Continuing our weeklong remembrance of the March on Washington, the second movie to celebrate civil rights this week is Spike Lee's Malcolm X, the sprawling biography of the slain civil rights activist played brilliantly by Denzel Washington (and for which he should have won his first Best Actor Oscar). The movie dramatized every major event in Malcolm X's life, from his early life as a criminal to his imprisonment, his conversion to Islam, his eventual falling out with the Nation of Islam, his spiritual re-awakening and so on, all the way to his assassination. It's a terrific movie that should have been recognized more in its time, but has since come to be considered a classic and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2010.
Trailer:
