Free Republic

Bloated with every trope in the genre, too long running time, lack of investment in the villains and Jon Snow dies not once, but twice. With the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and the lack of diversity in mainstream movies and TV being recognized and addressed, its risky to criticize BLACK PANTHER. I have seen the sea-change. Black actors and actresses are being hired. They are being represented on TV series and in films. The New York Times headline was “Why ‘Black Panther’ is a Defining Moment for Black America” might well be a true statement, but is it a good movie? A...

Blackness invites speculation. The very idea of a global African diaspora creates the most fertile of grounds for a field of what-ifs. What if European enslavers and colonizers had never ventured into the African continent? More intriguing yet: What if African nations and peoples had successfully rebuffed generations of plunder and theft? What if the Zulu had won the wars against the Voortrekkers and the British, and a confederation of Bantu people had risen up and smashed Belgian rule? What if the Transatlantic children of the mother continent had been allowed to remain, building their empires with the bounties of...

"Marvel Comics’s Black Panther was originally conceived in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two Jewish New Yorkers, as a bid to offer black readers a character to identify with."

Black Panther premieres to the general public this week. And as we all already know, it will be the blackity, black, black, black, black, black, blackest thing that will ever happen in the history of black people, blackness and people. So black that instead of ticket stubs, the box office will give you a reparations check. So black that instead of popcorn, the concession stands will sell buckets of white tears—frozen, caramelized and sprinkled with Old Bay. So black that apparently the first 15 minutes of the movie is just an Ida B. Wells hologram playing spades with Danny Glover....

Okay, I recently started binge watching "Homeland" due to getting a Showtime subscription when I turned off my cable TV and switched to Amazon Prime. I just completed watching Season 1 of "Homeland" last night and I noticed several absurdities with the show. However, the biggest absurdity of them all is: HOW DID A VICE-PRESIDENT BECOME SO POWERFUL? The President on the show is invisible so far but Vice-President Walden is so powerful that he can even order drone missile strikes? Really? In what alternate universe does this happen? Ordering military operations by himself is waaaaay above a vice-president's pay...

While the the liberal media lauds fascist dictators at the Winter Olympics, liberal Hollywood lectures us (with a wink and a nod) about fascist presidents on Showtime’s Homeland. The February 11 season premiere “Enemy of the State” continues after the shocking season six finale when President Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) ordered the sudden arrest and detainment of 200 intelligence officers for allegedly being connected to her attempted assassination. Despite the attempted parallels to Hillary Clinton from the previous season, the show now seems determined to portray Keane as the paranoid, tyrannical figure that liberals imagine Trump is. Observe how she...

Critics have found a number of ways to describe Sony Pictures’ new adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s mischievous yet beloved bunny, “Peter Rabbit.” The modern Peter Rabbit is a frat bro, a “raging narcissist,” a vandal that escalates a feud into a “truly sadistic display of violence.” Now, the bunny character has been billed as something else — a food allergy bully. The scene prompted intense backlash from allergy advocacy groups and parents of children with food allergies, who said it mocked an attack that in real life could have proved fatal. The segment led to a hashtag — #boycottpeterrabbit —...

The Black Panther first entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2016 in Captain America: Civil War. Now he's got his own film, which goes way beyond the usual expectations of fantasy, fight scenes and romance. Having a plot based around a black superhero with a predominantly black cast is a first for Marvel, but the film builds on this concept in a massive way. Directed by Creed's Ryan Coogler, it is set in the mythical country of Wakanda: a hidden African kingdom with incredible technological power, due to its reserves of the world's most useful precious metal. Chadwick Boseman,...

When Clint Eastwood’s 2016 drama Sully arrived in theaters, many people thought they knew the story of Captain Chesley Sullenberger. They thought they knew what happened after the heroic pilot safely landed his malfunctioning plane on the Hudson River in 2009. The film showed otherwise. It offered a revealing look back at the media frenzy and investigation that ensued after that January day. 15:17 to Paris, Eastwood’s latest feature, tells a more traditional story. The new drama stars three real-life heroes who helped prevent a terrorist attack on a Paris-bound train in 2015. Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler and Spencer Stone...

Marvel Studio News has reported that Facebook has banned a group that attempted to sabotage the fan review scores of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and also promised to do the same thing to Marvel’s upcoming Black Panther. The group’s Facebook page was named “Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys,” and it had created an event to post low review scores on the fan review section of the Rotten Tomatoes website. The exact motivations of the group aren’t completely clear, though some trends and theories have cropped up during the course of its actions. According to a...

