Movie review

Horrors of racial violence and a mother's love power 'Till'

The uptick in awareness over violence perpetrated on Black people in general, and Black men in particular, in recent years has served to underscore the tragically long history of racial violence in the United States. Though far from the first such incident, the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 has been an infamous example of such hatred, the story of which is laid out in the new film Till.

Emmett (Jalyn Hall), nicknamed Bo by his family, was sent by his single mother, Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler) to visit relatives in Mississippi when he was 14 years old. Portrayed in the film as an affable and outgoing kid, Emmett is warned by his mom that his sociable personality would not necessarily be as well-received in the South as it is in Chicago, especially among white people.

Sure enough, he runs afoul of a white female shopkeeper, whose husband and a friend soon track him down, kidnap him, and murder him. This horrifying moment would be the main part of many other films, but what happened after is what this film focuses on most. Mamie, despite her grief, uses Emmett’s awful state in death to show the world what racial hatred truly looks like, and dedicates herself to confronting those who killed him in court despite the personal risk.

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu and written by Chukwu, Michael Reilly, and Keith Beauchamp, the film is a tough but essential watch for those willing to reckon with the country’s sordid history. As the world has already witnessed too much violence toward Black people, Chukwu keeps Emmett’s actual murder off-screen. But, just as Mamie did, she does not shy away from showing his ravaged corpse, lingering on his bloated body and face in a series of scenes.

Some may argue that the amount of time spent looking at the horror inflicted on Emmett is too much, but that’s exactly the point. The reason Emmett Till’s name is so well-known is because Mamie made it her goal to get that appalling visual out to the world, hoping against hope that in doing so, some kind of change would occur. As Black people continue to be killed or abused at a shocking rate, showing the result remains as urgent today as it was 67 years ago.

Perhaps acknowledging the overwhelming power of those scenes, Chukwu seems to pull back on the emotion in the latter half of the movie. Even if you don’t know the history of the trial of the two men accused of the murder, the verdict will be unsurprising given the time and location in which it took place. Instead, it’s the stoic nature of Mamie and civil rights activist Medgar Evers (Tosin Cole), and the support of the Black community overall, that carries the film to its righteous conclusion.

Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures

Jalyn Hall and Danielle Deadwyler in Till.

Deadwyler is tasked with a difficult performance, and she manages to maintain a good balance between being despondent and being overwrought. She has a brightness that keeps the film from becoming a crushingly depressing dirge. She’s also aided by strong supporting performances from Cole, Sean Patrick Thomas, Whoopi Goldberg, and John Douglas Thompson.

The story told in Till happened a long time ago, but the lessons to be learned from it still apply today. The fight for civil rights endures, and as long as there is racial injustice in the world, films like this will need to still be made.

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Till is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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