GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
Ensofter
Overrated and overhyped
Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
SnoopyStyle
A middle-class boy from Atlanta is forced to spend the summer with his deeply religious grandfather in a poor housing project in Red Hook, Brooklyn.Spike Lee wrote and directed this boring tale. This rambling tale gets very tiresome. Did Spike Lee turn anti-religion? The story turns even uglier with a twist that comes out of nowhere. I'm uncertain about what is happening to Spike Lee. After great successes in the 90s and the 2000s, is he on the road to big time experimentation? What is going on? I don't get it. This movie is a mess. Maybe it's some kind of personal project. But even then, I'd expect more skills than he's showing here.
Deron Overpeck
This isn't Spike Lee's greatest film but by the end it has become one of his most intriguing. The children's performances are poor, but so are their characters; Lee doesn't have the kind of empathy needed to write for or direct child actors (and this is true of Crooklyn too). The film is also largely plot less, but as the film progresses it becomes clear that a traditional plot would undermine the film's themes. Red Hook Summer is about faith and human growth, subjects that aren't neat or linear.By no means a perfect film, Red Hook Summer deserves more attention than it has received.
riclanders-501-982768
Just awful. Every shopworn ghetto cliché packed in. Woody Allen's movies were crap in the beginning, but then they got better. Lee's movies where wonderful in the beginning, but then they got crappier and crappier.When you first see this old Bible-toting fool you cringe and say to yourself, "Oh, God," don't tell me the movie is about him." And why a movie about some dumb kid? Why does Lee think dumb kids and old Bible- toting fools are something to make a movie about?This all goes back to a certain psychology that's infected the black community for ages -- our fascination with failure and stupidity.The first question that pops up is how can a mother be so stupid as to place a child with a grandfather who's obviously a failure and fool? The building the old fool lives in reeks with urine; everyone above 13 pushes drugs. The mother and kid are from Middle-class Atlanta. Why on earth does she take him out of middle-class Atlanta for a summer in drug and crime infected Red Hook?This reflects Lee's increasing disorientation about things. I mean, what kind of grandfather takes 14 or 15 year to see his grandkid? Such a dumb premise.I watched 10 minutes of it and wanted the $5 I spent on the bootleg copy back.
smiley_b81
...Clarke Peters (Freemon from HBO's "The Wire") should get an Oscar nomination for this. His performance is at once over-the-top and understated as a Brooklyn pastor who seemingly is a righteous pillar of a community that continues to wane under material violence and generational malaise. However this 'man-of-black-jesus' is hiding a terrifying secret that lifts what is at first another half-cliché movie about coming-of-age into unexpected darker and deeper territory. It makes "Red Hook Summer" into a risky, uncomfortable film and a film quite necessary in this day and age when institutions will blanket even the sickest of monsters to save their own public rep (I won't get more specific, but the contemporary story I'm alluding to concerns a man who's last name rhymes with 'Sam Clusky'). Aside from Peters, the film is worth watching for the loving touches Spike Lee brings to the setting. The music (by Bruce Hornsby), design and photography perfectly capture Brooklyn in the summertime in the same way "Crooklyn" did. Although Lee's approach, which here resembles Cassavettes at times, will upset some due to the obvious shot-on-the-fly-digital look and the after-mentioned below-par performances of the child actors.
