Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Ayo Edebiri ★★★★ 1

  the performances are incredible, it only gets more relevant as the years go on and it really plays to one of my favorite Spike Lee strengths which is that he can think about something from as many angles as he can muster (especially as it relates to blackness and black masculinity in America). when he embraces that, and how murky and complex that can be, it's always a treat.

  it's wild to me that this is one of his less talked about films. I think that's a shame.
  let's talk about it more!
  I'll start: "good! - Ayo"

• 

  Review by Matt Singer ★★★★ 3

  The thing that really stuck out watching this with Da 5 Bloods still fresh in my mind is how time is represented, with three different generations of men all traveling together. Everyone on the bus faces the same issues that haven’t change in any of their lifetimes. That never change.

• 

  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★

  Action! - Spike The Power, Lee The Riot'

  While Do The Right Thing was Spike Lee at his most aggressive, this film sees him at his most preachy. Somebody here on LB mentioned the other day that Lee often goes for the most basic analysis of race, and nothing captures that better than this film. Throughout the 2 hours, he basically uses black characters from different backgrounds to discuss every issue that affected the black then (and still today) in the most unsubtle way possible.

  While I've heard sermons from my pastor that are less in your face than this movie, and that, for the most part, Lee feels like he's simply running through a list, the excellent cast his…

• 

  Review by KYK ★★★½ 1

  the amateur filmmaker being called "spike lee jr."

• 

  Review by Sam Van Hallgren ★★★★½ 3

  This is a hopelessly naive thing to admit, but I’ve been watching Spike Lee movies since the early 90s and yet somehow I feel like I’m only now seeing Spike Lee movies. Which is ironic because it seems obvious to me now that one of Lee’s primary concerns as a filmmaker is not just telling stories about race and the Black experience in America, but actually making us see things that were either obscured (by the media, by primarily white storytellers) or completely hidden (specifically from a white audience perspective). 

  Watching Da 5 Bloods in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd was a revelation, one that made watching Get on the Bus for…

• 

  Review by {Todd} ★★★½

  "The year 2000 is here... we gotta look into the future" -Wendell,

  - Spike Lee Ranked: boxd.it/1XDiG
  - 5x5 Directors Challenge 3 (spike lee 4/5): boxd.it/7ALXq

  Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination...or something like that.

  A group of men travel across the country to go to the Million Man March in Washington D.C.. Along the way they grow and find differences in their views on life and the black experience. This is so well made with such wonderful nuance and outstanding character development. The cast is stacked with wonderful actors that give performances which make the heavy-handed script feel really natural. It's a touching film with a lot of interesting things to say.

• 

  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  "Brothers, we are moving into the next millennium."

• 

  Review by Joe Lynch ★★★★

  Top 5 Spike Lee for me...and consider his filmography! This is a cinematic conversation piece that might feel very dated in places but serves more as a time capsule and a sad reminder how little has changed...but it also has hope and that needs to be reminded. 
  It’s on Netflix and worth a watch or a revisit.

• 

  Review by Wesley Stenzel ★★★★

  Spike Lee didn’t write Get on the Bus, but he uses Reggie Rock Blythewood’s stellar screenplay to make a movie that’s unmistakably a Spike Lee Joint. He assembles an incredible cast of commanding performers, including Ossie Davis and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Andre Braugher, to celebrate and dissect the nuance of activists within black culture. During their voyage to the Million Man March, the characters confront homophobia, gang violence, romance, police, the Civil Rights movement, and countless other fascinating topics in what’s essentially two hours of intriguing conversations.

  Everything great about Get on the Bus feels like a stage play — sharp dialogue, strong characters, and deep thematic resonance all evoke a sense of theatrical wonder that’s distinct from Spike’s other work. The…

• 

  Review by Josh Kadish ★★★★½

  “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  It’s almost unbelievable how much this has to say about our current moment...but then again, you could say that about most of Spike’s work.

  Here is a rich, complex, beautiful celebration and examination of black life in America — through the prism of spirituality, class and politics at a very specific juncture. Obviously the movie is rooted and based on the Million Man March, but it’s about so much more than that too.

  In short, it’s absurd the movie hasn’t gotten the appreciation it deserves before this point.
  
  BLACK LIVES MATTER!!!

• 

  Review by Jaime Rebanal 🇵🇸 ★★★★½

  Upper tier Spike Lee; one of my favourite things about Get on the Bus is that it does so much through conversations in a crowded setting. With the set up from watching a bunch of black men boarding a bus in order to attend Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, what you're seeing in the group that are coming together are African-American people all of whom are coming from different backgrounds and understandings of the world, seeing a commonality only in themselves being black men - but never being one and the same.

  The foundation of a movie like this being built upon where these men want to go, and how they see the world all being put into the same…

• 

  Review by Drew Edelstein ★★★★½ 6

  Get on the bus.

  To march on D.C., yet another march, because no matter how many times we march on D.C., nothing ever really changes.

  To drive across the entire country with a bunch of strangers, people so radically different than you, all united by the same struggle.

  To have your beliefs challenged in the most destructive of ways, because all you can do to pass the time is simply talk to others, and be forced to listen as a result.

  To find warmth among even the greatest of strangers, people you would never imagine connecting to in normal circumstances, because the circumstances we consider normal limit so much of the world that we see.

  To ride in a tin…