Sinners (4/5 Stars)

We have been waiting for this movie for ten years. In 2013, Writer/Director Ryan Coogler entered the scene with the impressive Fruitvale Station. We were all happy to see him hired by the biggest of studios (and definitely get paid) to make some wide release blockbusters like Creed (2015) and then Black Panther (2018). But unlike other auteurs that get scooped up into the money-making apparatus of reboots, remakes, and superhero franchises (Chistopher Nolan comes to mind), he either did not have the opportunity or chose not to take a step back and make some smaller movies in between his large ones. Ryan Coogler has not made a truly personal movie since 2013 until now. Sinners is undeniably Ryan Coogler’s movie. He built up a lot of good will (and box office) over the past decade, and here he is spending it.

Not that Sinners is a small movie. Yes, it takes place over the course of one day and one night in 1930s Clarkson, Mississippi, but it comes with all the technology and scope of a Marvel movie. Besides the obvious example of Oppenheimer, there has not been a more appropriate movie for an IMAX screen in the past several years than Sinners. I saw this movie in a regular movie theater and was consistently reminded by Coogler’s framing that I was seeing only a part of what he wanted to show me. My time to see it in IMAX has passed, but if it ever was released again in an IMAX theater, I would try to see it again.

The story as it is involves two identical twins, Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who have been gone from town for a while. First then fought in World War I and then they ran booze in Chicago for Al Capone. Despite the segregated reality of Mississippi, they have decided to open a bar/nightclub in their home town and spend the first half of the movie impressing the natives with their big city style and money and recruiting the best band they can for opening night. This involves rounding up an old bluesman like Delta Slim (played by Delroy Lindo) but more importantly an up-and-comer Sammie Moore (played by Miles Caton) whose voice is reminiscent of James Earl Jones.

The auditory aspects of Sinners are as impressive as its visual aspects.. Sinners has enough music in it to be classed as a musical, and Ryan Coogler shows his knowledge and very good taste in old school blues and old tyme folk music, which fill up the movie wall to wall. Sometimes it is hard to tell what makes good sound mixing or sound editing, but I would be very surprised if this movie was not going to show up next awards season nominated and perhaps winning those awards. (I do not believe there will be a nomination for Best Song because I think all of these songs are pre-existing, however, my category for Best Use of a Song will very likely include at least two entries from this movie).

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of Sinners, but I sit here and wonder whether I really understood the overall theme and plot of this movie. The main storyline I have already described is clear enough. But halfway through the movie, vampires show up and they surround the nightclub with the aim (I think) of turning the talented Sammie Moore into one of them. Clarkson, Mississippi is known as the place where blues musician Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical success. That might be relevant. I’m not sure. Sammie Moore seems to be plenty talented already. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what the sins are that the film title Sinners appears to be referring to. Is it just basic drinking, carrying on, and fornicating? Because I don’t think the characters were doing anything heavier than that besides killing vampires.

Nor does the vampires’ desire to obtain Sammie Moore seem to be a not-so-veiled metaphor for the white man’s mission to steal the essence of their (supposedly) more artistic/creative black brethren (see Jordan Peele’s Get Out). After all, the vampires have their own music, and Ryan Coogler made sure to incorporate some very good samples of it. The vampire’s cover of Rocky Road to Dublin is awesome. Indeed, when attempting to be invited into the nightclub (basic vampire rules do apply here), the vampire's claim that they are not prejudiced and that to join them would be an opportunity to join an equal fraternity of undead. Whether it is better to be an undying and powerful vampire or to be a black person in the segregated South is an argument that gives the characters (and us) pause.

The movie devolves into bloody fist fights before the last remaining characters make it to the morning. Overall, the mission to open this nightclub is a dramatic failure even if the Klan get dealt a major blow near the end of the film, almost as an afterthought.

One more thing can be said about the performance of Michael B. Jordan. I’ve seen actors playing against themselves as identical twins, and this is not the best version of that. But more distracting is the fact that Michael B. Jordan is still built like Apollo Creed and Killmonger. Is it appropriate for a normal human in 1930s Mississippi to look like they’ve been into competitive body-building? It is even more distracting given that Michael B. Jordan was a respected actor (see The Wire, Fruitvale Station) before he became a human action figure, as opposed to, say, Arnold Schwarzenneger who doesn't really have the range to be anything but Arnold Schwarzenneger. Nicholas Cage did this for a few years (1996-1998) but then became normal again. If Ryan Coogler can escape the constraints of franchise movies, then I think it is time to release Michael B. Jordan as well.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (3/5 Stars)

The first “Black Panther” was a product of its time. King T’Challa ended the film with a speech about the importance of openness and the responsibility that the enlightened and technologically superior Wakanda had to the greater world. It was an obvious rebuke to the present political climate in America, specifically the border wall politics of Donald Trump. The movie was wildly successful and Hollywood patted itself on its back for their political courageousness. Four years have since passed (maybe nine in Marvel time depending on the blip). At this time, I think it would be appropriate to take a step back and assess whether King T’Challa’s promises were kept. From the looks of it, the Wakandas haven’t started. 

