OJ's Movie Review - Black Panther

You think you know the superhero genre; it's tropes, it's format, it's message. And we can enjoy that. It's what we go and see them for. But then directors like the Russo brothers, Taika Watiti, and now Ryan Coogler come along and say "Hey, let me have a go." 

  What did I like about Black Panther? I liked the fact that Coogler wanted to bring his own team on board, his writers, his editors, his sound mixers, his crew that he'd worked with on his other films because that really shows. You could tell they put effort into getting the African setting just right. The Wakandan culture they developed felt engaging and real by their use of music, costuming, and aesthetic inspired by real African tribes. So on a directing front, I really cannot fault this film for standing out.

  

   Story-wise, we're given a royal family drama that somehow takes us into a James Bond feel at times and then leaves us with interesting political commentary all inside a Marvel movie with special herbs and robot arms. All of this surprisingly works well together and it really didn't feel like a two-hour film. I was invested from beginning to end and that was certainly helped by the amazing cast.

   Chadwick Boseman stars as the main character T'Challa and his stoic portrayal of this intelligent new king really makes for a different sort of superhero. He was one of my highlights in Captain America: Civil War and to see him here continues that enjoyment and proves to be one of my new favorite heroes. I wish I could mention all the cast because each one really did great. Letitia Wright as his sister Shuri was really entertaining, Danai Gurira was both intimidating, powerful and also funny. Andy Serkis looked like he was having a blast returning as Klaue and is just a joy to watch. Even Sterling K. Brown from American Crime Story only had a small role but was really worth it.

Now, this film is getting a lot of praise, and deservedly so, but I will point out that it's not without problems for me personally. First I'd say that the villain, Erik Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan, while good and had a really strong argument for his motivations, I felt needed a little more fleshing out. He only really starts doing things half-way through the movie. We are told things about his life but never really shown. Don't get me wrong, he's one of the better Marvel villains and a lot of what he says becomes the commentary that you're left thinking about but he does join the list of Marvel villains who end up fighting in the same suit with the same skill-set as the hero. And then a final issue was that some of the CGI wasn't as good as it perhaps could've been, especially towards the end.

But as a conclusion. I think Black Panther is one of the best Marvel films to date. It means different things to different people, and Ryan Coogler and his team really put their own stamp on it. I look forward to seeing these characters again in the future and will be following whatever the only 32-year-old director will do next.

9/10

OJ's Movie Review - The Cloverfield Paradox

Time for J.J. Abram's unorthodox franchise to return for another curious outing.

So The Cloverfield Paradox is the third film in the anthological series, following 2008's Cloverfield, and 2016's 10 Cloverfield Lane. I have to say I've been keeping my eye on this film for a while and I knew that marketing would be unusual like the others but to release a 30-second teaser at the Superbowl and then drop the film on Netflix a few hours later was not quite what I expected.

   I'll start with what I enjoyed. The Cloverfield Paradox boasts a pretty good cast, I genuinely enjoy seeing a lot of the people here. After seeing Captain America: Civil War, I was really impressed with Daniel Brühl's performance and here in this film, I once again enjoyed seeing his acting, this time as physicist Schmidt. David Oyelowo I think is a great actor and have followed his work since I really noticed him in Jack Reacher. Elizabeth Debicki and Chris O'Dowd, again, I thought did really great in their roles; O'Dowd is usually the funny man character so I was worried how he was going to fit in this sci-fi thriller but he really worked, still being used as the comic relief but in a genuinely entertaining way and fitting in with the context of the events. Our main hero is played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and although I had to scan her filmography to realize I had seen some of her previous work, I really thought she did a good job here and enjoyed her performance.

  Now, it's fairly known that this film used to be a completely singular film called God Particle and that during production it was taken over and converted into a Cloverfield entry. Now I have problems with this concept in itself but as it seemed to work out for 10 Cloverfield Lane, I hoped the same would be true here. But no. What has ended up here is that a standard, but pretty good, sci-fi film has been injected with extremely forced Cloverfield connections. All the scenes and plot elements that occur on the space station I really enjoyed, there were genuine creepy moments, really tense action sequences and interesting concepts. But all throughout we kept cutting back to this guy on Earth whose whole role was to remind you that the movie was taking place at the same time as the 2008 film. These scenes and an exposition dump at the beginning just felt so forced that it really let it down. 

I really want to be onboard for the Cloverfield franchise and the first two films I thought were average and fantastic, respectively. And here I really liked everything to do with what remained of God Particle, but if Paramount keeps hijacking films during production and forcing them to be part of this, then it's just going to get even messier. In the end, I'll say I was ultimately disappointed but wasn't at all bored during the film and I was entertained for the most part so I'll give it...

7/10