New movie review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Letitia Wright as Shuri in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Sequels are hard. Sequels in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are harder still. Making the followup to what was once the most successful standalone superhero film of all time in the wake of your leading actor’s tragic death: near impossible. But the gears of corporate movie making grind away, demanding the next big thing.

Director and co-writer Ryan Coogler gives it his best shot, and while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is not a perfect film, nor does it quite rise to the level of its predecessor, it is the best anyone could have done under the circumstances. Wakanda Forever is smart, subversive, and filled to the brim with excellent performances by a game cast who deliver comic book exposition like it is Shakespearean verse.

The missing cast member, of course, is Chadwick Boseman, whose absence looms over the whole film. Boseman died of colon cancer in August 2020 at the age of 43, leaving a whole in the hearts of family, friends, and fans alike. Though it was likely considered, there was no replacing Boseman, who put his stamp indelibly on King T’Challa and the Black Panther. 

Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole would have to adjust their plans and rewrite a sequel that was already in the works. They would have to address the tragedy directly. There could be no quickly moving on from one of the iconic characters of modern times. After all, the first film is the highest-grossing live-action film with a black lead of all time. It was a cultural event with meaning that far outstripped its place in the MCU. It became the first superhero film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, where it won three Oscars. And it made Boseman a hero to a generation of black audiences that had been and remain historically underserved by big-budget Hollywood movies.

The film opens with the offscreen death of T’Challa, as we watch his sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), in her lab, desperately seeking a cure for his unnamed illness. Her idea: to create a synthetic version of the purple heart-shaped herb that Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger destroyed the last of in the first film. Her mother, Quen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), arrives to tell her she is too late. T’Challa is dead.

What follows is the first of the film’s many gorgeously crafted sequences – a lengthy Wakandan funeral that is equal parts reverent and exultant. It is intended as an opportunity for the audience to grieve Boseman as much as it is an opportunity for the Wakandans to grieve their king. It works on both counts and sets up one of the central themes of the film: How does a nation, a people, move forward without its protector and patch the hole in its soul?

We quickly learn that world powers see Wakanda as weakened and the loss of the Black Panther as a chance to pilfer the nation’s reserves of vibranium, thought to exist only in Wakanda. However, we soon discover there is another source of the precious metal, deep in the Atlantic Ocean, in the heretofore unknown underwater kingdom of Talokan. The Talokan people, led by the centuries old mutant Namor (Tenoch Huerta), defend their territory from the mining operation, which leads to increased international scrutiny of Wakanda.

If this sounds like a lot already, it is, and Wakanda Forever’s greatest sin is that it is overstuffed with side characters and plots meant only to service the greater MCU story. This is not the fault of the filmmakers, necessarily, but rather one of the burdens of operating within the massive Marvel machine. Among these side characters, we get the return of Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA Director de Fontaine. We are also introduced to Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a brilliant MIT student who invents a machine for detecting vibranium.

Thorne is great in the role, and I enjoyed much of what the Riri character brings to the movie, but along with the CIA plot, it is one thing too many in a movie that already has so much to deal with. We also get a side plot with Danai Gurira’s Dora Milaje general Okoye as she grapples with her place in the new Wakandan order. And the always-great-to-see Lupita Nyong’o is back as Nakia, a former Wakandan spy who now runs a foundation for children in Haiti.

As great as Gurira, Nyong’o, and Thorne are, it is all too much. The film is at its best when it focuses on its three central characters: Queen Ramonda, Princess Shuri, and Namor. It helps that Bassett, Wright, and Huerta give the three best performances in the film. Bassett, in particular, is just stunning in her power and control. When they all meet on a river bank about a third of the way through the film, the fireworks are instantaneous and the key conflict of the story is set into motion.

At the end of Black Panther, T’Challa reveals Wakanda’s power to the world, ending centuries of isolationism. This inadvertently places Talokan at risk due to the world’s newly born hunger for vibranium. Namor insists that Wakanda form an alliance with Talokan and go on the offensive to protect their nations from any would-be invaders. Like Killmonger in the first film, he wishes to burn the world to save his people. If Queen Ramonda refuses the partnership, Namor says he will destroy Wakanda as a show of strength and go on to burn the world anyway.

Namor and the Talokan people are clearly Latin coded, descended from Mayans who took to the seas to avoid destruction and enslavement at the hands of white settlers. They do so using a plant that bears similar properties to the heart-shaped herb of the Black Panther. One can easily see the seams where Namor would have been set up as a mirror to T’Challa – superpowered protectors of their people with differing views on what protection means. Instead, Shuri must fill this role, and it becomes a story of the destructive power of vengeance and the need to work through grief.

Similar to Killmonger in the first film, Namor makes a good point. It is highly likely that (probably white) invaders will come to destroy his people in order to steal their resources. We have already seen similar attempts on Wakandan resources. It becomes a matter of whether these two nations of color will come to war with each other over their disagreement on how to deal with outside forces beyond their control.

These are heady, fascinating dilemmas, and no one but Coogler is infusing the big-budget Hollywood machine with these kinds of radical discussions and ideas. The reason Coogler’s antagonists – neither Killmonger nor Namor is a “villain” in the traditional sense – are the best in the MCU is because they are complicated and in many ways correct. They have a point of view. They are not kill-crazy mad men lusting for power. Their goals stem from real cultural and political ideologies that come into conflict with Wakanda’s sense of justice.

