Malcolm X

The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else. more

Mr. Lee means for Malcolm X to be an epic, and it is in its concerns and its physical scope. In Denzel Washington it also has a fine actor who does for Malcolm X what Ben Kingsley did for “Gandhi.”

A spiritually enriching testament to the human capacity for change -- and surely Spike Lee's most universally appealing film. more

Lee's biography of the slain civil rights leader treats Malcolm, not as a political rallying point, but as a fully rounded individual whose life defies reduction to symbolic status. more

Lee's finest, most unabashed labor of love. more

A mortal movie about an immortal subject and the very fact that it succeeds as well as it does is a testament to Lee's skills as a filmmaker. more

The picture comes up short in several departments, notably in pacing and in giving a strong sense of why this man became such a legend. more

The movie is disappointingly impersonal; it doesn't provide readers of the autobiography anything like a fresh vision of its remarkable subject. more

Lee has tried hard to give this shapeless picture some visual patterning though the cluttered effect created by his mistrust of silence is even more harmful than in the past. more

The film is inspirational and educational - and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else. more

A masterpiece. The best biopic ever. Washington gives a truly phenominal and unforgettable perfromance. A great movie in every way. Spike Lee's finest achivement as a director. It truly stands the test of time. It lives up to everything it was supposed to. more

This fantastic biopic is a great demonstration of Washington's acting potential. It does come across as a tad drawn-out, but Lee's direction is strong and the story is compelling. Very precise filmmaking. more

I saw this movie back when I was in high school, so it didn't have the strength to impact me the way it would had I seen it in college. All the same, Denzel Washington gave a great performance and I feel that for the sake of truly knowing about Black History in America, watching this film is an important part of the collection. more

While the movie itself is excellent, this is one of those DVDs that makes a great film even greater. Much has been said about the 1992 film, so I'll concentrate on the extras. First of all, the widescreen is not so wide that it makes you squint to see it. It's at a good porportion. But the edited scenes are really interesting. We see previously unseen footage of Denzel as Malcolm courting Angela Bassett as Betty Shabazz (in a rather touching way). We see Denzel/Malcolm putting an initiate through the rigors in an amusing fashion, we see him studying and feeding his hunger for books while... more

One of the most brilliant films ever made. Another reviewer, E. Hazell is correct, if maybe even understated in comparing this film with von Sydow's portrayal of Jesus in "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and B. Kingsley in "Ghandi". Without question, the portrayal by Denzel Washington of Malcolm X belongs with these two classic efforts. The screenplay closely follows Alex Haley's collaboration with Malcolm X on his autobiography, from his early days as a hustler and pimp, to his transformation and his rise to prominence in the Black Muslims and beyond. In so doing, it traces much of the... more

Malcolm, like any young african-american boy in a time of racial hatred, did not have it easy growing up. In fact he did not have it easy when he was in his teens to early twenties. Nor did he have it easy when he was an adult. Yet at least by his adult age he understood this and what his father had been fighting for. So with his Islamic conversion in prison, he set out to change the world as best as he sought, and, thanks to this film and the autobiography it was based on, we can now truly understand this struggle, inner and outer, for justice, liberty, and the pursuit of all to have... more