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Black Panther is killing it with critics. Reviews are really positive.

Spoiler

Currently waiting for an outspoken White to see it. Armond.

That makes me feel better. My son has been talking about it non stop for months and is super hyped for it so no matter what I'd be taking him to see it.

[quote="Big Ben"]Black Panther is killing it with critics. Reviews are really positive.

"It currently has a 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though the site has been forced to release a statement condemning attempts by an alt-right hate group to sabotage its audience score, as it did with Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

Luke M wrote:Joaquin Phoenix in Talks to Play the Joker in Todd Phillips’ Standalone Movie

I don't get how they are casting an actor in his 40's to play the origin of a character. This is more of WB/DC throwing shit at the wall and looking to see what sticks. So far their batting average is pretty low, and will probably get lower now that Michael Bay has taken an interest in directing Lobo.

jbeall wrote:

Big Ben wrote:Black Panther is killing it with critics. Reviews are really positive.

"It currently has a 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though the site has been forced to release a statement condemning attempts by an alt-right hate group to sabotage its audience score, as it did with Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

Well, the dipshits have taken their time to sabotage Black Panther's rating on the IMDB. Seriously, how fanatic and racist you have to be to spend your time shitting on a movie. Trump's America ladies and gentlemen.

I resent the implication that the IMDb rating system waited until the Trump administration to become terrible.

swo17 wrote:I resent the implication that the IMDb rating system waited until the Trump administration to become terrible.

I agree. And review bombing isn't new either. Look at any aggregate site that allows users to rate things and it becomes fandom hell. Although I will agree that it certainly feels certain films are suffering at least online because people disagree with their very premise.

The wild new conspiracy is that Rotten Tomatoes is conspiring against DC films (And apparently under appreciated master filmmaker Zack Snyder) to make Marvel look better. Despite the fact that Warner Brothers has financial stakes in Rotten Tomatoes. But you know the Illuminati is apparently suppressing Snyder's grand vision of an Objectivist utopia.

One of my unpopular movie opinions is that Sucker Punch is Snyder’s masterpiece.

swo17 wrote:I resent the implication that the IMDb rating system waited until the Trump administration to become terrible.

IMDb has been terrible for years, particularly ever since it was taken over by Amazon. As for the user ratings, they are well-known as garbage, and while some of the scores appear fair over time, none of them are, and I don't know a single person that gives them credence anymore, if they ever did.

I mean, really, is The Shawshank Redemption one of the top five films ever made? Of course not, but for years, it was right up there with The Godfather and Star Wars on IMDb--in fact, right now it's number one. That's right, if you were to take IMDb voting seriously, then The Shawshank Redemption, a movie with Tim Robbins, is the best movie ever made, and to top that off, Inception is a better film than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, GoodFellas and Seven Samurai, each of which is apparently a progressively worse film.

I will say that IMDb is the main reason why I give very little notice to Rotten Tomatoes (a site which might as well be part of the other RT, for all I care) or any other online voting metric.

McCrutchy wrote:I mean, really, is The Shawshank Redemption one of the top five films ever made? Of course not, but for years, it was right up there with The Godfather and Star Wars on IMDb--in fact, right now it's number one. That's right, if you were to take IMDb voting seriously, then The Shawshank Redemption, a movie with Tim Robbins, is the best movie ever made, and to top that off, Inception is a better film than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, GoodFellas and Seven Samurai, each of which is apparently a progressively worse film.

I will say that IMDb is the main reason why I give very little notice to Rotten Tomatoes (a site which might as well be part of the other RT, for all I care) or any other online voting metric.

Well, I don't know. I'm speaking here in a very general sense, but in defense of the IMDb ratings, I think they are a reasonable reflection of how the public at large regards a movie. In my experience, The Shawshank Redemption really is an enormously beloved movie. People really do love Inception. I don't think the ratings are designed to measure the objective quality of a movie - not like there's such a thing anyway - but rather just the general sense of how much people in general like them.