Other MCU films do not ask these kinds of questions. They are mostly about their protagonists learning to be heroes and dealing with the responsibilities of what that means. Though the plots often involve world-altering stakes, the themes are generally quite small in their ambitions. Among the rest, only Captain America: Civil War really even attempts to look outward and consider the political and social ramifications of these narratives.

Maybe that is a lot to lay at the feet of a piece of blockbuster ephemera. But more than any other director working in the MCU, Coogler seems to understand that these stories need not be ephemeral. Superhero movies are the westerns of our time – the dominant cultural force, encompassing both the film and TV worlds and crafting the iconography of the era. They feature larger-than-life heroes operating against clear villains in worlds of strict moral codes. The thing about westerns, though, is that most of them are forgotten, or at the very least not particularly well remembered.

The ones that stood the test of time were those that dealt with themes that resonate beyond the screen. Films like High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident last because they are unafraid to delve into the murkiness of real life and the gray areas in which most people live. For whatever flaws the sequel has, both Black Panther films share this essential trait. So as other superhero flicks fade from memory, Coogler’s willingness to engage the audience in meaningful moral debate ensures that we will remember Wakanda – forever.

See it? Yes.

RIP Chadwick Boseman

What we know is Chadwick Boseman was a brilliant man, a tremendous actor, and a genuine human being. He played iconic figures of American history, and he created iconic figures that have defined world culture. He quietly battled cancer for four years while working harder than most of us will work in 40. He spent his nearly 43 years on earth not only playing heroes but embodying them. He is dead way too soon.

The news does not hit you right away because it does not make sense. We just saw him this year in Spike Lee’s Vietnam opus, Da 5 Bloods. We will see him again this year when the August Wilson adaptation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom comes out. He will undoubtedly be wonderful in the film, and it will serve as his final big-screen gift to us. The gift all along, of course, was having him in our lives.

He rose to prominence as Jackie Robinson in 42. Much will be made of his death coming on the day Major League Baseball was celebrating Jackie Robinson Day, one of those cosmic coincidences that feels somehow scripted. It is not and feels to me more sad than poetic. He also took on Thurgood Marshall and James Brown. He brought grace, power, and sensitivity to all of these roles. 

And, there was Black Panther. It is on as I type this. It remains the defining masterpiece of the Marvel era. The cultural capital of the Marvel Cinematic Universe often feels purchased and purchasable. Black Panther feels earned, necessary. The world needed a movie like Black Panther, and it needed a hero like King T’Challa. For it all to work, though, the enterprise needed an actor who could engage, empower, and inspire. That actor was Chadwick Boseman, could only have been Chadwick Boseman.

There have been three or four good Superman performers. As many or more solid Batman actors. Three Spider-men just this century. Often, superheroes feel interchangeable -- that is the purchased cultural capital we were talking about -- but Black Panther is not interchangeable. Chadwick Boseman is not replaceable. Oh, he will be replaced because the gods of profit demand a Black Panther 2, and the millions across the globe who find hope and inspiration in the character to see the story continued.

But Black Panther without Chadwick Boseman will be inherently lesser. Hollywood without Chadwick Boseman is inherently lesser. The world is inherently lesser. Rest in power.

The Best of the 2010s: 20 for 2020

Amid all the list making and best-of roundups, there are films bound to be forgotten. Among these are great films, some heralded in their time and some less so, but all of which deserve to be remembered and shared as the years and decades go on. Last Cinema Standing will, of course, be compiling our Best of the Decade lists and sharing them in this space. We will talk about the best moments in film, the best performances, and the best films, but I wanted to start off this project with the films that might not end up in these other places.

I initially planned to have here a list of movies that should be revisited so as not to be forgotten, but as with so many things, the idea morphed and transformed in the process. What we have instead are the movies that for whatever reason, I could not stop thinking about as the years have passed. Some are big blockbusters while others are little-seen indies, but none has left my mind. So, here are 20 movies – two for each year of the 2010s – that I will be thinking about in 2020 and beyond and that I hope you will give another watch to in the decade to come.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Remember when Banksy was nominated for an Oscar? That was no joke, except perhaps on the Academy for buying into the veracity of the notoriously prank-happy street artist’s supposed documentary. But “fact or fiction?” is not really the point in Exit Through the Gift Shop. If you accept it as a documentary, then it is a documentary. If you view it as a satirical jab at the world of high art, then that is what it is.

The characters are verifiably real – or as verifiable as anyone in this world gets – with Mr. Brainwash, Space Invader, Shepard Fairey, and Banksy himself all making appearances. The film captures the guerilla nature of their work but also the craftsmanship inherent in the planning, preparation, and execution of their schemes. It then goes beyond that into the commodification of all that work, questioning the very nature of art as a business.

It is undeniable that Exit Through the Gift Shop is an elaborate practical joke, but on whom will change based on your perspective. Is it on the high-art world, which is shown to be shallow and corruptible? Is it on the street artists, who allow themselves to be taken in by Mr. Brainwash? Is it on us for getting dragged into any of this? Or maybe the joke is ultimately on Banksy, for thinking any of us would get what he was doing in the first place.

See also: 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s stirring tribute to the human spirit, which gives us James Franco’s finest performance, a wonderful A.R. Rahman score, and one of the most beautiful and uplifting finales of the decade.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

The revitalization of the Planet of the Apes series is one of the most pleasantly surprising developments of the past decade. Though many of the films are enjoyable, the original series essentially peaked with the twist at the end of the first film. Charlton Heston damns us all to hell, and it is basically downhill from there, give or take an Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Tim Burton’s widely loathed 2001 Planet of the Apes left neither hope nor much desire for a revival.

