Deadpool 2 (4/5 Stars)

Deadpool 2 makes such a big deal about its sub-class of superheroes. In one scene, as Deadpool wanders about the X-Men superfortress, he wonders where everyone else is. Didn’t this movie get the rights to anybody other than Colossus and what’s her name!? (A room full of the important X-Men quickly close there doors upon a glimpse). That is unfair. Deadpool does not lack for great superheroes. Well, perhaps not great but at least very fun superheroes. Take Deadpool, just by himself. Here is a man who that cannot die and does not care whether or not he lives or even gets hurt. Demonstrating how indestructible he is, he attempts to kill himself by incineration at the beginning of the movie. He literally lies on a bunch of gas barrels, drops in a lighter, and blows himself up into many pieces. No doing. He can’t die and just how he survives these sorts of things is fodder for many jokes, most made by Deadpool himself, an accomplished wisecracker.

The next most fun is Domino (the more diverse and genderfied version of Longshot, my favorite superhero who I guess will never make it into a superhero movie now). Domino’s superpower is luck. She just gets lucky all the time. “Luck is not a superpower” retorts Deadpool. Well, what if you gave a dumb excuse to a movie production team and several screenwriters to make sure you escape in the most profound and unexpected ways from many many dangers. Yes, that just might be a superpower. Then there are the big guys like Colussus and Juggernaut. At one point they use their big metal fists to pound on each other. It’s fun.

You have already seen the plot of Deadpool 2. This engagingly humorous derivative product of superhero movies basically copies the twists and turns of two great prior movies Terminator and Looper. Terminator concerned a bad guy from the future who was on a mission to kill a hero before he became great. Looper a derivative of Terminator with a twist concerned a good guy heading back to kill a future bad guy, who at that point was still an innocent child. Deadpool 2 has the same exact plot, and it speaks to the power of these particular story-lines that they continue to have such power. It certainly works here. Why? Because time-travel is about regret, and that is universal. Deadpool is an ugly outcast second rate superhero (regret). Deadpool failed his loved ones (regret). Deadpool wants to help a child be a better person than he turned out to be (regret). Deadpool is one of us, just immortal and with a far more developed sense of humor.

I confess I did not like at all the first twenty minutes of Deadpool 2. A deep tragedy occurs in that time and, no, the sarcastic opening titles could not make me feel any shallower about it. Not until did I realize that time travel was going to be involved did I start to feel like I was allowed to have a good time. When Cable (played by Josh Brolin a fine straight man counterpoint to Ryan Reynolds wild and crazy Deadpool), a Terminator knockoff, finally shows up trying to change the past, I was finally okay, nothing matters, they’ll figure out how to change the past at some point here. Of course they do, and many other things that did not need to be changed at all.

I want to give a shout out to the soundtrack of Deadpool 2, the songs of which the movie would have you believe it is playing ironically. Yeah right, these guys obviously love Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand. And why wouldn’t they, they’re the best. Deadpool 2 also contains an extraordinary acoustic version of A-ha’s “Take on Me”. I had to mention it to the people I saw this movie with around 3-4 times before I got them to admit that they too believed it was great. There is no shame when your heart is in the right place, that’s what Deadpool 2 teaches us about life.

Disobedience (3/5 Stars)

I confess that I wanted this movie to be worse. Part of the reason I saw it at all had to do with the promised outrageous scandal of the Hasidic Jewish lesbian love affair between actresses Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. A bad movie might have been hilarious and/or sexy. Unfortunately and fortunately this turned out to be a good movie about the forbidden romance of two Hasidic Jewish lesbians. Sexy at times yes, but not hilarious, and at some points rather touching. In fact, for the first time in an untold amount of movies, the conclusion to this particular type of story had a conservative bent. For once, sexual liberation does not get the upper hand in its age old war against traditional community values.

We find Ronit Krushka (played by Rachel Weisz) in New York. She works as a photographer. She ice skates. She drinks. She has casual sex with strange men. Then she receives a phone call. Her father, a venerated rabbi in a tightly bound Hasidic Jewish community in London has died. She has been outcast for some time.