So in that sense, I don't object much to the IMDb ratings. I don't really even object to the efforts to sabotage a movie's ratings, like with Black Panther*; in the end, things will even out, more or less. What continues to be strange, though, to me is when people take them personally. They're just a curiosity, although sometimes instructive in small ways.

* - since nothing really goes without saying on the internet, let me say that (obviously, I hope) I don't mean that as an endorsement of the racism being spouted against the film.

I'd like to point out that some of the review are very much down voted because of racism. The "We wuz kangz" meme originally sprouted from 4Chan and was used to mock black folks who discussed black civilizations (Like Egypt.) and I've seen that garbage show up on more than one review. They're down voting because a film about an advanced black civilization is apparently too much for them. The ability to abuse the rating system to promote such a blatantly racist agenda makes the site look pretty bad.

But Brian raises a good point. It should simply be a metric as to how users felt about the film they've watched. It should go without saying more than a few racists should show up to ruin things.

I guess most racists haven't discovered Letterboxd yet where only 4 people have given it the lowest possible rating.

Big Ben wrote:I'd like to point out that some of the review are very much down voted because of racism. The "We wuz kangz" meme originally sprouted from 4Chan and was used to mock black folks who discussed black civilizations (Like Egypt.) and I've seen that garbage show up on more than one review. They're down voting because a film about an advanced black civilization is apparently too much for them. The ability to abuse the rating system to promote such a blatantly racist agenda makes the site look pretty bad.

But Brian raises a good point. It should simply be a metric as to how users felt about the film they've watched. It should go without saying more than a few racists should show up to ruin things.

Well sure, but as racism goes, this is a relatively harmless outlet for those guys, and one that makes themselves look pathetic more than it accomplishes anything else.

Still and all, racists are people too. And if they downvote a movie for racist reasons, well, that doesn't exactly make the rating inaccurate. It's instructive, in its own way.

Brian C wrote:

McCrutchy wrote:I mean, really, is The Shawshank Redemption one of the top five films ever made? Of course not, but for years, it was right up there with The Godfather and Star Wars on IMDb--in fact, right now it's number one. That's right, if you were to take IMDb voting seriously, then The Shawshank Redemption, a movie with Tim Robbins, is the best movie ever made, and to top that off, Inception is a better film than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, GoodFellas and Seven Samurai, each of which is apparently a progressively worse film.

I will say that IMDb is the main reason why I give very little notice to Rotten Tomatoes (a site which might as well be part of the other RT, for all I care) or any other online voting metric.

Well, I don't know. I'm speaking here in a very general sense, but in defense of the IMDb ratings, I think they are a reasonable reflection of how the public at large regards a movie. In my experience, The Shawshank Redemption really is an enormously beloved movie. People really do love Inception. I don't think the ratings are designed to measure the objective quality of a movie - not like there's such a thing anyway - but rather just the general sense of how much people in general like them.

This is my perception, as well. From what I remember of college & film school, at least, Shawshank was extremely popular with a certain kind of film buff whose interest doesn't expand beyond the USA or much further back than the 90s. Inception is big with the same crowd. This the same subset of people who strike me as most likely to be voting regularly at IMDb in large numbers, so it all makes sense to me, regardless of my own feelings about those or any other movies.

I'm also curious about Shawshank's characterization as "a movie with Tim Robbins." Am I supposed to infer that a movie whose lead actor was never a particularly huge star is unlikely to be so popular? Or is it that Tim Robbins being in a movie automatically implies something about how good it could be? Either suggestion seems odd to me.

Kirkinson wrote:I'm also curious about Shawshank's characterization as "a movie with Tim Robbins." Am I supposed to infer that a movie whose lead actor was never a particularly huge star is unlikely to be so popular? Or is it that Tim Robbins being in a movie automatically implies something about how good it could be? Either suggestion seems odd to me.