So, imagine the delight of sitting down for another reboot in a decade of full of them and instead getting a startlingly original vision that refuses to trade on the nostalgia of its predecessors and forges a new path forward. Director Ruper Wyatt strikes gold with the story of a chimpanzee accidentally granted sentience and a society that has no idea how to handle that development. As ever, though, this tale about the rise of another species is truly about the fatal flaw in humanity that precipitates our own downfall.

Of course, Andy Serkis is great as Caesar, the central chimp, and we will talk more about him in another installment of this series. The visual effects work, to this point, was unmatched. How Joe Letteri and team lost the Oscar will be puzzled over. But Wyatt does not rely solely on performance and effects, and in the end, he stages one of the great battle scenes of the decade on the Golden Gate Bridge. He imbues the sequence with the weight it deserves, portraying humanity’s last stand for the futile gesture it is and, perhaps, always was.

See also: Drive, a tangerine dream of a film that made a lot of people (yours truly included) think they could be cool just by throwing on a scorpion jacket and remaining stoic. Perhaps no one will ever be as cool as director Nicolas Winding Refn makes Ryan Gosling look in this movie.

Prometheus (2012)

In 2012, I called director Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel the best film of the year. It was not a well-liked film, and its esteem has not grown in the intervening years. At the time, I thought it was an estimable science-fiction masterpiece. Masterpiece was probably too strong – the film is silly in places and has surface-level flaws I missed while admiring its depths. I still admire its depths. In the wake of Alien: Covenant, I find still more to like in Prometheus.

It is fascinating the four original Alien films were handled by four distinct directors, each putting his spin on the material. Of them, only Scott returned to the franchise. Perhaps, this is because he was the only one who had something left to say on the matter. Taken together, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant reach for a grand statement on humanity’s origins and our never-ending quest to find meaning beyond ourselves.

The android David (Michael Fassbender) is one of the great characters of the decade. He represents both human ingenuity and human vanity. He is the best of our intentions and the worst of our actions. He is both the pride and the fall. He is the film’s final verdict on what we are. Maybe Prometheus does not achieve all its goals, but for setting its aims so high, it is to be applauded.

See also: Chronicle, which like so much else in recent times has been stained by problematic men behind the scenes but which remains the second-best superhero film of a decade dominated by superheroes. Dane DeHaan is marvelous, and as a latecomer to The Wire who never watched Friday Night Lights, this was my introduction to the one, the only Michael B. Jordan.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

This is an already well-regarded film by two of the preeminent filmmakers of the era, which is to say Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis is not exactly at risk of being forgotten. On the contrary, it will be at or near the top of many best-of-the-decade lists, I suspect. And while it will not be on my list, Inside Llewyn Davis is a film that has not left my mind since I saw it. It sticks with you and demands attention, not unlike the cat Oscar Isaac’s Llewyn picks up as a traveling companion.

Adam Driver gave an interview to the New Yorker a couple months back in which he stated he no longer watches his own performances, citing his performance in this film as a reason why. In particular, he mentioned the famous “Please, Mr. Kennedy” sequence, which is the most out-and-out funny moment in a movie that is otherwise blackly comic at the best of times. I bring this up because at Driver’s mere mention of the scene, my mind spiraled in a dozen different directions, analyzing the film’s structure, its humor, and its performances, all of which remain richly nuanced on every viewing.

The story is not so much a straight line of incidents but a densely interwoven tapestry of accidents and ironies – all meticulously planned by the Coens, of course. Though I do not have this on my list of the best films of the decade, it tops the list of films I have thought about most in the past 10 years. It is impossible not to think of Llewyn and his brushes with greatness, his travels parallel to the road that leads to success and fame, a road he will never walk.

See also: Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley’s poignant and pointed work of autobiography, functioning both as a deeply felt exploration of the relationship between parents and their children and a larger investigation of the nature of truth and truth-telling.

Inherent Vice (2014)

In a decade that saw Paul Thomas Anderson produce two universally acclaimed masterworks (The Master and Phantom Thread), it is the film that came between those two that stands out the most in my mind as a hidden gem. It is truly PTA’s middle child of the decade – forgotten, underappreciated, and a little bitter. Where The Master and Phantom Thread trade on their mannered stateliness, Inherent Vice is an irreverent freakout, content in its strangeness and unbothered by its messiness.

Adapted from a seemingly unfilmable Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice is less about its twisty, private-eye mystery plot than it is about a mood. With an all-time Joaquin Phoenix performance at its center, the film tangles you up in knots, daring you to pull at any thread and see what happens. Sometimes, it feels as though the film itself is unsure what will happen if you look too closely, though of course, Anderson is always in control, no matter how out of control his creation seems to be.

The hippie dream has never been portrayed as foggier or more distant than here, where characters walk around seemingly aware that any change they longed for has eluded them and any peace they sought has curdled into boredom and discontentment. Anderson knows this, and his film is unafraid to show us how all that bitterness builds up in those who had so much hope dashed so unceremoniously. And, suddenly, all the fun stops, and we are left with only emptiness, and we can hardly picture what once may have filled the void.

See also: Mr. Turner, about what happens when a world we thought we knew passes us by and we are left to reflect on what remains. Mike Leigh delivers a gorgeously shot tribute to the life and work of a singular artist that serves as a reminder of what makes all artists special and just a little crazy.

