Spike Lee Lights Up the Oscar Conversation with "Da 5 Bloods" Trailer

Scene from Da 5 Bloods

When we last left director Spike Lee, he had broken through a decades-long feud with The Academy Awards and won an Oscar for BlacKkKlansman. The film found him capable of taking his angry style and presenting in an accessible way that made audiences latch onto its subject matter of racial divides in society. Even as time has passed, he seems just as ambitious as ever, wanting to tell stories that reshape how we see black America as something more complex and interesting. Considering that everyone was eager to see what he'd do next with his first Netflix movie, many see this as a new era, where Lee will be returning to the conversation sooner than later.

Da 5 Bloods is promised to be a Vietnam War epic like no other. With few exceptions (if any), there hasn't been a war story that explores the struggles of the black experience in this way. One has to wonder what he has to say, especially since we know that he won't hold back and get as confrontational as he believes that the story needs to be. While everyone won't get to see it in a theater, it's coming very soon to light up the Oscar conversation, giving us something that prognosticators sorely need right now. From the first trailer, it feels like we got our first surefire nominee and one that could find Lee going bigger and bolder than ever before. While it has some trappings of Vietnam War movie tropes, it's still got a lot of greatness under its surface.

Review: "Richard Jewell" Finds Humanity in a Cynical World

Scene from Richard Jewell

In a career full of depicting everyday heroes, director Clint Eastwood has never found one as every day as Richard Jewell. In the past decade, his heroes have been F.B.I. agents (J. Edgar), airplane pilots (Sully), soldiers (American Sniper) and even elderly drug mules (The Mule). There's plenty that makes it an exciting cinema but by no means a perfect reflection of the type of people who come to Eastwood movies, looking for justice to prevail in an unjust society. In the case of Richard Jewell, a man obsessed with becoming a police officer and follows the code to an egregiously formal display, he has someone who isn't photogenic nor has a charisma to handle the press that is thrust his way following one incident of selfless heroism. For Eastwood's latest, he has gone beyond the extraordinary and is now captivated by the ordinary. What makes the world turn on Jewell? It's a heartbreaking story and one that finds the director creating a narrative against the media in an attempt to find where society's cynicism comes from. It's safe to say that even with Eastwood quickly approaching 90, he still has the chops to entertain with a sharp commentary that stings with relevance.