Word: gotta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
SPIKE Lee made one the best movies of 1986, She's Gotta Have It, on a shoestring budget of $125,000 and built a following based on that movie's breezy, brilliant invention and irreverence. The movie allowed Lee to get a major studio, Columbia, to back him on his second feature to the tune of $7,000,000. But with School Daze, Lee may have disappointed a large segment of his newfound fans...
...that only a gifted filmmaker car. The movie isn't conceived on a simplistic or amateurish level. Rather, it is simply too ambitious and sprawling, too complicated and confused. Lee has a remarkable visual sense and a truly original way of constructing a story. In She's Gotta Have It, these talents came together to create an innovative, exciting new type of comedy. I doubt, however, that any moviemaker could construct a coherent whole out of the slew of elements Lee attempts to treat in School Daze...
There are also several sequences that are photographed with great sensitivity, especially in several of the slower musical numbers. But Lee never matches the irreverent invention of She's Gotta Have It, and all the narrative hullaballoo detracts from the film's interesting, eerily stylized photography...
...have no doubt that Spike Lee is one of the most promising moviemakers of the last five years. School Daze is a mess, a complex failure which nevertheless demonstrates that the unusual promise of the director of She's Gotta Have It is still there...
...Well I guess it would be nice/ If/I could touch your body . . ./ But I gotta think twice/ Before I give my heart away/ And I know all the games you play/ Because I play them...