Black Panther - Barney's Incorrect Five Second Reviews

One of Marvel's finest to date, Black Panther is sure to excite and entertain all audiences.

Finally got around to seeing this last night, and as much as I was expecting a good movie, it still managed to bypass that. I was particularily impressed with the great acting from the entire cast. All the leads were great, the supporting cast was fantastic (I was terribly intimidated by the King's bodyguards). I was totally unfamiliar with the backstory of the Black Panther, not having seen him in previous movies or reading comics. The whole technological aspect was very cool and never got old or tired.

Unlike the 3D in this movie. I got stuck seeing this in 3D which I typically dislike. In this the 3D was a mix of adding depth and visual splendor to some scenes, to being a TOTAL gimmick in others. In fact, once the 3D starts, it's around the King's bodyguards so all the spear tips are just poking right out of the screen, and I can't think of a worse way to take me out of the movie, "hey look everybody! It's THREE-DEE! The spears are RIGHT THERE! Cool huh?!"  I'd rather be paying attention to the scene and the strong performances.  Oh and every time the ship takes off, they use the same 3D effect with the engines. EVERY time. It got super predictable and old. I'd rather just see the ship fly, it was cool after all.

Secondly, and I'm going to sound like a broken record on this, I think they made a big casting mistake with putting Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya in such a recognizable role. EVERY scene he's in I'm thinking, "hey that's the guy from Get Out. He's even making the same faces and expressions." Get Out was much too recent and popular so I think they need to be careful about this. Whereas every scene Forrest Whitaker is it, I'm not thinking about Forrest Whitaker, but rather what a cool mysterious shaman this guy is. There's a fine line here and casting directors are supposed to be all over this stuff, I think using Daniel as W'Kabi was a mistake, personally. So that and the 3D are the only detractors for me.

Oh, and when you use 3D, be aware that all of your action sequences are going to look TERRIBLE. You cannot have fast action stuff going on with 3D or it will end up looking like The Hobbit. That's what happened here. I couldn't really follow what was going on in the big action scenes because it all blurs together. Good thing I was sitting in the very back row or it would have been even worse.

Beyond those things, everything else was perfect. The epilogue was really good and most welcome. There were about 100 ways to screw that up and they did it perfectly. I could have done without the U.N. scene though but I guess it was necessary. Oh, and no need to stay for the two additional scenes after the credits. Not worth it.

Also pretty cool how they managed to tame rhinos enough to put armor, saddles and harnesses on them.

Overall it's a really great movie largely due to amazing characters who you just want to keep watching. Great performances, great fun.

Heart rating: 5 stars (absolutely)

Brain rating: 4 stars (it's not pulling off Logan type stuff, but then again it's not supposed to be)