The world was shocked when Chadwick Boseman passed away in 2020 at the tender age of forty-four, just two years after finding superstardom as King T’Challa in “Black Panther.” His passing left the future of the “Black Panther” franchise in flux. Would it be possible to make a “Black Panther” movie without the Black Panther?
The second film in the series, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” answers the question. The new film has all the action you expect from a blockbuster Marvel movie, but also acts as a eulogy of a sort to the late actor and his most famous character.
“Wakanda Forever” begins on a sombre note, acknowledging the passing of T’Challa. “Your brother is with the ancestors,” Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) tells daughter Shuri (Letitia Wright). After a grand funeral fit for a king, director Ryan Coogler moves the action forward by one year.
Queen Ramonda, still healing from the wound left by T’Challa’s passing, is forced to defend her kingdom from international poachers intent on stealing their most valuable resource, a rare metallic ore with energy-manipulating properties called Vibranium. “We mourn the loss of our king,” she informs the United Nations, “but don’t think for a moment that Wakanda has lost its ability to protect her resources.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. military discovers a cache of Vibranium, previously thought to only exist in Wakanda, at the bottom of the ocean. But before you can say “Wakanda Forever,” the expedition is attacked by sea people, led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta), “feathered serpent god” of an ancient race of teal-skinned underwater people who look like they could have been extras in James Cameron’s “Avatar.”
Namor’s kingdom of Talokan also has Vibranium, and now that Wakanda has made the ore’s awesome power public knowledge, his nation is under threat from people who want what they have. That puts Wakanda at odds with an enemy unlike any they’ve fought before, an army outfitted with Vibranium weapons.
With a 2-hour-and-41-minute runtime, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” takes on a lot. It’s a study in loss and grief mixed with big time Marvel action set pieces. In addition, Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole have woven an indictment of colonialism into both the history of Wakanda and the Mayan-influenced backstory of Talokan. It makes for rich subtext in the storytelling, even if the movie occasionally has a rough time balancing all its elements.
If those missteps can be forgiven, its simply because “Wakanda Forever” isn’t a typical Marvel film. It exists outside Marvel Cinematic Universe. That means there is no connection to the other Avengers films, and it is better for it. Instead of feeling as if it is a puzzle piece of a larger picture, it is its own thing, a movie able to walk a different path and get away from the increasingly rigid structures of the late period MCU movies. The mix of the intimate and epic is what makes this movie work, both as a tribute to Boseman and as blockbuster entertainment.
The ensemble cast is very strong, but it is Bassett who leaves a mark. As Queen and T’Challa’s mother, she is majestic and melancholy, a woman attempting to balance duty with grief. “I am Queen of the most powerful nation in the world,” she says in anguish, “and my entire family is gone. Have I not given everything?” It’s a powerful moment and a poignant exploration of the weight that comes with loss coupled with obligation.
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” has a few draggy moments, but its determination to be its own thing makes for compelling viewing.
“Lancaster,” a new World War II documentary, now playing in theatres, is not simply a tribute to the titular British heavy bomber plane. The veterans who flew them over enemy territory express admiration for the giant aircraft, and speak about the damage they delivered, but this is more an homage to the brave aircrews who flew the planes, and won the war.
Directors David Fairhead and Ant Palmer, whose documentary “Spitfire” established their bona fides as aeronautical historians, are encyclopedic in their detail, but serve up the data with a heaping helping of humanity. Interviews with the navigators, gunners, radio-men and bombardiers, called “bomb aimers” by the Brits, reveal a sense of regret and the need to reconcile for the destruction the Lancaster bombing raids over Germany conducted by RAF Bomber Command caused, while at the same time acknowledging that without the aerial combat the war may have been lost.
“There’s no second prize in war,” one pilot says. “You either win or you lose.”
Through gravitas dipped narration courtesy of Charles Dance, we learn how the Rolls Royce-powered Lancaster could take the largest bombs used by the RAF and why it was crucial in the “taking the war to Germany” strategy. Through archival footage and scenes from the epic 1955 was film “The Dam Busters,” we get a sense of the massive scale of destruction that followed in the path of the Lancaster, but it really comes to life in the testimony of a German woman who survived the firebombing of Dresden.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the words of the people that were there, in the sky and on the ground, paint a vivid portrait of the destruction brought from above. With so few World War II vets left to tell the tale, “Lancaster” offers a valuable document. These firsthand recollections of the camaraderie, the fear—even when uttered through stiff upper “I was apprehensive” lips—and the human toll war took on them is eye-opening and important for future WWII scholars.
