Black Panther Review

I know I’m a little late to see it, but yesterday evening I watched Black Panther. Even before the movie had been released there was already a lot being said online about Black Panther, certainly what this film represents in terms of race has been heavily talked about. Given how much discourse is already out there I’m keeping my review a little more focused to avoid repeating what has already been written. As usual with my reviews I aim to be spoiler free but there could be some parts that might be considered spoilers.

I really enjoyed Black Panther. I think it could possibly become one of my all-time favourite superhero movies – though I would need to see it again before deciding that for certain. I always enjoy superhero movies that have sub-plots that operate on another level beyond just the action, that’s part of why I love Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There was also the right amount of humour in Black Panther, I know some people are critical of the amount of humour in Marvel movies but I think this time there was the right balance.

Another thing that makes Black Panther unique in the superhero genre is that it is a very aesthetically pleasing movie. The scenery is beautiful. The design of the city is impressive. Clearly a lot of time and effort went into designing Wakanda and that clearly showed on screen.

Nakia, Okoye, Shuri, Ramonda, and Ayo – Black Panther had come seriously cool female characters in it. I would go as far as to say that in terms of representation of women this is the best Marvel so far. I also noticed that Wakanda seems to be a pretty much gender equal society. It really is encouraging to see how far Marvel have come in terms of female characters.

I think the best character from Black Panther has to be Shuri. I’ve seen a lot of people saying how cool she is and I definitely agree with that. Shuri is smart, funny, badass and just really likeable – whenever she was onscreen she stole the scene. Maybe I am a little biased as I do tend to like quick-witted, intelligent, capable princesses but I really thought Shuri was great. I would say Shuri perhaps feels like the Princess Leia of the 2010s – two of the hair styles she has were definitely inspired by Leia! I hope we get to see Shuri return in many future Marvel movies.

One complaint I would say is that perhaps at times Black Panther was a little too reliant upon the events of Captain America: Civil War. I’d imagine if you go into Black Panther without having seen that first then you might be a little bit lost. Personally I prefer superhero movies to be standalone, but that said the connections between the two did not feel like they were arbitrarily forced in.

Also in the post-credits scene my absolute favourite Marvel character makes a cameo appearance!

Coco Review

Pixar have done it again. Pixar have made some fantastic films over the years and Coco is their latest triumph.

I am going to keep this review as spoiler free as I possibly can. If you want to experience Coco completely fresh then don’t read on, but otherwise I promise I won’t reveal any major plot points in my review.

Coco follows the story of Miguel Rivera on the eve of the Day of the Dead (also known as Dia de los Muertos) as he tries to follow his passion for music and learn more about his family. This is a movie about family, music, love and yes, it is also a movie about death.

Dia de los Muertos really is a perfect subject matter for a Pixar film. It’s a festival that’s colourful, about family and emotional, all of which are things that Pixar excels at. My assessment on how culturally authentic the depiction of Dia de los Muertos was is limited by my being a cultural outsider however I think Pixar did a good job at representing Mexican culture. I think they made a culturally authentic film that celebrated Mexican culture and avoided falling into stereotypes.

I would say in the canon of Pixar films tonally Coco feels most similar to Monsters Inc and Inside Out, both of which are some of their best films. There’s one moment towards the end which really reminded me of a moment from Monsters Inc. Whilst I would like to see Coco again before I make a full judgement I think it fits pretty highly up the list of Pixar films.

If you’re thinking about going to see Coco then I would urge you to go see it whilst it is still in cinemas. This is a movie that you will want to see on the big screen. Pixar are known for their stunning visuals and Coco is no expectation. There’s some scene which I can honestly only describe as breath-taking! I want to buy the art book and study every minute detail! Seriously, Coco is a really aesthetically pleasingly movie.

We all know Pixar movies are emotional. I think probably everyone who has ever seen a Pixar movie has cried at something (Bing Bong from Inside Out always makes me cry). Well, Coco continues that tradition. I’m not going to say what made me cry but I cried multiple times. Bring tissues with you when you go to see it. That said, despite the fact that Coco is an emotional movie it is not a sad movie.

