Tag: Movie Review

Movie Review: BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

(Spoiler alert: I did my best here to not give anything away, but I eventually make vague references to a few significant story developments I found hard to avoid mentioning in order to still provide a coherent, thought-out review of this movie.)

After a four month wait for BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER to become available to rent on a streaming platform (Disney), I watched it yesterday (Saturday) morning and was pleasantly impressed. First of all, this sequel to 2018’s BLACK PANTHER served as a means for me to properly grieve the passing of Chadwick Boseman, who died in late August of 2020 from colon cancer. This movie opens with his character, King T’Challa, the Black Panther, dying off screen from some unspecified illness from which his scientist sister, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) is unable to save him. Shortly after this, Shuri stands by her mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), who leads the fictional African nation of Wakanda in a beautiful burial and memorial ceremony of their beloved monarch. I wept, partly over the loss of this elegantly regal, dignified character but mostly over the death of such a fine and beautiful actor. I imagine other viewers had a similar cathartic experience. Sometimes, a movie character and the actor playing them uncannily seem to harmoniously intertwine on screen and in real life. T’Challa/Boseman is one such example I will always remember with warmth and a deep respect.

Queen Ramonda is soon beset with challenges, initially concerning the protection of her country’s vibranium from other nations and parties wanting to obtain it for power and profit. However, another problem arises: the threat from Talokan, a mysterious underwater kingdom originating from the ancient Mayan civilization. The Talokanil also have plentiful access to vibranium. Their sovereign state is led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia, full name Jose Tenoch Huerta Mejia), a half human, half ocean deity and anti-hero. Viewing Wakanda as responsible for publicizing to the world the existence of precious virbranium, Namor seeks out Queen Ramonda through a clandestine night-time visit to her homeland. During this unwelcome encounter, he demands her kingdom’s cooperation in delivering to him a young female scientist at MIT, who has invented and built a machine that detects vibranium. The already action-filled narrative picks up pace from there.

I was thrilled to see Angela Bassett in her role as Ramonda carrying the mantel of monarch and enjoying a more central role in this sequel. I so wanted to see more of her in BLACK PANTHER, and this follow-up delivered. Like the late Mr. Boseman’s, her screen presence is poised, regal, and elegant, harkening back to beautiful, larger than life movie stars of decades past. With a natural charisma, she wears her character’s grand and exquisite dresses and hats, adding much to the already lush-filled imagery throughout this fun work of cinema. Ms. Bassett spends all of her scenes gracefully portraying a leader with deep intelligence, strength, and compassion. Her 2022 Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress is well-deserved here.

The rest of the cast ranges from good to excellent, with Tenoch Huerta Mejia, Lupita Nyong’o, and Danai Gurira standing out alongside Bassett (well, almost alongside her). I was glad to see the old Marvel character Namor portrayed here as a Mayan instead of a black-haired white male like he originally was shown in the comics, starting in 1939. His grievances stem from his ancestors’ oppression at the hands of Spanish conquistadors, adding nuance and complexity to him. Handsome Mexican actor Huerta Mejia’s screen presence is sincere and passionate. Ms. Nyong’o as Nakia, the Wakandan spy and former love interest of King T’Challa, shows up a ways into the movie but, when she does, her familiar, serious persona quickly drew me in, as if I’d just seen her on screen the other day, not almost five years ago. She is a woman with gravitas and a sense of purpose in her face and movements. The same can be said of Gurira’s Okoye, General of the Dora, an elite group of Wakandan women warriors. These powerful women are forces to be reckoned with, matched well in strength and charisma by Namor.

Letitia Wright and Dominique Thorne are the two somewhat weak links in the cast. They are good, not quite excellent. I may be seeming unfair here, but hear me out for a moment. In her role as Princess Shura, younger sister of King T’Challa, Wright is lovely and fun as the geeky, super competent scientist in BLACK PANTHER. She is this again in WAKANDA FOREVER, only her role eventually has additional shoes to fill, a transition which I found hard for her to believably complete. Even though the actress is in her late twenties, Wright is rather girlish in her voice, emotional energy, and physicality, hence not quite grounded in fully mature adulthood and the deeper relaying of confidence that goes with that, particularly for someone in a position of power and authority. Perhaps, however, Ms. Wright will mature more in the next installment of this series. I will say, though, that she acts as a believable older sister type of friend to Thorne’s Riri Williams, a young genius MIT student. Their combined moments on screen are sweet and endearing. I did find myself having to effort a little bit around suspending my disbelief over Thorne’s portrayal of someone so scientifically brilliant. I imagined her spending most of her time and energy doing daredevil things like racing cars, a hobby of Riri’s in the movie, rather than frequently studying advanced mathematics and science and inventing high tech. machinery. This could just be me, however, given that I’ve hardly ever spent any time with young geniuses, it having been decades since I last did so in college. The few I met and can most readily recall were subdued and noticeably book smart. In any case, Ms. Thorne, who is now twenty-five, is believably youthful as nineteen-year-old Riri, amazed in the face of so much wonder around her. She is probably a significant, relatable vehicle for much of the youth watching this movie, so there is that, while I’m a middle aged man more readily relating to the characters who are over thirty. To other viewers, perhaps Thorne’s Riri is excellent too.

