Staff Picks: Do the Right Thing (1989) at Moxie Cinema

Set on one block of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy Do or Die neighborhood, at the height of summer, this 1989 masterpiece by Spike Lee confirmed him as a writer and filmmaker of peerless vision and passionate social engagement.

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) screens Wednesday, August 26 @ 7pm as part of the Staff Picks 2026 series at Moxie Cinema. Every month a member of the Moxie staff picks a film that impacted their lives and we put it up on the big screen. The Staff Picks series is Free for Members. August's pick was made by Kelsey Zimmerman.

Over the course of a single day, the easygoing interactions of a cast of unforgettable characters—Da Mayor, Mother Sister, Mister Señor Love Daddy, Tina, Sweet Dick Willie, Buggin Out, Radio Raheem, Sal, Pino, Vito, and Lee’s Mookie among them—give way to heated confrontations as tensions rise along racial fault lines, ultimately exploding into violence. Punctuated by the anthemic refrain of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” Do the Right Thing is a landmark in American cinema, as politically and emotionally charged and as relevant now as when it first hit the big screen. (R, 120 min.)