Let's Anticipate Spike Lee's HIGHEST 2 LOWEST

https://i.imgur.com/QN6Gzs7.jpeg

He still insists on the score blaring at max-out levels, the script plods with early expository material, and the Denzel Washington's final embrace of mediocre R&B was blah, but a near-great movie. Watch it in a theater before Apple whisks it away.

Lol thought this was a poll for a minute

He still insists on the score blaring at max-out levels

EASILY the worst part of the film, Drossin's score. Unbearable in the first half especially.

FWIW I liked the more delicate bits of the score. But that may have been relief from the these-go-to-11 parts.

The DC-area theaters that showed H2L last weekend are holding it over and adding more showings. If you think you might interested in seeing this I'd recommend watching it on a big screen with an audience.

Also, High to Low will be at AFI Silver in November as part of a Kurosawa retrospective; I plan to be there.

God yeah, the score really is unbearable at times. This movie has a couple of great setpieces (the ransom drop-off and the face-to-face meeting) and a strong Denzel Washington performance, but that's about it. All of the hokey, heavily orchestrated scenes devoted to "King David's" family and business ventures did little to make me care about the character and his plight. I would've liked to have seen more A$AP Rocky.

I think it helps the Kurosawa interpretation -- worth remembering that this all goes back to an Ed McBain novel at base -- that we don't see Mifune's character *at* work, just at home.

The scenes with the cops, especially the blocking of their movements around David vs Paul, was terrific. I agree that the first 30 mins of world-building made me impatient, but there's much more.

and in the Kurosawa the chauffeur's way more pathetic than Jeffrey Wright's Paul.

It was nice to see Eddie Palmieri.

Nice little minidoc/promo thing on the A24 YouTube channel -- instead of being a usual 'making of' thing with the central cast and director, it's a bunch of on-set footage mixed in with interview clips in those spots with all kinds of behind-the-scenes crew lifers or longstanding folks who have worked with Lee/40 Acres over the decades. Downside is that the volume varies wildly between interviewees -- whoever did this shoulda just miked everyone up properly -- but the upside is more Eddie Palmieri footage as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WZrTVrHcng

Surprised how much this won me over after a pretty terrible - except for an excellent Denzel - first half hour or so. Then the thing takes off and gets really entertaining. One of my fave Jeffrey Wright performances, too. The actors playing the wife and Wright's son were hilariously wooden. Few films in recent memory have made me so nostalgic for NYC.

saw this at the Cinerama, which has great, clear sound staging, but is always at about half the volume that would really hit, so I didn’t register the score being a contributing factor to the slog of the set-up hour.

that we don't see Mifune's character *at* work, just at home.

We get a much clearer idea of Mifune’s principles around work than Denzel’s — he’s absolutely disgusted at the idea of planned obsolescence, Washington just vaguely misses caring about music more than he did when he wasn’t 70. The scenes where we see him at the office are even more empty (which may or may not be Lee/Fox’s intention) — but the one scene of him DOING work is electric, so essential that it savagely undercuts the movie when it turns out he was trolling and would rather tank his mortgage on some capt. snooze R&B than actually sell vibrant expression like he claimed — but this is played as victory

Just watched this and mostly hated it. Little moments of electricity here and there but I’ve never seen a film so mercilessly murdered by its own score, and a lot of the acting and directing felt really heavy handed throughout.

You said nothing about the second half of the movie tho.

I thought it was great. Other than a couple of lines of "As you know, Bob..." level expository dialogue in the beginning (mostly given to Washington's wife), it was a fast-moving and economical script. I thought the score worked very well (it's a big Hollywood movie! it opens with a song from Oklahoma! give it a big Hollywood score!), and the James Brown songs and the Eddie Palmieri performance just added to it. A$AP Rocky's song actually sounded like a real rap song from this decade. Washington and Wright were both fantastic (and Dean Winters was an excellent asshole who's still ultimately on the right side). Best Spike Lee movie since Inside Man IMO.

I thought this was really fun and silly and extremely engaging even in the off-putting moments (like many a Spike joint).

Denzel shadowboxing in the car maybe the cinematic highlight of the year for me.

Yeah, I'm with unperson on this, I thought it was excellent.

the end credits song, being a gross abuse of the entire concept of the rarefied original that it’s attempting to cover, means I have to hate this movie.

Otherwise it was fine.

I was imagining a slightly different ending in which Denzel's character is trying to concentrate and listen to the new act in front of him, but every time he tries to concentrate on the music, all he can hear in his head is 'Back up the front to the front to the back...'

I'm downright dizzy at the extreme reactions I've heard to this, that almost on a day by day basis make me want to see it and make me want to miss it. It's his best movie in years! It's his worst movie in years! The first 45 minutes of it are a mess, but then I got really into it! The end of it is terrible! See it in theaters! Wait for it to hit streaming! Skip it! Big defenders of Spike that don't like it. People that don't really like Spike but like this. Wild.

I thought it was a return to form of the wild inconsistencies in Mo' Better Blues and Jungle Fever after BlacKkKlansman moved beyond them. Glad to have seen it, glad he made it, and in this one the two-hander scenes stay with me the most.

^^

(2 vv)

I wouldn't find Spike interesting without the inconsistencies.

Had a discussion with someone over the weekend about all of Spike's movies, there's really no question that they are Spike Lee movies. Sometimes they are really good because of Spike Lee, sometimes they're really bad because of Spike, but there is no question of authorship. If he'd only made 10 movies instead of over twice that, he might have a better reputation, but he wouldn't be Spike Lee, for better or for worse.