The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Lupita Nyong'o. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 April 2019

Movie Review: Us (2019)

A home invasion horror film, Us offers creepy thrills and astute commentary about the American dream.

As a young girl, Adelaide had a bad experience at the spooky mirror-filled funhouse on the Santa Cruz beach, where she bumped into an exact look-alike. More than 20 years later, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) is now married to Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) with two kids of her own, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). During a vacation trip to the family's rustic summer home Adelaide's anxieties are reawakened when Gabe insists the family spend a day at the Santa Cruz beach.

Her mood is not helped when she spots the funhouse still standing, and she momentarily loses sight of Jason. But things get a lot worse that night when a family of four lookalikes shows up at the Wilson's doorstep. The vacation turns to horror when the lookalikes invade the house, and Adelaide's worst fears are realized.

Us toys with the concept that everyone has a doppelganger, and combines it with the American Dream as a zero-sum game. Every success is mirrored and tethered by an equivalent failure, and maybe one day, the failures will rise up and demand their share. Here director and writer Jordan Peele has the invading hordes dressed in red jumpsuits, emerging from subterranean tunnels, and generally unable to speak. But they are capable of extreme violence, causing societal anarchy and joining hands across the country.

Through Adelaide's complex character Peele explores the fragility of the human experience, where life's trajectory towards misery or happiness is dictated by one childhood incident. And he may also be more broadly commenting on the United States ("Us"), where haves and have-nots can pretend to exist in separate worlds, but eventually (and maybe now), both the delusion and the peace will shatter with the downtrodden rising to seize control.

Peele does pack his film with sketched-in content, from a preponderance of bunnies to government experiments gone awry and years-in-the-making but barely explained plans hatched in tunnels, passing through the remarkable ability of the tethered revolutionaries to repeatedly come back from the dead. It's all fodder for thought and theories, but also an indication of some lack of writing discipline.

But Us is an otherwise enjoyable romp, combining an overall creepy mood with occasional jump scares and a mean streak of humour. Peele makes excellent use of the vacation home's hidden nooks, the aways unsettling funhouse with too many mazes and mirrors, and recurring symbols from black flag T-shirts to Jeremiah 11:11 references.

And when the time comes to unleash mayhem, Adelaide and her family rise to the challenge, the film's final act veering towards bloody action with even the kids getting into the act of self-preservation. Because everyone has a role in repelling the barbarians at the gate, especially if the barbarians are us.

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Wednesday, 20 June 2018

Movie Review: Queen Of Katwe (2016)

A rags-to-prominence story, Queen Of Katwe is standard feel-good fare delivered with honest intentions.

Phiona (Madina Nalwanga) is a young girl living in the Katwe slum of Kampala, Uganda. Her widowed mother Nakku (Lupita Nyong'o) is poor but principled and doing her best to raise Phiona and her many siblings the right way. One day Phiona stumbles into a ramshackle classroom where volunteer football coach Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) teaches chess to disadvantaged kids.

Phiona learns chess from scratch and displays a natural talent for the game. She emerges as the most talented of Katende's students, and he starts enrolling the kids in prestigious school chess tournaments, where they have to fight the stigma of being from the slums. Phiona continues to excel and international opportunities open up for her. But on the home front, Nakku's situation becomes dire when the family is evicted for non-payment of rent, Phiona's brother is involved in a motorcycle crash and her older sister falls in with the wrong crowd.

Produced by Disney, directed by Mira Nair and based on a true story, Queen Of Katwe continues the series of based-on-real-events Disney sports-themed films like 2015's McFarland and 2014's Million Dollar Arm. The premise of underprivileged youth finding their calling through an unlikely sports opportunity is an eternal and exhausted cliche, and Queen Of Katwe is essentially predictable from the opening credits to the closing scroll.

But at least Nair and writer William Wheeler do a few things right. The film is almost entirely set in Africa (there is a brief trip to a tournament in Russia), and Nair colours the movie with the bursting, earthy tones of the continent. There is no white saviour in sight, this being a story of black Africans helping black Africans. And for a Disney film, Queen Of Katwe does not shy away from portraying the squalor of the slums. Although the depictions of Phiona's world are still relatively sterilized, issues of homelessness, prostitution, the lack of basic civic infrastructure (like storm sewers) and rudimentary medical care make it to the screen.

