RUSTIN

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Magnificent.

"Rustin" is a prime example of ensemble filmmaking that works like a charm.

Coleman Domingo gives a tour de force performance as gay political activist Bayard Rustin, advisor to Martin Luther King.

Here is a fully fleshed out representation of a complex black gay humanitarian struggling to help bring equality in a racist political and corporate American climate of hate.

This is Coleman Domingo's moment. What a talent!

"Rustin" has a lot to say, and it says it all with supreme clarity and expediency.

Screenwriters Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black (screenwriter on "Milk") did their homework, and it shows.

This film's pacing and editing is exquisite.

"Rustin" is all substance, with appropriate '60s era style.

Supporting turns from Chris Rock and Jeffrey Wright pop with serious intentionality.

This is a perfect movie to go in knowing nothing about it.

Director George Wolfe hits another one out of the park on the heels of his perfect "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."

Smart of Netflix to do a theatrical release before "Rustin" goes to streaming. I saw it at the Paris cinema on 58th Street.

This movie will take you by surprise.

Rated PG-13. 106 mins.

DJANGO UNCHAINED — SHOCKTOBER!

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Back With a Vengeance: 
Tarantino Pushes Homage and Allegory to 11

You know from Tarantino’s audacious choice of intro music — the haunting theme song from Sergio Corbucci’s iconic 1966 Spaghetti Western “Django,” that the maestro-of-all-things-tasty has many surprises in store for his delighted audience.

Campy, funny, shocking, and seeping with sardonic social commentary, “Django Unchained” is Quentin Tarantino’s finest film to date.

The madness of slavery, i.e. racism, hangs thick in the air of the American South circa 1858. Tarantino says of his film’s representation of the pre-Civil War South: “It can’t be more nightmarish than it was in real life. It can’t be more surrealistic than it was in real life. It can’t me more outrageous than it was in real life.” Indeed, groans of audience empathy arrive at intervals with the agony we witness on-screen. Tarantino’s allegory regarding the use of torture couldn’t be more obvious.

In typical revenge-plot fashion, Tarantino establishes the nimble bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (brilliantly played by Christoph Waltz) as the kind of man who can get himself out of any situation. The retired dentist “purchases” freedom from slavery for Django (Jamie Foxx) to assist Schultz in identifying a trio of brothers named Brittle whose heads carry a hefty reward.

Django proves more than qualified for hunting down and killing slave-owners. Working together as a team, Dr. Schultz and Django craft a complex plan to free Django’s enslaved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from the evil clutches of Leonardo DiCaprio’s plantation owner Calvin Candie. “Candyland” is name of Mr. Candie’s plantation where he cultivates “Mandingo” slave warriors who fight to the death. DiCaprio’s centerpiece monologue — wherein the actor accidentally cut his hand and chooses to use the blood draining from his hand — is the stuff of cult movie legend.

Tarantino’s plot acrobatics have never seemed silkier — or bloodier for that matter. Blood doesn’t just splatter — intestines explode from bodies. More than a pure Spaghetti Western homage, the overall piece is an exploitation cinema mutt. Every character name rings with a bell pulled from Tarantino’s vast cornucopia of movie inspirations. The big-kid auteur gives shout-outs to everything from Gordon Parks’s “Shaft” to martial arts action star Sonny Sheba. The effect is an onion-layered communal movie for film lovers to rally around. I dare say that all those involved in the making of “Django Unchained” had more fun making it than just about any other group of actors and filmmakers. The comic joys and dark delights are up there on the screen.

As with all of Tarantino’s films, “Django Unchained” is filled with spellbinding dialogue and outstanding plot twists. One such sequence of steadily building suspense arrives after Schultz has freed Django. Our two heroes enter a bar where the white owner insists that they leave immediately for the obvious reason that they don’t allow black people. Schultz handily dispatches the man, and sends for the sheriff while he and Django take a seat with a couple of mugs of beer.

Naturally the bigoted sheriff shows up with a chip on his shoulder that the good “doctor” is only too happy to permanently remove. Shultz sends for the town Marshall, who in turn shows up with a posse of gun-toting thugs. The scene culminates in a crescendo of character-revealing magic. It’s not too early to call “Django Unchained” an instant classic. Movie lovers rejoice; Q.T. is back in the house.

Rated R. 160 mins.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD — SHOCKTOBER!

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In the context of a social revolution boiling around the ongoing war in Viet Nam, George A. Romero made a bold independent horror film that shocked audiences to their core in 1968.

Romero took all of the US Government’s vile attacks on humanity and flipped it on itself in an original way that set off a chain reaction that is still echoed today.

Filmed on a budget of $114,000, Romero used black-and-white film stock to create an agitprop‪ masterpiece of revolutionary filmmaking. "Night of the Living Dead" introduced zombies as a literal metaphor for blood-hungry soldiers and washed-up citizens of every stripe. Romero's "zombie" trope would soon become a narrative touchstone of universal appeal.

Although the allegory was lost on audiences unable to get past the film’s outré grotesqueness, itself a commentary on the war in Viet Nam, the socially relevant subtext is unmistakable.

Complacent white siblings Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbara (Judith O'Dea) visit their father's grave in a rural Pennsylvania bone yard that they have visited since they were kids. Johnny can’t resist scaring his adult sister when she shows signs of being scared.  However, shit gets real very fast when a zombie appears out of nowhere and attacks them, getting the getter of Johnny against a tombstone. 

A textbook chase-scene follows that bristles with suspense and horror. Romero instinctively uses Dutch angles to great effect. He expands time to create maximum tension. No key in the car’s ignition means Barbara has to put the car in neutral and coast her escape. Sound effects and spooky music make the sequence all the more terrifying.

Barbara runs to a farmhouse where she teams up with the Ben (Duane Jones), a soul brother on a survival mission. Others seek shelter there too, but Ben is the articulate and clear-thinking protagonist that keeps survival possible. A key scene shows Ben’s superior logic regarding remaining upstairs in the boarded up house where they can fight the off zombies rather than locking themselves in the home’s dead end cellar. Seldom before had a black character exerted such power and intelligence in American cinema.  

Romero handles the violence with a Gothic sense of dread that reflects life in a war zone. Nothing is predictable. Chaos reigns. 

Before it's over, family members will have to kill one of their own that's been bitten by a mindless zombie. Romero was inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 sci-fi novel "I Am Legend," but expanded significantly on Matheson's doomsday narrative to combine social commentary with satire in concrete terms of ideological conflict directly related to America’s war plight.

George Romero went onto to expand on his original concept for “Night of the Living Dead” with a biting attack on consumerist culture ("Dawn of the Dead" - 1978) that once again turned the horror genre on its head. Romero saw the enemy, and they are the zombie masses among us. There is nowhere safe to hide, from ourselves.

Rated X. 96 mins.