Archive
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE SHOW, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER WAITING UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE DONE SO TO READ IT.
The death of actor Chadwick Boseman in August 2020 resulted in an outpouring of grief and affection from the entire Hollywood community, but also necessitated wholesale changes to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the planned sequel to the 2018 blockbuster Marvel superhero film Black Panther, which was already in pre-production at the time of Boseman’s death. With the film’s lead gone, director Ryan Coogler, along with co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole, re-fashioned the film to be not only a fun and interesting superhero action film, but also a surprisingly poignant meditation on death, grief, and legacy; despite not being there in person, Boseman’s presence weighs heavy on the film, giving it a depth and meaning that most films of this type do not contain. In terms of plot, Wakanda Forever sees Shuri, the younger sister of King T’Challa, having to step up and be a leader in her own right when her country comes under attack from a mysterious race of people seemingly descended from ancient Mayans, and who have a powerful leader of their own. The film has a groundbreaking headline cast made up almost entirely of black women – Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Florence Kasumba, Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Angela Bassett – with Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta, Martin Freeman, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in key supporting roles. Read more…
TENET – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE FILM, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER WAITING UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE DONE SO TO READ IT.
The dual concepts of time and reality have been at the forefront of Christopher Nolan’s films almost since the very beginning of his career, when his sophomore effort Memento in 2000 explored the life of a man with no short-term memory by essentially running the movie backwards. Most of his subsequent films – including The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar – have tackled variations on similar themes, from dreams within dreams, to the circular temporal nature of interplanetary travel via black holes. Even his last film, Dunkirk, messed around with time by presenting the evacuation of the beaches of Normandy in 1940 from three different perspectives, all of whom experience the event from a different chronological point of view. With Tenet, however, Nolan has delved into these concepts more deeply than ever before, creating a film that examines the notion of time from a physiological point of view, introducing theories as complex as statistical mechanics and thermodynamic entropy into a large-scale action spy thriller. Read more…
CREED II – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The unexpected critical and commercial success of Creed, the seventh movie in the enduring Rocky franchise that began in 1976, made a sequel inevitable. However, whereas the Rocky movies mostly got progressively worse as the series went on (who can forget Rocky’s robot butler in Rocky IV?), the two Creed movies have maintained their high quality through a combination of excellent writing, directing, acting, and emotional content, as well as some sensationally choreographed and realistic fight sequences. Michael B. Jordan continues in the title role as Adonis Creed, the son of former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed. The past comes back to haunt Adonis when Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago – the man who killed his father in the ring – challenges him to a fight. To rise to the occasion, Adonis again calls on Rocky Balboa to train him – but Rocky is reluctant to get involved in the fight, fearing that the son will suffer the same fate as the father. Sylvester Stallone returns to play Rocky for the eighth time, Dolph Lundgren reprises his iconic role as Ivan, Tessa Thompson plays Adonis’s fiancée Bianca, and Romanian actor Florin Munteanu debuts as the man-mountain Viktor. The film is directed by Steven Caple Jr., taking over the reigns from Ryan Coogler, and has an original score by Ludwig Göransson. Read more…
BLACK PANTHER – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The utter dominance of comic book action movies at the American box office continues with the success of Black Panther, the 18th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s the origin story of a character who appeared for the first time in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, and explores the history of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, which is the most technologically advanced civilization on Earth thanks to its unlimited supplies of the metal vibranium, but pretends to be a poor third world country to hide its power. Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa, the new King of Wakanda, who takes up the mantle of the Black Panther after his father’s death in Captain America: Civil War; returning home to begin leading his country, T’Challa finds himself facing a threat in the shape of Eric Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), a mercenary with ties to Wakanda, whose actions send the entire country into a civil war of its own. The film co-stars Lupita Nyongo, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Sterling K. Brown, and Andy Serkis, and is directed by Ryan Coogler. Read more…
CREED – Ludwig Göransson
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The seventh film in the iconic Rocky series of boxing-themed movies, Creed continues the story of Philly pugilist Rocky Balboa, who fought his way from nothing to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. Nine years after the events of the last film, Rocky is still in Philadelphia, running the restaurant named after his late wife Adrian, and generally staying out of the limelight. Things change when he is approached by a young fighter from Los Angeles named Adonis ‘Donny’ Johnson, who is actually the long-estranged son of Rocky’s former rival and great friend Apollo Creed, who had been killed in the ring thirty years previously (during Rocky IV). Rocky reluctantly agrees to train Adonis, and the two develop a father-son bond; simultaneously, Adonis begins a relationship with an aspiring singer-songwriter named Bianca. However, things change on several fronts when Adonis is challenged by the British world light heavyweight champion Ricky Conlan, and when Rocky develops health problems and is forced to confront his own mortality. Read more…
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