“Lancaster” isn’t a flashy documentary. It doesn’t need to be. Well-chosen archival material supports the story, but it is the human touch that brings more emotion than you may expect from a war documentary.
Steven Spielberg has made personal films before but none are as intimate as the semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” now playing in theatres. In the film, the teenage Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) finds the power of movies and storytelling help him deal with a family crisis.
Set in the 1950s and 1960s, and loosely based on the director’s childhood, the story focusses on Sammy, played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord as a child and LaBelle as a teen, oldest son of post-World War II era Arizona housewife Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and engineer Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano).
On his first visit to the movie theatre he sees “The Greatest Show on Earth,” a dazzler of a picture that leaves a lifelong impression. Soon, he is making his own short films, staging elaborate scenes with his toy trains, and later making live-action war movies with his pals. He figures out how to make special effects—like poking holes in the film to replicate gun flashes—and constantly has the camera pressed against his eye, even on family camping trips.
The world of make-believe is a comfort to the youngster whose home life is showing signs of strain. As Burt moves the family cross country for work, Mitzi, an artistic soul like her son, becomes despondent, and even buys a pet monkey to keep her company in their new house.
As Burt and Mitzi’s marriage crumbles, Sammy faces antisemitism and bullies at his new school, a father who calls his all-consuming interest in filmmaking “a hobby” and an over-the-top girlfriend (Chloe East), who has pin-ups of Jesus on her wall next to the pop stars of the day.
His journey ultimately leads him to a Hollywood legend who teaches him a valuable lesson in how to make movies—which is also the film’s best visual joke—just before the end credits roll.
Spielberg is often accused of sentimentalism, so it is curious that “The Fabelmans” is not a maudlin movie. It bristles with life, love, frustration and heartbreak, all blended together to bring the family, and especially Sammy, to vivid life. Sometimes life is messy—the cause of Mitzi’s “episodes” is difficult for Sammy to understand—and sometimes it is sublime—Sammy’s discovery of his pure, unadulterated love of film—but it never feels as if Spielberg is romanticizing the past.
The 1950s part of the film has a certain glow about it, as if it’s being recounted by a Sammy, just a boy at the time. As he grows up, and his understanding of his family dynamic grows, the film takes on a different personality. The rough edges are not smoothed over as Sammy retreats into the world of make believe as a remedy for the tensions at home. The storytelling is episodic, but never less than emotional.
As “The Fabelmans” unfolds, two scenes reveal the mix and match of the effect of Spielberg’s parents, one a technician, the other an artist, on young Sammy.
The first comes in the form of a visit from Sammy’s Uncle Boris, played by Judd Hirsch in what may well be an Oscar nominated performance. In his quick in-and-out scenes, he is the truth teller who explains what it means to make art; the pain, the constant need to express yourself. It is a burden, but a beautiful one, and these scenes lie at the heart of the film, the idea of what it takes to create something extraordinary.
The second scene, near the end of the movie, sees Sammy learn an important technical lesson from a legendary filmmaker played by David Lynch. Lynch chews the scenery, clearly enjoying himself, while Sammy drinks it in. Spielberg even throws in a visual joke to ensure that we understand how fundamental the lesson was to him.
Both are fun sequences that reveal the filmmaker’s twin brain, a mix of art and science, that also echo his upbringing.
“The Fabelmans” ends with a shot that will warm the heart of any movie lover, but this is not simply a film for fans of the director. It’s a contemplative, poignant look at how art, and how it is a balm that helps sooth us in troubled times.
Told on a broken timeline with dual storylines, “My Policeman,” starring Harry Styles, and now streaming on Prime Video, is the story of friendship, interwoven relationships and secrecy.
Based on the novel of the same name by Bethan Roberts, the film revolves around three characters, visited in 1998 Britain with flashbacks to 1957.
When we first meet Tom, Marion and Patrick, played in latter day by Linus Roache, Gina McKee and Rupert Everett, it is Tony Blair-era England. Former museum curator Patrick has suffered a severe stroke and retired teacher Marion is caring for him in his recovery even though her husband Tom wants nothing to do with their ailing guest. “He was always in your life,” Marion reminds Tom, “in our lives.”
Flash back in time 40 years. Tom and Marion, now played by Styles and Emma Corrin as a fresh-faced young police officer and school teacher, are falling in love. “He’s just perfect,” she says. “He’s Tom.”
In an effort to impress Marion, Tom introduces her to high-minded museum curator Patrick, now played by David Dawson. As their friendship blossoms, Marion suspects the connection between the two men is something more than platonic.
