Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — Sophomore slump

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, strong violence and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.11.22

If this new entry falls short of its predecessor, it’s mostly because the 2018 film set the bar so impressively high.

 

Okoye (Danai Gurira, left) and Shuri (Letitia Wright) adopt disguises in an effort to
infiltrate MIT, where they hope to locate — and rescue — the scientist who has
developed a controversial vibranium detector.

That said, director Ryan Coogler’s second entry in the Black Panther series has a massive hole in its center: the tragic absence of star Chadwick Boseman. Try as they might, Coogler and co-scripter Joe Robert Cole — both of whom brought us the first film — can’t quite fill that gap.

And, in an effort to compensate — while also honoring the series’ ongoing heritage — they spend too much time on grief, lamentation and bleak dialogue exchanges between the story’s primary characters. You’ll find very few smiles in this long-winded saga, which at a ridiculously self-indulgent 161 minutes, overstays its welcome by at least one massive melee too many.

 

On top of which, this story’s central character — the science-minded prodigy, Shuri (Letitia Wright) — is burdened by an unnecessary amount of heartbreak.

 

A year has passed since the untimely death of Shuri’s older brother, King T’Challa, from circumstances left vague. Wakanda’s Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) struggles to protect their nation from intervening world powers, some of whom — notably France and the United States — wish to get their hands on the African realm’s fabled vibranium metal, with its extraordinary abilities to absorb, store and release large amounts of kinetic energy.

 

This meteoric substance also remains invisible to conventional scanners, making it a potential game-changer in global rivalries … which Queen Ramonda knows only too well. She has no intention of sharing vibranium with anybody.

 

Ah, but elsewhere at sea, a U.S. research facility is monitoring the progress of a deep-water machine that CAN detect — and has found — an undersea vibranium deposit. But before this discovery can be celebrated, everybody at the facility is slaughtered by an ocean-going platoon of blue-skinned underwater denizens, led by the remorselessly vicious Namor (Tenoch Huerta), lord of the hidden undersea civilization of Talokan.

 

(A brief sidebar, for those unfamiliar with Marvel Comics history: Namor, most famously known as the Sub-Mariner, dates all the way back to 1939. Since then, he has become both hero and villain, generally in service of trying to prevent his undersea kingdom of Atlantis from being discovered and/or destroyed by “surface dwellers.” 

 

(More recently in the Marvel Comics universe — given that both are hidden civilizations with advanced tech and militaristic tendencies — Wakanda and Atlantis have been embroiled in a punishing, long-term war that has wreaked havoc on both sides: hence, this film’s core plotline.)

 

(But I’ve no idea while Coogler and Cole made up “Talokan,” when they could — should — simply have used Atlantis.)

Black Panther: Sleek and polished

Black Panther (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for considerable action violence and (you gotta love this) a "brief rude gesture"
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.16.18

Marvel’s superhero movies have come in a variety of flavors thus far:

• Rip-snortin’ excitement (The Avengers, Captain America);

• Shakespearean high melodrama (Thor);

• Goofy adventure (Guardians of the Galaxy); and even

• Vulgar insolence (Deadpool).

This one’s different yet again.

T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman, left) is dismayed by an unexpected challenge to his
birthright, which comes from N'Jadaka (Michael B. Jordan) and takes place at
Warrior Falls (inspired by South Africa's majestic Oribi Gorge).

Black Panther is the first superhero film steeped with honor, nobility and heritage, while still delivering the requisite dollops of action, along with a soupçon of humor. Careful attention is paid, as well, to introducing a culture defined equally by its spiritual, mystical and technological elements.

On top of which, director Ryan Coogler and co-scripter Joe Robert Cole wrap the entire package with a thoughtful discussion of a contemporary Big Issue.

Add a star and supporting cast who bring dignity and grace to their respective roles, and you truly couldn’t ask for more.

The roster is led by Chadwick Boseman’s impeccably gracious and regal portrayal of T’Challa, reluctant new king of the little-known African country of Wakanda, which has been concealed for centuries — by design — from the rest of the world. This kingdom’s essential back-story is provided during an economical prolog, via a fascinating style of “shifting sand” animation later revealed as Wakanda’s signature means of telecommunication.

Boseman’s stance, manner of speech — his very aura — bespeak graciousness and a compassionate ruler’s tendency to suffer over difficult decisions. He rarely raises his voice — never needs to — and there’s no doubt, even when he dons his super-heroic suit and becomes the Black Panther, that he’s the smartest, kindest and most perceptive person in the room.