The Kindergarten Teacher (2015)

I have not seen Sara Colangelo’s 2018 remake of this film. I hear Maggie Gyllenhaal is exceptional in the title role. Considering I can think of no bad Gyllenhaal performances, I am sure that she is. But we already have Sarit Larry’s sublime performance in Nadav Lapid’s original, and to ask for more would seemingly be greedy.

Beyond Larry’s stellar work, there is also Lapid’s constantly seeking camera, following characters around at ground level, spotting the nuances and flavors of everyday lives that have seemingly been sapped of both. It is a film about art that is as cynical as Exit Through the Gift Shop but drained of satire. The Kindergarten Teacher is deadly serious.

When the film came out, Lapid called the titular teacher a “terrorist for art,” and she certainly proves willing to blow up her life, metaphorically, for the cause. As we slide further into a culture that ignores beauty for the banal, Lapid was already here on the front line before we knew there was a war, calling it a battle before the first shot was fired. It all seems so clear now, but The Kindergarten Teacher knew then.

See also: 99 Homes, when Andrew Garfield finally got to step away from the Spider-man mask that was always ill-fitted and show us once again the thespian underneath. Few films understood and conveyed the economic realities of the decade better than this vital Ramin Bahrani work.

Moana (2016)

Moana made $690 million worldwide. It was a critical hit. It featured a popular soundtrack spearheaded by the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda. And in its time across various streaming services, it has proved to be endlessly rewatchable. Despite all of this, it feels as though the film is destined to animated also-ran status for the 2010s.

The Frozen franchise was the biggest animated hit of a decade bookended by a pair of Toy Story sequels (Toy Story 3 in 2010 and Toy Story 4 in 2019), part of Pixar’s continued dominance in the animation realm. Hayao Miyazaki made his supposed swan song (The Wind Rises in 2013, though he may have further features yet to come). Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse changed how we look at animation and animated heroes. This all went on, and still, I keep coming back to Moana.

I can’t think of a better animated story to save for future generations than that of a young Polynesian girl who takes control of her destiny, saves her people, and defeats a “villain” not with violence but empathy. It is classic Disney, presented in a way that is anything but classic. There is no princess. There is no prince. There is just a fearless warrior, who instead of urging us to let it go, asks us to wonder how far we’ll go.

See also: 20th Century Women, Mike Mills’ loving portrait of the women who raised him, which stands among the most empathetic films of a time in which empathy seems in short supply. Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning are remarkable at the head of an ensemble of lives that feel truly lived.

In the Fade (2017)

Each of us is dealing in some way with forgiveness and reconciliation, be it on a small scale within ourselves or our families or on a grander scale with a society that continues to oppress and marginalize the most vulnerable among us. There is no easy answer, there is no quick fix, and no peace appears to be on the horizon. So, what are we left with? Fear. Anger. Resentment. Hatred. And a lack of avenues to explore and work through these feelings. In that spirit, director Fatih Akin’s In the Fade sure seems like the movie of the moment.

Despite winning the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and despite starring Diane Kruger, one of Germany’s most famous actresses internationally, who won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for this performance, In the Fade was criminally underseen. Perhaps it was too raw for American audiences. Tell me if this sounds familiar: A person of color is killed, and the system spends its time investigating the deceased for reasons it is his fault he is dead. Throw in the true antagonists, a band of Neo Nazis, and though set in Germany, this begins to resemble the America a lot of us know today.

Kruger plays the wife of the Turkish man who is killed along with their son in a terrorist bombing, and when the system fails to achieve justice, she is left to face a world that would rather protect Nazis than avenge an immigrant. So, we return to forgiveness and reconciliation. The Christian bible says Jesus wants us to forgive 77 times – or maybe 70 times 7. In the Fade asks what of that next time and whether practicing forgiveness and reconciliation simply comforts evil-doers. What of and at what cost accountability? Akin’s answer comes not from the bible but another worldly scribe: Don’t let the sun go down on your grievances.

See also: The Florida Project, about mostly good people mostly trying to do good in a world that has little time or patience for small kindnesses. Writer-director Sean Baker’s film is equal parts damning and triumphant, portraying the American Dream as a flickering candle, a beacon of hope that at any moment could be extinguished.

Black Panther (2018)

Ryan Coogler dominated the decade. I say that as a plain fact. I am on the record all over this website calling Coogler the best director in the game today, and I have not seen a compelling argument for anyone else. He burst on to the scene in 2013 with Fruitvale Station, an underseen masterwork. From there, he took over one of the most storied franchises in American film and made it relevant again with Creed in 2015. Finally, to close out the decade, he gifted the world Black Panther.

For 2018, Black Panther simply was the culture. Think about how remarkable this is: A black man directs a script from two black writers (Coogler and Joe Robert Cole), starring a mostly black cast, and the film becomes the highest-grossing domestic box-office hit (until Avengers: Endgame took back the title) in a series that is otherwise painfully white. But leave aside for a moment everything the film means to the industry and the world at large, and what you are left with is a tremendous work of art and, for my money, the finest superhero film ever made.

Black Panther is great because as thrilling as its set pieces are, as cool as its technology is, as fun as its heroes are, it is a film equally concerned with ideas. Though it ends with a big fight sequence – as required by Marvel formula – the battle is about more than brawn. It is about ideas, about ideology. Coogler engages the audience intellectually in a way that even few non-superhero films have the courage to do. That he does so while entertaining so thoroughly makes Black Panther like watching a magic trick – and Coogler, right now, is the world’s greatest magician.

See also: The Other Side of the Wind, the final Orson Welles film, about which we do not talk enough, perhaps because we take for granted a masterpiece from one of the greatest directors ever to step behind a camera. It is the perfect coda to a sadly imperfect career, marred by a system that could not understand or appreciate the genius in its midst.

