Clockers

This one's a downer. Heartbreakingly tragic and grim but full of empathy for the people and communities in the projects. A handful of montages in this movie that will stick with me for a while. In Clockers, Spike most notably plays with brightness, periodically forfeiting naturalistic lighting to create either very bright or very dark images in order to evoke visceral emotional reactions. The screen transcends the literal and captures emotional reality instead. It's wild coming from Crooklyn and comparing Delroy Lindo's performances. He is so scary here.