Malcolm X

Spike Lee's most ambitious film to date, 1992's Malcolm X is an epic biographical drama centered on the controversial civil rights leader, with a superb Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington in the title role. Lee traces his subject's life and education from his early days as a street criminal, through his days as a fiery orator charging up the Black Pride movement, and up to his ultimate falling out with the Nation of Islam. Throughout, Lee presents Malcolm as a thoughtful leader, challenging and confronting racial injustice with both words and action, but also evolving through the years, as we see in the last act of his life when Malcolm embraces a more humanist and nonviolent approach, a shift inspired by his journey to Mecca just before his assassination. Bowing on Blu-ray in an illustrated digi-book edition, Malcolm X features the same supplements as the earlier DVD special edition: audio commentary by Lee and his collaborators, deleted scenes, a “making-of” featurette, and a bonus DVD with the 1972 Oscar-nominated documentary Malcolm X—a superb nonfiction companion to the dramatized portrait of this major 20th-century figure. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)