Jungle Fever

Starring:Michael Badalucco, Halle Berry, Joe D'Onofrio, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, David Dundara, Tyra Ferrell, Michael Imperioli, Samuel L. Jackson, Lonette McKee, Anthony Quinn, Steven Randazzo, Annabella Sciorra, Wesley Snipes, Veronica Timbers, John Turturro, Nicholas Turturro, Frank Vincent, Veronica Webb
Studio: Universal Studios
Product Type: DVD

Product Description

Five groundbreaking films from prolific filmmaker Spike Lee come together in this collection. Starring such heavyweights as Rosie Perez, Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, and John Turturro in career-defining roles, the films include CROOKLYN, DO THE RIGHT THING, CLOCKERS, JUNGLE FEVER, and MO' BETTER BLUES. See individual titles for descriptions.

Format: DVD MOVIE

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Clockers
Based on the riveting bestseller by Richard Price, this 1995 crime drama was directed by Spike Lee with such authority and authenticity that it has the hyper-real quality of a stylized documentary. Fully capturing the thoroughly researched detail of Price's novel, the film focuses on Strike (newcomer Mekhi Phifer), a young, ambitious "clocker"--or drug dealer--who works the streets of his New York housing project, selling drugs for a local supplier named Rodney (played with ferocious charisma by Delroy Lindo). Just as Strike is struggling to get away from his dead-end life of crime, another dealer is murdered in a fast-food restaurant and local detectives (Harvey Keitel, John Turturro) consider Strike the primary suspect. In cowriting the script with novelist Price, Lee uses this murder mystery to explore the plague of guns and black-on-black crime in America's inner cities, in which drugs and death are familiar routines of daily life. The film doesn't pretend to offer solutions, nor does it dwell on the problem with numbing insistence. Rather, this taut, well-acted film takes the viewer into a world often hidden in plain sight--a world where options seem nonexistent for youth conditioned to have little or no expectation beyond a probable early death. Lee and Price are deadly serious in handling this volatile subject (which incorporates racism, powerless law enforcement, and political indifference), but Clockers is also blessed with humor, insight, and humanity. It's one of Lee's most confidently directed films, signaling a creative maturity that Lee continued to develop throughout the 1990s. --Jeff Shannon

Jungle Fever
Spike Lee's 1991 story about an interracial relationship and its consequences on the lives and communities of the lovers (Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra) is one of his most captivating and focused films. Snipes and Sciorra are very good as individuals trying to reach beyond the limits imposed upon them for reasons of race, tradition, sexism, and such. Lee makes an interesting and subtle case that they are driven to one another out of frustration with social obstacles as well as pure attraction--but is that enough for love to survive? John Turturro is featured in a subplot as an Italian American who grows attracted to a black woman and takes heat from his numbskull buddies. --Tom Keogh

Do the Right Thing
Spike Lee's incendiary look at race relations in America, circa 1989, is so colorful and exuberant for its first three-quarters that you can almost forget the terrible confrontation that the movie inexorably builds toward. Do the Right Thing is a joyful, tumultuous masterpiece--maybe the best film ever made about race in America, revealing racial prejudices and stereotypes in all their guises and demonstrating how a deadly riot can erupt out of a series of small misunderstandings. Set on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer, the movie shows the whole spectrum of life in this neighborhood and then leaves it up to us to decide if, in the end, anybody actually does the "right thing." Featuring Danny Aiello as Sal, the pizza parlor owner; Lee himself as Mookie, the lazy pizza-delivery guy; John Turturro and Richard Edson as Sal's sons; Lee's sister Joie as Mookie's sister Jade; Rosie Perez as Mookie's girlfriend Tina; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the block elders, Da Mayor and Mother Sister; Giancarlo Esposito as Mookie's hot-headed friend Buggin' Out; Bill Nunn as the boom-box toting Radio Raheem; and Samuel L. Jackson as deejay Mister Señor Love Daddy. A rich and nuanced film to watch, treasure, and learn from--over and over again. --Jim Emerson

Mo' Better Blues
With Mo' Better Blues, the story of a young trumpeter's rise to jazz-world stardom, Spike Lee set out to counter Clint Eastwood's cliché-ridden biopic of Charlie Parker in Bird. But the final product, a slick, glossy drama (with hip-hop jazz provided by Gangstarr no less), is just as superficial as the numerous Alger-esque stories of music stardom to which movie audiences are accustomed.

