Do the Right Thing (1989)
Director Spike Lee’s film was groundbreaking, funny and considered by many to be his best work. Its statement on race relations rings true today, 25 ½ years later. The scene where Radio Raheem was killed in a chokehold by police was eerily similar to Eric Garner’s death in Staten Island last year. The top movie critics of the day, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, called it one of the top 10 films of the 1980s. But it wasn’t nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Worse, Driving Miss Daisy, a much less incendiary portrait of race relations about an elderly white woman and her African-American chauffeur, won Best Picture that year.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)
Highly acclaimed, this film that chronicles the life of White House butler Cecil Gaines (played by Forest Whitaker) was not nominated for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director or Best Picture — one of the Oscars’ most recent gargantuan snubs
