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Movie Reviews

Year: 2018

Genre: Superhero Movie

Directed: Ryan Coogler

Stars: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Sterling K. Brown, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, John Kani

Production: Marvel Studios

 

When people ask me to describe Black Panther, the closest comparison that comes to mind when trying to set up a frame of reference – is Star Wars (1977). This probably says more about me and the cultural soup I swim in than the actual movie. I never grew up with Black Panther as a comic-book staple so the prospect of translating to the screen an idealized pan-African, futurist society, with pseudo-spiritual traditions, fleshed out with a story based solely on palace intrigue feels foreign enough to me.

But to say Black Panther the movie is a black Star Wars, featuring a black Iron Man (2008) or black Captain America (2011) is so (if you pardon the pun) beyond the pale that it almost feels like a put-down. As if to say the black version of anything is tacitly understood to be the lesser-than alternative to something that is the perceived norm. No, not this time around – Black Panther just is Black Panther. It’s a unique, gorgeously realized, inspiringly weighty film that uses every asset it has to tell one of the most compelling stories within the Marvel universe, and more generally, a solid story on its own terms.

Black Panther takes place shortly after Civil War (2016) whose cataclysmic events resulted in the death of Wakanda’s monarch King T’Chaka (Kani). T’Chaka’s son T’Challa (Boseman) ascends to the throne and after taking a role in an extended ceremony is bestowed the mantle of The Black Panther.  But when the reappearance of an old foe (Serkis) threatens the relative peace in Wakanda, T’Challa sets out to capture him and in-so-doing may have guaranteed himself a short reign.

Central to the Black Panther story is the inclusion of Erik Killmonger (Jordan) a half-American, half-Wakandan force of vengeance whose backstory as a forsaken shadow of the past conjures memories of The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). Now Marvel has a bad habit of plugging in one-and-done villains whose stature and motivations has proved a weak point in these movies. But here Killmonger ends up being; with little doubt one of the best villains we’ve seen in the golden age of comic book movies. Not only is he uncompromisingly charismatic and ruthless but his backstory and endgame prove incredibly compelling. Not only that, he’s the perfect foil for T’Challa, who’s predisposition for isolationism is fundamentally at odds with Killmonger’s mass revolution. American critics may cite lazy comparisons of the post-Killmonger T’Challa as a stand-in for Martin Luther King while Killmonger is a contemporary Malcolm X but it’d be way more appropriate to compare them to Seretse Khama and Mobutu Sese Seko. After all, Black Panther leans into its Sub-Saharan African roots to the point where all white characters are almost incidental. So maybe we should follow its lead.

Regardless of how the movie codes its heroes and villains, however, audiences, specifically black audiences will have a lot to mull over. Like the country of Wakanda itself, Black Panther has a lot of incredible layers hidden underneath pulse-pounding action scenes and compelling characters. White audiences may very well just see window dressing. Black audiences will undoubtedly see cultural flashpoints belying empowering messages and connecting dots of identity; political, social, personal, spiritual and even gender. I mean, T’Challa does surround himself almost exclusively with powerful women including the love interest and moral center Nakia (Nyong’o), his wicked smart sister Shuri (Wright) and the nay-unstoppable General Okoye (Gurira). Whether these layers of connectivity are ultimately undermined by Disney’s cooptation of pan-African ephemera and/or the fact that the movie emotes patriotism towards a fictional amalgam of 54 distinct countries with thousands of distinct sub-groups is not really for me to say (though in all honesty, it did make me feel a little icky).

With a movie like this that positions itself so comfortably in the cultural zeitgeist, complaining about its various faults feels a lot like nitpicking. Needless to say, most of the problems with Black Panther are connected to the realities of serialized, conveyor-belt cinema that Disney has turned into bonafide pop art. Special-effects added in post-production get a little dicey at times and the hand-to-hand combat scenes feel repetitive and unremarkable. Additionally, the mark of Black Panther’s (and Marvel in general) storytelling i.e. an intimate, standalone plot with only tertiary world-building means that if you remove all the thematics you’re still left with a basic good v evil storyline. And while in Thor: Ragnarok it still felt appropriate, in Black Panther it feels unusually charged.

