Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther (2018)

Director:

Ryan Coogler

Starring:

Chadwick Boseman

Michael B. Jordan

Lupita Nyong’o

Danai Gurira

Martin Freeman

Plot:

T’Challa, the King of Wakanda, rises to the throne in the isolated, technologically advanced African nation, but his claim is challenged by a vengeful outsider who was a childhood victim of T’Challa’s father’s mistake.

Review:

There is no way I can do this film justice in my review. I’m just not skilled enough and I’m still surfing on a buzz of awesome, but I’ll try.

T’Challa, Chadwick Boseman, is now not only the Black Panther but he’s king. Well, he will as soon as he completes a traditional ritual that involves fighting anyone that challenges him.

This is an incredibly technologically advanced culture and yet they are still able to honor their traditions, it was really quiet lovely. Embracing one did not, necessarily, take away from the other. However, it did end up causing some problems and they might want to think about a change in the future.

Anyway, as king he makes a vow to finally capture the colonizer that killed so many of their own decades ago. He’s given a chance, but is blindsided by a new player and loses his opportunity. This angers one of his friends and ends up providing an opening to the true villain, Killmonger, Michael B. Jordan.

Marvel is really winning on the villain side of things lately. They had a horrible, lets please forget the movie ever exists, misstep with Age of Ultron but got things right with Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Doctor Strange. They’re on a real winning streak which has me really looking forward to all the future movies.

Anyway, back to Black Panther. Killmonger could have very easily been not evil enough. He was incredibly empathetic, you could easily see how he’d become what he had become. He’d suffered and seen his people suffering all the while knowing that there was an entire country where they weren’t. Where they advanced beyond anything in the rest of the world. If he had stopped there, pleaded his case to T’Challa and tried the more humanitarian route that Nakia, Lupita Nyong’o, wanted to go then the movie wouldn’t have been as good. He went further and in so doing nearly destroyed what Wakanda stood for, but he also forced T’Challa to really see what life was like for those outside of his country and also see that his father wasn’t perfect.

Villains that make the hero change, to see other perspectives, are the best. Black Panther was a great hero, he was everything I like in a super hero. He was a good man, that strove to do the right things and make the right decisions, even when it wasn’t always the easiest route. Without Killmonger, though, I don’t think the movie would have succeeded so well in my eyes.

The supporting cast in Black Panther was also incredible. I freaking loved General Okoye, Danai Gurira, she was so freaking awesome. That red dress billowing in the breeze while she destroyed shit around her. So cool! Then you’ve got T’Challa’s sister Shuri, Letitia Wright, who was hilarious. It was so much fun to see her interactions with T’Challa. I also enjoyed how Martin Freeman’s character, Everett Ross, was the token white guy. He wasn’t killed in the first few minutes, he was actually given something useful to do so that was nice for him.

Black Panther is my second favorite Marvel movie, it was so good, and I hope that everyone is able to go see it.

5/5

A Kiss at Midnight

A Kiss at Midnight (Fairy Tales #1) By: Eloise James

Plot:

Miss Kate Daltry doesn’t believe in fairy tales . . . or happily ever after.

Forced by her stepmother to attend a ball, Kate meets a prince . . . and decides he’s anything but charming. A clash of wits and wills ensues, but they both know their irresistible attraction will lead nowhere. For Gabriel is promised to another woman—a princess whose hand in marriage will fulfill his ruthless ambitions.

Gabriel likes his fiancée, which is a welcome turn of events, but he doesn’t love her. Obviously, he should be wooing his bride-to-be, not the witty, impoverished beauty who refuses to fawn over him.

Godmothers and glass slippers notwithstanding, this is one fairy tale in which destiny conspires to destroy any chance that Kate and Gabriel might have a happily ever after.

Unless a prince throws away everything that makes him noble . . .

Unless a dowry of an unruly heart trumps a fortune . . .

Unless one kiss at the stroke of midnight changes everything.

Review:

I’ve been meaning to read an Eloise James book for years, I’ve actually had this one on my kindle for a while, but for whatever reason didn’t get around to reading it until now.

Kate is treated like a servant by her step-mother but isn’t quite sweeping cinders in the fireplace. She’s smart and opinionated and kind. She’s stuck where she is because she doesn’t want to leave the people beneath her without protection from her step-mother.

The prince, Gabriel, is stuck in a moldering old castle with all his batty relations because he’s the only one that can take care of them because he’s a prince. His reasoning is kind of weird and I guess you’re just supposed to accept that people in that time relied on others to take care of them, even though they themselves have a social standing.

Anyway, they meet, tease each other, fall in love, have sex, she runs away for reasons, he follows over a month later, they live happily ever after.

Sorry, I actually liked the story, except that when Kate and Gabriel have sex for the first time it’s while his fiancé is downstairs in the ballroom dancing at the party for her arrival. I realize he’s only just met her that day, but it doesn’t say anything good about either of them that they couldn’t restrain themselves.