Like BLACK PANTHER, WAKANDA FOREVER is a sweeping screen epic. All the lovely, cleanly done CGI of the colorful Talokanil is a beautiful addition to the mix of familiar Wakandan images. The focus on women as leaders and heroines in this sequel is a natural transition and evolution from the first movie. A proper honoring of King T’Challa’s memory and the male line of rulers before him is presented in a balanced, graceful way. And it is noteworthy that the large majority of the cast in this high budget blockbuster is Black and Latino. Far more high and lower budget productions with such casting of great, non-white talent need to be made, of course. This is so long, long overdue.

I’m skeptical of the power that will come through in the third installment of the BLACK PANTHER franchise. It is slated to be made, per the statement at the end of the movie’s credits that this entity will return. With King T’Challa (and Boseman himself) dead and buried and how BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER concludes, I can’t help but wonder how certain vacuums of presence that arose will be effectively, substantively filled. Will Letitia Wright be able to carry the third production? How much will Nyong’o and Gurira be able to help her along? It seems likely that these first two completed films will be very hard acts to follow, as is so often the case with sequels, especially second ones and beyond. Well, I guess we shall see.

Movie Review: THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES

THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES (released in December of 1973), is an obscure, low budget Gothic(ish) horror film starring the lovely 1950s scream queen Faith Domergue. John Ireland gets top billing and old-time horror movie actor David Carradine appears in a supporting role.

There are some gems within this campy, sometimes silly, movie, primarily Ms. Domergue, who was forty-eight or forty-nine during filming. The narrative is straightforward enough. A supernatural horror movie is being produced in an old mansion where seven residents met mysterious, violent deaths. The main star of the production, Gayle Dorian (Domergue), reads from the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD as part of her screen role. In the nested film, Ms. Dorian is playing a 19th century witch in New England (or so it seems to take place there). Just outside of the house, her reading in the scene being filmed inadvertently, actually animates a long-dead resident. Violent incidents begin to happen, starting with the sudden death of Ms. Dorian’s pet cat.

The movie opens with Faith delivering a monologue in which she has cast a witch’s circle and is summoning a spirit. She brings pure elegance and intrigue to the rather routine, cliched material she is left to work with here. A pleasant foil to the character of Gayle is Eric Hartman (John Ireland), an impatient, veteran movie director. He and Gayle are old flames who maintain a romance-filled friendship and working relationship, including on this current project. Their brief moments of chemistry and tension seem genuine.

Ms. Domergue delivers at least one good one liner that I can recall, this occurring in a scene where she and a makeup man argue about her eye wrinkles being “laugh lines” vs. “crow’s feet.” She may have said another one elsewhere that I’ve already forgotten. Regardless, the actress’ delivery is consistently smooth and elegant, due to her beautifully unique sloe eyed face and seductive voice. Her dyed-brown hair enhanced with a fall is visually remarkable, a holdover from 1960s fashion. While watching, I wondered if the project was all largely built around this underrated star of B movies. A quick Google search indicated this was the second to last film she appeared in before retiring from cinema altogether. I got the sense that THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES was a homage to Faith.

Some particularly colorful supporting characters are Edgar Price (Carradine), the long-time caretaker of the home, and the drunken, frustrated Shakespearean actor Christopher Millan (Charles Macaulay). They offer more amusing moments to this campily entertaining screenplay. Writers Paul Harrison (who also directed) and Thomas J. Kelly go for the tongue-in-cheek, which comes through in many of the players’ sardonic responses to others on the set.

For people who enjoyed watching DARK SHADOWS and/or STRANGE PARADISE, this movie will likely seem to be inspired by those slightly earlier produced television series. I appreciated the look and feel of both of those shows (which I admittedly hardly watched) and this film, in each of which the grand house is a central character.

The movie within a movie approach is both fun and effective here, a classic means of turning a mirror on Hollywood and the movie making experience. We the audience are allowed both distance/larger perspective while also being drawn into the actors’ lives, especially Gayle’s and Eric’s. When reality outside of the dramatized, nested film production finally converges with the actual movie we the audience are watching, a sweeping sense of the theatrical happens. I often laughed out of amusement while smiling with a wistful respect for both the characters and actors playing them. It looked like everyone was having fun within this simple, now dated script and set up, even if this may actually not have been the case and only an illusion. But, playing with illusion is what movies are usually about in some way or another, and THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES is often a play of sorts and very much filled with verbal and visual play.