She returns home. Everyone is surprised to see her but greet her with politeness. She first comes to the house of Dovid Kuperman (played by Alessandro Nivola). The funeral ceremonies are being held there because he was an important pupil of the rabbi. Its awkward though because Ronit and Dovid were in a relationship when she left for good. A further twist develops when the reason she the leave enters the room as Dovid’s now wife, one Esti Kuperman (played by Rachel McAdams). Esti it is established is lesbian. Ronit seems like she is bisexual. In any case, their relationship was frowned upon and Ronit simply left the community. Esti married Dovid.

For the most part, this movie follows the forbidden love genre track. It is a Romeo and Juliet storyline: the two lovers against the unjust world. Until, quite amazingly, it doesn’t follow through. There is something strange about this community. For all its stifling conformity, it is apparent that Ronit misses being apart of it. Witness her trying on a wig and keeping it on for a day. Look at the way she enviously eyes those she has left behind in the coffee shop. Then there is Esti. She finds Ronit more attractive than her husband, but she doesn’t want to elope to New York. She likes these people. There is even a scene where the husband is teaching Torah to some pimply faced teenage boys. They are studying a passage in which sex is the main feature. The boys interpret the passage as simply expressing physical pleasure. But, points out Dovid, isn’t there a type of love that is more than that?

What saves this movie from being a simple polemic against homosexuality is the main theme of it. It does not present the question as just dogma: if you don’t do as we say you will go to hell. It presents an actual choice. You can choose self-fulfillment in this particular way that this community does not recognize, or you can choose this community. The movie suggests that the latter can be a real choice made by a real person who is not brainwashed and not being abused by this community. That is, being part of this community might actually be worth the sacrifice being made. The point though is that the morality of the question necessarily depends on the choice of the individual. It is a question so fundamental to one’s identity that it needs to be independently made. What I love about this movie is that it asserts a free-thinking individual can assert an unselfish identity. There is rightly much cynicism about this topic, but yes, ultimately I believe it too.

The Avengers: Infinity War (5/5 Stars)

The last time a movie franchise achieved something akin to what Avengers: Infinity War accomplishes had to be The Lord of the Rings. That epic multi-Oscar winning movie was itself the third installment of a cohesive and perfectly realized trilogy of movies based on revered source material. Avengers: Infinity War leap-frogs that accomplishment. This movie is the culmination not of a trilogy but a universe of interconnected movies that spans nineteen films. Perhaps the HBO series Game of Thrones is the closest thing, but that TV series is still not of the same scale nor found in so many variations as the Marvel franchises that have climaxed into Infinity War. No, there really is nothing quite like Avengers: Infinity War in the history of movies.

Avengers: Infinity War has seventeen credited writers. It has two directors, Anthony and Joe Russo. It tells a story that attempts to involve all of Marvel’s outstanding franchises. These include:

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man); Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Pots); Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Samuel L. Jackson (himself)

Thor: Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Idris Elba (Heimdall); Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk); Peter Dinkalge (Eitri)

Captain America: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America); Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow); Paul Bettany (Vision); Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch); Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon); Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord); Zoe Saldana (Gamora); Karen Gillan (Nebula); Pom Klementieff (Mantis); Dave Bautista (Drax); Vin Diesel (Groot); Bradley Cooper (Rocket); Josh Brolin (Thanos)

Dr. Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange); Benedict Wong (Wong)

Spider-Man: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man)

Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther); Danai Gurira (Okoye); Letitia Wright (Shuri)

Any of these franchises can and have carried a great movie on their own. (In particular, since 2013 Marvel has made a stretch of great movies including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther). So one of the great obstacles Infinity War had to overcome is how to fit all the above in the same movie giving each and every character their own moment to shine. Amazingly, this is done. All of the above share this movie in equal heft and have their own moments to shine. I’m not sure how seventeen writers and two directors go about doing something like that, but its time to start handing out Oscars.

