by ·Comments Off on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020, George Wolfe)

It’s singer Ma’s show, but the record producers whine about every last expense, and the new guy in the band gradually takes over the movie as he antagonizes everyone. Ma is Viola Davis, also great in Fences and Blackhat, who holds a certain amount of power as long as she expends all her energy every day holding onto it, and the new guy is Chadwick Boseman in his celebrated final role, mixing arrogant with tormented. The veterans: Michael “Brother Mouzone” Potts, Glynn “Mayor Royce” Turman, and bandleader Colman Domingo (Red Hook Summer preacher-accuser). Ma gets a stuttering relative to intro the band as a power move, while Chadwick speaks of himself in the third person – never a good sign. Sure enough, he pulls a knife on Domingo, gets fired from the band after the session, and finally stabs Turman over nothing. I don’t understand the editing – good performances, though. Opening scene is set an hour south of here, in Barnesville.

Ma:

Chadwick in happier times with hottie Taylour Paige, star of last year’s Zola:

Turman, Domingo, Potts, an hour later after Chadwick has pulled a knife:

Chadwick, boxed in:

by ·Comments Off on Da 5 Bloods (2020, Spike Lee)

“There were atrocities on both sides.” Let’s see if I have this straight… American gold intended to pay Vietnamese allies fighting vietcong was found by Chadwick Boseman’s squad… CB wants to distribute it to Black countrymen, but is killed by accident by Delroy Lindo, who then hides the gold along with surviving buddies Isiah Whitlock, Clarke Peters and Norm Lewis.

The four return to Vietnam in present-day with Delroy’s son Jonathan Majors (Monty in The Last Black Man) and tour guide Vinh, locating the gold and the remains of their commander. This is where I thought they’d turn on each other out of paranoid greed, per the Sierra Madre comparisons I’d read, but it’s the already unstable MAGA-hat Delroy who holds the others hostage, and their smuggler middleman Jean Reno leading the fight against them. Only Peters and Majors make it out alive, and about a sixth of the gold is donated to Black Lives Matter, which ain’t bad. Whoever said this movie has more aspect-ratio clowning than The Grand Budapest Hotel was right, and I hadn’t heard about all the injections of historical photos. The only part I didn’t buy is an anti-landmine organization happening to walk by moments after someone steps on a mine.

by ·Comments Off on Black Panther (2018, Ryan Coogler)

All marvel movies are about sibling rivalries and father issues, aren’t they? Twenty-some years ago, New Black Panther Chadwick Boseman’s dad T’Chaka (who later died in a Civil War-era explosion) killed his brother/Boseman’s uncle N’Jobu (This Is Us star Sterling Brown), and now N’Jobu’s son has grown into the revenge-seeking Michael B. Jordan. But first, Boseman has to become Black Panther so we’re familiar with the rituals and clans… Winston Duke challenges and loses, Daniel Kaluuya is a Boseman buddy who joins Jordan and feels ambivalent about it (he’s this movie’s Karl Urban), Forest Whitaker is a wise man (of course he is). Jordan shows up with a dead enemy of Wakanda (Andy Serkis as “Ulysses Klaue”) and proof of his noble birth, so he’s accepted and allowed to challenge, then after he wins and Boseman loses his Panther powers, the alliances get all twisted.

Boseman has very capable help from his gearhead sister Shuri (Letitia Wright of the Black Mirror season I keep forgetting to watch), his ex Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), and Kaluuya’s girl, the bald warrior Okoye (Danai Gurira of Mother of George, whose costar Isaach De Bankolé appears here as an elder and I didn’t recognize him because of the huge distracting lip-plate), and improbably, CIA agent Martin Freeman. Besides the whole cynical “The CIA is actually doing good things for Africa” message and some typical CG-cartoon fight scenes, the movie’s Africa-influenced sci-fi and badass warrior women make for some striking imagery that we’ve never seen before. This and Thor 3 and Guardians are finally taking all this blockbuster superhero money and producing things that are fantastic to look at instead of ever-larger monsters destroying ever-larger cities.