Denzel Washington gives a typically charismatic performance as the trumpeter in question, as does Wesley Snipes as his sax-playing rival. And as with most Spike Lee films, there are numerous solid performers in small roles such as Bill Nunn, Latin-music star Rubén Blades, and comedian Robin Harris. One character, however, attracted unwanted attention: John Turturro's role as an unscrupulous music-industry exec. Critics called the Turturro character, who is at once money hungry, swarthy, and perpetually shrouded in darkness, a classic anti-Semitic caricature. But the charge seems almost irrelevant in Spike Lee's cartoonish, overstylized world of impossibly hunky jazzmen, curvaceous hangers-on, and incessant bebop. --Ethan Brown

Crooklyn
Spike Lee's semiautobiographical, 1994 film about the good and bad times for a Brooklyn family in the '70s has passion and nostalgic good feeling, but it is also a mess of random reflections and arbitrary storytelling. The centerpiece of the movie is a little girl (Zelda Harris) who views the ups and downs of her parents' experiences (mom and dad are played by Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard), and who navigates the life of her neighborhood. Lee tosses in a lot of '70s detail (watching The Partridge Family) and other diversions (Harris's journey through suburbia), but he has no master sensibility controlling the flow of it all. The film is more wearying than anything, although bright spots include Lindo's fine performance as a talented man suffering from irrelevance. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews:

Spike Lee - The Man.......2007-06-20

They could have put a movie on the other side of Crooklyn :(, Im still extremely satisfied. This is a piff collection. Spike did a great job capturing the essence (the lighter side) of emotion of every day life living in relative poverty like he did in Crooklyn. Watching these movies made me feel as if I were an invisible character.

You really get ur money's worth.......2007-05-14

I really like this collection, even though I thought it should have included his first work, school daze, instead of Clockers, u get five dvd's for the price of 1.

Good selection!.......2007-03-21

The only reason I gave it 4 stars and not a 5 is because not everyone will be happy with all 5 Films in this Collection. Point blank is that this a must get. You cannot beat the price for a good selection of quality American films. Very satisfied!

YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS!.......2007-03-16

5 CLASSIC FILMS BY ONE OF THE BEST AFRICAN AMERICAN DIRECTORS OF ALL TIME FOR $20.00! IF YOU THINK THIS ISN'T A GREAT DEAL THAN OBVIOUSLY THERE IS A PROBLEM! MO BETTA BLUES IS ONE OF THE MOST WELL PUT TOGETHER PIECES AND IF YOU ENJOY THE FILMS I SUGGEST LISTENING TO THE ACTUAL SOUNDTRACKS.

A Fantastic Collection That Is Very Affordable.......2007-03-12

There are a few artists who come to mind - Peter Max, for example - who strongly believe that their craft should be accessible to fans at any income level. Simply, art is solely not defined by its high price tag.

With the release of the Spike Lee Joint Collection (Clockers/ Jungle Fever/ Do the Right Thing/ Mo` Better Blues/ Crooklyn), the legendary film maker is making a very strong statement in the movie industry on producing an extraordinary product at an affordable price.

This is Economics 101 at its simplest, five movies for the cost of a couple of movie tickets at most theaters. It is as much a collection for fans of Lee's career as it an outstanding sampler for those just getting into his style.

And it begs a very important question; if Lee and Max - along with others - can do it, why isn't this practical approach done industry-wide within the arts?

