Black Panther (2018): based on characters and concepts created by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Don McGregor, Billy Graham, and others; written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole; directed by Ryan Coogler; starring Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther/ T'Challa), Michael B. Jordan (Erik 'Killmonger' Stevenson), Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia), Danal Gurira (Okoye), Martin Freeman (Everett Ross), Daniel Kaluuya (W'Kabi), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M'Baku), Angela Bassett (Ramonda), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), and Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue):
Marvel's epic about its first African superhero is obviously a crowd-pleaser, based on its stunning box-office success. It's an enjoyable piece of work. Ryan Coogler and company do about as well as one can in these things when it comes to superhero characterization, and some of the early fight sequences are nicely staged without too many quick edits, especially a battle in a Korean casino.
We also get a good look at the high-tech kingdom of Wakanda in all its utopian, Afro-futuristic glory. Much of the visual design for the capital of Wakanda is thoroughly grounded in the work of writer-artist Jack Kirby, who co-created the Black Panther with Stan Lee in the pages of the Fantastic Four in the 1960's. Given the success of Black Panther and the even-more-Kirbyesque Thor: Ragnarok, Kirby's art still has some power to awe and delight.
I have my usual quibbles, some of them anyway. The final battle goes on forever and occurs on too many fronts to be dramatically satisfying. And changing the last name of sound- and vibranium-obsessed villain Ulysses Klaw (a spirited Andy Serkis, probably glad to be out of the motion-capture suit for once) to 'Klaue' is a hilarious moment in micro-managing "verisimilitude" in superhero movies.
For a rare moment, Marvel has a movie villain whose motivations make psychological sense in a serious way in Michael B. Jordan's inspired turn as Erik "Killmonger." He's about one personality change away from being a hero, which is what makes him so involving (well, that and Jordan's charismatic performance). He's almost a tragic hero, to the extent that one roots for him to "turn good."
Chadwick Boseman is terrific in the difficult role of the mostly saintly Black Panther. An all-star cast of women does great work as Black Panther/T'Challa's female honour guard, his teen-genius sister, his ex (a fun and funny Lupita Nyong'o) , and his mother, a regal Angela Bassett. Coogler and company even manage to navigate the potentially offensive Black Panther character known as Man-Ape, in part by never mentioning him by that name and instead making he and his people something other than antagonists.
The tribal leader formerly known as Man-Ape (played by a solid Winston Duke) even gets some comic moments as he punctures the assumptions of Caucasian second-banana Bilbo, I mean, CIA agent Martin Freeman. Now that's good film-making! Highly recommended.
12 Years a Slave: adapted by John Ridley from the memoir by Solomon Northup; directed by Steve McQueen; starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (Solomon Northup), Paul Giamatti (Freeman), Benedict Cumberbatch (Ford), Paul Dano (Tibeats), Michael Fassbender (Edwin Epps), Lupita Nyong'o (Patsey), Alfre Woodard (Mistress Shaw) and Brad Pitt (Bass) (2013): A terrific film with terrific writing, directing, and acting throughout. This should really win Oscars for director, picture, adapted screenplay, actor (Ejiofor), supporting actor (Fassbender), and supporting actress (a harrowing Lupita Nyong'o). Will it? Probably not. Nonetheless, I think this is probably the best drama of at least the last five years. Certainly the most affecting, harrowing, and moving movie.
Really, there's not a lot more to say. There's a lot less on-screen violence and blood than most reviews lead one to believe. It's the skill of the writing and direction that make this so. In a weird way, Ejiofor's Solomon Northup, a free Northern African-American kidnapped and sold into slavery in the early 1840's, is the ultimate real-world Hitchcock hero, the ultimate Wrong Man. And McQueen deploys the principles perfected by Hitchcock to augment our identification with Northup, our horror at his situation, and our loathing of the system he's trapped within.
There's a nearly wordless scene involving the aftermath of a near-lynching that is as perfect a visual metaphor for the horrors of slavery as anything in any film I can think of -- and the metaphor remains a literal scene of horror as well, one focused on the suffering of a character we've grown to admire and the brave kindness of one person.
There are a lot of other great scenes. There's a soundscape that sometimes menaces the viewer-listener in a manner reminiscent of the non-diegetic industrial-slaughter-house sounds of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though the sounds here are those of a steam engine heard from within the hold by the kidnapped men and women.
There's Fassbender, as a horribly explicable monster; and Benedict Cumberbatch, as a slave-owner who knows that what he's doing is wrong; there's Lupita Nyong'o, making dolls from corn-husks, whose unsurpassed excellence in picking cotton protects her from exactly nothing in the way of Fassbender's monstrosity. There's Brad Pitt as a Canadian who is just good enough without being super-heroic or being made the focus of the film's goodness, the White Saviour.
There's a scene at the end that Spielberg and most other modern film-makers would have botched with over-length and crushing mawkishness, but which everyone involved here gives us sparingly and underplayed and movingly perfect because the movie knows how to pull back just that little bit to give its characters and its world their necessary emotional space. This is as about as good as a serious movie gets. Highly recommended.
