Black Panther

Director: Ryan Coogler

2018, 134, PG-13

Screenwriter: Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, based on Stan Lee’s Marvel comic.

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.

 

Black Panther exploded with a big bang in the Marvel Universe, letting the studio heads – and the rest of the galaxy – know that black superheroes (and directors, actors, and narratives) are here to stay! In Wakanda, a rare African community that remained untouched by plundering colonizers, Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is the benevolent ruler of a peaceful society – and, when needed, the superhero Black Panther. No doubt, he is needed when his father is assassinated, and a complicated mercenary (Michael B. Jordan, star of director Coogler’s Fruitvale Station) makes a grab for Wakanda’s greatest and deadliest resource. It’s do or die time, but with Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira fighting by his side, our bets are on the Black Panther.

“Marvel has made a great many entertaining movies in the past decade, but Ryan Coogler has made a profound one.” – Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker.