November 2022: 2nd Week
Hi everyone!
Welcome back to Top-Notch Movies one more week. It's already Oscar-movie-era!!! From now on, most big releases, critically, will be mainly for submitting these films to next year's Academy Awards. So how about a sequel to de highly praised Black Panther and a Steven Spielberg film to start?
Thanks for reading us!
MOST IMPORTANT RELEASES (November 2nd week)
1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Dominique Thorne, Tenoch Huerta, Michaela Coel & Martin Freeman.
Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Drama
Plot: Queen Ramonda, Shuri, M’Baku, Okoye and the Dora Milaje fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia and Everett Ross and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda.
Extra Information: After the sadly death of Chadwick Boseman, Marvel has decided to pay him homage with this new follow-up to the praised and critically acclaimed Black Panther. Black Panther is from 2018, the same year Avengers: Infinity War and Spiderman: Into The Spider-verse were released. Surprisingly, although I personally liked the other two more, Black Panther was a global phenomenon and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever wants to continue with that legacy.
2. The Fabelmans
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen & Judd Hirsch.
Genre(s): Drama
Plot: A coming-of-age story about a young man’s discovery of a shattering family secret and an exploration of the power of movies to help us see the truth about each other and ourselves.
Extra Information: The Fabelmans is a Steven Spielberg film about Steven Spielberg... Do I really need to say something else for you to go see it? This is a crowd pleaser, but unlike last year's CODA, this film has actual quality in the filmmaking process. This film is probably the most likely to win this year's Oscars for a lot of reasons: first of all, it's a movie about movies, secondly, it's a movie about one-of-the-best-directors-ever's life and third of all, it's packed with amazing cinematography, incredible direction and a staggering cast at the top of their game. This movie is extremely emotional and heartfelt and for all of those "unneeded" reasons, you should definetely check this one out.
3. Spirited
Director: Sean Anders
Starring: Ryan Reynolds & Will Ferrell
Genre(s): Comedy, Musical
Plot: Each Christmas Eve, the Ghost of Christmas Present selects one dark soul to be reformed by a visit from three spirits. But this season, he picked the wrong Scrooge. Clint Briggs turns the tables on his ghostly host until Present finds himself reexamining his own past, present and future.
Extra Information: This year's big Christmas-holiday family-watch movie comes in November by, no other, than the hands of the talented Ryan Reyniolds and the charismatic Will Ferrell. This movie has all the heart, all the soul and all the magic a Christmas film should have plus a lot of rythm and music!! This is definately a film you don't want to miss this holidays.
4. The Son
Director: Florian Zeller
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby & Anthony Hopkins.
Genre(s): Drama
Plot: A successful lawyer, with a new wife and infant, agrees to care for his teenage son from a previous marriage after his ex becomes concerned about the boy’s wayward behavior.
Extra Information: Although this film seems to be the biggest disappointment of the year among critics thus far, this is a very important film. The Son is a film about the difficulties of understanding your teenage son (or daughter). This film deals with some serious themes such as depression, love (family love), parental responsibility just to mention a few. Hugh Jackman gives one of the best performances of his career, which is saying, and although the rest of the cast weren't as good as him, most of them worked and helped increasing the film's emotion.
REVIEW OF THE WEEK - WRITTEN
BLACK PANTHER
NOTE:
Finally I can say Marvel has done something that has actually made an emotional impact on me after 2019's Avengers: Endgame!!!
