Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Director: Ryan Coogler
Screenwriters: Ryan Coogler, Joe Robert Cole
Starring: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Martin Freeman

On 28 August 2020, the world woke to the heartbreaking news that Chadwick Boseman had passed away. He was only 43 and had been battling cancer in secret for some time. This left Marvel Studios and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler with an unthinkable dilemma: to recast, or to acknowledge the in-universe death of one of your most prominent lead characters? They went with the far the more respectful second option, and so the sequel to one of the biggest hits in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had the added challenge of paying tribute to its dearly departed star in addition to telling a new and expansive story.

A year after the untimely death of her brother King T’Challa, Shuri (Letitia Wright) has thrown herself into her work to avoid confronting her grief, leaving her mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) to represent Wakanda on the global stage as ruler, the title of Black Panther vacant. When a new threat emerges in the shape of Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), the warrior-king of the powerful aquatic nation of Talokan, Shuri must rally her allies and embrace her destiny if Wakanda and the nations beyond it stand any hope of survival.

The world has changed. The MCU may not have experienced a Coronavirus pandemic, but half of it was snapped out of existence for five years by intergalactic tyrant Thanos. Friends and loved ones were torn apart, including Ramonda who lost both her children to “The Blip” and was then reunited with them briefly after the events of Avengers: Endgame only to lose her son all over again to human mortality. In the absence of heirs to the throne, hungry eyes have been on Wakanda, and UN member states have been performing incursions for their precious vibranium metal deposits. Everything comes to a head when the previously unknown Talokanil people attack the surface world to protect their own stores of vibranium, drawing out the isolationist Wakandans to take action of their own. 

Tragic circumstances have promoted Black Panther’s memorable supporting cast to main players, and everyone in the ensemble is given new depths and plenty of interesting things to do. One of the best things about the first Black Panther is how it saw T’Challa relying on a close support network of family and friends to effectively perform his role as superhero, and it is these same loved ones – Shuri, Ramonda, love of T’Challa’s life Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), and loyal bodyguard Okoye (Danai Gurira) – that are tasked here with continuing his legacy as best they can.

When it comes down to it, for all its spectacular, multi-tiered action and dazzling portrayals of hidden futurist worlds inspired by African and Mesoamerican cultures (much respect to returning production designer Hannah Beachler here), this is a film about legacy and a mother’s need to give her children a future. Namor’s origins are told through the lens of his mother’s experiences in 16th Century Mexico, and in one of the film’s standout scenes a particularly powerful, distraught Angela Bassett takes the floor in her throne room to illuminate the grief she has been through. The script from Coogler and Joe Robert Cole can at times be too tell-not-show, but in this moment Ramonda’s assembled audience need to be told in no uncertain terms.

Namor just shouldn’t work in live-action. Amazingly though, in the capable hands of a charismatic Huerta and Marvel’s digital artists (a couple of dodgy CG transition shots aside), this wing-footed merman is actually made to look pretty cool, and scary. Dubbed K’uk’ulkan by his people after the Mayan serpent deity, Namor commands a near-invulnerable army as well as the ocean itself, and thus every creature that inhabits it becomes a weapon in his hands. In a particularly striking image lifted straight from the “Avengers vs X-Men” comic storyline, Wakanda’s capital city feels the full force of Namor’s wrath, and like the best antagonists in the MCU such as Black Panther‘s Killmonger, he is both terrifying and fully understandable in his worldview. Why should the colonialist nations of the world feel they have the right to the resources of two small but advanced nations who have kept to themselves for centuries?

The film is a long one, at just over 2 hours 40 minutes it is the second-longest in the MCU after Phase 3 finale Endgame. While it could possibly do with a little tightening here and there, and less “Lord of the Rings ending syndrome” in its final few minutes, there is a sizeable ensemble of characters to serve here, not to mention having to close out Phase 4 of the MCU, set up new characters who will have large parts to play going forward (like teen genius Riri Williams/Ironheart, played by Dominque Thorne), and of course pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman – it’s difficult to see where the cuts could come.

