Issue #70: Now Playing 🎞️
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever + She Said
Well… it’s been a week! If you’re even marginally aware of the goings-on of the internet, then you probably know that (as predicted) Elon Musk’s “Twitter 2.0” is pretty much in freefall. In fact, if you’re a recent subscriber, then that may in fact be the reason you’re here. Welcome! We’re happy to have you.
To be honest, the news of Twitter’s decimation is a bummer. As difficult as that hellsite has been over the years, it’s also been a source of community and connection for us both, and we’ll be sad to see it go. After all, where else can you watch a coup happen in real time while retweeting memes about salt bae? Alas, it was a vast and wonderful place.
In any case, things have been rough recently, so publication has been slower than we’d like. But in honour of the demise of the internet as we know it, we’re back with two new reviews of movies you can currently find at your local megaplex. For your entertainment, Zosha tackles the impossible expectations for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Then Cate gets serious about the stories behind She Said. We’ve got lots to say, so time to get on with it. Happy movie yelling!
Zosha on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Black Panther 2 had a lot riding on it, even before Chadwick Boseman’s death. The first movie was, to put it mildly, incredibly well-received, changing what people could expect from (especially later-stage) MCU movies and — perhaps most notably — the villains who inhabited them. Boseman’s performance as King T’Challa and Black Panther brought a tranquil grace to it even in the most frenzied moments, and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger was pure fire (and, to a large contingent, right). So Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was never going to be just another sequel. It was going to be an example of what the MCU could do next.
Which was always going to be too much weight for a movie to carry, even with a runtime of 2 hours and 40 minutes. Wakanda Forever picks up at T’Challa’s funeral, with Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) in mourning as they struggle to figure out what this and having no Black Panther means for Wakanda. As they each muddle their way through grief, they are approached by Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), a man who can breathe underwater and bypass their borders. He gives them an ultimatum: bring him an American scientist responsible for building a Vibranium detector or he will attack Wakanda.
From there the movie kicks off in typical MCU frenzy, if not style. Ryan Coogler (who once again directed and co-wrote the movie) has clearly found a way to soften the harsh glare of the MCU’s look. And he manages to create some truly stunning shots as the film bounces around the world — from Wakanda to the underwater kingdom of Talokan. The void of T’Challa’s and Boseman’s deaths is filled instead with the women left behind, each with a compellingly layered performance in their own right. Danai Gurira (as Okoye) and Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia) are back, each stepping up to kick ass even as their characters reexamine their relationships to Wakanda. Bassett and Wright imbue their performances with a near-constant level of weariness, carrying the emotion of the loss even when it’s absent from the narrative.
The problem is that the movie can’t make every idea it has fit into a single narrative, let alone neatly and with finesse. Plot lines and character motivations get hampered as the Marvel globe needs to turn and action needs to happen, and so scenes often feel confusingly abrupt — Okoye enters a room, makes a plea to a character we have no backstory for, and then we get a cut immediately after a line. Details get withheld to better feed into a mid-credits scene, but ultimately that just leaves us with more questions (of the wrong variety). It’s impossible to walk away from Wakanda Forever without a sense that something got lost in the editing room. And while more time might not fix everything it would at least allow the characters more room to stretch in the larger Marvel blueprint.
Perhaps no one suffers from this more than Namor, stepping up to the mantle left behind by Killmonger, the preeminent example for fans to point to about a villain making a valid (if violent) point. The film gives him a reason to be righteously angry, but in doing so, robs him of the ability to simply exist.
When Wakanda Forever needs a villain it’s Namor who’s left holding the bag, and that switch for him leaves the film feeling clunky at best. Too often his moments feel purely like what they need to be: a Marvel movie with certain demands on everyone involved, audience and characters alike. In that world, Wakanda Forever feels too long, too multitudinous, and too burdened to move with the poise of its predecessor. As Namor and Shuri circle each other, both are stuck dealing with what the movie needs them to be rather than letting them be who they are. And unfortunately, the full power of the movie gets lost along with them.
Cate on She Said
It may seem facile to call She Said our generation's answer to All The President's Men, but the comparison is more than apt. Based on the 2019 non-fiction book "She Said: Breaking The Sexual Harassment Story That Ignited A Movement," the film of the same name tells the story of the New York Times investigation into the prolific sexual misconduct of famed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Led by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan as investigative reporters Jodi Cantor and Meghan Twoey respectively, She Said painstakingly recounts the quest to expose the rampant culture of sexual misconduct in the film industry.
There’s little point in recounting specific plot details of the film, as the Weinstein investigation is one of the most publicized works of journalism of our time. But led by director Maria Schrader, the movie expertly weaves the accounts of multiple women into a comprehensive look at one man’s outsized influence on an entire industry.
