Let’s see how Spike Lee does with his next few movies. The “BlacKkKlansman” director had a solid outing with the aforementioned movie last year, which was deemed a comeback of sorts after a rough 10-year stretch of films which included “Miracle at St. Anna,” “Red Hook Summer,” “Oldboy,” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” and, to a lesser extent, “Chiraq.” Those were the five worst Lee movies of his career (as far as I’m concerned).
And this coming from an unadorned fans of his, Lee could practically do nothing wrong in my books between his debut “She’s Gotta Have It” back in 1986 all the way to 2006’s heist flick “Inside Man” (let’s pretend 2004’s misbegotten “She Hate Me” doesn’t exist). The Lee filmography speaks for itself, really, “Do the Right Thing,” “Jungle Fever,” “Malcom X,” “The 25th Hour,” “Summer of Sam,” and his most underrated movie and, quite curiously, the most pertinently relevant to 2019, what with its satirical depiction of blackface in the mainstream, “Bamboozled.”
With all that being said I am being told that the Oscar-nominated director’s next movie, the Netflix-produced “Da 5 Bloods,” is going to be test-screened on the 25th of November in Brooklyn.
Does this mean we can potentially expect “Da 5 Bloods” to world premiere at Sundance this coming January? I contacted my source at Netflix and he told me the plan is for a Cannes premiere, which makes sense considering “BlackKklansman” had a triumphant award-winning debut there just a year ago.
This would, at first, seem like an odd statement from Netflix, given that Cannes has banned their movies the last two years, but maybe an agreement/deal has been made. It’s too early to tell but this is a very positive and telling sign that maybe negotiations between Netflix and Cannes are improving.
“Da 5 Bloods” circles around a group of Vietnam veterans who return to southeast Asia to find who they were before the war. Chadwick Boseman leads the starry cast which also includes Delroy Lindo and Jean Reno. Sources say production could start as quickly as March.