Average customer rating:

way to scary and crazy!
Open up your eyes, and you will be surprised to see what the world is truly like.
Interesting, from start to finish!!!
Truth hurts doesn't it!
Wesley should do more of this type of movie

Jungle Fever
Starring: Michael Badalucco , Halle Berry , Joe D'Onofrio , Ossie Davis , and Ruby Dee
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Drama | African American Cinema | Genres | DVD | Video

General | African American Cinema | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $7.49 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( J ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Mo' Better Blues
School Daze
Do The Right Thing - Criterion Collection
Get on the Bus
Malcolm X

ASIN: 0783230389
Release Date: 1998-12-15

Amazon.com essential video

Spike Lee's 1991 story about an interracial relationship and its consequences on the lives and communities of the lovers (Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra) is one of his most captivating and focused films. Snipes and Sciorra are very good as individuals trying to reach beyond the limits imposed upon them for reasons of race, tradition, sexism, and such. Lee makes an interesting and subtle case that they are driven to one another out of frustration with social obstacles as well as pure attraction--but is that enough for love to survive? John Turturro is featured in a subplot as an Italian American who grows attracted to a black woman and takes heat from his numbskull buddies. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews:

way to scary and crazy!.......2007-06-17

Look I have seen some people diapprove of interracial relationships but not like this. I mean in this film the way Spike lee show's people being against these two people being together is as if's the End of the world or someting. And I remember the first time I saw this movie it was on TV But I sure as Hell didn'd buy it so I decided to bowor it from the library and there was some seens that was to strong for me to watch. Please Take my advice if you want to see a movie about interracial relationships then please don't buy this garbage. Instead get the movie called Far from heaven now that movie makes more sense. And let me tell I am so aganist Racism as a matter of fact I'm a member of an Organization that fights hard against racism and that Organization is called the Communist Party of the USA yes that's right I'm a Communist and I'd rather be one than be a Racist and I'm black. Please don't get the misconception that were evil and against religion we just help people that are oppressed and we fight peace for proof go CPUSA.org

Open up your eyes, and you will be surprised to see what the world is truly like........2007-06-05

Ever since "Romeo and Juliet" people have been fascinated by love that crosses cultural barriers. Romeo and Juliet a la Spike Lee is the story of Flipper, a middle-class black architect from Harlem and Angie, a working-class Italian-American from Brooklyn. In Jungle Fever, Lee returns to the theme of racial tensions that marked his breakthrough film, "Do the Right Thing." The result is big, bold, vibrant and more than a little sprawling. By the end of it you feel run over by a truck. Everyone in the film has been somehow touched by Flip and Angie's affair. Drew throws Flip out of the house (and some people may wonder why Lee finds the affair's interracial nature more of a sin than its being a marital infidelity). Fathers on both sides disown their children. And a lot of people become self-conscious about their own ethnicity - dark-skinned Italians just as much as light-skinned blacks.

Lee's forte is scenes of confrontation, and Jungle Fever is a series of them, scorchingly written, extremely well acted and utterly riveting. (Sensitive souls should note that, along with "Goodfellas," this film held the Hollywood record for profanity, though it's long since been surpassed.) What he isn't able to do - at this stage of his career at least - is to organize them into a shapely narrative. The film doesn't really build, but stays pretty much on one pitch throughout. And, towards the end, Lee loses the love story in favor of a subplot featuring Flip's crack-addict older brother Gator (Samuel L. Jackson). The scene where Flip has to go to a crack den called the Taj Mahal to find Gator, scored to Stevie Wonder's "Livin' for the City", is terrific, and one of the best-sustained sequences Lee has ever filmed. But it's in the wrong film. Gator's story has no relevance to the central story of interracial love, apart from his addiction being a parallel sin of the flesh to Flip's adultery in the eyes of their father, played with painful dignity and restraint by Ossie Davis. Samuel L. Jackson broke out from a series of minor roles as hoodlums with this performance, which won him a specially-created Supporting Actor Award at Cannes. But by this time in the film, Flip and Angie's story has almost been forgotten. That's Halle Berry, by the way, as Gator's equally addicted girlfriend.

