MALCOLM X

 Spike Lee's finest film, "Malcolm X" is a vast, sprawling three hour plus epic built around a magnificent, career-best performance from Denzel Washington and opening with credits that might recall "Patton" as Washington castigates White America over images of the American flag as it bursts into flames. Of course, it was inevitable that a biography of Malcom X, one of the great figures of the 20th century, would be filmed at some stage and equally inevitable, given his track record, that Lee would be the man to do it.

As a political picture it does follow a predictable trajectory but from the beginning it's obvious that Lee wants to make something more than just a conventional biopic. Lee's film is nothing less than an epic account of the history of Black America in the second half of the twentieth century. It's tragedy isn't only that Malcolm X was assassinated but that very little has actually changed in the interim despite Obama's tenure in the White House.

Washington may dominate the picture but there's superb work too from Delroy Lindo, Albert Hall and Al Freeman Jr. in Lee's huge cast and thanks once again to Ernest R. Dickerson's cinematography it's also a fantastic looking film. Naturally, in 1992, the Academy almost totally overlooked the film with only Washington and Ruth E. Carter's costume designs getting nominations. As I said, very little has changed and it's taken a rule change by the Academy for diversity to fully get the recognition it deserves. Had it been made today, this might actually win Best Picture.