The Nightingale (2019)

Writer-director Jennifer Kent seemed to spring forth fully formed with her astonishing horror debut The Babadook in 2014. Her second feature, the equally horrific but decidedly less supernatural The Nightingale, proves that first film was no fluke and that Kent will be a filmmaker to be reckoned with in the coming decade.

A revenge thriller where the antagonist is nothing less than European colonialism, The Nightingale takes place 200 years ago and could not feel more of the moment. Our heroes are a white convict woman (Aisling Franciosi) and an aboriginal tracker (Baykali Ganambarr), who each have reasons to be angry with the hand life has dealt them, or more specifically, the hand their white male overseers have dealt them.

As they trek through the Tasmanian wilderness, doggedly pursuing those who have wronged them, we are confronted with the kinds of banal, everyday violence that make up life in a world destroyed by its conquerors. The film is brutal, bloody, and assaultive, all of which I mean as compliments, as Kent never shies from her duty to portray the truth of this place and these people. This is not about the nobility in the fight – there is no nobility or grace to be found here – but rather the necessity of struggle. No one wanted things to be this way, but they are, and we do what we must.

See also: Aquarela, which is the most beguiling and entrancing documentary to come along in quite some time, demonstrating the power of the natural world and, thereby, humanity’s inherent powerlessness. We are guests here, and not permanent ones at that.

___

Check back throughout the week as we continue with our Best of the Decade project, continuing with the Top 20 Performances of the 2010s.

Roma, The Favourite top nominees for 91st Academy Awards

Roma

The Academy, so reluctant in recent years to embrace Netflix and the streaming revolution in general, has kicked that bad habit cold turkey this year with massive support for Alfonso Cuarón’s masterful Roma.

Nominees for the 91st Academy Awards were announced early Tuesday morning, and Roma led the way with 10, tied with Yorgos Lanthimos’ royal comedy The Favourite. A Star Is Born and Vice each picked up eight nominations, while Ryan Coogler’s powerful superhero epic Black Panther garnered seven.

All five of those films earned Best Picture nominations and are joined in the top category by BlacKkKlansman (six nominations), Bohemian Rhapsody (five), and Green Book (five).

Roma had been expected to be among the leaders and picked up expected nominations for Director, Cinematography, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing but showed its true strength with well-deserved nominations for Yalitza Aparicio in Best Actress and Marina de Tavira in Best Supporting Actress. It also picked up nods for Production Design, Original Screenplay, and of course Foreign Language Film.

All of that means Cuarón is in position to walk away with five Academy Awards on the big night, as he served as writer, director, producer, and cinematographer on Roma. His name would also be on the statue in the Foreign Language category. He missed out on a sixth potential nomination when the film was surprisingly passed over for Best Editing, a category often seen as a bellwether for Best Picture.

Lanthimos, who had missed out with the Directors Guild, earned his first nomination for Best Director – a development that delights me to no end – and his wonderfully daft film showed up everywhere it conceivably could have. Its stars, Olivia Colman (Actress), Emma Stone (Supporting Actress), and Rachel Weisz (Supporting Actress) all picked up nominations, and though I would have liked to see all three in the leading category, I won’t argue with the recognition. The gorgeously mounted film was also named in Editing, Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, and Original Screenplay.

Filling out the Best Director category are Pawel Pawlikowski for Cold War, which also picked up a Cinematography nod and joined Roma among the Foreign Language nominees, Adam McKay for Vice, and Spike Lee with his long-overdue first directing nomination for BlacKkKlansman. That left Peter Farrelly (Green Book) and most shockingly Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) on the outside looking in, although both picked up other nominations – Farrelly for Original Screenplay and Cooper for Best Actor.

Coogler sadly did not make the final five for his work elevating the superhero genre to new heights, but the film’s stellar showing is evidence the Academy can embrace a Marvel blockbuster when it’s done right. Coogler, of course, knows how to do it right. In addition to Best Picture, Black Panther was cited for Costume Design, Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Original Score, and Original Song. It was not included among the Visual Effects nominees, where Avengers: Infinity War will carry the Marvel banner.

Joining Cooper on the Best Actor list are Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Christian Bale (Vice), Viggo Mortenson (Green Book), and Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate). Aparicio and Colman will compete for Best Actress with Glenn Close (The Wife), Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born), and Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?).

The Supporting Actor category features Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman), Sam Elliott (A Star Is Born), Mahershala Ali (Green Book), Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), and Sam Rockwell (Vice). Amy Adams (Vice) and Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) round out the Supporting Actress category with Stone, Weisz, and de Tavira.

It is traditional for film lovers and Oscar watchers to spend the rest of nominations morning grousing about the movies and performances that were not nominated, but on a celebratory day such as this, I like to keep positivity on the menu.

In that spirit, I shall dispense with small gripes as quickly as possible. I wish Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried had found more appreciation for their work in First Reformed. While Mary Poppins Returns pulled down four nominations (Score, Song, Costume Design, and Production Design), it would have been nice to see Emily Blunt recognized for finding her own take on the titular character and Rob Marshall cited for his fluid and fanciful direction. Other minor quibbles can be saved for another day.

In the plus column – and the plus far outweighs the minus today – I am overjoyed by the showings of both The Favourite and Roma, for my money the two best films of the year. Lanthimos’ and Lee’s directing nominations are music to my ears. Also, it is about time Paul Schrader gets some love from the Academy with an Original Screenplay nod that by no means should be his first but somehow is.

This might be my favorite Costume Design group in a long while, featuring the double Sandy Powell nomination (The Favourite and Mary Poppins Returns) and the out-of-this world Ruth Carter designs on Black Panther. Excited to see Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap in Documentary for the kind of long-form character study Liu’s mentor, Steve James, usually gets overlooked for. And finally, bravo for Hirozaku Kore-eda’s Shoplifters making the final five for Foreign Language.

That’s all for now folks. Click here for the full list of nominees, and check back on the site over the next month for more about these awards and these great films.

Year in Review: Top 10 Films of 2018

Another year is in the books, and here at Last Cinema Standing, it was a year less productive than I might have hoped. Less productive in the sense that fewer words were written and fewer films were discussed. However, I got married, traveled across Europe for the first time, explored Canada some, and never stopped going to the movies.

The cinema was there through every step of it, and though I did not check in here as I would have liked, the mission never changed: to explore the defining art of our time and to encourage interest in and enthusiasm for the artists who make it.

For this go-around, in lieu of the traditional series of top 10 lists and a sort of state of the cinema, I thought we would just jump right in with the Top 10 Films of 2018. Some may disagree – and I should like to meet them and discuss – but I felt this year was among the best in recent memory. Several masters of the form returned with beautiful new works, while many young talents announced themselves to the world with vibrant, vital pieces.

What struck me most in compiling this list was the manner in which these films reflect the many worlds that surround us, both far flung and close to home. The below filmmakers could serve as a case study in the desperate need for differing points of view and fresh perspectives – whether that be a Chinese woman reinventing the American cowboy picture or a black man changing the way we think about superheroes.

There was a time – and for many, we are still living in that time – when such voices would not have been heard on such topics. That’s a shame and a travesty. I feel sorrow for all the voices held silent throughout the years, voices that could have made conversations in and about the cinema that much more interesting and informed. However, I feel joy for the voices we will hopefully hear in the future because these filmmakers stood up and shouted above the noise, demanding to be heard. It’s a better cinema and a better world when all voices have a say.

First, five films that did not make the top 10 but which will have left an indelible mark on the year in movies no less (alphabetically): Pawel Pawlikowski’s devastating Cold War, a doomed romance that effortlessly makes the personal universal; Paul Schrader’s triumphant return to form, First Reformed, following a crisis of faith in a world in which faith holds little value; Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, a quietly radical tale of two lovers’ strength; Bing Liu’s moving, years-in-the-making documentary of youth and young manhood, Minding the Gap; and first-time feature director Paul Dano’s searing portrait of mid-20th century family life, Wildlife.

Without further ado, Last Cinema Standing’s Top 10 Films of 2018:

10. Blindspotting, directed by Carlos López Estrada

López Estrada’s feature debut defines “blindspotting” for us as an inability to see two realities at the same time, to witness the multitudes that surround us, or to accept people for everything they are and not just the one thing we see them as. Written by and starring childhood best friends Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, Blindspotting makes a poignant case that we are all losing a piece of our humanity by refusing to engage with the humanity in others.

The film – part of an Oakland Cinema Renaissance that also featured in movies like Black Panther and Sorry to Bother You this year – casts a wide net, tackling topics as diverse as gentrification, racial profiling, the prison system, and identity. It does so with insight and ingenuity, grabbing our attention with story of ex-con Collin (Diggs) trying to make things right and holding it with an engaging exploration of the political and social realities that make that quest so difficult.

Diggs, perhaps best known for his stage work in Broadway smash Hamilton, draws you into Collin’s world and makes you feel the pain and persecution he lives with, while never letting you forget the resilience it takes to make it through the day. When the world tries to break him, it leads to a climax that is at once unexpected and perfect. Collin stands in for all those struggling to keep their heads above water while the weight of history pulls them down. The struggle is the story, and in that story are multitudes, there to see if only we chose to look.

9. First Man, directed by Damien Chazelle

Neil Armstrong’s voyage to the moon is among the defining moments of the collective human experience. It connects us all, striking at the thing inside us that demands to know what else is out there and whether we are capable of finding it. As such, it is simply shocking the story had not been made into a major motion picture, daunting as the challenge may seem. Leave it to Chazelle, then, to take the classic hero’s journey and turn it on its head.

First Man is thrill ride as character study. This is not The Right Stuff, an exhaustive historical accounting of the space program. Nor is it Apollo 13, a crowd-pleasing space flick about the power of human ingenuity and spirit. No, it is something else entirely. Coming off the $150 million-grossing La La Land, Chazelle’s latest effort was a surprise box-office failure. This, of course, says less about the film’s merit than it does about the audience’s desire for heroes to be bold and triumphs to be black and white (to say nothing of the inane flag non-controversy that dogged the film).

What the low grosses are proof of most of all, however, is the risk Chazelle took – undertaken as well by stars Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy – to tell an intimate tale of grief and loss across the backdrop of the most exciting adventure on which humankind has ever embarked. The great lead performances express all of the repression and fragility innate in these characters, trying to hold a life together while one of them travels farther from the other than any human has ever been from humanity. In the end, it turns out Chazelle was less interested in exploring that physical distance than the emotional distance between two souls and whether that gap can ever be bridged, here on earth or in the heavens.

8. Mary Poppins Returns, directed by Rob Marshall

It occurs to me how little unfettered, unabashed, all-out genuine joy many of us experience in our day-to-day lives. The world is not so peachy, and lives are hard, but it seems there must be room for joy. Never is that sense more palpable than when confronted with a pure distillation of exuberance, happiness, and, yes, joy. That is precisely what veteran musical director Marshall finds in Mary Poppins Returns.

