Crooklyn

Summer 1973 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Nine-year-old Troy Carmichael lives with four brothers, her musician father Woody and her schoolteacher mother Carolyn. The street is crowded, the house is loud and there is no money. Then the mother's illness arrives and the story turns into something other than a coming-of-age film. Spike Lee directed and wrote the screenplay with his siblings Joie and Cinque Lee. His company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks produced and Universal distributed. Zelda Harris plays Troy in her first film, with Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo as her parents. Lee appears as Snuffy, a glue-huffing neighbourhood character. Its most discussed technical decision comes in the Southern section: Lee shot those scenes with an anamorphic lens that squeezes the image, expressing Troy's alienation there. Audiences took it for a fault, and cinemas put up signs at the door explaining that it was intentional. It opened on 13 May 1994 at number three at the box office and took 13.6 million dollars against a 14 million budget. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 79 percent, with reviews calling it a touching and generous family portrait. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies neighbourhood life and family films told from a child's eye. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an ordered plot. The film goes nowhere for long stretches, deliberately.