Also interesting is the tension that develops when Phiona is exposed to the potential for a better life through her travels and rubbing shoulders with kids from more fortunate backgrounds. She starts to resent her humble surroundings and a chasm opens between her and Nakku.

David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o deliver earnest performances, Oyelowo more reserved and Nyong'o marginally overdoing the motherly anger bit. The rest of the cast is made up of unknowns and amateurs, newcomer Madina Nalwanga serviceable in the central role.

Queen Of Katwe is impossible not to like, and but as entertainment never deviates from lukewarm.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Monday, 12 March 2018

Movie Review: Black Panther (2018)

A groundbreaking superhero movie, Black Panther is one of the finest examples of what the genre is capable of, with a rich story and a multitude of characters carrying far-reaching resonance.

The isolated African country of Wakanda hides behind a veil of poverty while enjoying prosperity and advanced technology afforded by Vibranium, a mineral deposited by an ancient meteor strike. As well, a heart-shaped herb provides supernatural Black Panther combat powers to the country's selected ruler. T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) rises to King of Wakanda when his father is assassinated. He reunites with his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), elder statesman Zuri (Forest Whitaker), and ex-lover Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o). The fierce General Okoye (Danai Gurira) is in charge of the all-female security warriors, while T'Challa's sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) heads up the technology advancement labs despite her young age.

W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) leads the border tribe, one of four clans united under T'Challa, but M'Baku (Winston Duke), the leader of the Jabari Mountain Tribe, chooses to remain isolated. The new king is immediately confronted by a threat. Black market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) teams up with the mysterious Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) to try and sell stolen Vibranium to undercover CIA Agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) at a rendevouz in South Korea. T'Challa, Nakia and Okoye intervene to try and reclaim the precious mineral, triggering a potentially catastrophic series of events carrying echoes of decisions made by T'Challa's father in years past.

With black director Ryan Coogler at the helm, an almost all-black cast and a predominantly African setting, Black Panther is a bold step forward in the Marvel Studios cinematic world. But remarkably, the brave new racial frontier is only one of the film's many spectacular successes. Black Panther creates the most compelling fantasy world since the original Star Wars, and a fertile plot teeming with interesting characters and events. The script, co-written by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, soon asserts itself. The story proudly takes centre stage, and several themes intertwine across the screen, connecting Wakanda's fantasy with current realities. The film's genius resides in debating with searing honesty pressing and relevant societal issues.

A central theme is an advanced country's role in the family of nations. Wakanda has always prided itself - and thrived - on a policy of isolation, looking inwards to the prosperity of its own people and disengaging from the rest of the world. T'Challa is challenged with three options: maintain the status quo, export technology to promote weaponized conflicts, or find a way to engage peacefully. Each potential choice comes with risks, and the film presents a well rounded view of all the justifications.

The black experience is tackled from two fronts. Black Africa's hidden potential to positively contribute globally is presented as an intriguing future state, while the appropriate response to the historical and current mistreatment of blacks in the United States and indeed around the world is the key grievance driving the film's antagonist Erik Stevens.

The sins of the father haunting future generations gradually emerges as a powerful thread unting T'Challa and his resentful cousin, who steps forward from the shadow of history seeking to right old wrongs. The film distinguishes itself by bringing the conflict to Wakanda itself, the struggle between good and evil presented as an internal conflict for the soul of a country .

All the plot elements provide opportunities for the many characters to shine, and Black Panther introduces an extraordinary number of memorable people, most of them women. While T'Challa hovers the near the middle of all the intersecting ideas, General Okoye, Nakia and Shuri emerge as his closest allies and confidants, and Coogler provides each with a worthwhile personality.

All of which leaves the superhero elements as the cherry on the cake, a natural embellishment to the film rather than its reason for being. Black Panther does not disappoint when the time comes for special effects and stunts, although the breathless chase scene in South Korea outshines the final triple-headed climax. The right dose of dry wit and a sprinkling of high-tech gadgets add a layer of gloss.

Smart, engaging, and relevant, Black Panther sets a new standard for superhero achievement.