Rustin (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

In case, this Black History Month, you are called to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, you would do well to view the recent Netflix original film Rustin. A dramatization of grassroots efforts that led to the famous 1963 March on Washington, the film feels urgent and timely as we culturally reel over the last election while looking ahead to an imminent rematch no one really wants to happen. It's a strident reminder of what we the people are truly capable of accomplishing together. But more than a survey of history, this film is a character study of its eponymous activist, Bayard Rustin, one of the great minds behind the march whose life and work in proximity to King were troubled once his queerness came out. This film, an ode to Rustin and intersectional politics, pulls no punches when it comes to confronting the tough stuff even as it earnestly teaches those of us not already in the know.

A heavy introduction to the film feels ripped from a documentary, reminding us of the boiling issues of segregation in the '50s and '60s with images of Ruby Bridges, Elizabeth Eckford, and Anne Moody enduring abuse as they worked toward integration. It's maybe a bit on the nose, and feels a bit gimmicky in so blatantly attention-grabbing, but it nonverbally reminds us that racism is more a social issue than a legal one before throwing us into Rustin's story, which is sort of emblematic of that very tension. Obviously he was targeted by anyone against racial equality, but the revelation of his homosexuality turned many of his fellow Black activists against him as well. 

Having now seen the film, I can say it provided a suitable introduction to the man whose name was the only thing I had previously known about him. It also whet my whistle in wanting to learn more about this queer man behind the man. In a similar way to the successes of Judas and the Black Messiah and The Trial of the Chicago 7, teaching and entertaining at once, Rustin works hard to be as pleasant to watch as it is informative. Despite surely learning about it in grade school, I was surprised to see the over 200,000 Black people descend on the Lincoln Memorial for one of the largest nonviolent protests America has ever seen. It effectively dramatized the various differing approaches to seeking justice, even within Black communities, and the conflicts that often arose between factions; for example, did you know that the NAACP initially discouraged the whole idea of the march?

It helps the drama of this story -- so concerned as it is, rightfully, with history -- to have an accomplished, nuanced, and authentically gay actor assuming the titular role. Colman Domingo, whose recent work has included such heavy hitters as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (also with director George C. Wolfe), Candyman, and The Color Purple, hits yet another milestone here with a charismatic and rhetorically brilliant performance that highlights the wit and scope of the screenplay (penned by Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece). The zingers and humor buttress -- and sometimes soften -- the more dangerous aspects of this story, which might not ring historically accurate but do help provide an "in" for us even as it helps differentiate what could otherwise be a dry sociopolitical rehashing of history.

Aml Ameen plays King very well; it's a thankless role sure to be forgotten in favor of, for example, David Oyelowo's performance in Selma, but Ameen plays wonderfully off Domingo, and the two share an electrifying chemistry. I'd have liked a bit more depth to their relationship through the dialogue, but the actors know how to share a lot of dynamics with only their faces and bodies. The two male characters with whom Rustin shares romance similarly share instantly believable and consistently interesting chemistry with Domingo, and I really appreciated the film's willingness to survey Rustin's somewhat needfully sordid private life in tandem with his rigorously organized social life. The character isn't reduced to an archetype or an icon on a timeline, but rather fully fleshed out in ways that enhance, rather than distract from, his legacy.

The Lost City (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

I don't usually go for comedies, especially ones that combine adventure and romance, but The Lost City was the unexpected delight of the season for me. In no ways does it try to reinvent anything, yet its familiarity breeds ingenuity and joy. Essentially taking what we all love about middle-aged rom-coms and silly adventure flicks and mashing them together, it works as fairly mindless and fun entertainment. In the hands of the directors and this stellar cast, and a screenplay laced with gold, it's a lot smarter and a lot more heartfelt than I expected. I'd compare it tonally to Isn't It Romantic in that way, even though it looks and feels more like Romancing the Stone or countless other adventures with varying degrees of romance and comedy (Jumanji, The Mummy, The African Queen, Jungle Cruise). It's a movie that knows exactly what it is and who its audience is, and gives what we want and expect while still delighting us each step of the journey.

Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) is trying desperately to stay afloat. The famed writer of smutty romance-adventures, she has grown disdainful for her own work since the untimely death of her husband. Her grief has made her reclusive and misanthropic, and she's hit a writer's block with her new book. When her agent Beth (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) pushes her into promoting her latest book on tour with the wildly popular cover model Alan (Channing Tatum), Loretta suggests that she's done writing stories in this series. The agent, the model, and the fans won't have it; they love the hunky Dash McMahon too much. We get many hints, too, that Loretta's stories contain nuggets of gold in them; she actually did archeological research with her deceased husband to inform her fiction.