Pixar have really done it again. I honestly think that this is one will be talking about and praising for many years to come.

Wonder Woman Review

You’ve probably gathered by now that I think Wonder Woman is awesome. One of the very first posts on this blog was about the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV Series! So it’s probably not a surprise that I went into seeing Wonder Woman with high excitement but also with quite a lot of apprehension.

Wonder Woman is the origin story movie for Wonder Woman. Given this is the first ever Wonder Woman movie it makes sense that they chose to tell the story of Steve Trevor crashing on Themyscira and Diana Prince leaving with him to go out into the outside world and become Wonder Woman.

In my opinion this movie got Diana’s character spot on. She’s one of the toughest most badass superheroes around but also one of her greatest strengths is her compassion. The final battle perfectly showed both sides of the character. Definitely during her fight scenes Diana is the strong and brave warrior princess. But many times throughout the movie we see the desire to save people from Diana that becomes a big part of why she becomes a superhero. Her compassion and love is one of her strengths in the comics and it’s also one of her strengths in the movie. One thing that’s always potentially risky when doing the Wonder Woman origin story is how far to go with showing her discovering new things after leaving Themyscira. On the one hand it’s only natural that she should be surprised by the social and technological changes in the outside world but on the other hand if it gets pushed too far then Diana can seem infantilised and unintelligent. I think this movie got just the right balance. She is surprised by things but that never gets in the way of her competence.

Diana wasn’t the only strong character in this movie, part of how Wonder Woman works so well as a movie is the strong cast of supporting characters. Steve Trevor was actually pretty competent in this movie which is a significant change from the 70s TV Series, I don’t mind this as he’s played by Chris Pine who I had a massive crush on back in 2013. Etta Candy was a fun character to watch who had some very enjoyable scenes with Diana. The Amazonians and the soldiers that Diana befriends whilst fighting in the war were also well developed believable characters. This is undoubtably Wonder Woman’s movie but I think it was a stronger movie because of the supporting characters.

This movie chose to set this story during World War One which is not a time period that we usually see Wonder Woman in but it definitely proved to be an effective setting. The setting of World War One was partially so effective because of the way that the movie portrayed war. It certainly did not glorify war and in some emotional scenes showed the human cost of war. I’ve noticed that increasingly it’s becoming a trend for superhero movies and TV shows to place the emotional story on par with the action. I’m all for this sort of emotional storytelling becoming a part of superhero narratives.

This is a more or less completely standalone movie. I know that superhero movies are often criticised for being overly reliant on other films and shared universes, Wonder Woman breaks that as a movie that can definitely stand on its own. Whilst you’ll probably get more out of this movie if you’re already familiar with the character there’s no prior knowledge required. Literally the only reference to any other movies in the DC Cinematic Universe is a little scene at the end where Diana is emailing Bruce Wayne.

Whilst DC is often criticised for being humourless (clearly people who say that didn’t go and see The Lego Batman Movie!) Wonder Woman has some great one liners in it which actually genuinely made me laugh out loud in the cinema. I am a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see the Invisible Jet but it probably would have felt out of place in the movie. Hopefully in a future DC movie we can get to see Diana flying to the rescue in the Invisible Jet.

In conclusion I loved Wonder Woman. This was exactly the movie that the character needed and deserved. I mentioned in my review of the Lois Lane Novels that DC is good at portraying their female characters. Wonder Woman just further proves that DC are good at giving us female heroes. I loved this movie and I’m looking forward to seeing the Batgirl movie that is currently in development.

Maleficent and Beauty and the Beast

Maleficent is the Disney Movie of the Month. The live-action Beauty and the Beast is out now. It was inevitable that I wrote a post about these two movies!

I’ve previously talked about my feelings on Disney’s live-action remakes. I think that if they’re done well then it’s a great idea. As I said in my initial post, I enjoyed Maleficent and as I briefly mentioned in my post about what’s been happening lately that I really liked the new Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast represents something new for Disney’s live action remakes in that it is the first one which is a musical. However it’s interesting that – as my friends and I were saying afterwards - the way the songs were arranged and presented in Beauty and the Beast felt more like a stage musical than a traditional Disney musical. I also mentioned in my post on Maleficent that I felt the structure was quite play-like. It’s interesting how live action is bringing out such a strong element of theatricality in these stories.

Maleficent and Beauty and the Beast both have really compelling protagonists. Angelina Jolie was great as Maleficent, her performance really delivered on all the emotional notes that were needed to turn a villain into a sympathetic character. But she was also excellent at the moments of camp arch villainy. Emma Watson delivered a wonderful performance as Belle. She felt truly believable as an intelligent young woman who wants more out of life.

One thing that real stands out and impresses me about both of these movies is the quality of the CGI. Obviously because Disney is such a big company they can afford really good CGI but that doesn’t make the visual effects any less impressive. From dragons and vast fairy-tale landscapes to the Beast and the enchanted objects, realisation of the CGI elements and the blending of live-action and CGI in both films is amazing. They really do a good job of bringing the most fantastical elements of the hand drawn animations to life.

Another thing that really stands out for both these movies - and this also applies to Cinderella - is that they have a really strong look. The fairy-tale world that is being realised on screen has a distinctive aesthetic and is really engaging for the viewer to watch. I hope this trend of the live action remakes being visual treats is one that is going to continue for as long as Disney keep remaking their archive.

I feel that in doing Beauty and the Beast Disney has learnt a big lesson from Maleficent.  One of my biggest problems with Maleficent was its loyalty the source material which lead to the inclusion of Prince Phillip and the Three Good Fairies who really were not needed.  If you’re going to include things because they were there in the original then just make sure they’re needed. Beauty and the Beast certainly managed this, it didn’t feel like anyone or anything was superfluous.

Basically Beauty and the Beast and Maleficent are both very enjoyable movies and I like both of them. They’re tonally very different but that works for the different stories that they’re trying to tell. Disney are showing no signs of stopping on the remakes but if they can keep up the good work then I’m not worried.

Aladdin – Disney Movie of the Month

Starting off a new regular feature on the blog with Aladdin.

So it’s a new year and for this year I am planning on having a Disney Movie of the Month for every month of the year on this blog. I will watch a Disney movie at the start of each month, then I will post a review/opinion/thoughts piece and then I shall aim to follow up on that with other posts about that movie later on in the month. The first Disney Movie of the Month is Aladdin.

I used to watch Aladdin a lot when I was a kid but then I lost my copy of it on DVD and until recently I hadn’t seen it for about a decade. So when I watched it for the first time in years back in December I was worried that I was going to be disappointed, however I was pleased to find that it’s actually still a really enjoyable movie.

On paper the story might not be the most original, as a Disney fan Aladdin definitely feels like it’s got a lot of familiar moments, but it’s the characters and the sense of humour that runs throughout which really makes this movie work.

Obviously everyone knows the Genie but he really is a funny and likeable character. Robin Williams’ performance is just as enjoyable in 2017 as it was when I watched the movie as a kid.

Jafar might be a villain in the typical ‘mad, bad and evil’ mould but sometimes villains like that are just fun. As people who know me can tell you I think Maleficent is awesome, partially because of the 2014 live action movie but also because all out evil villains are just fun to watch sometimes. And that is certainly the case with Jafar.

Jasmine is also interesting. She might not be as powerful as Elsa, as brave as Merida or as determined as Tiana, but Jasmine is certainly not a passive princess. She’s way more interesting than the likes of Snow White and Cinderella. Also it’s worth pointing out that the fictional kingdom of Agrabah is a Muslim country, thus meaning that Jasmine is a Muslim Disney Princess making her a more progressive character for Disney than she may initially seem.

In conclusions, sometimes I’ve found that Disney movies which everyone seems to love but I’ve not seen in ages/never seemed don’t live up to the hype – like The Little Mermaid for example. However Aladdin did not disappoint me.