The main problem aside from having to balance respect for an unexpectedly departed star with moving a franchise and its characters forward is that the slightly unwieldy script is very stop-start-stop-start. The world-building could always be more elegant, the story’s shift of gears less noticeable, but the character work is on point and there are plenty of individual moments in the film (from the intimate to the epic) that will stay with you.

Wakanda Forever has the unenviable task of eulogising the dearly departed and carrying a long-running franchise on the road to its future. Chadwick Boseman tragically died before his time and so this film does the rare thing of showing that superheroes might be stronger, faster and more powerful than us, but most are are not immune to illness and to grief. Ryan Coogler’s film does about as well as you might reasonably expect at balancing many disparate elements, and while this undoubtedly ended up as a very different film to the one it started as, Wakanda Forever makes a heartfelt connection and delivers memorable action in spades as well as some of the best performances in the entire MCU.

19/24

Recommended for you: Every MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked

Australian horror could never be accused of being just one thing, so here are 10 very different recommended starting points for which scary films from this part of the world to watch: 10 Great Australian Horror Films.

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1. Wake in Fright (1971)

A mild-mannered country school teacher breaks up for the Christmas holidays and begins to make his way to the city to see his girlfriend. While in his overnight stop off in the isolated Yabba, he loses all his money gambling and falls in with a group of constantly-boozing locals. Before long his life is falling apart and he finds himself trapped in a constant hazy cycle of drinking.

Wake in Fright might not be considered strictly a horror film in pure genre terms, but it does contain horror of three kinds: the horror of alcoholism, the horror of small-town over-friendliness, and the horror of when the former two collide. It’s a terrifying idea to any introvert, to be overwhelmed and led astray by loud, drunk, vaguely threatening but endlessly hospitable locals (chiefly represented by a chameleonic Donald Pleasence). It’s an oppressive atmosphere that builds, and this along with some bad trip imagery and a very upsetting unsimulated kangaroo hunt scene makes you feel as unsettled and drained as lead character John Grant.

The film’s marketing was botched upon its initial release and the original film negative had degraded to the extent it impacted how widely the film could be appreciated by worldwide audiences for decades, but today it is far easier to see and recognise alongside its more acclaimed and transcendent contemporary cousin Walkabout. 

2. Dead Calm (1989)

A couple grieving the tragic loss of their only child go on a therapeutic yacht cruise in the Pacific and come about a sinking schooner and its only surviving crew member. But is this castaway really an innocent victim of an accident at sea, or is something more sinister at play?

It’s quite a feat for a film that mostly takes place in bright sunshine on the open waves to make you feel intensely claustrophobic. The soundtrack does a lot of the work, but the cinematography, staging and the three performances – particularly those of Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane – keep everything taught and tense. Thanks to this pairing, Dead Calm is a bit sexy too – they play screw-me-kill-me cat and mouse aboard a yacht while poor Sam Neill is left trying not to die aboard another sinking boat as an ominous storm gathers.

The real achievement of Dead Calm as a thriller is that though for the most part it is staged in a strictly confined space, the story still feels grand and epic, with the odds against the characters surviving both acts of God and the darker side of human nature being remote at best.

The World’s End (2013)
Director: Edgar Wright
Screenwriters: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, David Bradley

2013’s The World’s End has been cited by some fans as the most disappointing entry in the Cornetto Trilogy despite a positive reception from critics who welcomed it just as favourably as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Coming 6 years after the trilogy’s middle entry, The World’s End acts as the culmination of the miniature series of Pegg, Frost and Wright collaborations, offering yet more reoccurring gags and winks for fans, with plenty for new new viewers to digest. It recounts a quintet of school friends, led by Simon Pegg’s Gary King, as they attempt to finish a pub crawl known as The Golden Mile they had attempted some twenty-plus years prior, encountering some otherworldly obstacles en-route.

