Alfre Woodard's presence is felt as the stern but loving mother of four kids and Delroy Lindo's is great as the father who is also dealing with pressure as a struggling musician and trying to pay the rent on time. At least for me, he succeeds in doing this almost magical thing with every single one of his films, from She's Gotta Have It to Inside Man. Then I thought the video must have messed up. It's a direct approach to call it autobiography, which I would imagine it is for not just Spike Lee who could be seen, more or less, as the one Carmichael kid who wears big glasses and is obsessed with the Knicks , but Joie the lead Troy perhaps? This is actually quite a cool move, if at first a little uneasy, as it goes in and out sometimes of looking like its distorted and then it will look like the characters and set pieces are skinny and such the fate of the relative's dog, by the way, is one of the biggest, if cruelest, laughs in the whole film. The scene at the funeral when Troy's older brother sits next to her and holds her hand was one of the most touching scenes in the movie. The family is very believable.
Growing up as a teen in today's age I'm 18 I love watching movies that take place in the 60's and 70's that showcase what it was like growing up in those days. Spike does all of this while giving a light and loving perspective to some hard issues. This world was light years away from the world of Lee's film, but certain aspects of childhood ring true wether your from Sachrimento or Siagon. Advertisement Her father, Woody , is a musician who once made good money playing pop music but is now concentrating on more serious composition, with no income. And there are family quarrels, as when Carolyn temporarily throws Woody out of the house for bouncing checks and not contributing to the family income.
Crooklyn is loosely based on Spike Lee's life growing up. She really made me believe that she was Troy. It's definitely one of the most thematic movies I have ever seen, and I can definitely relate to many of Spike Lee's memories. But the best acting would go to Zelda Harris. It is at times uneven and glaringly annoying, but that's easily overrided by so many great qualities like those kids and the acting by everyone. House: Hugh Laurie, Olivia Wilde, Omar Epps, Robert Sean Leonard, Peter Jacobson, Jesse Spencer, Odette Annable, Charlyne Yi 9.
The relationship between Troy and her brothers was especially memorable and so universal! But I really don't know if that was a good thing for this film. The acting is outstanding and the cinematography is brilliant. I'm surprised to see it is a Spike Lee film. The show's main stars have included, at some point, Hugh Laurie , Lisa Edelstein , Robert Sean Leonard , Omar Epps , Jesse Spencer , Jennifer Morrison , Peter Jacobson , Olivia Wilde , Kal Penn , Amber Tamblyn , Odette Annable , and Charlyne Yi. Although I wouldn't say this is a great Lee film, it is still very solid. Later the family finds out that Carolyn has cancer.
I don't think it's a bad film by any means. Ahhh who can forget the good Ol' days of Spike Lee films that had heart as well as insight? From here on, white artifacts give way to Afros, Soul Trains, Jackson Fives, disco and black consciousness. Zelda Harris as the young girl, Troy, is also brilliant. There are scenes late in the film where Woody's tact and empathy have to fill enormous voids, and they do. They drove each other crazy but it was still love in the end.
I wonder why he didn't distort any of the reality of the Brooklyn scenes? Mom getting the kids up in the middle of the night for not cleaning up, you can understand her frustration being the breadwinner, mom and everything else. This movie is nostalgia in its purest form. Harris is quite the little actress. The film shows them growing up in the lower middle class, racially mixed Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn during the 1970s, showing the good times and the bad times. So my high end analysis is this: instead of watching people's lives on screen, the only way to really embrace this film, is by being in that place and time, and actually inhabiting some form of their existence.
This was the first movie done by Spike Lee that I have ever seen, and I saw this movie by accident. Or do you think people in the suburbs would be too stupid to get it? Some audiences members may think the projectionist has made a mistake. Her father tells her that her mother is gone. The series follows the life of anti-social, pain killer addict, witty and arrogant medical doctor Gregory House with only half a muscle in his right leg. You can feel the emotions of the family from start to finish, especially from the daughter Troy. The characters are ones that you care about, their struggles are real and anybody who has been there can also relate. There are beautiful performances to be seen here.
Anyway, I liked this movie despite some of what I cited and recommend it highly. Using many unknown child actors and casting himself as a neighborhood glue sniffing junkie, Lee shoots a film that follows the lives of the fictional family, the Carmichaels. Troy runs to the bathroom and throws up, and it finally hits her that her mother is gone. Or rather too few nice ones that don't drop into cliché and cloying sappiness. It's too clean, too fairytale, too.
Delroy Lindo played his character well too. The closing credits of Spike Lee's 1994 film Crooklyn state that what we saw as an audience was a work of fiction. While she goes through dealing with her annoying brothers, her parents marital issues, and just being a kid in Brooklyn. It's a sudden shift in the story that doesn't really feel as true as it could, almost as if Lee and his sibling writers don't know where to go once Troy gets back except to go towards sentimentality. Whatever conflicts that occur between the characters characters that fade in and out of the proceedings are never fully realized and resolved, the one event or tragedy that occurs toward the film's conclusion does not fully beef up any dramatic momentum, and most of the scenes involving the main family depicted the Carmichael family feel tedious and in serious need of editing. She has obviously reached some kind of a breaking point.
Another reviewer referred to Crooklyn as Spike's most underrated joint, and I heartily agree. Alfre Woodard, as Carolyn, finds the right balance between wife, mother, and overtaxed human being. The movie starts off to be a fun loving look in the eyes of Troy. Its a real moment between a brother and sister, and shows they are on their way to reconciliation. There's a night, for example, when the mother, exhausted and worried, tells the kids to clean up the kitchen before they go to bed. Lee and his cinematic cohorts managed to take cinephiles back in the day to where everyone knew your name, watched out for your kids, played stickball and hide-n-go-get-it.