GOOD:
First of all, let's start with the most important thing about the film: the tribute. This movie is beautiful. It's probably the saddest and more serious film in this franchise, but also the most emotional and sentimental one. Part of that, and I repeat, part of that, is of course due to the emotive homage this movie pays to both T'Chala the character as well as Chadwick Boseman the actor. This movie has the best opening any MCU film has ever had and even the opening title is an homage to Chadwick Boseman. (RIP)
Once having talked about that, let's get started with the performances, and the truth is that this film might be one of the best acted MCU films. Part of that is because of the dramatic value this movie has to deal with and therefore there's a lot of "crying", meaning, there's a lot of incredibly emotional scenes where the actors need to "let everything out". Specially Letitia Wright (Shuri) is probably the person who has the most to handle and her character deals with a lot of tragic stuff , aside from her brother's death. But still, the standout here is by far Angela Bassett. Her character has an incredible arch and her performance might be one of the best in the whole MCU. She's incredible in every scene she's in, and keeps stealing the show every time her character is on-screen. She even has a very emotional meltdown in the first half of the film that made her to even be a candidate for next year's Academy Awards' supporting actress category. And although I've highlight these two performances, pretty much everyone is excellent here: Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke and Tenoch Huerta who makes a very interesting villain with a somewhat compelling background.
In regards with the most technical aspects, this is a very good-looking film plagged with gorgeous shots and nice cinematography all throughout. Apart from that, the editing plays also a very important role in this movie specially with this under-3-hours' runtime. Each sequence whether it's a fight or just a conversation, everyone feels very organic and although a lot of people might see 2 hours and 47 minutes excessive, I wouldn't cut anything out of this movie. Every scene feels important to the plot and every moment feels essential to the story. Also, after films with very quirky dialogue like Thor: Love & Thunder or, even more recently, Black Adams; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever doesn't have that sort of dialogue. It is a down-to-earth, realistic picture, and at its core, it is a family drama, and that's the beauty of it all. Sure, it also has the conflict (that eventually ends in a massive epic battle) between two kingdoms and their ideologies which is a clear analogy to a lot of situations happening daily in the real world. The film also criticizes the fact that human beings will always aspire to be as most powerfully dangerous as possiblehaving a very profound speech about the importance of arms in our consciences and the use, or bad-use, we make out of them.
Finally, this film is extremely well directed. This by far surpassed my expectations as well as returned in me the faith that the MCU might not be dead after all. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a serious drama about the importance of family, friendship and the death of the loved ones as well as the respect between two different cities, countries, continents, kingdoms, nations...
BAD:
The only real negative I have about this film is the IronHeart character, which is a really big part in the movie and I just don't think that character was neither well presented or explored or written as a whole.
And the other not negative, more like not as good thing that I have for the film is the fact that Martin Freeman is criminally underused here. Ha does appear a couple of times and as always he is very good in the film, but I just wished he was more in it than the little amount of screen-time he actually got.
CONCLUSION:
Overall, this is a much needed comeback to the routes of the good MCU, and probably, the most mature and adult film in this whole franchise. It has a couple of minor problems but those don't interfere in the movie's quality or enjoyment in the slightest. I totally recommend watching this film on the widest screen you find and specially for comic-book and blockbuster movie fans, this is an absolute must-watch.
I'll give it 4 and a falf out of 5 stars
VIDEOS OF THE WEEK - MCU (MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE) SPECIAL!
For those who don't know, there's a new Marvel movie coming out this week. So we've decided to take things to the next level and rank, and review, every single MCU film ever (30 films in total) from worst to best, not to mention Daniel will also discuss both Black Panther movies giving his opinion on them and talking about the important-profound themes those movies touch.
ALEJANDRO:
MCU RANKING (Part 1: Top 10 Least Favorites)
MCU RANKING (Part 2: Mid 10)
MCU RANKING (Part 3: Top 10 Favorites)
DANIEL:
BLACK PANTHER FRANCHISE DISCUSSION
UPCOMING FILMS (Next Week)
- The Menu: an astonishing comedy about food and food critics that slowly turns into a thriller full of suspense, tension, good performances and food!
- Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery: Daniel Craig's return to playing this now iconic detective: Benoit Blanc accompanied by yet another staggering cast in yet another Rian Johnson whodunit.
- Bones & All: a teenage-romance mixed with cannibalism.
- She Said: after the masterpiece Zodiac (2007) and the wonderful Spotlight (2015), She Said is another important journalism film that explores one of Hollywood's darkest periods.
Hope you found useful all of this information.
top-notch movies are always out there you just gotta find em.
Daniel Perales & Alejandro Gómez, Top-Notch Movies
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