The whole night was supposed to be their only night because he had to marry for money. Only, after she runs away he realizes that he can’t live without her and finds a way to make it work. Of course, Kate ends up having her own massive fortune and he didn’t need to figure anything out, but still. If he loved her so much that he couldn’t be in her presence without getting a boner why couldn’t he take the time to figure out the finances and just send his fiancé on her way?

Oh well. It was an entertaining story and I want to read the next.

3/5

 

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

Director:

Jake Kasdan

Starring:

John C. Reilly

Jenna Fischer

David Krumholtz

Kristen Wiig

Plot:

Singer Dewey Cox overcomes adversity to become a musical legend.

Review:

Recently I had the pleasure of a re-watch of Walk Hard. Even after several viewings this movie still makes me laugh.

The film starts with Dewey and his brother playing outside, through constant verbal and physical cues you know the brother is going to end up dying and the movie does not disappoint. He halves himself, a common occurrence on a farm that uses machetes I’m sure, and before he dies he tells Dewey he’ll have to be doubly good for the both of them. No pressure at all.

The movie follows Dewey as he starts in music and evolves as an artist. There are jabs at known musician stereotypes and tons of guest stars that make the whole thing hilarious. It’s also got a surprisingly entertaining sound track.

Seriously, if you haven’t watched Walk Hard by this point I highly recommend it.

5/5

Altered Carbon (2018-?)

Altered Carbon (2018-?)

Network:

Netflix

Starring:

Joel Kinnaman

James Purefoy

Martha Higareda

Chris Conner

Dichen Lachman

Renée Elise Goldsberry

Kristen Lehman

Plot:

Set in a future where consciousness is digitized and stored, a prisoner returns to life in a new body and must solve a mind-bending murder to win his freedom.

Review:

It’s been almost a week since I finished watching Altered Carbon and I’ve done a lot of talking about it, my original opinion was mostly neutral but it has become more negative the more I’ve thought about it. AC is visually remarkable, especially considering it’s a TV show. The world created was interesting and definitely something worth exploring. There have been lots of complaints about the acting, but I personally don’t have a problem with it considering it’s a Sci-Fi show and that’s honestly what I expect. My main problems with the show are the characters, story, and the treatment of women.

In AC bodies are called sleeves, if you’re wealthy you can slip in and out of different sleeves depending on your whim. If you are poor, not so much, but it is possible for you to earn enough in your lifetime so that you can feasibly not die. This makes the human body almost like a car and for some disposable, which is supposed to explain a lot of things, like why there is so much nudity in the show.

My problem with that is that the nudity is almost completely one sided. You see all but one main female cast member completely naked. You see one male lead and it’s so brief I missed it. There is a scene where Dichen Lachman’s character jumps into six different sleeves of herself, all completely naked, and fights on a ton of glass. There are multiple sex scenes were you see full frontal female nudity, but the most you get male wise is butt. There are discarded female sex bots all over one episode, but almost no male ones.

I counted 2.5 penises, though I’m told I missed maybe 2 more. I lost track of how much bush I saw. If this was a futuristic world in which women appeared to be able to do everything that men could, they were revolutionaries, capitalists, and police officers, why was there so little in the way of their sexual entertainment? Why were their bodies the only ones on display?

Even ignoring the nudity the female characters were treated and written horribly. It was a violent world, but they almost always ended up worse than the male characters. They made decisions that seemed to go against character, though, most of that seemed to be in situations involving them being naked which just adds to my frustration on that front. Clearly the reason for the female nudity had very little to do with story.

Kristen Ortega, Martha Higareda, stalked Kovacs, Joel Kinnaman, from the beginning because he was in the sleeve of her boyfriend. She hated him because of it and was constantly calling him a terrorist, but this did not stop her from sleeping with him and falling in love to the point where when her boyfriend is cleared and Kovacs is returning the sleeve she is visibly disappointed. She was tortured, her partner killed protecting her, and her entire family brutally murdered. She’s finally at least getting the man she’s supposed to have loved enough that it messed her up emotionally at the beginning of the story, but she’s bummed because…reasons.

Reileen Kawahara, Dichen Lachman, is Kovacs sister. She has miraculously survived these two hundred and fifty years because she has no morals or scruples. This was hinted at in flash backs to their original lives and not out of character at all. What does feel out of character is her sudden incestuous feelings toward Kovacs. While she’s taken over the body of Kristen, she comes on hard to him. He realizes it’s her and is grossed out, but her explanation is nothing is off limits when you’re rich and basically a god. She goes from a younger sister that idolizes her brother to a madam that does truly heinous things all in the pursuit of money and apparently wants to get in his pants. Her getting her brother free is basically a stretch goal and her real purpose was to cover her own ass. She ends up dying, which is much deserved, though who knows if it’s permanent.

Quellcrist Falconer, Renée Elise Goldsberry, is leading a revolution. She’s created a technology that she thought would be good, but of course turned out bad. She’s trying to correct things, she’s got a plan, too bad she falls in love with Kovacs. She ends up dying at the hands of his sister, or does she? She’s currently saved on a stack waiting to be rescued by Kovacs.

