Review

This 1989 hit was deemed inflammatory by some for its portrait of racial strife in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Seen today, the controversy has faded; what remains is the electrifying confidence of a master filmmaker getting a chance to flex his cinematic muscles.

Two Decades Later

Spike Lee’s breakout film is marking its twentieth anniversary as part of BAM’s Afro-Punk Festival, which runs from July 3 to July 8 and includes screenings of Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings and Barry Jenkins’s Medicine for Melancholy, among other recent and older works.