This movie makes a big deal as to whether or not the Wakandans have shared the secrets of Vibranium, their exclusive and all-purpose natural resource. They haven’t, but I don’t blame them for that. America doesn’t share its nuclear weapons technology and the original Black Panther wasn’t making the argument that it should. No, I’m talking about the immigration policy of Wakanda. King T’Challa, the monarch of a nation with an eternally closed border and a 100% ethnically homogenous population, had made a veiled criticism of the United States of America, the most immigrant friendly and diverse country in the history of the world, for not being open enough. Surely, within four years, Wakanda would have allowed some migrants to enter their lands. How about some refugees from the interminable civil war in neighboring Congo or from the chaotic and famine stricken Horn of Africa? No? Well, then they must at least have let in some Indians with P.H.D’s in software engineering. Nope, not one. The people of Wakanda are as pure of race as they have ever been.  

Beneath the comic book facade of Marvel’s Black Panther franchise lies a fascinating philosophical conundrum. Its contradictions are manifestly apparent, but because of the political climate in Hollywood, they go unmentioned. Wakanda is based on an erroneous premise, one that has been taken to such extraordinary lengths and with such artful sincerity in these two films that it goes a full 360 degrees and unwittingly presents its own antithesis. 

It is one thing to be appalled by the evils of five hundred years of European hegemony: the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, environmental degradation, etc.. It is something else to argue that Europeans (read white people) have contributed nothing good to human civilization during the same time period, no advancements in culture, morality, or political science, as well. But this is what the premise of Wakanda must argue. Otherwise, it couldn’t exist.

What is the Wakanda premise? It is succinctly articulated in the first minute of the first film. Five tribes in Africa had access to a special resource: Vibranium. They fought with each other until one man used Vibranium to become stronger than all the rest: the First Black Panther. This Black Panther imposed his power over the rest of the tribes and Wakanda became peaceful. The remainder of the world was without vibranium. Presumably without a material that would make one particular person stronger than the rest, it descended into chaos and war while Wakanda thrived.

According to that, what is the source of political power? It’s technology. The corollary to this argument follows: White people’s position of power in the last several hundred years is due solely to their advanced weapons technology. If the colonized people of the Earth had the same technology as the Wakandans, they would have been able to fight off the Europeans and keep their way of life, which in its natural state was advanced and peaceful. It is not a mistake to note that the Black Panther, although his position is one acquired and maintained by brute strength, is not the oppressor of his people, but it's protector, and that the Wakandans, even with their advanced technology, sought no conquest or colonialism over neighboring peoples. Why does the Wakandan monarchy not descend into bloody successionary wars or attack its neighbors like every other hereditary monarchy in history? Well, because Wakandans are a closed society with a pure race untainted by the outside world. In other words, because the Wakandans (see black people) are inherently good and the outside world (see white people) are inherently bad.

This train of logic goes so far as to argue against democratic principles. You see, if you take the premise that a society untainted by foreign elements will remain in its advanced and peaceful ideal form, then a democracy with its openness to expression and immigration and its wild swings from popular passion to popular passion is an obvious threat to the system staying the same. In other words, if everything is already perfect, a hereditary monarchy with absolute power handed down from superior man to superior man is a much better system for the job: keeping everything perfect. As the Queen points out in this movie, it is not that Wakanda will not share its secrets of Vibranium, it is that a country such as America (represented here by white people) cannot be trusted with it.