A Few Thoughts on Moana (Spoiler Free)

I saw Moana in 3D this afternoon and here’s a few of my (spoiler free) thoughts on the latest Disney movie.

My main reaction upon leaving the cinema was that whilst I had enjoyed the movie - and it is a good movie - I didn’t love it. This the type of movie that’s good but it could have been great. I remember back in early 2014 Disney announced that Moana had jumped forward a year in the schedule (partially as a result of the crazy success of Frozen) I feel that Moana probably would have really benefited from that extra year in production.

To me Moana felt like a strange hybrid of a movie that both wanted to be a Disney Princess movie and a movie that really didn’t want to be a Disney Princess movie. It used a lot of the tropes that we’ve come to expect from the Disney Princess movies – like the way Tangled lovingly used the tropes of the Princess movies – but Moana didn’t own its use of those tropes. Moana also defied a lot of the tropes from the Disney Princess movies – like Brave did – however it never fully went with rejecting the tropes we’ve seen from the Princess movies.

Another problem was that Maui was not a strong enough character to hold the number of scenes he had. I feel this movie needed a character like Olaf from Frozen – someone to provide helpful advice, heart-warming moments, humour and just generally help keep the plot moving. But instead of Olaf we got stuck with Maui.

Also I have to mention the music. What a let-down! The songs just don’t really work – there’s no Let It Go, Almost There, I See The Light, A Whole New World or Colours of the Wind. I found them really forgettable and unneeded. I think Moana would have been a stronger movie if like Brave it had chosen to not include songs. Perhaps without the forced songs it would have felt like the filmmakers knew more what they were doing with the tropes of the Disney Princess movies?

That’s enough of the negative. I’m making it sound like I hated the movie when I really didn’t!

Here’s a list of a few of the thing I really enjoyed about Moana…

• ·         Moana herself is a cool character.
• ·         The visuals are stunning.
• ·         Moana grows as a character throughout the movie. She’s not automatically perfect.
• ·         The scenes in the ‘Realm of Monsters’ is like nothing Disney have ever done before.
• ·         Pua (Moana’s pet pig) is adorable!
• ·         Seriously the animation is incredible.
• ·         Moana did a great job at world building.
• ·         The Kakamora were a really interesting and creative adversary.
• ·         Did I mention that the animation is REALLY good looking!

In conclusion I did enjoy Moana but considering how good Disney have been lately this is a bit of a let-down after Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootropolis. Moana is a good movie but it really suffers from the bar being set so high by what came before it.

Give Ghostbusters 2016 a Chance

Who ya gonna call? Well I’m going to be calling the 2016 Ghostbusting team.

So it’s probably safe to say that the new Ghostbusters was the most decisive movie of 2016 and today marks the DVD’s UK release. This is my (spoiler free) opinion of why you should give the 2016 Ghostbusters a chance.

It’s actually a genuinely funny movie. I saw it originally in the cinema with my Dad and both of us laughed throughout the movie. Not all the jokes work but they come quick enough that if one misses it doesn’t matter. I was also very pleasantly surprised that it completely avoided making sexist, racist or sizeist jokes at the expense of the cast.

Women in science. We all know women are underrepresented in STEM careers, according to the Guardian in 2014 women made up ‘just 12.8% of the Stem workforce’. Obviously a movie is not going to change this but a successful movie with 3 of its female leads specialising in STEM provides exposure and representation that in the long run may influence a generation of women to pursue STEM.

The original Ghostbusters approve of it. According to repeated social media trolls, one reason why the new Ghostbusters was destroying the legacy of the original movies. I find this ironic given the original cast - from Bill Murray to Sigourney Weaver – cameo in the new movie.

It’s accessible for everyone. I went into the cinema with very little knowledge of the original Ghostbusters movies and I enjoyed it. There’s no need to have an in depth knowledge of what went before but if you are an uber Ghostbusters fan then there’s enough references to the originals to appeal to you.

The hope for a second outing for the new Ghostbusters team now solely rests upon DVD sales, streaming and downloads. I hope enough people pay to watch it that Sony is convinced that a sequel would be profitable.