20 Best Movies Over Three Hours Long

Runtime: 3 hours, 23 minutes

Spike Lee has always been a director striving to tell urgent stories in a subversive, thrilling way, and Malcolm X remains his most audacious vision - and perhaps his most successful.

Though it goes through all the motions of a standard biopic, charting the life and times of civil rights activist Malcolm X through his youth to his assassination in a linear fashion, Lee infuses it with such creativity, joy, frustration, and vibrant energy that every scene practically shakes the screen.

Anchored throughout by a captivating Denzel Washington, Malcolm X explores it all and refuses to sugar-coat the journey. Lee knows X was a controversial figure and refuses to hide from the how and why of his divisive reputation, but the film never loses sight of his humanity.

Sharply focussed, Malcolm X is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, and remains as urgent as it ever.