Sure enough, before you can say “throuple,” Tom and Patrick have formed a romantic bond and have become clandestine lovers. The true depth of their love, however, doesn’t become clear to Marion until she reads Patrick’s diary, as he convalesces in her home forty years later.
“My Policeman” is a beautiful looking but somewhat dull exercise in melancholy. Every frame is touched with a certain kind of wistfulness, which, over time, gives way to a sort of solemn melodrama. A fiery heat should ignite in this story of complicated emotions and prejudice, but here it is barely a glowing ember, scarcely enough to illuminate the film’s underlying themes.
In the performances, restraint is the name of the game. The English reserve on display is palpable, which befits a story set in a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, but it does hold much of the drama at arm’s length.
As young Patrick, Dawson introduces passion to the film, effectively portraying the character’s nuanced wit, fervor, pain and charm.
Of Marion’s portrayers, McKee takes the edge, giving the elderly woman a weathered view on life as a person with regrets who attempts to atone (NO SPOILERS HERE) for the actions of her younger self.
Styles, the over-the-title star, earns kudos for applying his talents to challenging roles like this and his work in “Don’t Worry Darling,” but stacked up against his co-stars here, the sense of longing and emotion necessary to form a believable character, is missing from his take on Tom.
“My Policeman” is an elegant, but dry, movie that should be a fierce hymn against prejudice and the erosion of personal freedoms but settles for melodramatic romantic tragedy.
Another semi-autobiographical movie adds itself to the ever-growing list of films about filmmakers. Recently movies like “Belfast” and “The Fablemans,” lovingly detailed the young lives of Kenneth Branagh and Steven Spielberg. Now, “Armageddon Time,” starring Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Strong, and now playing in theatres, treads similar ground, as an edgy Reagan-era period piece about director James Grey’s early life.
Set in Queens, New York, the story takes place over two months in the run-up to Reagan’s election in 1980. Red-headed sixth-grader Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), is an artistically inclined kid, who lives with his second-generation Jewish American parents, Ester and Irving (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong). His older brother Ted (Ryan Sell), now studying at private school, is an over-achiever, whose example has set the bar very high for the head-in-the-clouds Paul.
Only his doting grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins) seems to understand him, and support his artistic ambitions. “You can be an artist if you want to be,” Aaron says. “Nothing’s going to stop you.”
At school his stuffy teacher Mr. Turkletaub (Andrew Polk) doesn’t appreciate a caricature Paul draws of him and punishes him, along with African-American classmate Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb), a more worldly youngster, who dreams of being an astronaut. The two dreamers hit it off, forming a friendship that teaches Paul difficult lessons about the nature of friendship and family.
“Armageddon Time” draws its name from a Ronald Reagan news interview, seen in the film, where the former “Bedtime for Bonzo” star warned that, unless he is elected to straighten the world out, “We might be the generation that sees Armageddon.”
On a more direct level, the titular Armageddon refers to the battle Paul wages between his good intentions and evil deeds. The impulsive sixth-grader is torn between Ester and Irving’s desire for him to excel at anything, it seems, except for the thing he loves most, his grandfather’s advice to always be a mensch and his friendship with Johnny, and it pushes him to act out, without regard for the consequences.
It is in that push-and-pull that Paul makes the mistakes that will shape the film’s study of race and class, and inform his relationships and, presumably, his future.
The melancholy movie finds its drama within that push-and-pull. At the start Paul and Johnny are goofy troublemakers, bonded by a shared enjoyment of walking their own path, but as their stories become intertwined, their innocence is soon stripped away as the disparity of their life situations is highlighted. Both young actors bring a palpable sense of confusion, disappointment and eventually resignation, to their roles. It is remarkable work from each, performances that shine a harsh light on adolescence, rather than the usual coming-of-age wistful glimmer.
“Armageddon Time” features predictably interesting work from the entire cast, who come together in an ensemble that often feels like a real, dysfunctional family. There is also a subtle showstopper of a scene between Hopkins and Repeta that packs an emotional punch by what it doesn’t say, rather than what it does, but director Grey’s biggest achievement may be the uncompromising, unsentimental and uncomfortable approach to his own coming-of-age story.
“The Swearing Jar,” a new drama now playing in theatres, is a relationship story about finding the love of your life, not once but twice.
Adelaide Clemens and Patrick J. Adams are married high school music teacher and novelist Carey and Simon. They’re happily married, but change is in the air. When Carey announces she is expecting a baby, their first order of business is to curb the cuss words that so easily flow out of their mouths. “Holy frickin’ poop,” Simon says, embracing the spirit of the new house rules.