I just think it's absurd, that's all, and also a fine example of the utter pointlessness of internet voting. You are, of course, fairly spot on in your assessment of IMDb voters, which is precisely why the film has consistently ranked amazingly high on the site's Top 250 for what must be over a decade, now. Don't get me wrong, I think the film is wonderful, but I've simply never found their internet voting to be of good use. I did enjoy the IMDb forums regarding films and celebrities, even though they were abused by some, the forums were often interesting, and sometimes, had valuable information.

Brian C wrote:

Big Ben wrote:I'd like to point out that some of the review are very much down voted because of racism. The "We wuz kangz" meme originally sprouted from 4Chan and was used to mock black folks who discussed black civilizations (Like Egypt.) and I've seen that garbage show up on more than one review. They're down voting because a film about an advanced black civilization is apparently too much for them. The ability to abuse the rating system to promote such a blatantly racist agenda makes the site look pretty bad.

But Brian raises a good point. It should simply be a metric as to how users felt about the film they've watched. It should go without saying more than a few racists should show up to ruin things.

Well sure, but as racism goes, this is a relatively harmless outlet for those guys, and one that makes themselves look pathetic more than it accomplishes anything else.

Still and all, racists are people too. And if they downvote a movie for racist reasons, well, that doesn't exactly make the rating inaccurate. It's instructive, in its own way.

Ok, I’ll bite how is it instructive? Black Panther already has a bunch of negative audience reviews from people who no doubt haven’t seen the film yet.

Instructive of how many people are willing to rate the movie a 1 without having seen it

The irony in it, from what a fellow French critic told me, is that Black Panther has a politic sub-text which is as progressist and subtle that Wonder Woman's feminism (ie a joke).

However, I've read that some DC fanboys might be behind the 1-bombing on RT.

Anybody expecting a Marvel film to have a nuanced and cutting edge political subtext is lying to themselves. I think the backlash to that sentiment is leading the negative review spam as much as racism. Some of the fan praise/hype for this I’ve seen online is ridiculous, as if Wakanda was real and the existence of the film acknowledging it is a revolutionary act

On the soundtrack for Black Panther, Yugen Blakrok hilariously name drops the Batman comics on “Opps,” and of course, someone decided to bleep 'Riddler.'

Spit slick, attack is subliminal
Flowers on my mind, but the rhyme style sinister
Stand behind my own bars, like a seasoned criminal
Gotham City streets, I’ll play the Riddler

If you saw Black Panther this weekend, I think this criticism is worth your time.

His point was undermined with his initial tweet saying Coogler has made Do the Right Thing as a major successful studio film... seemingly forgetting Spike Lee did just that in 1989.

Luke M wrote:If you saw Black Panther this weekend, I think this criticism is worth your time.

Thanks for posting that. Here's a rather more criticial take, though it's a little hot take-y for me. I saw Black Panther this morning and enjoyed it a great deal, so I'm decidedly more receptive to the link you posted, but figured it'd be interesting to add a competing viewpoint.

This film arrives at a particularly fraught moment, and so we're going to see more reviews than usual freighted with their particular authors' cultural politics. And it's not like the film itself doesn't invite those kinds of reviews.

Luke M wrote:If you saw Black Panther this weekend, I think this criticism is worth your time.

I briefly talked to a young someone who was sympathetic, but didn’t understand the lavish praise that was being heaped on Black Panther. Why? Because it just didn’t work for him! It just wasn’t that good! Sure, he could connect to all the logistical reasons people might connect to it. Sure, he could see how it’s “good” to see black heroes in action. But the effect just wasn’t up on screen for him! Meaning people must just be liking the movie for ulterior X or Y reasons!

.....Not next to the incalculable value of the aforementioned representation, like the fact that the smartest tech whiz in the world is a young African princess who quotes vines and could probably run laps around Tony Stark. Not next to the range of characters and motives and perspectives rarely seen in any films, let alone within a cast of ten (TEN!) amazing black actors who are getting to headline a major studio superhero film.

How is this not liking something for “ulterior X or Y reasons?” And that comment about white teens is a massive can of worms I don’t really want to touch but offers the same kind of oblivious hypocrisy.

