Metrograph

Described as “a nose-to-the-sidewalk paean to Bedford-Stuyvesant as it was in Lee’s ’70s youth” by Brooklyn Magazine, Lee’s period drama centers on street-smart tomboy Troy (Zelda Harris), the youngest of five and lone daughter in the Carmichael clan, headed by a sporadically employed jazz pianist father and schoolteacher mother (Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard), all living and tussling together in circa 1972 Brooklyn. This gentle, semi-autobiographical tale—sentimental but by no means sugar-coated (Lee himself appears as a glue-huffing neighborhood nuisance)—written together with siblings Joie and Cinqué, recalls with aplomb a season of jump-rope games, Knicks super-fandom, and the burgeoning influence of Soul Train.

Distributor: Universal