The main thorn in their side is Simon’s mother Bev (Kathleen Turner). She is a dark cloud whose visits are filled with passionate passive aggression, and non-stop references to her own failed relationship with her former husband. Unhelpfully, with the new baby on the way, Bev even goes so far to warn Carey that Simon inherited his father’s worst traits.
Still, despite Bev’s worst intentions, things are OK at home. But when Carey has a chance encounter with struggling musician Owen (Douglas Smith), she finds herself charmed by his flirtatious, but slightly awkward presence.
I am leaving out one major detail of “The Swearing Jar’s” plot. It is a crucial one, and I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, so read on with caution (it’s best to go into this one cold) as I try and talk around the plot twist.
Mixing Carey’s past and present, “The Swearing Jar” examines one person’s experience with grief. Dramatically, when her life is turned inside-out, the film takes on a richer texture, while maintaining the dual nature of humor and drama that fuel the first half. It’s the story of perseverance and an emotional reckoning, and it is effectively rendered by Clemens’s heartfelt performance.
“The Swearing Jar” is has its ups-and-downs, both stylistically and emotionally, but emerges as a nicely calibrated, resonant look at grief, love and moving on.
In the low-key drama “Causeway,” now streaming on Apple TV+, Jennifer Lawrence once again shows why she is one of her generation’s best actors. She delivers a performance driven by subtlety, without a hint of affectation.
Lawrence plays Lynsey, a young woman, born into poverty, who used the military to get away from a negligent mother (Linda Emond) and junkie brother (Russell Harvard). “Don’t turn into your Aunt Lesley. Or anyone from your father’s family. Or mine,” says her mom.
While serving in Afghanistan with the Army Core of Engineers she is badly injured in an IED blast.
Now, back at home, living in her New Orleans childhood home with her negligent mother, her road to recovery is paved with difficulty. She suffered a brain injury, is prone to anxiety attacks, and the daily rituals of her past life, like brushing her teeth, remain just out of reach.
She longs to get back to the army to escape the memories of the trauma of growing up as a bright young woman in a home marred by substance abuse. “I just have to get out of here,” she says. But before she can be redeployed, she takes a job cleaning pools. “It’s just temporary until I can go back,” she says.
The job brings her in contact with a lonely but kindhearted auto mechanic names James (the brilliant Brian Tyree Henry), who becomes the person who grounds her, while coping with his own demons.
“Causeway” is a movie about the healing power of friendship and choosing, as Armistead Maupin said, your logical, not biological family.
Director Lila Neugebauer, working on a heartfelt script by Luke Goebel, Ottessa Moshfegh and Elizabeth Sanders, has crafted a movie that defies the usual “coming home” drama in favor of a quiet, slice-of-life story that is actually a character study of broken people who find comfort in the company of one another.
Lynsey and James have a lovely, unspoken way of communicating. There’s no (well, very little) sexual tension, just deep affection and positive pal vibes. This is a story of broken people who form a platonic friendship because they enjoy one another’s company. They are open and raw with one another, because they understand the other’s pain and the link between trauma and depression.
“Causeway” is not so plot driven. It’s a slice of life; a beautifully performed, low-key character study of people coping with past trauma who find comfort in one another’s company.
“The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile” is not a regular musical bio-doc. We get bits and pieces from Tucker’s legendary career, how she had her first hit with “Delta Dawn” when she was just thirteen-years-old, and her cocaine fueled relationship with country superstar Glen Campbell, but the focus here is the making of the 2019 album “While I’m Livin’.”
Produced by Shooter Jennings and country singer Brandi Carlile, it was Tucker’s first album in seventeen years, and earned a Grammy, her first ever.
Director Kathlyn Horan takes a fly-on-the-wall approach, a style that lends itself to revealing many organic and intimate moments of Tucker and her producers capturing the magic that is Tucker in full flight.
It also captures Carlile’s esteem for her elder. There’s palpable sense of second chances hanging over the proceedings as Carlile carefully and respectfully guides Tucker through the paces. The creative process reveals a deft and deep musical knowledge, and the importance of finding joy in the making of the art. Tucker’s career was marred by sexism and abuse, so this feels like a new beginning, a return to center stage, guided by Carlile’s steady hand.
It is a portrait of a legend who calls herself “just a country singer,” but with a voice that is imbued with the texture of a woman who has lived a life, and brings that experience to her art. At the heart, this is a love letter to Tucker, whose career has had as many ups as it has downs.
Come for the story, stay for the incredible music.