After successfully derailing a public appearance with "Dash," Loretta is abducted by a fan. Well, a fan who is also a criminal in the form of Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), an eccentric and vengeful billionaire who wants his own fame, fortune, and glory. Fairfax has located the titular lost city from one of Loretta's books and needs her to translate clues that might lead them to a hidden treasure. Time is ticking because, of course, the treasure is located near an active volcano. Why not? This is a highly contrived plot, but by the point the plot is properly laid out in the first, let's say, twenty or thirty minutes, we pretty much know every beat the movie will hit. And it does, in spades. What a pleasure.

The doubtful and resistant Loretta has no intention of helping Fairfax, but he takes her anyway (while destroying the world's largest charcuterie display, tragically). Alan, who seems to be somewhat smitten with Loretta -- or at least desperate to keep his famed character alive and popular -- gives chase with the help of a former mentor and meditation guru/fitness trainer Jack Trainer (Brad Pitt). And so ensues the rollicking, somewhat swashbuckling adventure that takes our cast to a remote Caribbean island in search of love, treasure, and themselves. Once they all reconvene, in one of the film's best action sequences to the sound of "Red Right Hand", things really kick into high gear. A principal joy here is the acting from stars who are simply doing what they do best. Tatum keenly understands his own appeal as a caring and slightly stupid hot guy; Bullock has made a career out of understanding her own appeal as a sexy, disillusioned, and somewhat awkward intellectual with walls to tear down. Together, they share some of the best chemistry I've seen in a comedy in years.

Everything about this movie is charming. Its supporting cast works well, though Radcliffe's character feels underdeveloped and sometimes forced into a narrative that clearly just needed a caricatured villain (though Radcliffe himself delivers admirably). It's bright and cute and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. It's also exciting and rousing and sexy and surprisingly emotional. It's everything you want from this kind of movie, and it's smart about playing itself accordingly; the Nee brothers are simply taking an old recipe, using A-list ingredients, and injecting it with fresh and jubilant energy. This is one of those movies I enjoyed so much I could have happily watched it again shortly after the first screening, and will probably stay on my repertoire of date night/sick day/rainy day flicks, and it would pair beautifully with tequila cocktails or any shade of wine.

The Guilty (2021)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

Typical of Hitchcockian fare, The Guilty operates as a man-on-the-phone thriller that hinges on his own reliability as a protagonist. Joe Baylor was an officer in the LAPD before an event disgraced him, demoted him to a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and now has him set to go to court. The event apparently involved no small amount of controversy, and so he furtively looks around the call center and avoids the gaze of others. He regularly uses his inhaler -- too often, in fact; one wonders if it's his stress level, or if he was already asthmatic and the raging wildfires are exacerbating his condition. Indeed, his workplace features a large wall of televisions tuned in to ongoing news reports of an inferno encroaching on Los Angeles. Among his regular calls, he must shut down the attempts of reporters sneakily trying to get his inside scoop. And then there are the calls he makes to his estranged family, trying to say a simple "good night" to his young daughter.

He's clearly not handling the stress well, and as played by Jake Gyllenhaal, the character clearly has some issues with anger management, bedside manner, and snap judgments. His short temper leads him to argue with a panicked caller who has apparently been robbed by a prostitute in one of the film's few comedic moments. Another time, more cruelly, he criticizes a caller for substance abuse; scenes like these stand in stark contrast to the main plot: he gets a call from a terrified woman (Riley Keough) who he surmises has been abducted. He quickly learns that she has a six-year-old daughter who may be in danger, too. Immediately (and alarmingly) invested in the case, he tries to operate as both a responding officer and a dispatcher, jumping from phone line to phone line to corral the necessary units. In the hands of Gyllenhaal, it's a master class in acting from the most consistently unpredictable and excellent actors working today.

But, in the hands of writer Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) and director Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven, Southpaw, King Arthur), the film's tone and themes vacillate wildly. What starts as a character-based thriller becomes an oddly unwieldy radio play of voices and ideas that reverberate without really sticking. Joe's rash responses -- including swearing to help Emily and her daughter without having enough information -- reveal the film's dubious critique of toxic white maleness in the American police system. His ignorant bravado and possessive masculinity cause serious problems and result in further violence, but the film's constant attempts to elicit our sympathy through Joe's well-meaning demeanor undermine the critique. I suppose we could be grateful this didn't lean into any discussions about Defunding the Police; instead, we get a watered-down survey of concepts relating to hegemonic cops in disgrace.

