Do the Right Thing 

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• Photo Courtesy Of Universal Pictures
• HEAT WAVE Radio DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) dedicates a song to a slain neighborhood fixture in Spike Lee's classic 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, screening at The Palm Theatre in SLO.

What's it rated? R

When? 1989

Where's it showing? The Palm Theatre in SLO on March 16 and 17 (1:30, 4:15, and 7 p.m.), and March 18 (7 p.m.)

Writer-director Spike Lee (Jungle Fever, Malcom X, BlacKkKlansman) scored an early hit with this twice Oscar-nominated dramedy about race relations in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Mookie (Lee) works as a delivery man at a pizzeria owned by Salvatore "Sal" Frangione (Danny Aiello), and on the hottest day of the summer, racial animosity bubbles over, resulting in violence.

It's a deft piece of filmmaking with an amazing cast of characters, many of whom break the fourth wall to express racist insults. Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, John Turturro, Rosie Perez, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Savage are a few of the notable cast members. Lee's father, jazz musician Bill Lee, wrote the score, and the film's memorable soundtrack includes Public Enemy's anthem "Fight the Power."

Upon its release, critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert ranked it as the year's best film and later complained when it didn't win an Academy Award, but others criticized the film for its potential to incite race riots. Lee, in a 2014 interview, commented, "That still bugs the shit out of me," because it suggested a Black audience couldn't restrain itself. It's an incendiary piece of filmmaking, and an early example of Lee's outsize talent. (120 min.) Δ