What may to be the hardest thing to accomplish is how consistently funny the movie is. I say this because there are two big things fighting against it. The first is that the main villain, Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) is trying and succeeding throughout the movie to kill off half of the universe. It is heavy stuff and is taken quite seriously, not least by Thanos. Two important characters from the Thor franchise, Loki and Heimdall, die in the first fifteen minutes. Another important character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise dies at the half-way point. At the end, well, it seems like half the characters die. I won’t tell you which half, that would be a spoiler. The second is that this is an action-heavy blockbuster and huge spectacles and jokes generally do not generally complement each other. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs working is the first Ghostbusters movie. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs not working is the Ghostbusters remake. But in Infinity Wars, every joke lands. Dr. Strange is funny, Thor is funny, Star-Lord and Drax are funny, Spider-man is funny. Some characters are generally funnier than others. For instance Captain America and Black Panther were never particularly humorous, but almost everyone has their moments. There is also the added pleasure of seeing various characters interacting for the first time. At one point Thor meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Bruce Banner has a scientific conversation with Shuri in Wakaanda. Dr. Strange and Tony Stark have this dialogue upon meeting.

Tony Stark: Nice cape. What's your job, again?

Dr. Strange: Protecting your reality, douchebag.

Infinity War is supposedly only the first of a two part movie, the other coming out next year. In that case, it is hard to judge the overall story at this point. But really, given how well this movie did what it set out to do, how could it be bad? Marvel is at its peak and the movies it has been making deserve to start getting serious recognition and not just for special effects. I expect Black Panther will run away with a serious amount of Oscars next year. Perhaps the year after Infinity War 2 will take the ultimate prize. As far as I’m concerned, Marvel has already earned it. At this moment, They are the best in the business.

Oscars 2018

I am too busy to write much this year about the movies. Here are my favorite from last year. Bold indicates a winner.

BEST PICTURE

Battle of the Sexes

The Beguiled

Call Me By Your Name

The Florida Project

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Lady Bird

The Little Hours

Logan

Thor: Ragnarok

Wakefield

BEST DIRECTOR

The Beguiled – Sofia Coppola

Dunkirk – Christopher Nolan

Lady Bird – Greta Gerwig

The Florida Project – Sean Baker

Call Me By Your Name - Luca Guadagnino

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Big Sick – Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon

Logan Lucky - Rebecca Blunt

Lady Bird – Greta Gerwig

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Martin McDonagh

The Florida Project – Sean Baker

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Logan – James Mangold

The Beguiled – Sofia Coppola

The Little Hours - Jeff Baena 

Call Me By Your Name - James Ivory

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers

BEST ACTOR

Logan – Hugh Jackman

Wakefield – Bryan Cranston

Call Me By Your Name – Timothee Chalemet

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle – Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

Phantom Thread – Daniel Day Lewis

BEST ACTRESS

Lady Bird – Saiorise Ronan

Battle of the Sexes – Emma Stone

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Frances McDormand

The Florida Project – Brooklyn Prince

The Shape of Water – Sally Hawkins

BEST EDITING

Baby Driver

Dunkirk

Logan Lucky

Mother!

The Florida Project

BEST MAKEUP/HAIRSTYLING

Logan

Darkest Hour

The Shape of Water

BEST COSTUME DIRECTION

The Beguiled

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Blade Runner: 2049

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Phantom Thread

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

The Beguiled

Blade Runner: 2049 

Thor: Ragnarok

The Shape of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Coco

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Dunkirk

IT

Blade Runner: 2049 - Roger Deakins!

The Shape of Water

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

IT

Blade Runner: 2049

Thor: Ragnarok

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Spiderman: Homecoming

BEST SOUND EDITING/MIXING

Baby Driver

Dunkirk

IT

Mother!

