Highest 2 Lowest
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“I Don’t Covet Shots, I Covet the Film”: DP Matthew Libatique on Highest 2 Lowest
In November of 2023, always-busy cinematographer Matthew Libatique embarked on a particularly prolific period that saw the three-time Oscar nominee lens a trio of films nearly back-to back. That grueling feat was predicated on the fact that a triumvirate of Libatique’s most frequent collaborators came calling: Spike Lee with Highest 2 Lowest (briefly in theaters, now on Apple TV+), Darren Aronofsky with Caught Stealing (now in theaters) and Bradley Cooper with Is This Thing On? (scheduled for release at the end of the year, premiering shortly at NYFF). “It wasn’t lost on me how rare of an opportunity it was […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 19, 2025 -
Cannes 2025: Highest 2 Lowest, Die My Love, The Love That Remains
Spike Lee’s maligned 2013 update of Park Chan-wook’s 2003 revenge picture, Oldboy, did little to inspire confidence in his latest reimagining of an Asian classic, this time relocating Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) to DUMBO in Brooklyn. Given a very Spike title of Highest 2 Lowest, the Denzel Washington vehicle is expectedly brimming with the director’s signature expressive filmmaking—wildly cubist jump cut coverage within establishing shots, double-take character greetings and spontaneous shifts into saturated 16mm footage of New York abound—and tends to feel more like another excuse to create a cinematic love letter to his hometown and the Black […]
by Blake Williams on May 23, 2025