Like critical race theory, which appropriates much of its thought from non-racial Marxism, the Wakandan premise overlays a racial element from very ancient non-racial philosophy. (You can’t make any philosophical argument in America nowadays without including race somehow). It really goes back to that age old question: whether change makes things better or worse. A philosopher like Plato would argue the latter. He argued that the world in the past was composed of ideal forms that had since, via intermixing with foreign elements, become decayed and degraded. The idea of a secret utopian society bereft of the outside world’s ills is not new. Voltaire included it as El Dorado in Candide. The Shire in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings is another good example. Modern fascism and totalitarian regimes embrace the idea and use it as the main reason for rigid censorship and propagranda. What has always struck me as absurd is why open and prosperous societies such as America and Athens of old consistently produce intellectuals that swear by the superiority of such evil states as the USSR and Sparta. Marvel’s continued practice of criticizing its own country and leaving such nations as China off its villain list is yet another iteration in this age-old tradition. But then again, there is something inherently unequal and undemocratic about superheroes in general. They are quite literally superior to the rest of us and according to the Wakandan premise, that superiority in strength entitles them to unquestioned political power. (I disagree of course, which is why I was firmly Team Iron Man for "Captain America: Civil War")

The interesting thing about both Black Panther movies is that this ugly premise is present but not belabored. I believe that the writer/director Ryan Coogler does not have a racist bone in his body nor do I believe he is philosophically pig-headed. He is working for a large corporation that has given him this premise to work with. Mr. Coogler follows it with reason and competence. In doing so, the Black Panther movies are good comic book movies with decent action and great production value, yes, but they are also plausible narratives of power politics. The main characters are Wakandan royalty and they act with a knowledge of their absolute power and a sense of entitlement to it. The main antagonist is royalty himself, King Namor of Talokan, an underwater Mayan secret society (appropriated from the myth of Atlantis). 

The interactions between the royal families are done so well that the two nations go to war for reasons so stupid and arrogant that it would fit right into the Hundred Years’ War. Neither King Namor nor Princess Shuri bother to seek counsel or permission from their respective populace’s before sending men to fight and kill each other. They just decide to do it and their subjects just obey orders without any second thoughts.  The war is fought to a draw and nothing is gained or lost that couldn’t have been negotiated by diplomats or voted on in referendums. Unless, that is, you count the lost lives of subjects, which the movie barely registers. 

You may be wondering why I’m talking at length about political philosophy and not the movie. Good question. These ideas are not new to me. In fact, I could have inserted them into my review of the first Black Panther movie. I didn’t because there was so much that was new and exciting about that movie that I just gave it five stars and talked about the good stuff. This movie, Wakanda Forever, though is actually quite mediocre. The plot is pretty simple and the action sequences, well, you’ve seen them before. Overall, I believe my philosophical digressions are more interesting than an in-depth review of the movie. At least this is what I was thinking while I was watching this movie. 

Here is my proffer for the plot of the third Black Panther movie. One or more of the tribes finds out that King T’Challa has a son and recognizes him as the proper heir to the throne as a direct challenge to Princess (now Queen) Shuri. Queen Shuri plots to murder her cousin and all other blood relatives in order to consolidate her power. A bloody and ruthless civil war ensues which depopulates the countryside and expends the wealth of the nation. In order to gain advantage, both sides start trading secrets of Vibranium to the outside world, which brings in other nations into the fight. Ultimately, the USA and UN intervene and insist that Wakanda install a democracy. Falcon represents both the USA and UN in this development and this is accepted by Wakandans as something other than a humiliation because Anthony Mackie is black. Finally, have someone other than Ryan Coogler do it. That man has done his time and should be choosing projects that are more personal in nature.

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.

Fruitvale Station (5/5 Stars)

Death Comes for Oscar Grant

“There are a lot of kids out there that need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. Is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them, and values them, and is willing to invest in them.”

- President Barack Obama

Events, unforeseeable yet strangely inevitable, have conspired to make Fruitvale Station, already great, into an important and timely film. It is appropriate as ‘Fruitvale Station’ concerns the unforeseeable and inevitable. It is about an extremely specific time and place: The Fruitvale Station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the wee hours of the New Year, 2008. We will never know what exactly happened to Trayvon Martin, his last moments only known by a single unreliable witness. But we do know what exactly happened to Oscar Grant. We know because of where and when it happened. It happened on the public platform of a BART station in front of a light rail train bound for Oakland full of passengers coming from watching the San Francisco New Year’s Eve fireworks and it being 2008, many of the cell phones the passengers carried had video cameras. The moments leading up to Oscar Grant’s death were chaotic. A fight broke out on the BART train. The train was stopped at the Fruitvale Station. BART police officers rounded up who they thought were the suspects young black men. The passengers felt the officers were being unnecessarily rough and so flip, flip, flip, all the camera phones came out and started recording through the open doors of the train. Amidst the surrounding ruckus, Oscar Grant gets up from where he had been ordered to sit and wait with his hands raised in a non-confrontational manner. Two of the officers forcefully put him to the ground, face first, and try to cuff him. Oscar won’t give them his hands. One of the officers puts his knee to Oscar’s neck to stop him from moving. The other officer takes out his gun and shoots Oscar point blank in the back. The train crowd reacts in horrific disbelief. Oscar yells out “You shot me. I have a 4-year-old daughter.” The train doors close and the it leaves the station. Oscar Grant bleeds to death on the cold concrete platform.