Well, maybe not the smartest. That honor falls to his sassy, über-cool younger sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), the tech wizard who out-dazzles James Bond’s Q and Batman’s Lucius Fox. Her enthusiastic gadgetry genius aside, Shuri gets all the best one-liners, and Wright has a smirk to die for.

But make no mistake: Shuri also is as ferociously protective of her older brother, as T’Challa is of his entire kingdom.

The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies: At long last, the grand finale!

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and some truly scary monsters
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.19.14

Peter Jackson certainly knows how to stage a spectacle.

He’d have had a great time during Hollywood’s Golden Age, choreographing the fabled casts of thousands.

As a massive battle between elves, dwarves, humans and nasty orcs rages about them,
Gandalf (Ian McKellen, left) and Bard (Luke Evans) realize that the ghastly orc armies are
being directed by the orc lord Azog the Defiler, standing on a nearby hilltop. Clearly, he
must be stopped ... but how?

That said, he has become a poor judge of narrative structure. Although this final installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit builds to a rousing, suspenseful, crowd-pleasing climax, this cinematic saga definitely didn’t deserve the three-part presentation that seems to have been dictated entirely by commerce.

Consider the irony: We couldn’t get enough of Jackson’s three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and fans eagerly snapped up the extended-edition DVDs, to savor all the additional scenes left on the cutting-room floor. That adulation was entirely warranted, because those three books are extremely dense.

But The Hobbit lacks that complexity; it’s a shorter, single book, and — more significantly — is aimed at a much younger audience. Granted, Jackson and his fellow scripters — Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro — drew from the 125 pages of notes and appendices included with modern editions of The Lord of the Ring ... but, even so, this newest trilogy has suffered from bloat since its first installment. (I still haven’t recovered from the slapstick, Disney-esque dwarf songs in Bilbo’s dining room.)

Although the major plot points have been impressively realized, there’s a definite sense of treading water along the way, and extraneous characters we’d be better off without. Notable case in point: the Master of Laketown (Stephen Fry) and his weaselly aide (Mikael Persbrandt), who popped up in the middle installment and return here. They’re no more than stunt casting, particularly in Fry’s case, and their characters seem to have wandered in from a Blackadder installment. Very poor judgment, on Jackson’s part.

More disappointing, though, is the fact that — in this third and final installment — Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins has become a bystander in his own story. That’s a shame on all sorts of levels, not the least of which is the lessened degree to which we’re able to enjoy Freeman’s marvelously subtle performance. I just love the way he twitches his nose, or starts to say something, checks himself, and then decides that silence is the better part of wisdom.

Freeman gets more mileage out of Bilbo’s double-take decisions not to speak, than many of these supporting characters deliver via pages of dialogue.

The 2013 Oscar Shorts: Great things in small packages

The 2013 Oscar Shorts (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: G, PG and R, depending on the film
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.31.14

Much as I always enjoy the annual Oscar short subjects, I’ve noticed over time that many of the live-action nominees tend to be ... well ... quite depressing.

So when this year’s entry from Denmark, Helium, opened on a little boy in a hospital bed, I couldn’t blame my Constant Companion for shooting me a decidedly reproachful glance.

At first blush, animation entry Get a Horse! looks and sounds like a late 1920s-era
Mickey Mouse cartoon; the historical "impersonation" is remarkably authentic. But
things take a wonderfully unexpected turn about a minute in, when Mickey
"breaks the fourth wall" quite spectacularly.

In fairness, director Anders Walter’s 23-minute fable is equal parts charming and poignant, despite building to a sad-yet-triumphant conclusion that you’ll anticipate 30 seconds in. And you’ll be right ... but you won’t be prepared for the gut-punch that comes with the quick final scene.

It’s an imaginative film, with Walter drawing expressive performances from young Pelle Falk Krusbaek, as the dying little boy in question; and Casper Crump, as the eccentric hospital janitor who concocts a progressively wild tale about the much more interesting, kid-oriented alternative to heaven that awaits true believers.

Be prepared, though: Walter’s film packs quite an emotional punch.

That’s also true of Spanish director Esteban Crespo’s That Wasn’t Me, which is likely to leave an intense mental scar long after the lights come up. Helium, for all its gentle power, is a work of fiction; Crespo’s film is ripped from today’s grim headlines regarding the cruel indoctrination and subsequent exploitation of child soldiers.