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Wormwood - Errol Morris

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christopher Plummer – All the Money in the World

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Sam Rockwell

Mother! - Javier Bardem

The Florida Project – Willem Dafoe

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle – Jack Black

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The Beguiled – Nicole Kidman

Okja – Tilda Swinton

The Little Hours – Kate Micucci

Lady Bird – Laurie Metcalf

The Florida Project – Bria Vinai

BEST USE OF A SONG
Coco – Remember Me

The Little Hours – Gregorian Chant

Baby Driver – Mint Royale Blue Song

Baywatch – Panda Dance Scene

Logan Lucky – Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver

Ready Player One (4/5 Stars)

Steven Spielberg, the father of blockbuster, made his splash in the genre in 1975 with the movie Jaws. In addition to being a great action movie, it had a great “making of” story. Apparently the main reason Spielberg kept the shark off-screen for most of the movie was because he couldn’t get his fake-looking mechanical shark to work. He spent most of the making of the movie innovating off of the top of his head various ways to accomplish the presence of a fearsome creature while not actually showing it. Contrast this situation with his latest Ready Player One, a movie backed by fully mature computer technology that can materialize anything Spielberg could possibly want and then some with an absurd ease. The climax of the movie is an insanely complex battle that takes place on an entirely digital snowscape with entirely digital characters, the most notable being Mecha-Godzilla and the Iron Giant. Think about it: only forty-three years ago, Spielberg couldn’t get his shark to work. The seemingly exponential progress of the visual arts in movies is absolutely mind-blowing.

Ready Player One seems preternaturally designed to exploit this new capability. The movie takes place in 2045 in a dystopic version of Columbus, Ohio. Apparently the outside world has turned to shit, so everyone now spends their lives in a virtual reality called the Oasis. The Oasis is everything you could possibly want it to be and you can be anybody you want to be in it (at least physically). It was dreamed up by a man named Halliday (played by Mark Rylance). It has rules much like World of Warcraft and leans heavily an ethos of ultimate freedom i.e. anarchy. Apparently if you kill someone in the Oasis, you get to keep all of their digital money and purchases. This lawlessness has seeped into the real world. A giant corporation has monopoly power on much of the Oasis and uses rent seeking to gain more. It also has a sort of debtor’s prison set up, where if you go into debt buying their stuff, you can end it up in a box in a warehouse in the real world spending your days mining virtual gold.

What drives the plot in Ready Player One is the last wishes of the Oasis creator. Apparently he hid an Easter Egg somewhere in the Oasis. The person who finds it, gets control of the entire thing. The Oasis creator also really loved 1980s pop culture, so every character who wants to find the Easter Egg has to steep himself in that stuff. In fact, there is a scene where the CEO of the evil corporation (who not coincidentally looks exactly like the principal in “The Breakfast Club”) tries to buy the services of our humble hero Wade. He attempts to do this by making a lot of 1980s pop culture reference, as if you know, he really cared about that stuff.

I for one do not care about 1980s pop culture references and believe that any author/screenwriter who believes that anyone in the 2045 would care is delusional. As Mr. Spielberg is responsible for many of the 1980s references himself, one could add the term narcissistic to delusional. And on a personal note, I have a general protest against metaness, in this case a heavy reliance on references to 1980s pop culture. Meta-ness is a bit like telling the same joke twice. It is remembering how great and/or funny some thing in the past was, which is generally an inferior experience to viewing something great and/or funny right now. (Why watch a movie that relies on your memory of past movies to work? Why not just rewatch the old movie? That is what I say.) But its not correct to simply attack the conceit of the movie without addressing how a movie is about it. Putting aside the silliness of the idea and the inferiority of meta-ness, the movie is well made. I mean that first car chase scene. Amazing.

My favorite part of this movie is the inclusion of a mercenary character named I-R0k, who is unmistakably voiced by the great T.J. Miller. The character looks like a bad ass. He has a cavity in the shape of a skull in the middle of his torso. However, he talks like a total nerd and gives away the underlying absurdity of this world, that however elaborate and mind-blowing it looks, it is actually just a bunch of people in trailer parks sitting on their couches wearing goggles.

Given how far the visual capabilities in movies have come in the last fifty years, it seems like it should continue to progress. But look at this movie, what is left to be accomplished in this field. What can be done visually that has not already been done before? Perhaps at this point, when visual delights like this become routine and maybe boring, the movies will come full circle and recreate the problem Spielberg encountered in Jaws. That is, the shark wasn’t working so he could not rely on anything visual to create action and suspense. Instead, he focused on story and character. If scenes like the war in Ready Player One become common-place, and there is nowhere bigger and elaborate to go, perhaps the movies will finally get back to the basics of storytelling.

Isle of Dogs (5/5 Stars)

 Crisis! Setting: The Japanese Archipelago, Megasaki Prefecture. An epidemic of snout fever is raging through the population of dogs with no signs of abatement. Mayor Kobayashi initiates a dramatic solution: Ban all dogs to the nearby trash island. Wholly Moses! Whatever happened to man’s best friend?

So begins in efficient precision the conceit of Writer/Director Wes Anderson and co.’s third masterpiece in a row (following Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel) the Isle of Dogs. I say Wes Anderson and co. because it so obvious from his last three movies that he has assembled an extraordinary crew of artists around him. These movies are quite frankly on another level. A few words of effusive praise can be spent on the look of the movie. It is rendered in spare crisp black and white tones, obviously heavily influenced, nay in direct homage, to the efficient elegance of the best of Japanese art. It is an animated movie, using the same stop-motion technology and style Anderson previously used in Fantastic Mr. Fox. As such, the entirety of each and every frame is designed. And what design! Pick a frame at random and you’ve got a painting.

After the dogs are unfairly marooned, a young boy named Atari pilots his way to the Isle of Dogs to find his beloved dog Spot. Atari his helped in his search by a group of dogs with names such as Chief, Rex, Boss, King, and Duke, voiced by such A-listers and Anderson regulars as Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, and Jeff Goldblum respectively. Why do they help the child? Because they are dogs and dogs love children. Such cute logic is all over this movie. (For example, a not-so-subtle reason for the nefariousness of the Kobayashi clan is the fact that they are associated with cats. The ancient grudge between cats and dogs is continued). The plot is disarmingly simple and the sympathy it commands so persuasive (unless you’re are some kind of cat-lover/dog-hater) that I expect this movie will become the favorite movie of legions of children. For once, grateful parents will have at least one movie their kids are obsessed with that they would not mind watching a hundred times over.

Isle of Dogs is routinely funny in that wry and dry Wes Anderson way. His humor has gotten sharper over the years and his last three movies are a testament to that. There is a particularly good joke concerning a dog, called the Oracle, who the other dogs believe has special powers. Actually she has figured out how to watch T.V. and is letting everyone know what she is sees on the news.

The pathos works as well. One flashback scene shows the first meeting of Atari and Spots, his newly assigned guard-dog. Spot, as if a seasoned professional, describes at length his employment to Atari, the various functions he has and his and commitment to Atari’s well-being. “In other words,” Spots concludes, “I am your dog.” There is a simple profundity to that which just killed me.

I have left to discuss perhaps the more original and inventive detail of Isle of Dogs. The human characters are Japanese and speak Japanese, which the movie chooses to not provide subtitles for. The barks of the dogs, however, have been rendered into English. This provides for a unique experience in which half of the dialogue is not understandable, or is being translated by more-or-less reliable translators. There are enough visual cues so that an English only speaker can definitely understand what is going on, but the decision made by Anderson to not provide a translation of the Japanese is an interesting one. Like Lost in Translation, I expect part of the experience is not understanding the Japanese language. Or it could be that Anderson wanted to make it clear that the Japanese and the dogs indeed speak different languages and do not fully understand each other. In any case, it works.

I always pegged Wes Anderson as more of a “cat guy”. Obviously, I was wrong.  

The Death of Stalin (5/5 Stars)

Democracies get all the bad press as dictators and totalitarian governments don't allow their citizens to complain about them. So there seem to be several movies a year that feature the failings of American politics (not to mention daily editorial pieces in press) but not so many concerning the truly awful governments. When the truly awful governments are covered, they get the Nazi treatment so to speak. They are the evil antagonists in the action blockbuster or serious drama. Almost never are unspeakably bad governments used for laughs. That makes the horrifying and hilarious satire “The Death of Stalin” a rare treat. Watching it will not only make you laugh but thank your lucky stars no movie like this could ever be made about America.

