Posts Tagged ‘Angela Bassett’
Wednesday, November 30th, 2022
Henry Selick, the director of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, just made his first movie in thirteen years. Stop motion animation takes a long time, of course, but not usually that long. (With the exception of MAD GOD.)
It’s not like he took a vacation. Only a year after CORALINE Selick moved from Laika to Pixar to start a new stop motion division called Cinderbiter. They actually animated much of a movie called THE SHADOW KING – $50 million worth – and then cancelled it. And then he developed a bunch of other movies with a bunch of other people that didn’t even get that far.
But now, finally, he has a new, completed and released one called WENDELL & WILD. He wrote it with Academy Award winning screenwriter Jordan Peele, it stars the voices of Key and Peele, it’s about demons and zombie skeletons and shit, and it has Selick’s eye for design and increasingly sophisticated stop motion, so it’s the kind of thing some people ought to be interested in, in my opinion. Only trouble is it was produced by Netflix, so they just squirted it out in a little glob exactly like Wendell & Wild squirt the cream that grows their father’s nose hairs (more on that later), so most of the people I’ve mentioned it to never heard of the fuckin thing. I read that it didn’t even make it into Netflix’s top ten when it came out, but the computer animated movie THE BAD GUYS did a couple days later when they picked it up after it had already been on DVD, blu-ray and Peacock for five months.
That doesn’t seem fair. I figured I should write a review just so it’s on record somewhere that WENDELL & WILD is a real, existent movie that was made and released and can be viewed with your eyes and everything. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bassett, David Harewood, Fishbone, Henry Selick, Igal Naor, James Hong, Jordan Peele, Keegan-Michael Key, Lyric Ross, Maxine Peake, Phoebe Lamour, stop motion animation, Tamara Smart, Tantoo Cardinal, Ving Rhames
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2022
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER has so much more to live up to than just being the next Marvel movie. As the first sequel to a genuine cultural phenomenon, meeting everybody’s expectations would’ve been a high bar. Then its beloved star Chadwick Boseman died unexpectedly and the whole story was reworked to make supporting character Shuri (Letitia Wright, THE COMMUTER) the lead, while the cast and crew mourned, and also dealt with a pandemic. And they kept it on the down low how the fuck it was even gonna work; I will of course be discussing how the fuck it works, so this will be a HEAVY SPOILER review.
Luckily it was Ryan Coogler at the helm. His best movie CREED shows that he’s a not only a highly skilled filmmaker, but one capable of investing a franchise type movie with deep personal meaning. And I think he’s done about as good as anyone could have in his situation, creating a sequel that I don’t think flows as well his first one, but that builds off of it, reminds us of what we loved about it, introduces new worlds and yes, turns mourning into commercial art. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Dominique Thorne, Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Martin Freeman, Michael B. Jordan, Ruth E. Carter, Ryan Coogler, Tenoch Huerta Mejia, Winston Duke
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 59 Comments »
Tuesday, December 29th, 2020
SOUL is one of the best and most ambitious movies Pixar has made, and they had to release it straight to Disney+ (great job, Covid). It comes from MONSTERS, INC. director Pete Docter, co-directing and co-writing with Kemp Powers, the writer of ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI (both the play and the upcoming movie), and it’s another one of Docter’s hard-to-explain emotional high concept fantasies like UP and INSIDE OUT, but this time squarely centered in Black culture.
The protagonist, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx, and I honestly never thought of him as Jamie Foxx), is a New York City middle school music teacher. Not a bad one, but not currently seeming to motivate kids like he’s Mr. Holland or somebody. He’s finally been offered a full time job at the school, which impresses his mom (Phylicia Rashad, CREED) but sparks feelings of failure that his occasional gigs as a jazz pianist haven’t led anywhere and he might have to settle in doing this less exciting work. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bassett, Jamie Foxx, John Baptiste, Kemp Powers, Pete Docter, Phylicia Rashad, Questlove, Rachel House
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2019
Weird, but true: turns out you can make a TRANSFORMERS movie that’s sweet and funny, with sensible, reasonably concise storytelling that never feels like it’s whacking you in the face with a frying pan, and has characters you can care about. Even a human female one! All you gotta do is get the director of KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS and a script by Christina Hodson (SHUT IN, BIRDS OF PREY).
Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg are both listed as executive producers, but BUMBLEBEE definitely feels more like the latter, taking heaps of inspiration from E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL but none that I noticed from ARMAGEDDON. Set in 1987, it does work as a prequel to Bay’s TRANSFORMERS (2007), telling the story of a soldier robot who flees the war on his home planet of Cybertron to hide out in California disguised as a car and wait for the others while evading the secret government agency Sector 7 and two evil Decepticon robots voiced by Angela Bassett (STRANGE DAYS) and Justin Theroux (MIAMI VICE).
