Here Are The Movies of Today

Heads up on the movies hitting theaters today, starting with the biopic Rustin starring Colman Domingo seen above. Telling the long overdue story of Bayard Rustin, the black homosexual who organized the march on Washington back in 1963 but got shoved to the side attention-wise because of the "homosexual" part of that Domingo gives a wonderful performance -- I do wish the movie was a little more lively and surprising though. It very much feels like a movie that will be watched respectfully in high school history classrooms for a long time and seeing as how this is a story that needs to be told that's good and all. It's just told very flat, and visually it's got that whole boring Netflix style. And I wish people would stop hiring Chris Rock to act -- he is a terrible actor. Anyway I would've written a proper review of this one when I saw it at NewFest a few weeks back but I had a nightmare audience experience with people using their phones and being total assholes so I didn't feel comfortable writing about it; all of that might've colored my opinion of the movie. It's worth watching for Colman -- just don't expect to be bowled over by the movie itself, I guess. Watch the trailer here.

Then there are two other movies out today that I have also seen -- first there is Sofia Coppola's Priscilla which I reviewed right here. Terrific movie. And second there is the documentary Subject, which I saw at Sundance but never got the chance to write about -- it interviews the subjects of multiple famous documentaries, specifically real life people from The Staircase, Hoop Dreams, Capturing the Friedmans, The Wolfpack, and The Square. And it digs into what that experience was like -- if they felt like their stories were properly served by the documentrarians' takes, and what the aftermath was like. It's all incredibly fascinating, especially if you're familiar with those films -- I'm not sure it would be if you haven't, but maybe? It does raise several questions of ethics that stand on their own. 

And the fourth movie out today is called Fingernails and it stars three of my favorite currently working actors -- Riz Ahmed and Jessie Buckley and Jeremy Allen White! You cannot go wrong with Riz and Jessie and Jeremy. That said I have not seen it yet and I have kept what it's about to a minimum because I want to be surprised by the movie when I do see it. I know it's being sold as a "sci-fi romance" and it's from Greek director Christos Nikou, who has worked with Yorgos Lanthimos and made the 2020 film Apples which... I heard great things about but also haven't seen. Anyway Fingernails is both in theaters and on streaming today so we'll see it soon enough. Here's the trailer: