Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (dir. Ryan Coogler) is the sequel to Marvel’s Black Panther (2018). Wakanda Forever is exactly what Marvel’s Phase Four of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) needs to say goodbye to the late Chadwick Boseman (who died in 2020), as well as reintroduce some beloved characters and debut refreshing new ones.
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‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the mansion,
Terrorists were swarming, demanding their ransoms.
Hostages taken, struck with despair.
Luckily for them… Saint Nicholas was there.
For some godforsaken reason, pop culture is currently in the midst of a Pinocchio epidemic. Left and right, up and down, Pinocchio is everywhere. Disney dumped out their live-action remake of Pinocchio earlier this year, a drab, mostly beat-for-beat remake, apart from the addition of pop culture references and Disney+ advertising. Then, over from Russia, we have the infamous Pinocchio: A True Story, a very-fictional animated film starring Pauly Shore, which is almost certainly a front for a mafia money-laundering scheme. And, finally, in the world of gaming, we have Lies of P, a grim-and-gritty reimagining of Pinocchio as a magical steampunk Blade Runner, where Pinocchio himself resembles a cybernetically-enhanced Timothée Chalamet. It’s a little unfair to lump that last one in with the others, but regardless, Pinocchio has become an icon of unoriginality, a soulless husk puppeteered by corporate forces looking to make an easy profit off name-recognition. But just as it seemed that there was no integrity left, out has emerged Guillermo del Toro to grant the character life once again.
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Beauty and ugliness are seemingly two opposing things, but what happens when you combine them? What you get is Bones and All. The very title alludes to this, it refers to a quote from the film when a man is describing the extreme high he gets from consuming a human, bones and all. Yet towards the end of the film this very line is tenderly spoken between two lovers as one of them bleeds out in the arms of the other. This stark contrast is where the film’s power really shines through, and the audience can experience the true brutality of identity and life.
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Tacking the words “Holiday Special” onto the end of a beloved franchise is guaranteed to raise some eyebrows regarding a film’s artistic integrity, but, thankfully, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special has the mind of James Gunn working in its favor. It’s become abundantly clear over the past few years that Gunn is perhaps the most passionate filmmaker within the superhero movie circle, carrying a love for his misfit characters that makes all of his projects stand out amongst the never-ending output of superhero media in pop culture. So, when James Gunn wants to do an idea as inherently stupid as a Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, he’s earned enough goodwill to convince audiences that the story serves some kind of purpose beyond profit. Although, granted, the project certainly wouldn’t have been greenlit if “Christmas Tree Groot” merchandise didn’t sell itself.
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Disenchanted (dir. Adam Shankman) is the sequel to Enchanted (dir. Kevin Lima) that we never knew we needed. The film starts after a time jump from the first move, where Giselle (Amy Adams) and Robert (Patrick Dempsey) have gotten married and had a child together. Disenchanted shows what happens in the real world after “happily ever after”–and how not everything will always work perfectly.
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Weird: the Al Yankovic Story comes to us in a time oversaturated with biopics. Just in the past few months alone we’ve gotten Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant Elvis, and Andrew Dominik’s controversial Blonde. Weird director Eric Appel even credits the likes of Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman and Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody as being the driving forces behind getting his film green lit. However Weird stands apart from its predecessors in the biography genre.
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The Banshees of Inisherin opens by introducing us to the small island town of Inisherin. It is a quaint little place, with lush fields of greenery as far as the eye can see, and rainbows spread themselves across the small town’s perpetually overcast sky. Everything seems as-usual in this tight-knit community, until one otherwise uneventful weekday when Colm (Brendan Gleeson) doesn’t show up to meet his best friend Pádraic (Colin Farrell) for their ritual two o’clock trip to the pub. Pádraic goes looking for Colm, worried that something may be wrong with him, and upon finding him, Pádraic learns that Colm no longer wants to be his friend and demands the two immediately cease all contact. An abrupt, seemingly very simple, request from Colm quickly implodes on itself as the two men come to realize how inescapably intertwined their lives have become. As Pádraic insists on mending their friendship, Colm is drawn to increasingly desperate measures to ward off his presence, leading to rippling consequences for Inisherin as a whole.
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Black Adam has had a very, very interesting production history. For those uninformed, the film is more or less Dwayne Johnson’s passion project, which he’s been cooking for nearly 15 years. He spent a long time trying to convince producers that the Black Adam character had enough depth to carry his own movie, and such skepticism seemed completely warranted. To explain Black Adam’s DC comic book origins briefly, he is the archnemesis of Shazam, and serves as his mirror image in every way, except Black Adam is EVIL. When Shazam already has a movie of his own, the redundancy of Black Adam is unavoidable. The MCU gets its fair share of criticisms about producing homogenized content, but they’re not out there doing anything as egregious as producing films for both HULK and RED HULK, which is the equivalent of what DC has done here. Walking into the theater for Black Adam, audiences have one question—simply put, why does a Black Adam movie even exist?
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Actress Olivia Wilde was on track to be one of the next great filmmakers. Her directorial debut, Booksmart (2019), received favorable reviews from critics and audiences alike. Her sophomore directorial endeavor led to a bidding war between eighteen studios, and with a star-studded cast, many believed Don’t Worry Darling would be another hit.
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