Miriam Bancroft, Kristen Lehman, is married to Laurens Bancroft, James Purefoy, and is basically stuck. She can’t do anything because he owns everything, but she’s got her kids. Her kids are everything to her apparently, though apart from a couple seemingly throw away comments you don’t really know this until the last episode. She has been with her husband forever and seems to exist for him. Her body is specifically engineered to be amazing at sex to the point it excretes some kind of pheromone or something. Naturally she has sex with Kovacs and then any time she’s around him is trying to get him to go to an island where all of her clones are so that he can have sex with lots of her. You discover that she killed a sleeve and an unborn baby because of her great love of her children and not wanting someone else to give birth to a child by her husband. She has charges read against her and she’s led away by the police.

I’m not going to list the rest of the female cast, but their histories are similar. They’re dedicated to getting ahead at whatever cost, they do everything for their children, and they’re sexually abused and left for dead.

Just so you can see the contrast here’s a breakdown of some of the male characters.

Kovacs is woken up after two hundred and fifty years in jail, he’s put in an enhanced body, sadly they missed an opportunity here. He went from being Asian to a white male, if bodies are as exchangeable as they keep trying to say in the show it would have been nice if they hadn’t been so tone deaf.

He’s told if he can solve Bancroft’s murder he will get a full pardon and a ton of money, in the meantime he’s allowed to roam free and has access to a ton of money. He indulges in lots of drugs, has sex with his boss’s wife and the cop tailing him and wins a lot of fights. At one point he’s tortured for quite a while, but he eventually breaks himself out and destroys the whole place. The show ends with him killing his sister (maybe), learning his true love is in a stack somewhere and just needs to be found and put in a body, and getting a ton of money and a full pardon.

Laurens Bancroft is RICH and thinks of himself as a benevolent god. He’s kept his children in arrested development and they hate him for it. He believes one of his sleeves was murdered and wants Kovacs to figure out who did it. All the evidence points to suicide, but he refuses to believe that’s what happened. Turns out that’s exactly what happened. His wife drugged him because she was being blackmailed after she killed his baby momma. He gets super violent while on these drugs and permanently kills one of his prostitutes. He can’t believe he’d do something like that and it breaks him, he felt there was a line he’d never cross. So that he will never have to remember what he’s done he kills his sleeve before his memories can be backed up. The show ends with him being arrested, though the charges are never read by the police. He reconciles with his son and leaves him in charge, but let’s be honest there’s no way he’s not getting free with his money and the confession of his wife drugging him.

Poe, Chris Conner, is the most interesting character in the whole show. He’s a hotel AI and takes care of his guest, Kovacs, every whim. He dies a heroes death.

Like I said Altered Carbon is visually amazing to watch, the world interesting, but the story and characters are seriously lacking. There’s a lot wrong with it and I don’t think I’d say I enjoyed watching most of it, but it’s got a lot of potential. If it is picked up for a second season I hope it’s able to live up to that potential and do a lot better. I’m honestly not sure if I would watch a second season though.

2/5

All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook By: Leslie Connor

All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook By: Leslie Connor

Plot:

From Leslie Connor, award-winning author of Waiting for Normal and Crunch, comes a soaring and heartfelt story about love, forgiveness, and how innocence makes us all rise up. All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook is a powerful story, perfect for fans of Wonder and When You Reach Me.

Eleven-year-old Perry was born and raised by his mom at the Blue River Co-ed Correctional Facility in tiny Surprise, Nebraska. His mom is a resident on Cell Block C, and so far Warden Daugherty has made it possible for them to be together. That is, until a new district attorney discovers the truth—and Perry is removed from the facility and forced into a foster home.

When Perry moves to the “outside” world, he feels trapped. Desperate to be reunited with his mom, Perry goes on a quest for answers about her past crime. As he gets closer to the truth, he will discover that love makes people resilient no matter where they come from . . . but can he find a way to tell everyone what home truly means?

Review:

I cried through this entire story, there are so many tear stains on the pages of this library book. I expected it to be well written based on the buzz around it, but I had no idea that I would end up crying so much. After the first chapter I knew that it was going to be an emotional journey so I had to read the last chapter to make sure there was a happy ending.

***SPOILERS***

There was.

Perry was so innocent and optimistic and just let things roll right over him that would normally drive an adult crazy. His ability to cope with things was remarkable and I wish I had his skills. Just when I was starting to think he was too good, though, Connor allowed him to get mad. He had been bothered by things throughout the book, but he was able to accept that there was nothing that he could do about them.

I do wish that he had a bit more fight in him, but the book acknowledged that was an area he could grow in. I also wish that the pay off at the end was a bit better. I found myself reacting like one of the characters and I wished things had been fair. I at least wanted the DA to have more negative backlash against him. It would have also been nice to learn more about Perry’s father.

There was so much love between the characters. It was beautiful.

4/5