You could say that Lee is less interested in the love story than in examining its effects. He's also far less interested in Angie (though Sciorra does her best with the part) than he is in Flip: the film ends with him with her all but written out. Lee had faced accusations of sexism from his first feature (She's Gotta Have It) onwards. He certainly tries to answer them here: there's a long sequence where Drew and her friends pour out their grievances about the men in their lives. It's a brave attempt, though it fails Joanna Russ's test for fully-dimensional female characters: do two women have a conversation at any time in the story that isn't about men? Not here they don't: the conversation is entirely about men, their ways, and their......parts.

Other pluses are Ernest Dickerson's camerawork, the visual stylization toned down somewhat since Do the Right Thing - though Lee has developed a signature shot, where characters seem to glide rather than walk. The film also benefits from several newly-written songs from Stevie Wonder, though the best-used example is a pre-existing one, "Livin' in the City" cited above.

Interesting, from start to finish!!!.......2007-02-09

This is a film that looks at interracial dating from all walks of life. I think that this is one of Spike Lee's best films to date. Spike Lee literally makes your conscience alert and aware with all of his films. He is a genius, and this film makes his point. Great acting by all, especially Lonette Mc Kee, and definitely Tyra Ferrell. I love this film, one of my favorites of all time!!!!

Truth hurts doesn't it!.......2006-11-22

I read some of the negative reviews on here and I just laughed at how naive some people are. They call this a racist movie, it is horrible, and spike shouldn't make movies anymore. But if these people open their eyes, they will realize that all of the negative comments and actions in the movie really happen. It is true on both sides black and white. The movie was made to expose how we are as a people in general and to expose the ignorance that different races have about each other. Not only does the movie address race but it also addresses drug problems in the community as well as issues that affect families. But I guess some people are too narrow minded to catch that. Anyway this is a classic Spike Lee film with great cinematography, good script, and an awesome cast. Definitely a dvd for your collection

Wesley should do more of this type of movie.......2006-09-14

he is a good actor and good looking. But this movie is like most of Spike's movies, always with the Black/White at odds issue. I think the subject should be put to rest, it has become boring. To each his own, I say, and everyone is entitled to her/his own opinion on the subject of race relations. Life could be so simple if the powers that be, Black & White, were not so power hungry and greedy. Why can't they let us live in peace and tolerance without pitting us against each other for their amusement. Wake up people - all governments are evil!

The Spike Lee Collection (Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, and Crooklyn)

Average customer rating:

spikes best
All great films

The Spike Lee Collection (Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, and Crooklyn)
Starring: Spike Lee
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( S ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Drama | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

School Daze
Do The Right Thing - Criterion Collection
Get on the Bus
Malcolm X
Bamboozled (New Line Platinum Series)

ASIN: B0000549B3
Release Date: 2001-01-30

Customer Reviews:

spikes best.......2006-03-17

I'm a big fan and if you are you will enjoy this all in one package its all about relationships!

All great films.......2001-05-16

These are Spike Lee's best work, with great plots and interesting characters, Spike Lee is able to make every race, color, and creed relate to these great movies. My personal favorite of the three was "Crooklyn" which is a film the whole family will enjoy.

Average customer rating:

way to scary and crazy!
Open up your eyes, and you will be surprised to see what the world is truly like.
Interesting, from start to finish!!!
Truth hurts doesn't it!
Wesley should do more of this type of movie

Jungle Fever [Region 2]

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( J ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Mo' Better Blues
School Daze
Do The Right Thing - Criterion Collection
Get on the Bus
Malcolm X

ASIN: B00005PJON

Amazon.com essential video

Customer Reviews:

way to scary and crazy!.......2007-06-17

Open up your eyes, and you will be surprised to see what the world is truly like........2007-06-05

Interesting, from start to finish!!!.......2007-02-09

Truth hurts doesn't it!.......2006-11-22

Wesley should do more of this type of movie.......2006-09-14

Average customer rating:

Jungle Fever [Region 2]

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

( J ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Average customer rating:

way to scary and crazy!
Open up your eyes, and you will be surprised to see what the world is truly like.
Interesting, from start to finish!!!
Truth hurts doesn't it!
Wesley should do more of this type of movie