But that’s all going on in the midst of a teen movie centering on Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld, 3 DAYS TO KILL), who has just turned 18 and has been going through some shit ever since her dad (Tim Martin Gleason) died suddenly an unspecified few years ago. She resents that her mom (Pamela Adlon, THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE) has a dorky new husband (Stephen Schneider, 2012: SUPERNOVA), she fights with her little brother Otis (Jason Drucker, BARELY LETHAL) and gets into it with mean girls like Tina (Gracie Dzienny) and hunky asshole Tripp Summers (Ricardo Hoyos, Degrassi: The Next Generation) who embarrass her while she’s working at Hot Dog on a Stick. Not necessarily unrelated, her favorite band is The Smiths. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: '80s nostalgia, ALF, Angela Bassett, based on a fucking toy, Christina Hodson, Dylan O'Brien, Fred Dryer, Hailee Steinfeld, Hasbro, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Justin Theroux, Pamela Adlon, Stan Bush, Travis Knight
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 23 Comments »
Wednesday, December 12th, 2018
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I’m saying it now: when it comes to balancing horror and comedy, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is the goal. I mean, there ones I love just as much that I consider a little heavier on the goofiness, like RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and EVIL DEAD 2, but AMERICAN WEREWOLF is that ideal where it’s a perfectly serious horror movie and also it’s funny because of the situations and the way the story is told, and neither quality takes away from the other, in fact they only enhance each other.
Well, what seemed like a million years later, but was actually only eleven, director John Landis did a far lesser known but confidently crafted horror-movie-that-is-funny, this time in the vampire realm. INNOCENT BLOOD tells the story of an out of control couple of nights in Pittsburgh when a well(ish)-intentioned bloodsucker named Marie (Anne Parillaud, LA FEMME NIKITA) decides to feed on the local mafia, and it turns into a big mess. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bassett, Anne Parillaud, Anthony LaPaglia, Chazz Palminteri, Dario Argento, Don Rickles, John Landis, Linnea Quigley, Robert Loggia, Sam Raimi, Steve Johnson, Tom Savini
Posted in Crime, Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, November 21st, 2018
I don’t know why there was a Wes Craven movie that I didn’t bother to see in the theater and then didn’t bother to see on home video for over 20 years. Granted, everyone said it was terrible, and it seemed to be an Eddie Murphy comedy vehicle, not a real horror movie, and he started wearing fat suits and shit right around that time.
But these days you can’t take fresh Wes Craven movies for granted, so I decided the moment had come to watch VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. The verdict: it’s not an unheralded gem. But it’s also not what I had pictured. It’s a mildly interesting failure.
Murphy (DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) plays Maximillian, the only survivor of a tribe of Egyptian vampire who “traveled south through Africa and over the Atlantic to a beautiful island hidden deep in the Bermuda Triangle,” where they lived for centuries before the vampire hunters found them. There’s a certain parallel to COMING TO AMERICA, because he’s this confident, exotic visitor from another culture, looking for a woman. In this case it’s a specific woman, Rita (Angela Bassett, PANTHER, BLACK PANTHER), a rookie NYPD detective who doesn’t know there are vampires, or that her dad was one, or that she’s the last descendent and only hope to revive the race. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allen Payne, Angela Bassett, Charlie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Joanna Cassidy, John Witherspoon, Kadeem Hardison, Simbi Khali, vampires, Wes Craven
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 34 Comments »
Monday, February 19th, 2018
(SPOILERS)
BLACK PANTHER is the first Marvel movie I was anticipating mainly because of the director. FRUITVALE STATION was very good, but of course it was CREED that made me think Ryan Coogler is one of the most promising young directors we have. Best and most miraculous movie of 2015 that didn’t star Charlize Theron with a robot arm. I’d be up for whatever Coogler wanted to do next, but this seemed like a particularly good match for him after CREED’s mix of moving personal drama, immaculate filmatistic style and 21st century pop mythmaking.
#2 reason: Chadwick Boseman. The guy playing the title character shot to the top of my most exciting actors list when I saw his incredible performance as James Brown in GET ON UP. I didn’t know how anybody could pull off playing The Godfather and here is this actor I barely heard of before transforming himself into crazy old man James Brown, young James Brown, all kinds of James Browns. And dancing and strutting and grunting and referring to himself in the third person and pulling it off. He didn’t get all that much acclaim for it, definitely not any awards – somehow he got to skip that step before becoming a super hero.
