BlacKkKlansman

Although it's occasionally weighed down by cinematic choices, this dark comedy is director/co-writer Spike Lee's strongest work in years. While there's some tension around the fact that the jig could be up at any moment, this isn't a thriller. Rather, BlacKkKlansman plays as an absurd comedy with a premise that defies credulity. But the real Stallworth apparently did spy on the Klan by using a telephone persona and apparently did interact with Duke. Thanks to solid performances by an extremely well-chosen cast, the too-bizarre-to-be-true situation feels real. And because the interactions are so crazy, the film's deadpan approach makes them all the funnier.

Lee can't help but lecture at times, with extended public speech sequences and even excerpts of the infamous The Birth of a Nation designed as viewers' lesson for the day. Despite a few of these heavy-handed lapses that break the film's stride, Lee's commentary is perhaps his most effective since Do the Right Thing. The movie includes undisguised links to today's sociopolitical environment, with Duke and others reviving the 1930s-era isolationist/anti-Semitic slogan "America First" (which they did) and promising to "make America great again" via ethnic cleansing. As you'd likely expect from a Lee production, the cinematography and editing are excellent. And Washington and Driver form a solid, heads-down, hardworking team. Driver's Flip has a particularly affecting moment in which he reconnects with the importance of his Jewish heritage. As Duke, Grace is a fool you enjoy laughing at -- until he shows what lies beneath his three-piece-suit veneer in a moment of anger. Given BlacKkKlansman's subject matter and injections of the real-life horrors of racial violence from America's past, it's notable that its touch stays light enough to let its humor shine ... and then a devastating postscript reminds us how real and present this danger remains.