The writer-director of “The Death of Stalin” is Armando Ianucci. It is a perfect meeting of man and material. Mr. Ianucci has spent the last decade and a half satirizing British politics (“The Thick of It”) and American politics (“Veep”) and at least one time both (“In the Loop”). Mr. Ianucci specializes in cruelty. In British and American politics this played out in bullying, betrayals and language whose foulness was only matched by its creativity. In Soviet politics, women are raped and men are murdered. Mr. Ianucci may be the only person in the business that could have pulled off the black humor in this picture as well as he does.

If one ignores the sheer terror of it all, Russia under Stalin had a lot that was funny about it. When Stalin collapses from a stroke late one night, his guards are so scared of Stalin’s potential anger for needlessly interrupting him that they pretend not to hear anything. Stalin is not discovered until the morning. When he finally is discovered, it is determined that a doctor should be called. However, Stalin had previously ordered the murder of all the best doctor’s in Moscow because he believed that Western medicine was a conspiracy. The inferior doctors are brought in to help. However, they do not use the equipment that would save Stalin’s life because it was manufactured in the United States. Stalin eventually dies betrayed by the incompetence his despotic rule bestowed upon his country.

The movie is the comedic version of “1984”. Everyone participates in ‘double-think’. That is the ability to know something is untrue and to believe it anyway because Stalin said so. Everyone knows that Stalin is a homicidal maniac. When they hear of his death, they grovel and weep and mourn deeply their country’s awesome loss. Meanwhile a power vacuum has opened and the member’s of Stalin’s highest committee start vying for power. There is a great scene where they must pretend to continue to believe Stalin is without error while making their first order of business to stop the latest round of political assassinations Stalin had just ordered the week before.

The two men vying for ultimate power after Stalin’s death are Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), the head of Stalin’s secret police, and Nikita Khruschev (Steve Buscemi). Stalin’s successor-in-name is his deputy Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor). Rounding out the committee is Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin). Mr. Ianucci makes an interesting choice in directing the actors to use their regular voices instead of adopting Russian accents. This choice is confusing and then illuminating. After all, Russians do not hear accents when they speak to each other. (The best version would be for all the actors to speak Russian. However, that would impair Ianucci’s ability to write sharp satire in his style.) So everyone might as well speak in their native accents. This reminded me of the American accents in “Amadeus”, which also worked remarkably well.

The performance of Steve Buscemi is a revelation. Like the actor, the man Khruschev seems a harmless character actor. But this betrays a deep political cunning, which Iannucci and Buscemi slowly develops until the moment of action when Nikita outmaneuvers his enemies and takes control. Then the comeuppance is chilling and exhilarating. As Khruschev also seems to be the least worst of all the members of the committee, this brutal satire also unexpectedly has a happy ending. Jeffrey Tambor as well is perfectly cast as a weak man. Michael Palin’s presence appropriately connects Iannucci’s style with its most obvious predecessor, Monty Python. This is a great movie. Unsurprisingly, it has been banned in Russia. Apparently they are still afraid of Stalin over there.  

Black Panther (5/5 Stars)

I would hesitate to say this next thing if it hadn’t been for multitudes of people saying it before me. In fact, before seeing Black Panther I would have argued against it. I would have pointed to about thirty years of movies starting with Spike Lee and John Singleton to argue that black representation in film has been around for awhile. Important movies about the black experience in America have been made by distinguished filmmakers (say Amistad and 12 Years a Slave). There have even been black super-hero movies (Blade and Hancock). But Black Panther is a special movie. Never before has a very large studio thrown so much money and effort in such an unadulterated way towards making an arguably “African” movie. Black people have always been with us but not really like this. Like India in Slumdog Millionaire and China in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Black Panther can be categorized as a “coming out” party. And what a party it is.

