Singing of the unsung Spike Lee

There are many people — and I am one of them — who believe that the ever-creative, ever-rebellious Spike Lee is one of the most talented and hideously underrated filmmakers of our time.

His newest, The Inside Man, starring the captivating Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owen, opens this week and is said to be maybe the best thing he's ever done. Here are five more very special Spike Lee works that get overshadowed in the scheme of his admirable, if sometimes erratic, career. As Dap (Laurence Fishburne) says in Spike's School Daze, "Wake up!"

Jada PInkett Smith and Savion Glover in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" (enlarge photo) Reviews of "Inside Man"

1. 4 Little Girls (1997): My South Carolina native grandfather doesn't watch movies about the Civil Rights movement anymore, because it's too painful for him, he says — "I lived through that. Why would I want to go through that again?" There are certainly heartbreaking moments in this documentary about the four little girls murdered in the racially motivated bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. It's hard, but it should be seen. So no one ever has to go through that again, for real.

2. Bamboozled (2000): Spike's at his best when he does what seem like broad parodies, that aren't that far from reality when you really examine them. Would a minstrel show, complete with blackface, really be a runaway hit, like in the movie? Well, maybe not in blackface. But . . . just think about it.

3. Get On The Bus (1996): I never understood why this drama about men traveling to the Million Man March in Washington D.C. didn't do better at the box office, while its intended demographic made Scary Movie a runaway hit. And then, sadly, I understood why it wasn't a hit. Shame on y'all.

4. Crooklyn (1994): Hmmm. A movie about an intact black family, living just enough for the city, as Stevie Wonder said. Didn't do that well. See No. 3.

5. Clockers (1994): Before Mehki Phifer was dropping the medical knowledge on ER and helping Eminem find the microphone in 8 Mile, he was an intense drug dealer with an ulcer and a wavering moral compass, trying desperately to survive the police, the business and his demons. The movie was criminally lost in a sea of gang movies. Go seek it out.