a name to know

Powerful new Netflix film Rustin showcases forgotten civil rights activist and pioneer

Certain people in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s became so iconic that it’s easy to recall their names, people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Medgar Evers. But others are not as well-known despite accomplishing monumental deeds, including Bayard Rustin, who was one of the co-organizers of 1963’s March on Washington.

The new film Rustin attempts to rescue his reputation from the dustbin of history by showing just how influential he was. The film tracks Rustin (Colman Domingo), who had been a leader in the movement for decades, as he tries to push fellow Black leaders to go beyond what they think is possible. An attempt to protest the 1960 Democratic National Convention puts him on the outs with the NAACP and others, but he persists.

Photo courtesy of Netflix

Colman Domingo in Rustin.

When he revives the idea of a March on Washington – which he and A. Philip Randolph (Glynn Turman) attempted to organize in 1941 – he once again meets resistance, most notably from NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock). But his friendship with King (Aml Ameen) – to whom he introduced the idea of non-violent protest – and his sheer tenacity keeps the project on track, a remarkable feat given that he was also having to hide the fact that he was gay from many, even those in his inner circle.

Directed by George C. Wolfe and written by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, the film is a powerful take on the Civil Rights Movement from a perspective that rarely gets shown. The front-facing people like King, Wilkins, and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (Jeffrey Wright) get a lot of the credit, but the grunt work, especially for the march, was being done by Rustin and his group of both Black and white volunteers.

Unlike Rustin was forced to do, the filmmakers don’t hide Rustin’s gayness, although they do acknowledge the difficulty that came with being gay in the early ’60s. Rustin knows just where to go in his private time to be able to live relatively openly, but relationships are tricky, whether it’s with Tom (Gus Halper), his partner/work assistant, or Elias Taylor (Johnny Ramey), a married man in the movement with whom he has an affair.

The struggles in both sides of his life complement each other, as Rustin had to fight tooth and nail against racists, homophobes, and powerful people in the movement. Wolfe and his team keep the film from becoming too grim by utilizing fast-paced editing and, often, a jazzy score that fits with the against-all-odds mission Rustin is trying to accomplish.

Domingo, who’s been an actor on the rise in recent years, knocks the lead role out of the park. Utilizing a distinctive voice and never-back-down attitude, he is everything the role needed and more. The rest of cast is mix between notable Black actors like Rock, Wright, Turman, and CCH Pounder to go with lesser knowns like Ameen, Ramey, and Michael Potts to make for a potent acting crew.

The events in Rustin happened 60 years ago, but its story is as resonant as ever, especially because it gives us a new view on a famous moment. Bayard Rustin may not have spoken at the March on Washington, but this film teaches us that he was as responsible as anyone for cementing its place in the history books.

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Rustin opens at IPIC Houston on November 3; it will debut on Netflix on November 17.

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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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