For one thing, black people are being represented from a position of strength. The Black Panther, as a Marvel Superhero, is the crown-prince of the fictional kingdom of Wakaanda. Wakaanda is based on the old European myths of utopic cities such as El Dorado and Shangrila that stayed in static idyllic peace while the outside world suffered through the hell of progress. Wakaanda is situated on top of large deposits of Vibranium, a mineral that seems to literally do everything from providing energy, making airplanes, and cloaking entire cities from view of the outside world. As far as the country’s wealth in concerned, Wakaanda is a production designer’s magnum opus of contradictory elements. Wakaanda is essentially a science fiction version of Africa, traditional elements intertwined with technology several decades ahead of the rest of the world. The same can be said of the costumes and makeup of the movie, all three of which should run away with Oscars next year. Black Panther is a gorgeous movie in all its respects. Wakaanda is also an Enlightened country. Even though Wakaanda’s political model is based on fights to the death for dominance (this is a comic book movie after all), women apparently have equal status as men and actually form the most prestigious parts of the army as well as, as far as I could tell, the one and only scientific post in the whole country.

(For reasons that could fill several books, the idea of an isolated highly technological egalitarian utopia is stupidly wrong. The apparent location of Wakaanda, northeast Congo, also known as the world capital of anarchy, poverty, and rape, is the perfect location for the manifestation of a stupidly wrong idea. However, as this is a comic book movie, I will try to refrain from lecturing on the subject of economics.)

The main theme of the movie is whether or not Wakaanda should use its wealth and technology to help the rest of the world or to conquer it in revenge for the oppression of black people. In an interesting twist, the rest of the world is mainly represented by the projects of Oakland, California (where it should be noted, Director Ryan Coogler is from and where he made his first great movie Fruitvale Station). The movie handles this subject the way Nelson Mandela would handle it, with great maturity.

I’m not exactly sure what the black panther legend means in Africa or where exactly it comes from. Here, in America, the Black Panthers were a militant vigilante group that took it upon themselves to police the police, sometimes coming in direct conflict with them (I am also told they did community service). The Marvel superhero actually precedes the militant group by several years and simply does not have the same philosophy. Actually, the philosophy of the militant group is more closely aligned in Black Panther by the main bad guy, a man named Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan. This is a black panther in the American sense. Fueled by resentment and hatred, he is bent on using Wakaanda’s wealth and technology to burn everything down. Coogler’s treatment of Killmonger is empathatic but not sympathetic. He develops the character well and explains his actions, but ultimately does not agree with him.

There is one particular scene that stood out to me. When the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) is first made a King, he goes through an ancient ritual in which he visits his ancestors in an ethereal version of the Serengeti. Later on in the movie, Killmonger goes through the same ritual. However, as his father was an exile from Wakaanda, Killmonger visits him where he ended up dying, a project in Oakland, California. It is a scene of great gravity and incongruity and one of the best manifestations of cultural displacement I have ever seen in a movie. It perhaps can be said that a King of a wealthy country like Wakaanda is privileged and can afford then to take a Nelson Mandela (also of royal blood) view of the world whereas Killmonger grew up poor and excluded and is entitled to his resentment. But no matter, the point I believe is that black people want to have the decision to choose to be included in the world. Given the choice, it seems that Black Panther is stating that they would choose inclusion. That’s fine with me. If that is where the words "black panther" lead now, I will follow.

So much of black culture seems to be simply reactionary to white culture (a dumb generalization but I don’t want to spend the space to get any more specific). By positioning Black Panther’s arguments and themes in a place outside of white influence, it allows the “peace and inclusion” choice to avoid the Uncle Tom label of appeasement. In recent years, I have been continually annoyed by other black movies (“black movies” another gross generalization but I won’t spend forever writing this) from the incompetent Selma to the insult-to-history which was Birth of a Nation to the multitudinous iterations of "untold stories" of the "first black ___ to do ___” like Hidden Figures that arrive in theaters in a ever-reliant stream. If the complete absence of white people in Black Panther indeed enabled its philosophical maturity and creativity, then we should start producing more "black movies" set entirely in Africa and/or space (having said that, the performance of Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman were fantastic in Black Panther). I also hope that Ryan Coogler can make some more personal movies. Chistopher Nolan got to switch between regular movies and blockbusters. Hopefully Coogler gets a similar deal.