Mo' Better Blues

Spike Lee's 1990 directing effort is a jazz film, the story of a fictional trumpeter named Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington). He leads a quintet at the Beneath the Underground club with a flashy saxophonist named Shadow Henderson (Wesley Snipes). Though Shadow takes a few too many solos, everything ...more

Spike Lee's film on the life of a jazz musician features some wonderful music, but in its slapdash construction and melodramatic hokiness, it does little to illuminate the nature of the profession it attempts to explore. Lee, whose father was a noted bass player, has an unquestionably vast knowledge of the jazz idiom and the kind of life that goes with it. But the conflict between a personal and professional life that can become a problem for so many musicians -- as it is for Lee's protagonist, ...more