My Own Little World

Comic book films have begun to vary quite a bit in the past couple of years. Deadpool opened the doors to R-ratings in the genre, Logan showed how emotionally compelling and tonally focused those films can be, and Wonder Woman brought a strong female presence to the genre for the first time. In Black Panther , we have yet another drastic change; this time, though, it is to more than just the superhero genre. Sure, we do finally have a properly fleshed-out black superhero; but the bigger thing here is the subtext. There is so much to this film’s major themes that make it one of the timeliest comic book films ever made. This is rooted in the film’s villain Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan. Besides Jordan’s great performance, this is a highly and uniquely motivated villain. His core motivation is to flip the narrative of blacks worldwide and to leverage Wakanda’s (the African nation at play) premier technology to do so. He wants to oppress their oppressors and demand ...

I'm just going to come right out and say it: Creed  is one of my favorite movies to come out this year. It's not because the Rocky franchise is one of my favorites in cinema history, as I feel that a couple movies really tainted the entire series. It's not because I like any of the specific actors or crew members involved, as I'm not very familiar with any of them. No, it's because this is a movie that I would gladly spend my money on time and time again. I left the theater pumped up and wanting another installment in a way that almost no other movie has done. Looking back at my viewing of Creed , the reasons why surprise me. Usually when I like a film this much, there has to be some kind of great story to get me hooked. With Creed , however, this isn't the case. Not to say that the story is bad, but it definitely is not the film's best quality. It loosely follows the storyline of the original Rocky  at times and deviates from it to become a more sta...