Movie Review: Pacific Rim Uprising (PG13 – 111 Minutes)

Pacific Rim was a movie by Guillermo del Toro that feels less like a Guillermo del Toro movie than most of his other movies – except for the one sequence with Ron Perlman. The movie was super silly fun, and posited that an inter-dimensional breach opened in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to release giant alien monsters known as Kaiju, which come to the coastal cities, and wreak havoc.  Humanity decides the best way to combat the kaiju is to build giant robots to fight them hand-to-hand.  The robots – called Jaegers – are so large that they require two pilots to operate them, and the two pilots must be ‘drift compatible’.  With the help of kaiju scientists Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb, Stacker Pentecost bombs the breach, closing it, and preventing further kaiju arrivals.  If all that sounds a bit complicated, the bottom line is that it’s giant monsters fighting giant robots, and that’s about all you need to know.

In this follow-up, we meet Pentecost’s previously unmentioned son, Jake, who is bumming around the rim, squatting in half destroyed mansions, partying, and selling jaeger pieces that he scavenges. He’s basically Rey from the beginning of Episode 7.  Jake stumbles across Amara Namani, a young woman who has built her own mini-jaeger from scraps.  They both get arrested, and Jake’s adopted sister, Mako Mori, convinces him it is time to come back to the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, and that Amara would be a great addition as a new cadet. 

Jake grumbles through the arrangement, and agrees to help rangers Nate Lambert and Jules Reyes train a group of new recruits to become jaeger pilots.  Jake is a bit skeptical, believing the war to be over. Meanwhile, Hermann Gottlieb is still working with the PPDC, warning that the kaiju may come back, while Newton Geizler is working with Liwen Shao, as her company has started building drone jaegers that can be remotely piloted – eliminating the two-pilot drift issues.

Inevitably, during a demonstration for the new drones, things go awry, and Jake has to get the cadets ready to battle some new kaiju’s before they are completely ready. 

The movie is really uneven, and similar to the first movie – they throw around names with a casualness that makes you wonder if you missed something. No, you’re not supposed to know all the names of the jaegers, even though they act like you are supposed to.  Yes, sometimes they refer to the kaiju by name, but you aren’t supposed to know those either.  Those parts absolutely feel like a video game (in particular, One Must Fall), where you would have to select or build your own jaeger based on the features you want.

This is the film directing debut of Steven DeKnight, and while the action is still super fun, the in-between parts (you know, with the human actors) are a bit of a struggle to get through. The movie has multiple competing storylines, and that would not be an issue if it could pick a focus a little better. Amara lost her parents, and built a jaeger, the cadets need to be trained, Geizler and Gottlieb are researching, Shao is determined to get the drones working, and Jake has to deal with his own unresolved father issues.  If you just turn off your brain and enjoy the action sequences, it’s just fine.

• John Boyega tries his best, and is absolutely the most charismatic person in the movie, which is normally tough in a film with Charlie Day.  Boyega is wonderful, and fun, and does a great job with what he has.

• Scott Eastwood is wooden and boring as Nate Lambert. Apparently, he and Jake used to pilot together, but Jake blah blah blah.  Honestly, I don’t remember. They seem to be find with one another.

• Cailee Spaeny plays Amara Namani – and aside from being a huge jaeger fangirl, her tech awareness and mechanical skill was really interesting, and I did enjoy the payoff of her own jaeger, Scrapper.

• Burn Gorman returns as Hermann Gottlieb who does his best to help figure out a way to get jaegers to their fight sequences faster, since previously they are slowly carried there by helicopters.

• Charlie Day returns as Newton Geiszler and yes, there are definitely repercussions in this movie from him ‘drifting’ with a kaiju brain in the last movie. Turns out, that was a bad idea.

• Tian Jing, who was one of my favorite parts of the Great Wall, plays Liwen Shao, one of my favorite parts of this movie. I found her character really interesting. She’s all business in the beginning, and definitely about getting the PPDC to use her drones, but then she actually gets a full character arc as she realizes what has happened with her tech.

• Jin Zhang plays Marshal Quan, the man in charge of the PPDC.

• Adria Arjona plays Jules Reyes, and seems to be there to exist only as eye candy for Nate and Jake – it was insulting. Apparently she was a great ranger, with mechanical skills, but that was all wiped away every time the guys oogled her.

• Rinko Kikuchi returns at Mako Mori, there to help Jake step up to his destiny.

Overall, the kaiju/jaeger fight scenes were great, the story was a little rough, and some of the acting was not great.  It kept reminding me of Starship Troopers and if it had done a better job on the introducing-and-training-the-cadets storyline, it could have been a little more like it in a positive way.

5 out of 10, not great. Not terrible, but not great.  If you’re going to see it, see it in 3D!

Bonus, watch Starship Troopers again – would you like to know more?

Movie Review: Tomb Raider (PG13 – 118 minutes)

The first Tomb Raider game debuted in 1996, focused on Lara Croft, an incredibly wealthy heiress who travels the world looking for lost artifacts and relics. She’s Indiana Jones without the respect and day job.  I have played several of the versions, but honestly I never get very far, because Lara ends up having to shoot wolves and other animals, and I just don’t care for that.  I’d rather play any of the Uncharted series (If you haven’t played Uncharted: The Lost Legacy yet – go buy it now). 

The first Tomb Raider movie was called Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and came out in 2001 starring Angelina Jolie.  It’s cheesy and a little ridiculous, featuring Jolie doing a british accent and a younger (not young, I don’t think he was ever young) Daniel Craig doing a terrible American accent. 

That spawned a sequel where Lara and Gerard Butler chase after Pandora’s box.  Then, in 2013, the game was rebooted, and Lara was reverse-aged a bit, taken back to her younger days as she learned to become the world’s foremost raider of tombs. 

This movie is based on that reboot, and starts with a young Lara upset as her father leaves on an expedition.  We then zip forward to learn that he’s been missing many years, and Lara is working as a bike messenger because she is refusing to sign the papers acknowledging her father’s death and accept her inheritance.  In a conversation with her father’s associate and lawyer, she is given a puzzle box, which leads to her father’s secret office, which leads her to a man named Lu Ren in Hong Kong, which leads both of them to an island off the coast of Japan in search of the tomb of Himiko, an ancient queen who was said to bring death by her very touch. 

After barely making it to the island, Lara and Lu stumble across a group of mercenaries hired by a shady company (aren’t they always?), and it becomes a race to the tomb to discover the truth of what was buried long ago.

The movie is fast paced, with tons of action, and is by director Roar Uthaug.  He’s a Norwegian director and this is his first non-Norwegian film. I particularly enjoyed the chase sequences, of which there are several. There’s an interesting bike chase in the beginning, and foot chase in Hong Kong, and a chase at the very end.  The hand to hand fights are also pretty great.  The cast is pretty good:

• Alicia Vikander is good as a young Lara, she’s not yet the heiress comfortable in her money, but currently a scrapper, working to get what she needs.  By the end of the movie, it’s actually not hard to believe she can grow into Angelina’s version.

• Daniel Wu plays Lu Ren, and I will say this again – if you are not watching Into the Badlands, you really should be.  He’s great in this, even with very little to do. He is a perfect supporting character to Lara’s lead.

• Dominic West plays Lord Richard Croft, who eventually seems to drive himself mad researching Himiko’s tomb and the mysterious company who is after it. 

• Walton Goggins plays Mathias Vogel, and he is fine, but honestly, when you have Walton Goggins, you want him to go a little crazy.  Here he feels a bit restrained. I wanted him a bit more like he was in Predators – just straight up crazy and dangerous. Here, he does a great job of being tired, overworked, and frustrated by all Crofts in general.

• Kristin Scott Thomas plays Ana Miller, who is an associate of Lord Croft, and continues to assure Lara that Lara doesn’t need to worry about the business as she is keeping good care of it…. Or is she?

• Derek Jacobi shows up very briefly as the lawyer. And there is a Nick Frost cameo.

Overall, I was expecting this to be outright terrible, so I was really pleasantly surprised by how entertaining it was!  I enjoyed the reveal of Himiko’s tomb/power once revealed, and the various action set pieces on the way to the reveal. It was certainly fun – and honestly, I hope they do make a sequel.

7 out of 10 – definitely benefitted from low expectations!

Bonus – Into the Badlands!

Movie Review: A Wrinkle In Time (PG – 109 minutes)

The book, A Wrinkle in Time, was write by Madeleine L’Engle, and was first published in 1962.  I remember reading it when I was in middle school, but honestly, I don’t remember much about the story, other than it was a little confusing.  It was adapted for a made for TV movie in 2003, which L'Engle was displeased with as it removed her overtones about Christianity. 

This version is directed by Ava DuVernay.  The story starts with young Meg, studying with her scientist father as he explains various frequencies.  Mr. and Mrs. Murray are both scientists, and are studying…well, I’m not entirely sure what they are studying. Frequencies, space-time, folds, the ability to travel light years in seconds using your mind, etc.  Mr. Murray is talking with Meg, and talking to her about the arrival of her new baby brother, who is about to be adopted. We flash forward several years, to the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of Mr. Murray. 

Meg is now struggling in school, and her younger brother, Charles Wallace, is extraordinarily intelligent, so he’s being bullied.  And because Meg is now sad and withdrawn, she’s being bullied – so it’s just bad for everyone.  Apparently Mr. Murray vanished after he and his wife gave a talk at a science symposium of some sort, and he went a little off-topic insisting that traveling through these ‘space-time wrinkles’ or ‘tesseracts’ was possible.  Immediately thereafter, he successfully ‘tessered’ and disappeared.  Four years later, Charles Wallace has been talking with Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which.  The Mrs.s are three celestial being who have heard a call for help across the universe, and come to Charles Wallace, Meg, and her random friend Calvin, to come assist find their father, who they believe made the call. 

This leads to a cross-universe adventure during which the children successfully tesser with the Mrs.s to several planets, and finally find out that their father is on Camazotz, which is the center/home base of all darkness in the universe.  Meg has to battle her own lack of confidence to save her father and bring light back to the universe.

Ava DuVernay has done an incredible job with the look of this movie. It is stunning and luminous.  The story is a little confusing, but I think that has more to do with adapting a confusing book than with the movie itself.  Apparently she chose to remove some major pieces of the book, including Meg's other siblings, and the Christian tones.  I did want a little more explanation of the details and the science to what was happening - incidentally, the trailer above has a whole explanation that was not in the final movie! How exactly do you 'tesser'? Why is Meg looking like she is drowning in white sheets in the beginning, but by the end is surrounded by lustrous CGI ribbons? Again, it’s a kids story/book so that’s not as important. Along with the visuals, the costumes on the three Mrs.s are fantastic.  They are outrageous and beautiful, and change with just about every scene. The casting is divine, everyone is perfect for their roles.

• Storm Reid plays Meg, and she is going to have an incredible career. She’s so charming and genuine, and when she is down and getting bullied at the beginning of the movie, her performance was heartbreaking. Also, on importance of representation – as a nerdy biracial girl who wears glasses – the lead of this movie being a nerdy biracial girl in glasses resulted in me crying through the first several minutes of this movie.  

• Oprah Winfrey plays Mrs. Which, a very Oprah-like celestial being who seems to be either super large, or regular size, and offers advice and guidance to Meg.

• Reese Witherspoon plays Mrs. Whatsit, the celestial being who first shows up to get Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin started on their adventure.  She seems unconvinced of Meg’s potential at first.

• Mindy Kaling plays Mrs. Who, a celestial being who has evolved past language so only speaks in quotes, until she doesn’t anymore.

• Levi Miller plays Calvin, and after showing up abruptly, is super supportive of Meg on the trip, even if not super helpful. Also – He looks enough like a young Ashmore that I had to double check the credits to see if the Ashmore twins have a younger brother. Apparently not.

• Deric McCabe plays Charles Wallace, and while he was charming and precocious, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him once (SPOILER ALERT) he gets possessed by the IT, but I did enjoy that the love between he and Meg was what saved him.

• Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Dr. Kate Murry, and she has little to do, but manages to do a wonderful job with what she has – conveying how much she loves and misses her husband when explaining to Calvin what happened.

• Chris Pine plays Dr. Alex Murry, and again, not a ton to do but get annoyed that no one believes his theories, then get scared as he proves himself right.

• Zach Galifianakis plays the Happy Medium, who the travelers visit to get some guidance on their journey. He helps Meg begin to realize that she can overcome her own self-consciousness to accept her own strength and succeed.  At least, I think that’s what he was doing.  He was also functioning as some comedy relief.

Overall, the movie was just fine.  The pacing was a little strange – at some points it felt like it was moving too fast, and at others, too slow.  There’s little to no explanation given for anything, again – I suppose that’s fine for a kids story, but I could have used a little more information here and there. Since a lot of the marketing embraced the "Be A Warrior!" part, I was expecting more battling/warring to be done.  I'm not sure that campaign made much sense. Meg is a 'warrior' in the sense that she does fight the darkness to bring back the light, but mainly within herself.  The movie looks lovely, and the overall message seems to be that everyone is worthy of love, and that love and light will heal the universe, so hey – I can definitely get behind that.

6 out of 10 – Gained points for Michael Pena! Lost points for not enough Michael Pena.

The trailer for the 2003 version - with Alfre Woodard!

Movie Review: Game Night (R – 100 minutes)

In 1997, there was a Michael Douglas movie called The Game, in which Douglas’s character is given a birthday gift by his younger brother, played by Sean Penn.  The gift is a game that basically ends up being life or death.  Why bring that up?  That movie kept popping into my head while watching Game Night.  This movie is from the same production team behind Horrible Bosses, which is hilarious and worth a watch if you haven’t. 

Game Night follows the story of Max and Annie, a couple drawn together because of their furious competitiveness playing various board games.  The movie begins with a montage showing how they met and got married intermingled with various game nights.  We then jump to present day, where Max and Annie are prepping for a game night and attempting to avoid their creepy police officer neighbor Gary.  When Gary was still married to his wife, Debbie, they came to game night. However, they have since divorced, and Gary hasn’t exactly taken it well, so Max and Annie spend a lot of time avoiding him.  They are also meeting with a fertility doctor as they are trying to have a baby.  The doctor seems to pin down that Max’s sperm isn’t great as a result of his stress about his brother coming into town to visit.  His brother, Brooks, has always been more popular, more charismatic, more successful, etc.  And now he’s coming to game night.

Max and Annie invite their friends, Kevin and Michelle (a married couple who were each other’s childhood sweethearts), and Ryan, who brings a new friend from work, Sarah.  Brooks eventually shows loudly arrives in a fancy new car, which draws Gary’s attention, ruining their plans to not let him know they were having a party.  After an evening in which Brooks humiliates Max in front of everyone – he insists on hosting game night at his house next week, promising something above and beyond.

The next week, everyone arrives at Brooks’s giant house, and he sets up a murder mystery game night.  Telling the group this ahead of time, they don’t react when some burly guys come in and kidnap Brooks.  Then an ‘FBI Agent’ comes in to give them files to help them solve the case.  Eventually they begin to realize that Brooks was really taken, and the rest of the night becomes a mess of trying to figure out what is real, what is fake, and what needs to be done to rescue Brooks.  Spoiler alert – it all has a happy ending.

The movie is directed by John Francis Daley (yes, from Freaks and Geeks and Bones) and Jonathan Goldstein.  It’s well-paced, and each character has just enough development that you are interested in them, without pulling focus from the two leads. The strength of the movie is absolutely the cast and the way they play off each other.

• Jason Bateman plays Max, and honestly, if you like Jason Bateman – you’ll love him in this. He excels at “sarcastic straight man” in a comedy – something he perfected on Arrested Development and it fits perfectly here.  The subplot about him being stressed, and maybe not really wanting to have a baby felt a little forced, but ended up not overpowering the story, just another piece of the character. 

• Rachel McAdams plays Annie, and I was a little surprised by how well she handled the comedy.  The age difference between her and Bateman felt noticeable, but they did pair well, and the chemistry of two really competitive people was believable.

• Kyle Chandler plays Brooks, and was charming and popular, right up until he wasn’t anymore. It’s not a shift that is surprising, because you can see it coming, but he still manages to play that well.

• Billy Magnussen plays Ryan, one of Max and Annie’s friends who keeps bringing over dumb ‘instagram model’ types to the game night montage.  He plays the pretty and dumb guy – but not dumb enough to be annoying, just clueless enough to be funny, and still genuinely concerned about his friends.
• Sharon Horgan plays Sarah – Ryan’s Irish guest, who proves to be a breath of fresh air from his typical date night guests.  She is a co-worker of his, and while it seems that he originally brought her to win the game, the two begin to form a genuine bond over the course of the evening.

• Lamorne Morris plays Kevin, and Kylie Bunbury plays Michelle – they have been a couple since grade school, and always come to Max and Annie’s game nights.  Their side plot is that during the course of preliminary games, Michelle lets it slip that she one time slept with a celebrity, even though they’ve been together forever, so the rest of their evening is them attempting to solve the game, while also solving how they both feel about that event.  It could have gotten painful or forced, but again, it manages to stay an interesting subplot – with a hilarious pay off.

• Jesse Plemons plays Gary, the next door neighbor police officer, who is so creepy that he is no longer invited to game night after his divorce.  The lengths that Max and Annie go to prevent him from finding out they are hosting are really funny.  He steals every scene he’s in by just being creepy enough to not make you hate him, but almost make you feel for him – it’s a really fine line, and Plemons walks it well!

• Michael C. Hall shows up briefly as the Bulgarian, an international criminal after a Fabrege Egg. Danny Huston shows up even more briefly as Donald Anderton, the current possessor of said Egg.
• Chelsea Peretti plays Glenda, the secretary of the murder-mystery game night company, while an uncredited Jeffery Wright plays the “FBI Agent” working for the company.

Overall, the movie is short, simple, and entertaining. The cast elevates the material to make for a fun outing.  It’s worth a watch, but not necessarily at the theater.

7 out of 10 – Also, rewatch The Game, which is not nearly as entertaining, but is definitely way more creepy.

Movie Review: Black Panther (PG13 – 134 minutes)

In Marvel comics, Black Panther first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in July of 1966 (predating the creation of the Black Panther political party by about three months).  He was the first black superhero leading his own line of comics.

In the MCU (the Marvel Cinematic Universe), Black Panther first appeared two years ago in Captain America: Civil War on team Iron Man, not because he was all that supportive of Iron Man’s point of view, but because he believed the Winter Soldier killed his father, and the Winter Soldier was on Team Captain America.  Eventually he learned the truth (that Helmut Zemo killed his father) and ended up taking Bucky back to Wakanda at the end of that movie for mental reconditioning, healing, and recovery, because let’s face it – Bucky was a mess. 

This movie begins with a pre-credit sequence detailing the history of Wakanda in a story told from father to son illustrated by what I would call Vibranium smart-sand, which pops up again and again in the movie.  Wakanda was founded by five tribes over and around a Vibranium meteorite crash site.  Originally the tribes were at war, but a member of the Golden Tribe had a vision visit from the Panther goddess Bast, who told him to eat the heart-shaped herb and be infused with panther powers – he became the first king of Wakanda and unified the tribes, all except a sixth tribe called the Jabari, who moved out to the mountains, uninterested in being ruled. 

The story then picks up almost immediately after the end of Civil War as T’Challa is heading back home for his own coronation, and stops along the way to pick up his ex, Nakia.  Nakia is a Wakandan “war-dog”, one of the spies they send out into the world.  She is mid-mission, infiltrating a group that seems to be kidnapping young girls.  T’Challa interrupts, and asks her to come home with him, much to the amusement of Okoye, the general of the Dora Milaje (the all-female warriors that protect the king and family.  They head back home, and we get our first glorious look at all of Wakanda.

After meeting with his mother, Queen Ramonda, and his sister, Shuri - T’Challa goes through the ritual of being stripped of his powers by his advisor Zuri to welcome any challenges from any of the other tribes (River, Merchant, Mining, or Border – he’s from the Golden Tribe).  None of them want to challenge, but the Jabari tribe comes down out of the mountains, and their leader, M’Baku challenges.

Okay – from here on – spoiler alert, I will not ruin anything major, but just be forewarned.

After forcing M’Baku to yield, T’Challa gets to ingest more of the heart-shaped herb to get back his panther powers and visit the ancestral plane to have a chat with his dead father about how best to be king.  The conversation isn’t all that helpful, but the plane is beautiful.  T’Challa also gets to walk around Wakanda, trying to talk Nakia into staying with him and potentially being his queen (she’s not interested - she loves him, but knows that she can do more to help people outside the very closed borders of Wakanda), as well as visit with his best friend W’Kabi, who is leading the Border Tribe warriors and helping raise their war rhinos.  Yes – war rhinos.  Okoye gives everyone the heads-up that Ulysses Klaue has resurfaced to sell some Vibranium he pulled out of a British museum with the help of mercenary Erik Stevens.  After picking up some awesome new tech from Shuri (who on top of being the princess is also a genius inventor) T’Challa, Nakia, and Okoye head to Bosun in South Korea to interrupt the sale of the Vibranium from Klaue to Everett Ross, undercover CIA guy.  Recognizing each other, T’Challa and Ross first try to convince each other to back down, then help each other out. After an incredible action sequence, Klaue is rescued by Stevens, and T’Challa has to make some decisions as to what step to take next and what kind of king to be, whether to continue to keep Wakanda isolated and alone as they have been in the past, or to reach out and assist those struggling in other parts of the world.

From this point forward, I’m not going to say anything else about the plot – you need to see it. Director Ryan Coogler has assembled a powerhouse of a movie that is absolutely a Marvel comic movie, but is also something else.  The story is compelling, the characters are interesting, and I was surprised at how great the action was! Coogler helmed Fruitvale Station and Creed prior to this, both of which are excellent dramas with tremendous performances, but neither has what I would call typical action sequences.  Black Panther has an incredible small battle in the beginning, an amazing fight sequence followed by a car chase in South Korea, multiple wonderful hand to hand combat pieces, and a giant final action set piece that is astounding, even if it has a touch too much CGI.  I really enjoyed all of the characters, and Coogler outdid himself by assembling one of the greatest casts ever.

• Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa, and really does provide the calm, stoic, heart to this movie.  His performance is understated when compared to some others, but that fits with the character as T’Challa struggles with his new role.  The one scene he really gets to let go and show some emotion is in his second visit to the ancestral plane, when he confronts his father about a lie, and error he made.  T’Challa realizes that his father is not flawless, and simply following that lead as king is perhaps not the best path.  At that point he truly decides to be his own type of king, and really shines from that moment on.  Boseman is exceptional, and has signed a five-movie deal with Marvel, so I cannot wait to see him in Infinity War, and the next Black Panther movie.

• Michael B. Jordan plays Erik Killmonger (Stevens), and by now you’ve heard that he is one of the most compelling Marvel villains to date.  He’s compelling because while he seems fueled by rage and hate, the cause of that rage and hate is completely understandable.  His goal to arm oppressed people of color everywhere with Wakandan Vibranium weapons makes sense when you consider where he came from, and what he has had to overcome.  Encountering his anger allows T’Challa to revisit his father’s policy of isolation, and formulate a path that incorporates some compromise between the two viewpoints.

• Lupita Nyong’o plays Nakia, who is very clear on the fact that she believes Wakanda should be doing more to help people all over the world.  She is refusing to stay and be T’Challa’s queen because she knows how useful she can be in other places.  It will be interesting to see what happens with her character as she does become a bit of a villain in the comics.

• Danai Gurira plays Okoye, and she stole every scene she was in.  Those who watch The Walking Dead know she is completely badass as Michonne, even when stuck under a terrible wig.  Here, unburdened by terrible wigs except in one scene (which is brilliant), she is phenomenal.  She absolutely is the greatest warrior in Wakanda, something that is never in question, and her devotion to the throne is stunning, even when she herself wants to question it.  Her non-verbals are the best part of her performance, not just in the hand to hand action sequences, but in the side-eye and glances she gives to other characters.  She’s exceptional.

• Daniel Kaluuya plays W’Kabi, and he does a great job, but he’s just a little too understated for his character’s (spoiler alert) loyalty flip.  Klaue killed his parents, and he’s been after him for thirty years, and when T’Challa fails to bring Klaue back, W’Kabi seems disappointed – and I think a little more anger would have helped to make his sudden association with Killmonger later on feel less sudden. 

• Angela Basset plays Ramonda and is every bit the Queen you expect her to be.  Proud of her son, then terrified when Killmonger drags her husband’s past errors back home with him. 

• Letitia Wright plays Shuri, and every scene that Gurira has not already stolen, she steals.  She is absolutely one of, if not the, best parts of the movie.  She is completely natural and believable as the younger sister of the king, who is absolutely the smartest person in the kingdom, responsible for all the tech, weapons, transportation, and all other devices used by everyone.  She is very much the “Q” of Wakanda, but so much more in that she also will not hesitate to join a battle when necessary.  She is absolutely the star of this movie, and that becomes even more important when considering all the little girls who will see this movie and want to be like her.  In the comics, she eventually becomes Black Panther for a while – I really hope she gets to do that in the movies as well.

• Florence Kasumba plays Ayo, and she’s the one Dora Milaje who was featured in Civil War (“Move. Or you will be moved.”).  Here, she’s number two to Okoye, and is striking and proficient in battle.  She also has some interesting story lines in the comics that they may bring into later movies.

• Winston Duke plays M’Baku, and at no point is he called Man-Ape, as he is in the comics – which was a good choice on their part. He’s large, imposing, and after losing his challenge in the beginning, comes back to help save T’Challa after his loss to Killmonger. At no point was I ready for M’Baku to be hilarious, helpful, and one of the most enjoyable parts of the movie!

• Forest Whitaker plays Zuri, royal advisor, and heart-shaped-herb grower.  Eventually he has to tell T’Challa about his role in the whole N’Joba/Killmonger backstory, which he really regrets. 

• Martin Freeman plays Everett Ross, and provides just the right amount of comic relief in some tense sequences.  I found him completely believable as a quiet company man who is used to being the smartest man in the room, but can also adjust when he learns he is not. 

• Sterling K. Brown plays N’Jobu, King T’Chaka’s brother who in the early 90s was stationed as a war dog in America when they were both younger.  He becomes angry and sad at race relations in Oakland, where he is located, and he first comes up with the plan to give Wakandan weapons to oppressed people.  However, he makes the mistake of partnering up with Klaue to steal the vibranium from Wakanda – trusting Klaue was a mistake, as he blew up a bomb at the border, killing many people.
• Andy Serkis plays Ulysses Klaue, and (spoiler alert) he doesn’t make it through this movie, which is really too bad, because he is really entertaining.  He gets to be huge and over-the-top with his performance because those around him have to be more stoic. He’s an out and out moustache-twirling bad guy, but the performance elevates would could have been simply cookie cutter.

• John Kani plays T’Chaka, and while he plays him only on the ancestral plane, that’s important, because that’s where he gives T’Challa advice, or just tries to defend his choices.  And the reason the younger version of him in the flashback sequences looks so much like him is that is John’s son. 

It is also worth mentioning the costumes, music, and look of this movie.  Kendrick Lamar created some really great songs that punctuate different points of the story, and the drums and African-style beats to the score help to round out the feel of the film.  The costumes in particular are incredible.  Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter ensured that each tribe is given their own trademark color and look, based on traditional African tribal characteristics.  My favorite of those was the Lesotho style blankets that the border tribe wear.  They are beautiful, but their true purpose is demonstrated once they step into battle – they are actually shield projectors!  Every detail of this movie is striking like that and in a really smart play, the movie basically requires multiple viewings so that you can take it all in! 

And yes, let’s mention the cultural significance.  Similar to Wonder Woman’s significance last year, this movie has the incredible fortune and burden of being ‘just another comic book movie’ - but also the incredibly important first depiction of a black superhero in his own mainstream movie.  I love Blade, and those movies were awesome, but I wouldn’t necessarily refer to them as mainstream – and besides, all rated R, so definitely not for kids.  Blade curses a lot.  Representation matters, and now little kids of all races get to see a non-white hero – and in particular little kids who are black get to see a hero that looks like them in the Cinematic Universe they love.  Not only Black Panther himself, but there is a wealth of incredible female roles in this movie for little girls to look up to and admire.  They span aspirational aspects from Queen, to Warrior, to Scientist, each more well-rounded and defined than the next.  These characters and this movie are incredibly important and overwhelming when you think about it in that light.  In fact, the one moment of the move that really made me tear up was the very end, when a little boy walks up to T’Challa, looks at him in amazement, and says, “Who are you?!?”  It’s a simple moment, but it’s also incredibly powerful.

10 out of 10 – go see it. If you’re already seen it, go see it again.  No, it’s not flawless (there’s a little too much CGI in the end battle, and a couple of beats that don’t flow as smoothly as others), but the few flaws are easily overpowered by the parts that are just incredible.

Bonus – the behind the scenes featurettes that were released did an amazing job of really pulling in an audience before the movie was released, check them out.