Reaction Shots

Even Kevin Feige has taken note that people are feeling the weight of the MCU on their shoulders or maybe we’re all just suffering from Marvel Attention Deficit Disorder (MADD…I wonder if that’s still taken?) However, I can’t say that Marvel fatigue or superhero fatigue has hit me yet. This is not to say that I don’t recognize it as a genuine movie-going malady, just that I’m not quite there. That said, I haven’t been blown away by some of the more recent offerings, including the current Ant-Man outing. But I was blown away by the sequel to the “Black Panther”. I’ll start with “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” first. It deserves thoughtful consideration and I’ll do my best to provide it. Right out of the gate, the sense of absence looms large and permeates the film and doesn’t really let up. King T’Challa is dead and knowing that his death is rooted in Chadwick Boseman’s lends a gravitas to a film that supports it while celebrating T’Challa’s legacy, In many ways, “Wakanda Forever” s...

In 2012, when Steven Soderbergh announced his retirement, I scratched my head and figured that it isn’t like he hadn’t been prolific or paid his dues or added to the process of how films are made. A little while later, he walked his comments back and said he was taking a sabbatical. That, too, is fair; well-deserved break and all that. But it continues to amuse me that the following year, he came out with “Side Effects” and “Behind the Candelabra”, busied himself with producing “The Knick” series (as well as directing) in 2014 through 2015, as well as producing no less than three other films for other people, took another break, cranked out “ Logan Lucky ” in 2017, another series (“Mosaic”) and “Unsane” both in 2018, produced a couple of other flicks for other people, and I’m sure I could keep going, but you get the gist: Soderbergh keeps himself busy and at a glance, this means something like two features a year not always, the two under discussion are about a year apart. There’s a...

It’s difficult to overstate how timely (and sadly, timeless) Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miriam Toew’s novel is. Despite being based on a true event - the systematic drugging and rape of women members of a Mennonite cult group in Bolivia - the current framing is of a discussion based on and surrounding women’s agency and the oft-uncomfortable intersection with faith and often male-led religious institutions. It is a necessary and moving conversation. The film opens on a woman in bed, asleep with visible bruises and wounds, a voiceover tells us that they - the women of this community were merely tools of the devil, or ghosts, or simply lying to get attention, or “an act of wild female imagination” - but that one of the attackers was caught and he, in turn, named the others. The the men have left to post bail for the assailants, giving the women two days to forgive the attackers before they return.  However, knowing that these attacks were not the work of Satan or ghosts or the r...