One of the film’s major strengths is the way in which it flips the leading roles of the two previous films on their head. On this occasion Nick Frost plays the uptight, professional and reluctant straight-man to Pegg’s man-child, the latter firmly longing for his adolescent years. This change in roles does little to nullify the chemistry of the two leads who, by this point, are so in tune that they hit every single mark and establish a relateable leading duo even after 6 years apart. Martin Freeman as Oliver is also cast against type as a stone faced estate agent, a far cry from his roles as Bilbo in The Hobbit and Tim in ‘The Office’. The other two members of the central quintet are famed British talent Paddy Considine (who of course featured in Hot Fuzz) and Cornetto newcomer Eddie Marsan (Filth).

As with the two previous entries in the Cornetto Trilogy, there is an assortment of guest stars including standouts Pierce Brosnan, Rosamund Pike and David Bradley, with a further selection of familiar faces strewn across the 12 pubs visited, including (as always) some of the cast of Wright and Pegg’s cult TV sitcom ‘Spaced’.

The 6 year gap between the films, which saw Pegg and Wright establish themselves as some of Hollywood’s go-to filmmakers on the likes of Star Trek and Mission: Impossible (Pegg), and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Wright), was one of the major drawbacks for The World’s End at launch as it led expectations to be at a high level amongst fans. It is difficult to note whether the gap (in terms of time and expectation) affected the film’s box office haul, which was just over half of what Hot Fuzz made, but in terms of audience reception there must be some consideration made towards the high levels of expectation the duo brought with them into this film.

As was the case with the previous Cornetto movies, The World’s End once again treated us to some inventive action sequences, including the trademarked pub fight. The standout here was perhaps the brawl in the pub toilet, which proved to be imaginative and enthralling, and nicely contrasted the style of action seen in Hot Fuzz.

Thematically, The World’s End has plenty to say and is without question the most sobering of the Cornetto films. It offers commentary on the “Starbucking” of UK towns as many of Newton Haven’s pubs have been bought out by chains and have lost their unique qualities, with a recurring comment being whether it is our quintet or their childhood town that has changed the most. Another of the main themes is letting go of the past and any disappointment one might feel about how life has turned out, Gary commenting that his life was never as good as the night they first attempted the Golden Mile. The film also offers insight into life in a small town and the nature of a lads’ night out. Meanwhile, the surprising addition of an alien invasion thread proves to be satisfying and gives the premise a welcome breath of fresh air.

A great soundtrack is one of the hallmarks of the whole trilogy and music plays arguably its most prominent role in its finale. A particular emphasis is placed on 90s Britpop which reflects the group’s at-the-time burgeoning adulthood with tracks from the likes of The Stone Roses, Pulp and The Happy Mondays. In keeping with the pub crawl theme, several of the tracks including The Doors’ “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)” and The Housemartins’ “Happy Hour” are nods to the film’s alcohol-fueled plot-line.

The World’s End does, overall, round the trilogy off in fine fashion. It is more of a slow burner than its two predecessors, building suspense and a sense that something is not quite right with the residents of Newton Haven, the audience and characters alike being teased for longer than before, and the slow build isn’t to everyone’s taste, but the contrasts to the previous entries tonally and character- wise bring added depth and ensure the film never feels formulaic or repetitive. In The World’s End, we are offered more of a varied glimpse at the acting chops of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as well as some strong support from the core cast. Perhaps the film will be viewed in a more positive light in the years to come and step out of the shadow of its two siblings to take on a life of its own, but for now it remains an underappreciated entry into the canon of the Cornetto films and Edgar Wright’s wider filmography.

Score: 17/24

Have an opinion? Make sure to leave a comment!

6. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Gross USA: $255,119,788
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $956,019,788
1 Academy Award Nomination
1 BAFTA Award Nomination

The best part of this film was the battle with Smaug.

The previous film had concluded on quite the dramatic moment with the dragon about to wreak destruction on the defenceless Lake-town, and The Battle of the Five Armies brilliantly jumps straight back into the action. There’s fire, there’s destruction, people are dying and the audience is gripped with anxiety for Bard and his sickeningly sweet children.