The new Western Hostiles begins with an unshakably violent event. A small family is attacked and brutalized by a group of Native Americans. There’s no justification for the violence. Only bloodshed. There’s no moral ambiguity in that sequence but as the film tells a larger story, moral ambivalence takes center stage as the story explores the omnipresence of violence in the Old West. Set in 1896, the feature stars Oscar winner Christian Bale as Captain Joseph J. Blocker. Blocker is a weary warrior who has seen his share of violence and engaged in his share of battles. He’s seen friends...

In a moment of woeful irony in the Obama-administration documentary “The Final Year,” UN Ambassador Samantha Power travels to Cameroon to offer photo-op comfort to families terrorized by Boko Haram — only to have her motorcade kill a 7-year-old boy. Greg Barker, director of this fan film, does his best to downplay the accident: It is discussed while we watch a clip of Power’s convoy moving at a crawl when in fact it was reportedly traveling at over 60 miles an hour when it struck the boy. Despite Barker’s intentions, the handiwork of the Road to Hell Paving Co. is...

The new war drama 12 Strong begins with a news clip about the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. It then flashes to clips featuring the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.The feature then flashes to a house where young father Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth) is introduced at home with his wife and child. Nelson is a veteran who has finally returned home to the desk job he requested.Then, September 11th happens.Like so many others, Nelson recommits that day to facing down the enemy that made such an attack possible. Under the command of Max Bowers (played...

“The Shape of Water” received 13 Oscar nominations on Tuesday morning. The 90th Academy Awards will be held on March 4. • “Dunkirk,” which got eight nominations, and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” which received seven, also emerged as strong contenders. • Frances McDormand, Gary Oldman, Saoirse Ronan and Daniel Kaluuya were among the acting nominees. • Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) and Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) were each nominated for best director and best original screenplay. Oscar voters tilted toward a new Hollywood era on Tuesday, giving first-time nominations to at least 35 people, inviting Netflix into the club, recognizing...

The entire trailer is framed as a question of Paterno’s guilt, ending with his son asking “Did you know?” This puts it in a similar league as Levinson’s last film for HBO, The Wizard of Lies, about Bernie Madoff and the familial aftermath of him being charged and jailed for his crimes. In both cases, the focus remains on an older man who has become famous due to incalculable amounts of cover-ups and shady dealings having to face the truth of his actions when confronted by his own children.Its a worthy subject but also feels a bit stale, considering that...

Those of you (most of you) who haven't been watching the new Star Trek series, Star Trek Discovery, are missing out on a entirely new level of political correctness. The show features a black female protagonist named Michael; her boyfriend, a Klingon disguised as a Muslim-Arab security officer; an obese female cadet who is a genius in all areas of science; and a gay couple, one of whom is black and possibly also hispanic. But that isn't enough for SJWs. They actually worry that the black gay character, who is also hispanic, is not visibly hispanic.

Best movies: 1. Wonder 2. Dunkirk 3. Darkest Hour 4. The Shape of Water 5. Lady Bird 6. The Big Sick 7. Disaster Artist 8. The LEGO Batman Movie 9. I, Tonya 10. Spiderman: Homecoming Worst movies: 1. Mother (R) 2. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (PG-13) 3. Suburbicon (R) 4. The Dark Tower (PG-13) 5. The Snowman (R) 6. Power Rangers (PG-13) 7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (PG-13) 8. Snatched (R) 9. Transformers: The Last Knight (PG-13) 10. Downsizing (R)

Roseanne Barr said her character’s support for President Donald Trump in the revived sitcom “Roseanne” is a reflection of her own views and also true to the show’s roots. The sitcom brings the Conner family and the life of the country up to date when it debuts March 27 on ABC. “I’ve always attempted to portray a realistic portrait of the American people and of working class people. And in fact it was working class people who elected Trump,” Barr said Monday.

Please pardon the vanity. I just saw Darkest Hour. It was really excellent and moving. Both history and drama. Some lines and scenes are obviously fictionalized. The scene with Churchill riding the subway is silly, but I understand the need for dramatic license. It is about the last three weeks of May 1940. Churchill becomes Prime Minister, even though Chamberlain, Halifax, and King George dislike him. Hitler invades France, which becomes a rout. Halifax insists on peace negotiations with Hitler. Churchill wavers, but decides to fight on. It is impossible to say what might have happened if Britain had made...

Churchill is an abidingly popular role with big-time actors once the receding hairline and expanding girth of middle-age set in. Sometimes the player is too evidently suited to the part - one thinks of Robert Hardy on telly in the Eighties - and the jowly gravitas gets clanked around as if Winnie wandered Chartwell and Westminster in never-was-so-much-owed mode 24/7. On the literal face of it, the man who brought both Sid Vicious and Commissioner Gordon to the silver screen is one of the least obvious cinematic Winstons ever, and he wears his lavish prosthetics with a very light touch....