Get on the Bus

The intimacy of video only increases the power of Spike Lee's ensemble piece, Get on the Bus, about a group of African-American men on a journey from South Central L.A. to the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. The phenomenal cast includes Homicide's Braugher (as a homophobic thespian) and Richard Belzer (as a Jewish bus driver) and Waiting to Exhale's Wendell Pierce (as a cigar-puffing Republican). The standout performance, though, comes from Thomas Jefferson Byrd (whose face looks like a road map of his character's hard life) as a long-absent father struggling to reconnect with his juvenile-delinquent son (DeAundre Bonds). With its grainy cinematography and loose-jointed structure, this is Lee's scrappiest film since She's Gotta Have It — and a trip well worth taking home. A-