Bard defeats Smaug, his children survive, and the rest of the villagers who avoided peril all go and meet on the nearby shore. It’s all down hill from there…

We are given a few dramatic moments that we are supposed to care about, but there aren’t strong enough foundations built for us to be particularly moved. Tauriel barely knew Kili, how can she claim to have loved him? Why did the Elves suddenly decide to help the Dwarves for no apparent reason? It is generally a film with poor storytelling and a dependence on expensive CGI to make up for it.

Other than the opening battle, the most popular moments were those that referenced the predeceasing trilogy, such as Galadriel’s encounter with Sauron and Thranduil telling Legolas to seek out Aragorn.

Legolas running up falling boulders was pretty sick too!

5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Gross USA: $258,366,855
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $960,366,855
3 Academy Award Nominations
2 BAFTA Award Nominations

For anyone who had read the book at a younger age, it was so exciting to see so many scenes taken directly from the book in this film – the Spiders were just as scary as when we’d read about them years ago and Beorn was just as mysterious and intimidating. This made the film so much more enjoyable for nostalgic reasons, especially comparing it to The Battle of the Five Armies which contains a lot of made up moments that didn’t take place in the book.

The accomplishment in animating Smaug blew away many who’d approached the CG-heavy prequels with a critical eye. Special effects progress so fast that it’s easy to forget how making Smaug talk was a major feat, especially since the dragon was what people were anticipating most about this film. In this respect, The Desolation of Smaug absolutely delivered! The mouth movements of the dragon matched up with what he was saying so perfectly without looking silly, which we all know is far more impressive than a CGI tiger.

4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Gross USA: $303,003,568
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $1,021,103,568
3 Academy Award Nominations
3 BAFTA Award Nominations

There were a lot of immediate reactions to this film which criticised it for being a little messy and full of unrelated content. Although many criticised The Battle of the Five Armies for similar reasons, An Unexpected Journey had a different purpose to the last film in the trilogy. After an almost ten year gap since The Lord Of The Rings ended, An Unexpected Journey is our first dip back into Middle Earth; it has to set the scene and starts the story.

The Hobbit Trilogy may have been about one film too long, but this is an opinion only forged in retrospect. In this first instalment, it was exciting to see things like the rock giants fighting in the mountains and Radagast with his woodland pals being intimidated by the Spiders. It felt like a promise for all the goodness that was yet to come, it’s just a shame that the promise was not fulfilled.

For this list, we’ve analysed the contemporary era of cinema (1970 and beyond) for the very best rom-com ensemble casts that came to define eras, surprise audiences and ultimately sell their film, whether the picture could be considered good or not.

As a rule, we’ve avoided films that are firmly attached to other genres, such as musicals like Grease and La La Land or dramas like The Silver Linings Playbook and Shakespeare In Love (all of which have rom-com elements), and have judged all casts based on casts alone – beware, there may be some seriously trash movies in the list ahead!

In no particular order…

1. No Strings Attached (2011)

Starring that year’s Best Actress Oscar winner Natalie Portman and arguably the decade’s most trustworthy go-to rom-com leading man Ashton Kutcher, this early 2010s offering from Ivan Reitman, the director of Ghostbusters (1984), featured a stacked cast of future industry leaders including Oscar-nominated director Greta Gerwig and multi-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling.

Oscar winning actor Kevin Kline played Kutcher’s father, meanwhile Lake Bell, Ophelia Lovibond, Ludacris and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Jake Johnson offered their two cents in some of the film’s smaller roles, filling No Strings Attached to the brim with some of the decade’s most influential and recognisable names.

Cast: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell, Cary Elwes, Greta Gerwig, Olivia Thirlby, Ludacris, Mindy Kaling, Jake Johnson, Ophelia Lovibond

2. You’ve Got Mail (1998)

The 2nd half of the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks rom-com double bill, You’ve Got Mail, also directed by Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally), peaks its older sister to this slot due to each of its stars (particularly Hanks) being even closer to the top of their game, with the supporting cast being nothing short of a who’s who of top class late 90s names.