Again, it’s not for me to say whether or not Marvel appropriately married blackness with all the naturally fascistic tendencies that lend themselves to the superhero genre. All I know is if Black Panther is already having a positive effect on communities of color while getting hate trolls to foam at the mouth then it must be doing something right.

Final Grade: B+

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Movie Reviews

Year: 2018

Genre: Sci-Fi Drama

Directed: Alex Garland

Stars: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac, Benedict Wong, Sonoya Mizuno

Production: Paramount Pictures

 

Annihilation is Ambition – or at the very least what we’ve come to know as ambition. It is a stunningly beautiful, emotionally ratcheting and intellectually stimulating film to be sure; expertly crafted with an uncommon appreciation for the meditative, the obscure and the monstrous. At one point a character refers to “the shimmer,” the phenomena studied in Annihilation by its characters, as a prism. In a way so is this movie. Waves of information from the primordial to the meta-textual form the backbone of Annihilation, creating what amounts to the biggest mind-f*ck you’re liable to see this year.

 

The film begins in an uncomfortable daze. A meteor crash lands at the base of a Southern shore lighthouse. Oscar Isaac lurks in shadows – the first survivor to return from the alien force field around the site that slowly expands across miles of empty swamp. Lena (Portman) an accomplished biologist is now the second, and the first to adequately give testimony on what exactly goes on inside the shimmer.

 

And what exactly is the shimmer? Writer/Director Alex Garland does a great job keeping that mystery as opaque as can be without falling into a hole of diminishing returns. He accomplishes this largely through well-timed frights and beautifully acted character moments especially on the part of supporting players. We largely remain in the headspace of Portman’s ambulant Lena, yet fellow scientists-with-a-death-wish Anya (Rodriguez), Josie (Thompson) and Ventress (Jason Leigh) remain singular and engaging; so much so that they prod you to think about their motives and actions.

 

This, I feel is what makes Annihilation so refreshing and (thankfully) tempers its academic ambitions. Film-school students will gasp at the purposeful visual references to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) and Solaris (1972) but what Annihilation adds to film language is a drastically different context; one that almost seems to take delight in perverting visual and audio cues for the sake of some truly pulpy moments. One minute Garland is smuggling the most high-minded of overtones to get us thinking about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, next we’re sideswiped by bloodcurdling monster moments that’d feel at home in a 1960’s B-movie, only with much better effects.

 

It’s a tough balancing act and one that deserves the highest of praise even if the editing proves unmotivated most of the time. Throughout the film, you get the feeling something was lost in post-production like a thematic follow-through that the director thought lost its luster. At first, the compositions and cross-cutting between timelines felt like it was leading somewhere, but when the third act rolls around, it becomes clear that it’s all there just to keep the pace. That’s fine, that’s one of the largest functions of good editing. But one can’t help but be reminded of a movie like Arrival (2016) when watching Annihilation, compare the perfect synergy behind frame and function and think of Garland’s latest as somehow lesser-than. It’s even more frustrating when considering Garland’s freshman effort Ex Machina (2016), which did the above with so much aplomb that it still remains the best remix of art-house and heavy science-fiction sensibilities ever put to screen. How can it be that out of the two, both beset with themes of identity, humanity, and femininity, it’s Annihilation that has a last act that’s blocked like a Revlon commercial?

 

Yet if this is the director in a sophomore slump than I’m excited to see what he comes up with next. Annihilation’s biggest strength lies in its ability to punctuate stunning beauty and uncompromising ambition with exhibiting deeply felt characterizations that feel like they can exist in our world while also seeming otherworldly. Accomplished actresses Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson are truly a sight to behold and Portman proves she’s more than capable of anchoring a movie with such loft.

 

Final Grade: B+

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