Rare is the film that leaves you sore from smiling and happier for it. Rarer still is the film that accomplishes this without once feeling forced or false. Marshall, screenwriter David Magee, and star Emily Blunt approach the story with neither irony nor the winking snark that sours so much of today’s pop cultural landscape. Instead, the filmmakers embrace this bold, lovely tale in all its dreamy, technicolor glory, and they ask us to do the same.

The film version of Mary Poppins, that magical nanny who descends from the clouds, has always been about letting the pains and pressures that tie us down fade into the background and allowing the small pleasures to lighten and lift us up. It is a cheery message, to be sure. Some might say sappy or, worse, naïve. And maybe Mary Poppins Returns is the escapist fantasy its detractors claim it to be, but I say that is a feature, not a flaw. The sooner we can grab hold of that, the sooner we can all float on.

7. The Rider, directed by Chloé Zhao

White American men have not said all there is to say about The Western, that most American and male of genres. They have, however, said all they have to say about it – then repeated it and spit it back out ad infinitum throughout the history of the medium. It took Chinese émigré Zhao to find something new to say and, more importantly, a new way to say it.

This is a dusty, dirty tale of masculinity set in a frontier that is shrinking, in idea if not land. It is a cowboy picture of the highest order, but Zhao has no interest in the mythmaking that implies. Rather, her camera is fascinated by the hardscrabble lives of young men with few options or outlets and the rites and rituals they enact, more out of habit than desire.

With a cast populated by non-actors, all playing some version of themselves, The Rider tells the story of Brady (Brady Jandreau), who knows only one life and is one more bad accident from losing that life forever. If a rider cannot ride, who is he, the film asks. In so asking, it forces us to question how we define ourselves and those around us and what more there could be than what is there at first glance. At every turn, Zhao and her gorgeous film upend our expectations, and perhaps more impressive, they demand we set greater expectations, not only for ourselves but for the world we inhabit.

6. The Other Side of the Wind, directed by Orson Welles

The miracle of this film’s existence would be enough to make it a must-see. The long, troubled history of The Other Side of the Wind is by now common knowledge to those who would seek out such knowledge. For those wishing to know more, Morgan Neville’s superlative documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is an excellent starting point. All of this is to say to the film did not have to be a masterpiece to be magnificent, but in life, Welles could make nothing less. The same holds true in death, as the long-gone master delivers one last lesson.

Much has been said and will be said of the metatextual narrative of the film: An aging, legendary filmmaker is having trouble pulling together the financing for what would be his final film while critics and sycophants alike hover around like vultures, looking for scraps to gnaw from the carcass. But as much as we want to see Welles in his lead character, director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), the magician behind the camera is cleverer than that.

Welles weaves a shapeshifting tale of debauchery and hedonism among the Hollywood elite, an Eden overrun with sin. At the same time, he unleashes some of the most boldly satirical and astonishingly experimental filmmaking of his career in the film within the film, itself titled “The Other Side of the Wind.” What we are left with is the final document, the evidence – if there needed to be any further – of an iconoclast who pushed the boundaries of cinema right to the end and, it turns out, after as well.

5. Shoplifters, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

There have been films made before about how the best families are the families we choose. At this point, it is something of a clichéd logline. There are fewer movies – none comes to mind – about how difficult it is to keep that chosen family together. More than anything, Kore-eda, the humanist Japanese auteur, has made a film about the forces, internal and external, that pull us away from the things we need in this life.

On its face, Shoplifters does not appear to have much going on outside its central story of a family of thieves that takes in a young girl from the cold. However, in every new revelation about who these people are and what truly drives them, Kore-eda finds new meaning and new depth, which he mines for maximum empathy. It is a film of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, but it is also none of these things. We ultimately discover these are just people fulfilling that most basic of human needs: connection.

With a deft directorial hand and a storyteller’s knack for pulling you into the drama, Kore-eda, who also wrote the script, builds tension and anxiety until you fear you will jump out of your seat and leap to the screen, wishing to grab these characters and tell them someone out here cares for them. The very effortlessness with which Kore-eda communicates all of this serves as proof of just how difficult it really is. For, if were so easy to craft a gem such as this, would not we have more of them?

4. Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler

There has never been a more important superhero movie than this. Some movies capture the zeitgeist. Black Panther simply is the zeitgeist. Coogler, named multiple times on this site as the best young director in the game, stands up and practically demands that title with this Afro-futurist pop fantasia that is as radical as it is crowd-pleasing. Black Panther – yes, the big-budget, comic-book behemoth – is certainly the movie of our time, but in a just cinematic universe, it would be the movie of the future as well. Every blockbuster should be so bold and brilliant.

The superhero formula – and the Marvel formula in particular – can sometimes feel like it was handed down from on high, etched into stone tablets. Coogler takes those tablets, destroys them, and rearranges the pieces into a new form that reflects not the cold calculation of a studio board room but the beating heart of an artist. With a predominantly black cast and a crew of collaborators of the kind overlooked by big Hollywood for too long, including cinematographer Rachel Morrison and costume designer Ruth E. Carter, Coogler smashes down the doors of the establishment and plants his flag.

The story of King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and the usurper Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) is a story of African determinism and black activism dressed up in the robes of a high-tech, sci-fi shoot-‘em-up. Simply populating the world with strong, intelligent, relatable black characters would be radical enough in the history of Hollywood, but Coogler takes it the extra step further with a film that demands the viewer be actively engaged. It dares to challenge and subvert the standard narrative of all those films that look like it but could never be it. Black Panther requires your attention and your thought. And it gets it.

3. BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee

Lee picked up an honorary Oscar in 2016, a career achievement award from an Academy that had to that point failed to recognize duly any of the filmmaker’s career achievements. It is the kind of award given to artists toward the end of their careers, when their best work is behind them. How silly the Academy must feel now that Lee has produced his best film in years, a film that by all rights should be Lee’s first Best Picture nominee and earn him his long-overdue first Best Director nomination. Of course, it is not about awards. It is about respect – the respect Lee has gone too long without. Here, he garners it without compromising one bit of the vision that has made him who he is.

BlacKkKlansman is at once a buddy-cop drama, a ’60s radical picture, and a prestige period drama, all filtered through a lens that is best described only as Spike. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) and Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) – a black man and a Jewish man – infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in a tale that if it were not true, would be impossible to believe. Lee exposes and dissects the dark heart of a nation still stained by the virulent plague of racism and which to this day, would rather look away than confront its deeply troubled past. ‘That’s a problem that existed,’ we wish to say, and Lee rebuts: ‘It is a problem that exists.’

The racist Klansmen of the film are buffoons, yes, but Lee never lets us forget they are well-connected buffoons, powerful buffoons, dangerous buffoons. It is not up for debate that the KKK is a terrorist organization that exists only to strike fear in the hearts of its enemies. Klansmen are terrorists who live here. Work here. Shop here. And march in our streets. It was true then and it is true now. And here is Lee with BlacKkKlansman, to show us how far we have not come.

2. Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Roma is a love letter to a place, a people, a history, written by the only filmmaker who could write so beautifully and so elegantly. Cuarón is hardly the first filmmaker to pen an ode to the times of his youth. On the contrary, the coming-of-age film is almost a rite of passage. This is not that, though. Cuarón is too smart a writer for that, too canny a filmmaker. With Roma, his masterpiece, he crafts a loving paean to the women who raised him, immortalizing their stories in ways the cinema has rarely seen.

Newcomer Yalitza Aparicio stars as Cleo, nanny to a wealthy family in Mexico City. Right away, we are privy to the visible and invisible class structures that define her life and the lives of those with whom she interacts. We see Cleo’s routine – she mops, she scrubs, she washes, she hangs the laundry out to dry – and we feel the rhythm of her day. All the while, the sights and sounds – oh, the sounds – of Mexico surround her and us, enveloping us and making the world of the story a fully lived in place, marked by hopes and dreams, loves and losses, life and death.

Immersion is too small a word for what Cuarón accomplishes with Roma. The film surrounds you, makes you a part of its whole, piling layer on top of layer, emotion on top of emotion, sensation on top of sensation. You are held speechless, breathless, enthralled by a new kind of cinema. Cuarón, who serves here as writer, director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, has dazzled us with his technical prowess before (Gravity and Children of Men spring to mind), but never before has he employed those gifts in service of a story this worthy. It is cinema and storytelling as high art, and with Roma, Cuarón has carved his name alongside the cinema’s foremost artists.

1. The Favourite, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

It was only a matter of time, really, before Lanthimos made the best film of the year. Every film he has made has been in contention for the title. Dogtooth was a bleak comic fable. The Lobster a moving meditation on romance and fascism. The Killing of a Sacred Deer a strange, haunting morality play. Now, finally, Lanthimos achieves full Kubrickian splendor with a daft comedy of royal intrigue that is as unabashedly entertaining as it is formally accomplished. Everything he has made has been building to this satirical haymaker that lands with the blunt force of a sledgehammer to the chest.

From a biting and brilliant script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, Lanthimos crafts a whole new kind of costume drama, one that isn’t afraid to roll around in the muck, literally and figuratively. It is the early 1700s, in the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), and Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) controls the queen through sly mind games and overt sexual manipulation. Into this closed world arrives Abigail (Emma Stone), a ruthless social climber who will stop at nothing to achieve her ends. The power struggle that forms among these three women forms the basis of the wildest, most irreverent tale of the monarchy ever put to film.

Every element of the film has been fashioned to feed into the nightmare these characters have allowed to fester around them – the luxurious but tattered costumes; the fright-fest hair and makeup; the crumbling architecture of the set design; and most of all, that insane, near-fisheye camerawork that spins you like a top then stops you on a dime. Of course, it is the three-headed beast of a performance among Colman, Weisz, and Stone that ensures the film reaches its greatest potential, each actress delivering work that is by turns loony and lyrical, depraved and delectable.

From the irreverent title design onward, The Favourite is everything you could want from the cinema. It provides a sumptuous banquet for the eyes, the ears, and the mind. It is a gluttonous experience and a film filled to the brim with gluttons. Gluttons for food, power, wealth, influence, status, you name it. Lanthimos’ final trick is to show us the corrosive emptiness of getting everything you ever wanted – all it does is make you want more. And I will admit to suffering the same sin when it comes to films like this: Give me more.

Note: We will hopefully in the coming days explore the rest of 2018’s wonderful offerings, with discussions on the performances, moments, and quotes that stood out last year. The Oscar season will be fully upon us Tuesday with the announcement of the 2018 nominees, and we will be here to discuss that as well.

Last year, we got cut off in the middle of this. The goal this year is to make the workload more manageable so that it will not happen again. Let’s see how this goes. All I can promise is that I’ll be here, ready and willing, to talk about the cinema.