I saw Black Panther in IMAX 2D DMR today. I was surprised by how good it was, in fact, better than I thought it would be, thanks, no doubt, to my being blinded by the politics swirling around the film. I think it's probably one of Marvel's top-tier "origin" films--I really enjoyed the world-building regarding Wakanda and all the characters there. In fact, for me, the Wakanda sequences were the best part of the film, especially early on.

It does have to be said that while the plot is interesting, it's rather plain and redundant. We've seen this kind of "Royal main character's throne is threatened" type of film many times before, and even at least one set in Africa (The Lion King), and we also know that Black Panther isn't going to die in his own origin film, either. Maybe that's why Coogler spent so much time setting up the plot, because he knew that this would be the best part of the film.

One thing I found rather odd and sort of disappointing, was

Spoiler

the film's use of black American characters. For an American movie, with a largely black cast, and written/directed by black Americans, I was pretty surprised that all of the positive black characters are Wakandans, while the only black American character of note is the villain Erik/Killmonger, and he's portrayed as a half-Wakandan who was born in America, and basically "lost his way" (after T'Challa's father, as Black Panther, killed Erik's father) and went nuts. There is even a sidebar in the film where T'Challa chastises his father for essentially not "saving" the child Erik by taking him back to Wakanda. Additionally, most of Erik's backstory is compressed into a few expository sentences, where we learn that he got into M.I.T., but then went into the military and became a killing machine. The film never really explores Erik's anger (or his reasons for wanting to arm all kinds of oppressed peoples worldwide) in a satisfying way, and the film failed to have any sort of black American character in a positive role to counterbalance the villain. While there isn't necessarily anything wrong with this, it nevertheless gave the film a weird colonialist vibe for me, as though it was saying that only with the superior Wakandans help, blacks in America (and elsewhere) could lead better, more equal lives.

Having said that, though, there was still much to enjoy in the film. The supporting cast is wonderful, particularly Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, and Letitia Wright, and the film is well-supported by the likes of (the ever-radiant) Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, and, in smaller roles, John Kani and Sterling K. Brown. I do think that most of the time, both leads, Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman, were upstaged by the supporting players. The three young women around T'Challa's life are much more interesting than T'Challa himself, and as for Killmonger, Michael B. Jordan's performance was effective at times--particularly in one scene with Sterling K. Brown--but most of the time, he seemed sort of aloof and unimpressed, and as happens so often in Marvel films, he simply seemed like a weak and ineffective villain. As I mentioned in the spoiler above, I really think Erik deserved to be fleshed out much more, because I really wanted to know how such an obviously intelligent and capable person got to where he was. I think if the villain had been as convincing as Wakanda and its people, Black Panther could have been one of the best films Marvel has ever produced.

Technically, the film was sound, and the IMAX 2D DMR version I saw has several sequences opened up to 1.90:1, which was nice. Some of the CGI, particularly during a couple of "outdoor" tribal ceremonies in Wakanda, looked a bit cheesy, and I agree with others who've said that the action sequences are fine, but not amazing. This is definitely a film which is more about characters and the world they inhabit, and that is where its good qualities tend to come out. As a superhero film, I think it leaves a bit to be desired, and I'm not exactly sure what Marvel is going to do for the sequel, either. A good solution might be to emulate Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok and bring in some additional MCU heroes.

One thing I found depressing, was that despite a relatively diverse and packed theater, nobody clapped at the end. Literally one or two people made half-hearted attempts to applaud, and then nothing. It makes me wonder if people enjoyed the film as much as some of the trade papers are reporting they did. I know someone I saw it with made a comment that they found the first part of the film in Wakanda boring, and certainly people go into Marvel films with certain expectations for action and fun, often of the fast and furious kind. This film was a bit talkier than the average Marvel film, so I wonder if that might have put some people off a bit?

I'm pretty sure that no movie, however beloved by some, generates universal clapping, but there was widespread clapping at the end of the movie in the screening I went to. That said, I have never personally felt like clapping after a movie, no matter how much I enjoyed it.