Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)

Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther

Black Panther T'Challa / Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman
Erik Killmonger: Michael B. Jordan
Nakia: Lupita Nyong'o
Okoye: Danai Gurira   
Everett K. Ross: Martin Freeman
W'Kabi:  Daniel Kaluuya 
Shuri: Letitia Wright
M'Baku: Winston Duke
N'Jobu: Sterling K. Brown
Ramonda: Angela Bassett
Zuri: Forest Whittaker
Ulysses Klaue: Andy Serkis
Ayo: Florence Kasumba 
T'Chaka: John Kani 

Director: Ryan Coogler
Screenplay: Ryan Coogler, Joe Robert Cole
Based on comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Cinematography: Rachel Morrison
Production design: Hannah Beachler
Film editing: Debbie Berman, Michael P. Shawver
Music : Ludwig Göransson

This past week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put on hold its proposed introduction of a new category: best popular film. The idea provoked a barrage of criticism and mockery. Did this mean the Academy was admitting that its recent best picture winners had not been popular? What criteria would be used to determine popularity? The box office take, for example, or would that be a tacit admission that the Oscars have always been in it for the money? It was also noted that the idea was not a new one: At the very first Oscars in 1929, two "best picture" awards had been presented, one for "outstanding production," which went to William A. Wellman's Wings, and the other for "unique and artistic picture," which went to F.W. Murnau's Sunrise.* The Academy apparently found the distinction unworkable way back then, because it was discontinued the following year. Critics also noted that some of the most popular films of all time, such as Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), and Titanic  (James Cameron, 1997) had won best picture Oscars, so what was the problem? The problem, if there was one, seemed to lie in the fact that the Oscars had lost clout. By the time the Academy's awards are presented, there have been so many other awards shows, from the Golden Globes to the BAFTAs to the Screen Actors Guild awards, that there's hardly any suspense left about who will win. And ratings for the Oscars on TV had steadily declined -- the show was overlong and featured too many categories that viewers don't care about. The Academy has apparently stuck to its plans to give out some of the less-glamorous awards, like the ones for sound effects editing and for short films, during the commercial breaks in the TV show, but caved to ridicule of the popular film award.So what does this have to do with Black Panther, ostensibly the topic of this entry? One of the criticisms of the proposal suggested that the popular film category was only a way of pulling in fans of blockbuster hits like the Marvel superhero movies, of which Black Panther was the most recent example. Of course, there's nothing to prevent Black Panther from being nominated for the old best picture category -- though to date no Marvel film has been so honored. It currently has a 97% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which indicates not only that it's popular but also that even the critics think it's good. So do I: It has an interesting story to tell, a unique perspective on race and history, and it's sharply directed and superbly cast. Its appearance, in the midst of the political and cultural uproar caused by the election of Donald Trump, is more than timely. And it has even provoked intellectual debate over whether it is a fresh and clever valorizing of the black experience or, as Canadian journalist James Wilt put it,  "a fundamentally reactionary understanding of black liberation that blatantly advocates bourgeois respectability over revolution, sterilizes the history of real-life anti-colonial struggles in Africa and elsewhere, and allows white folks such as myself to feel extremely comfortable watching it." For my part, I never felt "extremely comfortable" watching Black Panther, though I did feel entertained and more than a little provoked to think about the issues raised by it, which is more than I can say about any other recent superhero blockbusters.

*Both films were released in 1927. The first Academy Awards for for films released between August 1, 1927 and August 1, 1928. The split-year eligibility continued until the awards presented in 1935, which were for films released in the calendar year 1934.

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

Alex R. Hibbert and Mahershala Ali in Moonlight

Adult Chiron Harris: Trevante Rhodes
Teenage Chiron Harris: Ashton Sanders
Child Chiron Harris: Alex R. Hibbert
Adult Kevin Jones: André Holland
Teenage Kevin Jones: Jharrel Jerome
Child Kevin Jones: Jaden Piner
Paula: Naomie Harris
Teresa: Janell Monáe
Juan: Mahershala Ali
Terrel: Patrick Decile

Director: Barry Jenkins
Screenplay: Barry Jenkins
Based on a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney
Cinematography: James Laxton
Production design: Hannah Beachler
Film editing: Joi McMillon, Nat Sanders
Music: Nicholas Britell

Coming-of-age films are the cinematic equivalent of the Bildungsroman, the usually semi-autographical "novel of education" that tracks the formative childhood and adolescent experiences of the protagonist. Dickens, for example, wrote not one but two Bildungsromane: David Copperfield and Great Expectations. In the movies, the classic coming-of-age films include Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, 1955; Aparajito, 1956; The World of Apu, 1959) and François Truffaut's The 400 Blows* (1959). Lately, Richard Linklater has added a distinguished entry to the genre, Boyhood (2014). And now Barry Jenkins adds to the genre with Moonlight, a fine film about growing up black and gay, while deftly avoiding the double pitfall of making his film about being black or gay. There have been plenty of films about growing up black and about growing up gay -- I watched a good film just last night about the latter, André Téchiné's Wild Reeds (1994) --  and much commentary about possessing the dual stigma in a straight and/or white society. But what sets Jenkins's film apart is its avoidance of pop psychology and trite sociology: Moonlight is about being human. You don't need to have grown up in India or France to understand and sympathize with Apu or Antoine, and you don't need to have grown up in the Miami housing projects to sense why Chiron (rhymes with "Tyrone," but with a spelling that suggests the mythical centaur) is so blocked, so stubborn, so silent. Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the play Jenkins adapted for the film, step carefully around the clichés of the genre, especially when it comes to ascribing blame. Juan, the drug runner who finds the young Chiron hiding from bullies in an abandoned crack house and shows him kindness, isn't entirely the heroic figure he might be. Juan becomes the fatherless Chiron's first adult male role model, but he's a poor one even though he's generous and understanding, since Chiron grows up to follow Juan's profession and even imitate some of his showy mannerisms. Paula is a terrible mother, but she doesn't want to be: It's the drugs that Juan sells her that send her skidding off the track she desperately wants to be on. Kevin, Chiron's first (and apparently only) sort-of boyfriend, isn't strong enough to stand up to the taunts of the bully Terrel, so he betrays the teenage Chiron, provoking him to violence. So the film ends on an ambivalent note with the reunion of the adult Chiron and Kevin. Are they strong enough now to provide support to each other, or are their lives going to be haunted by the damaged child that was Chiron, seen in the film's final shot? There is something a little too formulaic about that ending, I think. I'm not entirely convinced, for example, that the handsome, bulked-up, successful drug runner that is the adult Chiron would have remained celibate for so long. But Jenkins has risked much and mostly succeeded -- after all, there's that Oscar -- in crafting a film that doesn't play the blame game or rely on pat explanations and outcomes.

*I'm not including the other four Antoine Doinel films by Truffaut because, like many others, I don't sense a real continuity of character between the Antoine of The 400 Blows and the Antoine of the sequels.