warped humor to them: when it returns to Brooklyn, it fumbles with tragedy and remorse.
