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Showing posts with the label Angela Bassett

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Similar, Emotional, yet Still Empowering

  Black Panther: Wakanda Forever poster. Photo courtesy of Disney. When I saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Friday night, I was reluctant at first because of the reminders of grieving a loss. From the first scene, it seemed pretty heavy, and god rest Chadwick Boseman's soul. And the plot and musical score seemed similar to other films, namely The Lion King  and Aquaman , and it was heavy again with more reminders of the violent racism other people of color had to face . But the good parts of the film came from Dominique Thorne's character of Riri Williams/Ironheart with her scientific genius and geeking out with Shuri, Angela Bassett's empowering mother spirit (she should get an Oscar for this), Letitia Wright as Shuri for snapping out of the grief in time, the fighting choreography, and the costumes and makeup. I'd recommend you try not to read too much into the dark parts of the film, but try to do what Rihanna did and lift yourselves up, lift Chadwick Boseman up, a...

Bumblebee Gave Transformers A Fresh Restart

Official Poster of "Bumblebee" starring Haille Steinfeld and John Cena. Photo Courtesy of imdb.com While I have liked seeing the Autobots overcome the Decepticons, it recently hit me that the story had lost some of its spark. But, the "Transformers" franchise made a fresh restart in the form of "Bumblebee". With its numerous 1980s-era pop culture references, an emotional and invigorating performance by Hailee Steinfeld, and packs of action, "Bumblebee" may be the inventiveness to bring the Transformers films back to light. Taking place in 1987, Autobot B-127 (voiced by Dylan O'Brien) crash lands on planet Earth after a war with the Decepticons consumes his home planet, Cybertron. Once he loses his memory and vocal processor, he befriends rebellious teenager Charlie Watson played by Hailee Steinfeld. But the friendship between human and machine is threatened by a paranoid government agent, Jack Burns, played by John Cena, and two Dece...