Spanish aid worker Paula (Alejandra Lorente) has naively followed her boyfriend Juanjo (Gustavo Salmerón) into an unspecified African country, hoping to Make A Difference. Based on their larkish demeanor, things have gone well thus far; that changes abruptly at a checkpoint, when a thuggish rebel army general (Babou Cham) decides to use these interlopers as human targets, in order to “blood” his young conscripts.

One of the latter is Kaney (Juan Tojaka), an adolescent with a fondness for soccer.

What follows is grim, graphic, tautly edited and heart-stopping; Crespo doesn’t let up for a moment, and — for a time — we’ve no idea where this 24-minute film is going. The complexity of the filmmaker’s vision becomes clear once we move toward the climactic third act, and the realization that Crespo wants us to understand that these young boys, no matter how bestial, are just as brutalized as the victims they’ve been brainwashed into fighting. Only as the film ends do we understand and appreciate its title.

It’s a thoughtful, harrowing drama: quite possibly the winner in this category.

Not that the competition isn’t stiff. French director Xavier Legrand also does excellent work with Just Before Losing Everything, a drama whose mere title makes us fear the worst (particularly given the reputation of these live-action shorts!). The opening sequence is deceptively bucolic, with young Julien (Miljan Chatelain) heading off for an average school day.

Except that he doesn’t.

The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug: More Middle-Earth magic

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and frightening images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.13.13

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way.

Yes, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas makes a vibrant return during this second chapter in director Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, under circumstances that will raise the eyebrows of J.R.R. Tolkien purists. No matter; It’s hard to complain when Jackson and co-scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro integrate this fan-favorite character with such verve.

As Thorin (Richard Armitage, right) explains what Bilbo (Martin Freeman, left) is to do,
once he gets inside the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, the little hobbit finally, truly realizes
the danger involved. How in the world will he be able to find a single magical gem, amid
a veritable mountain of treasure, without disturbing the ferocious dragon rumored to
sleep beneath all that gold?

We’ve not seen swash so well buckled since the 1987 adaptation of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.

On the other hand, there’s nary a glimmer of the brooding, owl-eyed Gollum, not even a whispered “My precious” in the soundtrack. The gnarly, nasty little goblin is sorely missed, but — again — it’s hard to complain when his place has been taken by the largest, most impressive fire-breathing dragon ever brought to the big screen. (That would be Smaug.)

Jackson’s Tolkien films never do things in a small way, and that continues to be true here. You’ll once again be amazed by the size and scope of these many settings, whether the forest community of the Wood-elves, or the immense underground Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, deep within Lonely Mountain.

Production designer Dan Hennah continues to have a field day with details large and small, aided and abetted by visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and the army of talented artists at Weta Digital. The finished work is seamless; it’s truly impossible to determine where physical set design leaves off, and the computer-enhanced magic takes over.

We truly live in an age of cinematic wonder, to see a book this vividly, imaginatively rich brought so successfully to the big screen.

Acting verisimilitude also plays a major role, of course, and Martin Freeman remains the pluperfect hobbit: His Bilbo Baggins experiences (endures?) one of the best character arcs in fantasy fiction. No longer frightened by his own shadow, Bilbo has found his courage but also carries an increasingly dangerous secret: the powerful golden ring that grants its wearer invisibility, while inexorably sucking the soul from that same owner.

Freeman’s Bilbo spends much of this story at war with himself: all too aware of the psychic damage he’s enduring, and yet forced — by increasingly dangerous circumstances — to don the ring again, and again, and again.

Alternatively, Freeman is equally precise with comic timing, as with Bilbo’s fiddly hands and suddenly stricken expression, having engineered a perfect getaway plan for his dwarf friends, when he realizes that he has no means of escape. Despite the scene’s tension, we can’t help but laugh. That’s clever writing, deft direction and subtle acting.

The World's End: What a way to go!

The World's End (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for violence, pervasive profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

This is, without question, the funniest pub crawl ever brought to the big screen.

Another pub, and still only the same single flavor of beer. By now, our heroes — from
left, Andy (Nick Frost), Peter (Eddie Marsan), Gary (Simon Pegg), Steven (Paddy
Considine) and Oliver (Martin Freeman) — are startng to wonder if something other
than franchise blandness might be to blame...