If you want to call him that. T’Challa isn’t a vigilante or anything, he’s the King of Wakanda, a culture where part of the job is getting supernatural strength and wearing a panther costume to defend the kingdom. It’s like if the president also had to be Superman. What’s cool about this is that Black Panther has to think about things none of his peers do. He has to be a symbol much like Captain America, but with the responsibilities that Thor skipped out of when he turned down the throne. Here he’s challenged to not only defend his rule from a dangerous usurper, but convince his people to shift the direction of the country in order to make a better world. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy Serkis, Angela Bassett, Chadwick Boseman, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, Isaach De Bankolé, Joe Robert Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Marrese Crump, Martin Freeman, Marvel Comics, Michael B. Jordan, Ruth E. Carter, Ryan Coogler, Sterling K. Brown, Winston Duke
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 116 Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2016
LONDON HAS FALLEN is the sequel to 2013’s OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, that one where Gerard Butler (GODS OF EGYPT) plays Secret Service agent Mike Banning, protecting President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart, I FRANKENSTEIN) when the White House is attacked. It is not to be confused with WHITE HOUSE DOWN, the one where it’s Channing Tatum protecting Jamie Foxx.
Who am I fooling though? I get them confused so much I sincerely mixed up the titles when I wrote the first draft of this review in my notebook, and when I fixed it I started to type OLYMPUS DOWN. I was thinking I’d found the Tatum one to be the more passable 2013 half-assed excuse for a DIE HARD rip-off, but then I went to the tape. My review of that one is a little harsher, and ends by saying “If you see only one UNDER SIEGE IN THE WHITE HOUSE movie this year, see… ah, who gives a shit? Nobody will remember either of these movies a year from now. Of the two I think I preferred OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN. I forget why though. Something about Melissa Leo?”
In my day a movie had to excite somebody’s imagination to get a sequel. Now it just hast to be the one of two similar bad movies that gets more money because it came out first. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Alon Aboutboul, Angela Bassett, Babak Najafi, Gerard Butler, Jackie Earle Haley, Melissa Leo, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Robert Forster
Posted in Action, Reviews | 128 Comments »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2015
CHI-RAQ (Chicago + Iraq, pronounced shy-rack) is the Spikiest Spike Lee Joint achieved so far. It seems like whatever itch Lee was trying to scratch with those musical numbers in SCHOOL DAZE has been building up for all these years until it exploded onto the screen like that inflating dude in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. Lee must’ve woke up one morning and said fuck it, I’m gonna make a movie that’s so Spike Lee it turns into Baz Luhrmann.
Let me tell you a few things about how heightened and crazy this is. It has musical numbers. It has dance numbers. It has a rap number that breaks into a gun fight precipitated by an argument depicted in onscreen text messages. It has an army of women in chastity belts performing a sexy choreographed group lip-synch to “Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites (maybe my favorite scene). The two rival gangs wear purple and orange, and are called the Trojans and the Cyclops Spartans, whose leader is Cyclops (Wesley Snipes wearing a red-sequined eyepatch). There’s an explicit reference to THE WARRIORS so you know Spike knows what this reminds us of. (Also Luther himself, David Patrick Kelly, is in it.) All of this is presided over by a fourth-wall-breaking narrator played by Samuel L. Jackson wearing fly suits, spinning a cane and reciting toasts and dirty jokes like Dolemite. That’s not just me reading into it, because he’s called Dolmedes and he references Shine and the Signifying Monkey.
Oh, by the way: all of the other characters speak in rhyme also. So that’s pretty different from most movies. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ?, Angela Bassett, Aristophones, Chicago, D.B. Sweeney, Dave Chappelle, David Patrick Kelly, gangs, Harry Lennix, hip hop, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jennifer Hudson, John Cusack, Nick Cannon, Roger Guenveur Smith, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Teyona Parris, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Musical, Reviews | 37 Comments »
Wednesday, August 19th, 2015
Of course I had to re-watch BOYZ N THE HOOD as part of the N.W.A celebration. Not only is it named after an Eazy-E song, but it’s the actorial debut of Ice Cube, and still, in my opinion, one of his best performances. (No offense, GHOSTS OF MARS.)
The lead, though, is future DTV master (and Oscar winner, but who cares?) Cuba Gooding Jr. as Tre Styles, a teen in South Central L.A. circa 1991. He lives with his dad Furious (Larry Fishburne, DEATH WISH II), a firebrand mortgage broker who works hard to instill discipline and responsibility in his son, and whose fierce attention to politics gets him called “Malcolm Farrakhan.” In one scene he drives Tre and his friend out to Compton to give them a big speech about gentrification and the importance of black-owned businesses. They’re impressed, but mostly just scared to be in that neighborhood. They’re happy to get back in the car and drive straight outta Compton.
Tre’s friends don’t have fathers, and most of them spend more time sitting on the porch drinking 40s than he does. One of them, Dooky, is always sucking on a pacifier. Apparently that’s because the actor, Dedrick D. Gobert, did that to stop smoking, but it definitely comes across as a symbol of men who never get around to grow into adults, or never get a chance to. These guys live something closer to the lifestyle described in the Eazy-E song than Tre does, but with less shooting and drug money and no hitting women as far as we see. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Bassett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, John Singleton, Laurence Fishburne, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Regina King, Yo-Yo
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 12 Comments »