First time director Ryan Coogler uses the actual cell phone footage as a prologue to the movie. In a way he has to because the incident and how it happened is so utterly unthinkable that without real life evidence, it would be almost impossible to believe that it could have occurred the way it did. It also works incredibly well as a dramatic setup, an omen of foreboding like ‘The Ides of March’ that haunts the rest of the story which shows the last day of Oscar Grant, played perfectly by Michael B. Jordan, as he celebrates his mother’s birthday, picks his daughter up from school, looks for employment, and makes New Year’s resolutions. The incident at Fruitvale Station sparked a politicized debate about race and police brutality and spawned peaceful protests and violent riots in Oakland. But unlike a movie like Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” this movie does not dwell on greater societal topics. What Coogler focuses on and what the movie makes especially clear is why the fate of Oscar Grant was especially sad on a personal level. And “Fruitvale Station” is without a doubt one of the saddest movies I have ever seen. Like “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Shutter Island” sad. Ultimately we are presented with a complex portrait of a young man who had a mother and daughter that he loved and who loved him, who had a girlfriend he wanted to marry if he only had the money, who was hardened by streets and prison, who had plans to grow and hopes for the future, and who died suddenly in a freakish act unfinished, so sadly incomplete. What our President hinted at in his remarks on the Trayvon Martin case is that policy changes may not be the only important thing here. Perhaps what we need is simply a greater sense of empathy for people like Oscar Grant. That we should stop expecting nothing but the worst in the behavior and ultimate fate of young black men and start insisting and expecting that they be involved in our society in a socially productive way. There is a particularly great shot in ‘Fruitvale Station’ that takes place at Oscar Grant’s mother’s birthday party. The food is ready and the family enters the living room in order to eat. But the camera stays in the kitchen and merely peers at the family praying before eating from a distance. It lingers here for a confusing amount of time. That is until you realize that the director Ryan Coogler is keeping the camera in the kitchen in order to frame the praying family with the refrigerator right by the door. The refrigerator is covered from top to bottom with pictures of the family Grant. That is what this movie is about. It is not about police brutality. It is about a family praying together in a house that has a refrigerator covered with memories of love.     

Oscar Grant is played by Michael B. Jordan. I did not recognize Michael at first no doubt because he has grown nearly a foot and has had the bright taken out of his eyes since I last saw him. But it is indeed him. Oscar Grant is played by the same actor who portrayed Wallace from “The Wire,” another child killed in a supremely unjust fashion. Both are the type of roles that make a strong imprint on one’s movie consciousness. His performance here is especially acute and given that you know how it ends, has a visceral worryingly portentous edge to it. Michael B. Jordan infuses the character with a dramatically susceptible personality given what environment he is in at the time. There is a telling scene told in a flashback in the year 2007 when his mother, played perfectly as well by Octavia Spencer, is visiting him in prison. He has one personality when speaking to his mother about her life and his daughter. And then a fellow prisoner comes by and calls him a ‘Snitch.’ In a flash, Oscar gets up from the table and engages in a verbal fight full of macho threats. And you’re looking at this and thinking ‘calm down man someday you might escalate some shit and get killed.’ Oscar is only 22 years old.

But that Oscar was young and prone to temper flare-ups does not make it his fault that he was killed. And this movie does not especially concern itself with attaching a deep meaning to the act of killing. The reason hinted at in a post-movie epitaph states that the officer thought he was grabbing and shooting his taser. A jury convicted him of nothing but ‘involuntary manslaughter.’ Weirdly this may have been because of the many cell phone videos. Given what they show it is completely crystal clear that there was no good reason as to why the officer shot Oscar in the back. Therefore it must have been a mistake, right? We can go in circles with this. Heck, this movie could be a great primer for a lesson in chaos theory where the watcher can take any little occurrence and be like “If only for this,” or “If only for that” ad infinitum. Maybe a butterfly in the Amazon rainforest flapped its wings and caused the shooting. If only Oscar had not stopped to help a woman pick out catfish in a supermarket that morning then- But what does it matter? Oscar Grant is dead.