Mike Reynolds (4) (1967–)

It made me want to slit my writs.

But in a good way!

Kids these days have it so easy. The Internet, smartphones, healthcare…and now Mike Reynolds! Back (way back) when I was young, we had VCRs, Walkmans, band aids and NO MIKE REYNOLDS! We were left to find our own way through the jungle of film analysis. How did we do it? I remember when my parents first bought a VCR -- I came home to find them watching High Road to China. And you know what? I still have no idea what that movie is about (but if you check out the web page for it at amazon, you'll notice that the comment voted "most helpful" is very much unhelpful and is written by a guy from my hometown because that's how we roll). I've been confused ever since! It's like there's this big mustache between me and whatever movie I'm watching.

Don't get yourself lost like me! Beat back the mustache before it's too late! That's the beauty of this book: while it overtly concerns itself with the oeuvre of Spike Lee, it also offers up a pallete of various (palatable) critical theories that will help the reader better appreciate and understand cinema (and the most concise definition of structuralism I've ever read -- I'd post it here, but NO SPOILERS! Go buy your own copy!).

My only problem with the book is that it doesn't include a picture of this beneficent demigod of an author. As such, I've taken the liberty of including what I believe him to look like:

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I was the despair of English teachers through all my schooling years, and they were many. I can just see each of them grading my essays, a fresh red pen running out of ink, mumbling, "I swear she was awake in class, what is this crap?" Not that I was a bad student, since my regurgitation powers were second to none in my prime. Sadly, regurgitation didn't allow for original thought.

When I watch movies, I miss about as much as I miss when I read books or with any form of art. All the subtext, themes, and messages in favor of explosions, nekkidness, and footballs in the groin (aka humor). It's like I walk on water - the miracle is my obliviousness to depth.

This instructional book on movies combined these weaknesses into one. It presents 4 of Spike Lee's films and then applies different methods of critical analysis, each ending with discussion questions and additional ways of approaching the films. The analyses are wonderful in their clarity, strictly following an essay outline (intro w/theme, supporting arguments, conclusions restating the theme).

While the targeted audience is pre-college-age students, the subject is one such that anyone could learn from this slim text. I most appreciated that throughout the book the reader is encouraged to see how Spike Lee may have presented an issue through his movies but wanted viewers to think for themselves and form their own opinions, just like this book presented a few tools but urged the reader to understand that there was a whole toolkit to be used. I do wish I could take a class on this subject and discuss, because this is a topic where discussion would be awesome.

I really, really need to watch more Spike Lee movies. The necessarily limited scope of examination of the movies presented in the book (Do the Right Thing, When the Levees Broke, Malcolm X, Bamboozled) made me feel shame at how much I misunderstood, a little happy that things that were supposed to tug at the mind did stay in my memory, and an itch to do better.

My best-to-worst list of Spike Lee movies:
1) 25th Hour
2) Malcolm X
3) Do the Right Thing

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Freakin' Esteban!...just to undercut his position a little, whatever position that might be (and whatever it is I'm opposed to it), I goaded him into his purchasing and apparently super-speed-reading of this here text, and he beat me to the punch (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/127113066).

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