It’s also a cheeky delight that gets much of its fizz from the slow, tantalizing unveiling of What’s Really Going On: a reveal that deserves to remain a surprise for every viewer, much in the manner of 1998’s The Truman Show. That’s unlikely — which is a true shame — in an era when media outlets scramble over each other in an effort to unleash mega-spoilers.

Because The World’s End is best viewed the way my companions and I did last night: with an advance preview audience that hadn’t the faintest idea what would come next.

So if this review remains elliptical and vague in spots, blame my desire not to spoil any of the fun.

Life hasn’t been kind to Gary King (Simon Pegg). Twenty years ago, his compulsory secondary education at an end, he was on top of his world: young, free-spirited and popular with the lads and lasses. By way of celebrating their impending release from school, Gary and his four mates vowed to drink their way through the 12 pubs dotting the “golden mile” of their bucolic UK community of Newton Haven.

They didn’t quite make it, but that’s immaterial; the camaraderie was key.

This introductory flashback unfolds, like a series of video snapshots, to Pegg’s sassy off-camera narration. But his enthusiasm fades as we’re brought to the present day, to discover that Gary is sharing this saga during a group therapy session.

Time has moved on; Gary hasn’t. He’s still a self-absorbed layabout: a poster child for arrested adolescents who failed to launch. A 40-year-old man (to quote this film’s equally droll press notes) “trapped at the cigarette end of his teens.” And it eats at him.

His former best buds, long estranged, have done better. More or less. Andy (Nick Frost) is a corporate attorney; Oliver (Martin Freeman) is a buttoned-down real-estate agent who shifts seven-figure properties. Steven (Paddy Considine) founded a successful start-up, sold out when the time was right, and now enjoys the companionship of a personal trainer half his age.

Peter (Eddie Marsan), the meekest member of the one-time gang, got stuck with the family business — selling cars — and seems little more than an afterthought to his wife and two children.

No surprise, then, that Gary first broaches his “inspired” plan with Peter: to re-visit that tempestuous night two decades back, but this time to succeed ... starting with The First Post and concluding with The World’s End. (Just in passing, all 12 of these Newton Haven ale houses are named for actual English pubs.)

The Hobbit: An impressive journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) • View trailer
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for considerable violence, action and relentless dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.12

A decade after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and its stunning — but definitely well-deserved — 11 Academy Awards, director Peter Jackson has lost none of his ability to amaze and delight.

Bilbo (Martin Freeman, center) can't imagine why so many dwarves — including, from
left, Bifur (William Kircher), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), Bofur (James Nesbitt) and Oin
(John Callen) — have decided to join him for dinner on this otherwise average evening.
The poor hobbit is about to find out, which won't ease his mind any.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is breathtaking in every sense of the word: a glorious return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, with its heroic little folk, their unlikely and often quarrelsome allies, and a host of dire and deadly creatures, each more ghastly than the last.

Jackson and his numerous production teams certainly had nothing to prove, when it comes to world-building; their Lord of the Rings trilogy delivered the true “sense of wonder” that made 21st century filmgoers appreciate what it must have been like, a century ago, when audiences first glimpsed the moving images of primitive one-reelers. We can only lament that Tolkien himself never had the opportunity to witness the grand and glorious means by which Jackson brought his imaginative prose to the big screen.

And yet, amazingly, Jackson has upped the ante again with this first installment of The Hobbit (with two more to follow, in successive Decembers, as before). All the realms of Middle Earth are back, as if we’d never left them; one imagines that some massive chunk of Jackson’s New Zealand simply has remained, wholly transformed, for all this time.

All this said, questions have been raised.

Turning Lord of the Rings into three expansive films made sense: one for each book. But The Hobbit is a single, much slimmer volume, with a kid-friendly story that (by design) lacks the narrative complexity of Tolkien’s heftier trilogy. Pundits have wondered whether the decision to turn THIS saga into a nine-hour experience might be more than a little self-indulgent.

Ah, but Jackson and his co-scripters — veteran Middle Earth colleagues Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, along with newcomer Guillermo del Toro, a masterful fantasist in his own right — had a secret weapon. We tend to forget that Tolkien concluded his Lord of the Rings trilogy with 125 pages of notes and appendices that also added considerable back-story to The Hobbit: more than enough to justify this unexpectedly ambitious big-screen adaptation.

Additionally, as James Cameron did with Avatar, Jackson has taken advantage of technological advancements to deliver a whole-immersion experience that’s almost too real at times ... and definitely will startle folks (about which, more in a moment).