Spike Lee, a very accomplished New York film director and NYU professor, has spent a substantial part of this summer promoting a Kickstarter campaign he'd launched to crowdsource a $1,250,000 budget for his vaguely defined next movie. (On Friday, his $1.25-million goal was met.) One of the ways he'd drummed up…

Spike Lee, the very accomplished director, producer, and Madison Square Garden defender, has been a film professor at NYU for the last 15 years. Every semester on the first day of class, the former Harvard instructor distributes a list of essential movies he considers "the greatest films ever made," cinematic titles…