Leading male Tom Hanks had won two Oscars between Sleepless In Seattle and You’ve Got Mail (for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump) and was about to win his 3rd for 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, while the supporting cast featured that year’s Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Greg Kinnear, award-winning comedian Dave Chappelle, Steve Zahn, Parker Posey and even Chris Messina in a small role.

Cast: Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Dave Chappelle, Steve Zahn, Heather Burns, Jean Stapleton, Chris Messina

Black Panther (2018)
Director: Ryan Coogler
Screenwriters: Ryan Coogler, Joe Robert Cole
Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis

As thrilled and enthralled as I was by Black Panther, I can’t imagine what it must be like to watch this if you’re black.

Newly-crowned King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home to the secretive high-tech African nation of Wakanda to rule. He must unite the tribes and maintain order using the royal birthright alter-ego of the Black Panther, not to mention deciding on how his isolationist country should interact with the world. Everthing becomes much more complicated when vengeful radical Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) returns to Wakanda and challenges T’Challa for the crown…

Refreshingly, T’Challa doesn’t subscribe to the old “lone hero thing”. He knows what he needs and he asks for help. Always having a team to back him up has a lot to do with him being royalty (even back when kings led the charge into battle they were surrounded by loyal bodyguards) but it also speaks volumes of his personality, and how he sees his family and friends. To T’Challa, those he values are indispensable assets. And what assets these loved ones are!

Letitia Wright’s impish gadget gal Shuri (T’Challa’s sister, who must surely be destined for a scene where she emasculates Tony Stark through tech talk) and Danai Guira’s deadly spear-wielder Okoye (imagine how formidable you have to be to be asked to protect a bulletproof warrior-king). Both are undeniable highlights of the film, and Marvel better be busy writing them into anything and everything they can.

Chadwick Boseman is strong in the lead even if his accent occasionally veers into uncharted territory and yes, everyone who has proclaimed Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger as the most interesting and compelling villain in a Marvel film are correct. His arc, his aims and motivations carry the entire film and fearlessly skewers and subverts realities of race in our contemporary world.

This is less a superhero movie than a fantastical spy thriller. As for the spy/espionage stuff, the gadgets are better than Bond, the politics more self-aware and the tech displays more original and exciting than in most sci-fi. We see traditional tribal cloaks become energy shields, holograms that disintegrate into sand clouds and a range of remotely-piloted vehicles (Shuri has a moment of panic when taking sudden control of a car in South Korea and wondering, “Which side of the road do they drive on?”).

Black Panther’s action scenes are something else, a whole new scale and level of vital energy for Marvel. I didn’t stop grinning for the entire Busan sequence from the long-take casino fight to the deliriously fun gadget-driven car chase that follows it. Later on we have a pitched battle on the plains that wouldn’t look out of place in Lord of the Rings or ‘Game of Thrones’.

I was not familiar with the concept of Afro-futurism at all, but it’s a fascinating aesthetic, presupposing an untouched African nation as a vibrant cultural collage focused through a science-fiction lens. Director Ryan Coogler revels in the look and feel of this world, with soaring camerawork capturing both vast tableaus (the awe-inspiring first flight into Wakanda) and every little detail of characters’ traditional African dress (taking in the distinctness of each region’s tribe as they gather to observe a bout of ritual combat). Colourful tribal dance performances are played completely straight and without much comment, and as such it just sweeps you up (from an outsider’s perspective) as a striking, vibrant celebration of a wealth of African cultures.

Black Panther represents Marvel’s boldest move yet in many ways. It’s one of the darkest and most violent of the studio’s offerings so far, but it’s also one of the most fun and full of life. While the spectacle on offer will surely mean it’ll end up as one of the blockbuster highlights of 2018, it’s an important marker in wider film history as well. The modern superhero movie cycle may not have happened at all without Blade in 1998, now another black hero is taking the genre into its next phase with wit, bravery and a whole lot of power behind his punches. It’s fantastical but grounded, escapist but about the here and now. Here’s hoping our return to Wakanda isn’t in the too distant future and that Coogler gets to make whatever the hell he wants next.

20/24

By Sam Sewell-Peterson

Recommended for you: Every MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked

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