This movie's waste of potential themes notwithstanding, it's a wildly entertaining time because of Fuqua's focus on his greatest asset. Gyllenhaal is in almost every scene and still steals the movie, committing his every breath to conveying the inner (and often outer) turmoil of his character. His operatic finale rang a little melodramatic to me, but that's pretty standard for Fuqua's flicks. The movie occasionally overemploys typical thriller devices to ramp up the tension, like the approximate GPS he uses to track callers or the hellish flames projected from the rear wall of the office. And so, all in all, it's a reasonably good time at the movies if you want to rest your artistic intelligence and let the mellow side of darker thrillers carry you along.

Dolemite is My Name (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

In the 1970s, Rudy Ray Moore is working a record shop by day and a nightclub by night, hoping to make it in LA show biz. It's not going well. His boss won't let him perform a stand-up routine, even though he's the emcee, and his wistful manner is just begging for inspiration. Thankfully, the city of angels gives it to him when a homeless wino stumbles into the store entertains and spellbinds everyone within earshot with his boisterous storytelling. The slick rhymes and tight meter of his stories and jokes are as brazenly audacious as the crude and vulgar content. Soon thereafter, a hypnotized Moore takes to the streets by night and absorbs everything he can about this urban ghetto talk, and in a magnificent scene around a trash can fire, he fashions his future stardom from the most unlikely of sources. But, in vino veritas, and what appears to us a Shakespearean fool appears to Moore a muse.

Indeed, Dolemite is My Name is the story of the man behind the pop culture sensation, the popularly dubbed "Godfather of Rap." A biopic of rare insight and frenetic energy, it carries us along with Moore as he develops his stage persona, Dolemite, a wisecracking pimp with excessive charisma that manifests in braggadocio and rhyming syncopation and no small amount of profanity. "Dolemite is my name," he announces himself to anyone who will listen, "and fuckin' up muthafuckas is my game." He details his bizarre sexual exploits along with his impossible feats of heroism, criminality, and social prowess, all the while strutting along in suits of vibrant hues, bedazzled and glittering, with his hat and cane akimbo.

The role is a perfect match for the unique talents of Eddie Murphy, who has been largely absent from the silver screen for many years now. This is not as clearly a dramatic role as his in Dreamgirls, nor is it remotely child-friendly as many might have come to expect. This is Murphy in rare form, spitting out so many profanities you might think this was a Tarantino flick. But he's no Samuel L. Jackson, and Murphy is here making a bold reclamation of his talents as a serious artist. Other worthy players buttress the film, especially Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Tituss Burgess, and even Ron Cephas Jones in a single scene, but the movie only works because of its leading man.

Moore eventually decides he's going to make a movie about his alter ego, and suddenly the movie takes a drastic turn and feels more akin to Ed Wood or The Disaster Artist than I was ready to handle (Fun fact: the writers of this film also wrote Ed Wood and Big Eyes). We get plenty of slapstick to mirror the foul-mouthed blasphemies, hilarious sex scenes, and downright absurd effects. The madcap comedy boils over to a fever pitch both in terms of content (the movie's production is bedeviled with setbacks, conflicting characters, and financial turmoil) and in terms of execution: fierce editing, heightened music, and increasingly voluptuous production design raise the stakes in every frame. They take over an abandoned hotel as a soundstage, employ (or, rather, "employ") a group of white film students from UCLA as tech crew, and heartily enjoy the shoot. Well, everyone except the director, who ends up walking out when he can't Moore's campy artistry and flippant attitude any longer.

By the finale, which depicts the premiere of the troubled and troubling kung-fu blaxploitation film, we understand that for all his faults and failures, Moore is an admirable and even endearing man. Moreover, as the on-screen text describes before the credits roll, Moore is in many ways the catalyst and safe haven of a specific subset of American culture at a time when culture was breaking. His amazing ability to signify (more properly, signifyin') is the touchstone for much of what we now appreciate as rap music, sure, but also largely establishes a foundation for contemporary Ebonics or Black Vernacular English. The film's amazing insight into the creation of culture carries along its messages of cultural appropriation in heavy doses, but they are quite easy to take along with its main course, the surprisingly heartwarming story of a down-and-out hopeful who makes it big. At least, big on his own terms.

And, ultimately, isn't that what really matters?