In the film’s two-hour-plus runtime, we follow Jodi and Meghan as they track down sources who have been hiding in the shadows for (sometimes) upwards of two decades. As I mentioned on today’s episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, Schrader repeatedly makes the haunting choice to stop the film’s momentum dead in its tracks whenever they succeed in getting one of Weinstein’s victims to speak, lingering on the profundity of the way he entirely derailed their lives. Each women’s story is given the weight it deserves, and the actresses who portray them give such devastating performances that it is frequently hard to remember that they are in fact, acting. One by one, they enter the story, terrified of the trauma that has come back to haunt them. We see in their faces how desperately they want to speak, and how deeply felt and close to the surface their pain and fear remain. As the film continues, Weinstein’s pattern of predation emerges, and we see with vexing clarity how methodical he was in victimizing the women whose careers he held in his hands.
Weinstein’s impact did not just extend to the Gwenyth Paltrows and Ashley Judds of the world — the latter of whom bravely portrays herself in the film. She Said makes it clear that he did the most damage to the film industry hopefuls who simply wanted to be a part of making art they loved — the assistants, junior producers, and entry-level employees. It was an approach much improved from 2020’s The Assistant which elevated its Weinstein stand-in to mythic proportions and left its protagonist helpless and inert.
Through it all, Mulligan and Kazan connect these tales with the weight of their own fraught emotional involvement in reporting the story. Both Twoey and Kantor both have young daughters, and they each reiterate the desire the make the world a better place for them. Mulligan’s steady but fragile performance as Twoey is an interesting contrast to her brash take on Promising Young Woman’s deliciously vengeful Cassie. But Kazan especially reminds the audience that reporters are first and foremost people. Her wholehearted desire to not just get the story, but to sincerely make things better for her sources comes through in every scene. Kantor’s eldest daughter is old enough to have some understanding of the work she’s doing, and Kazan brings a delicate touch to her navigation of the weight of the world she is stepping into. In a scene late in the film, when Judd calls to confirm that she will go on the record, Kazan all but breaks down in a mix of relief and sadness — a long-held breath finally exhaled.
And frankly, it was refreshing to finally see a movie about female journalists that did not cast them as lascivious and unethical in their pursuit of a story. Far too often, female reporters are depicted as sleeping with sources either to get information or because their feeble lady brains can’t stop them from ~falling in lurv~ So much so that it was almost a welcome relief when Rutherford Falls’ unethical journalist who slept with a source was a man. But She Said avoids letting the story lean into its more prurient or salacious elements in any way. Twoey and Kantor are women at work, and their focus is getting the job done.
The one critique I would levy against the film is its treatment of Rose McGowan and her story. While it at no point discredits or disbelieves her, it treats her paranoia about Weinstein’s influence as perhaps a little overblown. She is skeptical of speaking with the Times and for good reason — McGowan was one of the few actresses who never hedged about what had been done to her, but her declarations were rarely believed. And as Ronan Farrow’s reporting later revealed, her contention that Weinstein was having her followed by spies was the very least of his campaign of assault against her character.
Following that, it was frustrating to see a line about Lena Dunham and Jodi Konner’s overture of assistance included in the story. While I’m sure it did in fact happen — there is, after all, no story Dunham can refrain from inserting herself into — her own complicity in protecting Hollywood’s abusers is well-known and confirmed. To see her included as another cog in the machinery that took down Weinstein felt offensive and crude. Despite her self-flagellating non-apology, Dunham is not someone who should ever be trusted as a safe ally for women.
And while it will likely not hurt the film’s awards chances, it is also irritating to know that the film was financed in part by Plan B, the production company owned and operated by the actor Brad Pitt. Pitt is currently in the middle of a highly publicized divorce from Angelina Jolie, his partner of several years and mother of his children. Their divorce was instigated by a much-contested incident on a private plane, in which Jolie accused Pitt of abusing both her and their children. As the settlement drags on, Pitt’s camp has rolled out its playbook of smears, painting Jolie as a negligent and unreasonable mother.
It’s hard not to see his involvement in this project as more of the same. Especially since Pitt was told of Weinstein’s behavior by both Jolie and ex-girlfriend Gwenyth Paltrow. Jolie has stated on the record that Pitt’s insistence on seeking out Weinstein as a producing partner despite this knowledge was a point of contention in their marriage.
I do not claim to know anything more about the state of their relationship than has been reported. But after the offensive displays of himpathy in the cases of both Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson, it’s ironic that Pitt would produce a film in which the central thesis demands that we lend specific credibility to Jolie’s account of their relationship over his own.
So which is it? Do we believe women? Or not?
Assorted Internet Detritus
ZOSHA: Why won’t doctors remove my IUD? This piece on Pulse that I love. Ghost Baby! The Future Library is a metaphor for the climate crisis. The oral history of the terrifying Andor prison. And also this interview with Tony Gilroy about every episode of Andor being a trap. Why therapy is broken.
CATE: A People’s History of Black Twitter, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Skin cycling, and Tik Tok trends that don’t suck, the rise of influencer capital, how Prince King Charles plans to keep the monarchy together, more on She Said from me on Pop Culture Happy Hour, and more evidence of the unfettered genius of tech billionaires.
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Zosha + Cate <3
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