by ·Comments Off on Sinners (2025, Ryan Coogler)

I’ve gotta stop sitting so close to the screen – between the closeness and the frantic editing, I’m not sure how our small team survived when fifty vampires, who’ve been shown as lightning-quick and super-strong, bust into the house. Bold music throughout, and the music not just incidental but vital to plot and theme. I’d be interested in reading about influences, since it turns From Dusk Till Dawn to Django Unchained. A little too neatly tied together, with the late revelations of the twins’ Chicago adventure (not actually becoming rich gangsters but stealing big from two rival gangs then running away while the gangs blamed each other) and the tolerant local whites’ less-tolerant motivations, and each of the three main dudes meeting a woman at the same time, then those six being the main survivors. Mostly as good as advertised though, taking place in a single day, plus a delicious Buddy Guy postscript.

The near-white girl is Hailee from True Grit, and the other Michael Jordan’s woman played the wife in His House… we saw a preview for the evil white vampire’s next horror movie 28 Years Later… the girl Sammy likes will supposedly star in a Running Man remake… I never recognize Lola “Gemini” Kirke, who doesn’t look enough like her sister… the Chinese woman who must have died in that climactic rampage is in the new Alma & The Wolf… the doorman was in Miracle at St. Anna and plays Raphael in the recent Ninja Turtle things… plus Delroy Lindo on harmonica.

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.