ALSO SHOWING
Black Panther (12A)
It’s been 20 years since Blade quietly kick-started the current multiplex dominance of comic book movies and it has taken precisely this long for Marvel to give another of its characters of colour a franchise of their own. Having been introduced in
Avengers: Civil War, the eponymous superhero (played once again by Chadwick Boseman) gets an epic origins story all of his own, one that weaves references to slavery, colonialism and the failures of the Civil Rights movement into a pulpy comic book adventure full of family betrayal, Bond-style gadgetry and overblown action. Visually, director Ryan Coogler
(Creed) may struggle to transcend the murky CGI fakery that’s become the default Marvel house style (it’s particularly ugly in Imax 3D), but he’s put his stamp on it in terms of the casting and the agency he’s given characters more usually consigned to the background in these sorts of films.
Set largely in the fictional African nation of Wakanda – a country that itself has a bit of a superhero identity (it exploits its global status as a developing nation to conceal a thriving technocratic society) – the film revolves around Boseman’s royal heir T’challa as his ascendency to the throne is challenged by a vengeful American cousin he never knew he had (he’s played by Coogler regular Michael B Jordan). Boseman and Jordan are commanding leads, but it’s the supporting cast – including Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o as a spy for whom T’challa clearly pines; Danai Gurira as his most fearsome protector; Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya as his more radically minded best friend and, especially, Letitia Wright as his super-smart Q-esque sister – who steal the show and continue to generate interest whenever the dreary slam-bang action takes over.
Lady Bird (15)
Late on in Greta Gerwig’s funny, joyous and perceptive coming-ofage film, a character points out that closely observing something and loving something might be the same thing. The conversation in question is in reference to a school essay the film’s self-named heroine, Christine “Lady Bird” Mcpherson, has written about her hometown of Sacramento – an apparent cultural backwater from which this adolescent, desperate to reinvent herself, is intent on escaping. But it’s also a way of understanding the antagonistic relationship Saoirse Ronan’s Lady Bird has with Laurie Metcalf ’s Marion, her harassed but attentive mother, whose constant criticism is, in Lady Bird’s myopic view, the spark that keeps igniting their already combustible bond.
Taking place over an 18-month period encapsulating Lady Bird’s final year of high school and her first few weeks of college, the film offers a fabulously witty and wise spin on all the expected teen movie beats. Yet it’s Gerwig’s decision to make the mother-daughter relationship the driving force of the narrative that really makes it special.
50 Shades Freed (18)
The 50 Shades franchise draws to a close in typically tedious fashion. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan return as Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, newly wed and coming to the realisation that their BDSM proclivities symbolically parallel the demands of modern marriage and the strictures of imminent parenthood. OK, not really. Though matrimony issues and pregnancy feature prominently, the film – which, like the previous instalment, has been adapted by 50
Shades creator EL James’s husband, Niall Leonard, and directed with similar yes-man compliance by 50
Shades Darker’s James Foley – forgoes any interest in the psychological underpinnings of the characters in favour of an ineffectually executed thriller plot and sex-scenes with all the daring of a 1990s Häagen-dazs ad. ■