Rating: 
Summary: Bigotry is alive and well in Tinsletown
Review: Lets be honest.Spike Lee is a bigot who hates white people.When i had to endure this Italian exploitation mess,I felt insulted and as an Italian,quite angry.Hey Spike get a grip.Perhaps your own people are beginning to see through your ways!
Rating: 
Summary: Loud, Flashy Excrement
Review: A film designed simply to appall and disgust the audience, SUMMER OF SAM is the only film I've seen in a theatre in recent years which caused a sizable portion of the audience to leave before the film was over. Supposedly a film about emotional hysteria during the Son of Sam killings during the summer of 1977, SUMMER OF SAM is really just Spike Lee's exercise in thoroughly trashing and dehumanizing the Italian-American community.It really is a sight to behold the utter contempt that Lee has for his characters. They are simply crude stereotypes, seemingly with little or no redeeming qualities, or even humanity. It is on parallel with watching the portrayal of African-Americans in D.W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION. The script is awful, and the acting by an excellent cast is uninspired at best. The only sincere performance is that of Adrien Brody. His performance and SUMMER OF SAM's beautiful cinematography are the only virtues to this film crud, which seems to go on forever, despite plenty of gratuitous sex, drug use, and violence. Fans of self-exalted trash epics that laughably take themselves seriously, such as CALIGULA, MANDINGO, and SHOWGIRLS, should definitely add this to their collection. All other non-masochists should steer clear of this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Movie, Sountrack enhances powerful and infectious film
Review: I know America is a highly morralistic country, but come on, theres more to this than sex, yu have to delve into why the main character has this perversion of promiscuity. This is not a porno, and to call it one is an insult. I must comment on Spike Lee's use of music - The 70's soundtrack was fantastic and had relevance to what was going on in the scenes, eg "Don't Leave me this Way" during the scene when the couple splits up. Lee uses unsubtle imagery to emphasize the harsh, unrelenting and aggravating conditions of the Bronx and the enduring summer heat wave. The "dead end" sign is perhaps a tad unfair when it was projected behind the Italian Americans. Also, this movie deals with the common confusion with anarchy and pop/sub culture - hence the associations with the "different" punk character -he must be Sam then! This movie has too much content just to be dubbed as porn and anyone who does so needs to leave their moral inhibitions at one side and for once try and understand someone elses meanings.
Rating: 
Summary: 8 million stories and Spike picked this one
Review: Interesting movie but unfortunately not Spike's best. Really just the tale of a marriage break up set in the 70s just as punk was exploding. Strange images, a talking dog and disco: a reminder of a time when style did not matter and there was no AIDS. I expected a much harder message from this movie. What drama there was was obscured by a multitude of plot lines that often appeared to go nowhere. Is this a story about fidelity, about fear or about insanity? Hey but all that said, this is a Spike Lee joint and worth checking out. The bonus in this movie is the chance to see the man himself playing the worst TV reporter ever!
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as expected.
Review: This wasn't one of the best films that I've seen lately. The thing about it that I didn't particularly care for was that it was too long (it should have wrapped up a lot sooner than it did). The acting was okay, but none of the cast stood out. Summer of Sam wasn't as good as I thought it would have been. It's a real gritty and coarse movie in all aspects, but didn't capture my attention completely. I actually give this film 2.5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: forget this summer
Review: I am a big movie buff, and can usually enjoy even a not-so-good movie by finding a few aspects in it that are good. There was nothing good in this movie. It played out more like a cheap porno (watch twenty minutes and you will know what I mean, sex scenes one after another). There are few movies I turn off, but the three other people who were watching it with me agreed that there was no redeeming value in watching all of this. Pure trash. Which is sad coming from someone accomplished like Spike Lee.
Rating:
Summary: Eating its own swelled head
Review: I don't know much about the real "Summer of Sam"--I was only a year old. I DO, however, know that this film displays poor excuses for tension and meaning all by itself. The sections of the movie that focus on David Berkowitz are actually the good ones. It's the surrounding drama of the couples and their neighborhoods that really bombs. Director Spike Lee seems to be trying to shock the viewers into some sort of social awakening, but only manages to shock us into realizing what a bigoted movie this is. We are made to dislike EVERYone in the movie (even the characters we're probably supposed to sympathize with), and even that brilliant 'Who' song gets extremely annoying when it's played ten times in one movie. The only thing that kept me from giving "Summer Of Sam" one star was the fact that it did provide a bit of historical knowledge into that summer--something I found at least interesting.
Rating:
Summary: the history, memorable. the story, poor.
Review: As a African American male growing up in New York City during the same period as Spike Lee I can really identify with many of the experiences of the summer of 1977. The Yankees were great, The weather was hot, the night of the blackout was something I will never forget, discos were king, and the Son of Sam terrified the city like no one before or since. This man was a serial killer who communicated with the media during his crime spree, which is very rare. Also, he was communicating with the media in the media capital of the world. I and everyone in New York that year experienced a constant news barrage about this madman on the loose in our city. New Yorkers tuned in to every story about and every letter written by the Son of Sam. We all were terrified. Because of this shared experience with Spike, I really wanted to see this film. However, I came away disappointed by the film. I do not feel like Spike was able to combine the history of that New York summer with the story of the lives of his characters. I give him three stars because I feel that the summer of 77 was a very worthy story to be told. However I could not give Spike four or five stars because he could have written a much better story about that memorable time and place.
Rating:
Summary: Garbage
Review: I saw this movie because I grew up in the area in the timeframe of Son of Sam. I was expecting a movie about the killer and the times but what I got was a movie that perpetuated every negative Italian American stereotype you could imagine. The movie focused around a small neigborhood where every inhabitant was a low life. Every single character in this movie was dysfunctional from the cheating husband, to the neighborhood punk rocker who prostituted himself to gay men, to the redneck Mafiosos. Unfortunately, Lee had a chance to make a great movie about mob mentality (the plot was decent) but instead he chose to use this movie to portray Italians and Whites in general as subhumans. It was truly a disgusting display and a waste of 142 minutes.
Rating:
Summary: Summer Of Sam
Review: New York, Summer 1977 and, in addition to one of the hottest heat waves the city has ever experienced, David Berkowitz - The Son of Sam - prowls the neighbourhoods for over a year killing indescrimately. However, although Berkowitz' activities form the central backdrop to the story, the film is far more interesting, presenting as it does more of a snapshot of neighbourhood life at the time. Director Spike Lee is an acknowledged master of the genre (whose work is akin to that of Britain's Mike Leigh) and he utilises the usual elements to reinforce his points. A montage of genuine footage and news reports interject with the story of John Leguizamo's (Vinny) adulterous marriage to Mira Sorvino and his best friend Adrien Brody (Richie, complete with awful English accent early in the film). Richie is a bi-sexual-by-convenience punk rocker who is totally misunderstood and eventually outcast by the low-life neighbourhood wise-guys, ultimately becoming their target as the most likely Son of Sam suspect. Vinny's divided loyalties to both the local bone-heads in regard his friend Richie and the consequences of his numerous affairs once uncovered by his wife nicely heighten the personal tension felt by the whole community. And the understandable paranoia is all here: the rush for brunettes to turn blonde overnight (Berkowitx seemed to favour the murder of dark haired individuals), the local cops forming an unholy alliance with the neighbourhood Godfather for help in the case, the heat wave and ensuing blackout that led to widespread looting, fingers being pointed by everyone at anyone for the most tenuous of reasons. A smouldering melting-pot then of story-telling, nostalgia and, indeed, fear. Berkowitz' crimes are summarised by sledgehammer inserts which, although brief, do truly shock and Lee takes time out to give a brief insight into the madness that spurned him on, right down to the infamous black dog he purported as telling him to "kill, kill, kill"! With a film score utilising Club hits of the day (disco, disco, disco!), the obligatory punk workout and even some tracks from The Who (who we could take issue with as being proclaimed "The Fathers of Punk" but as Lee wasn't in the UK when Punk was born we can let this slide, just this once), there's some nice touches with cameo slots given over to the Studio 54 and Platos Retreat scenes. All in all, this is another solid accomplishment from Lee that not only does justice to a number of entwining stories but is also an accomplished piece of nostalgia. Way above average, this definitely deserves two hours of your attention. The Mad Ferret, London, England
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