Tag / angela bassett

by Jaime Rebanal

An Alternate Take: Mission: Impossible – Fallout is Exhilarating from Start to Finish

The “Alternate Take” indicates an instance where another writer on our behalf also wants to share their thoughts on a film previously reviewed on the site. You can read Chuck Winters’s review right here.

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Six films already into the Mission: Impossible series and they may have already hit their peak – something I don’t really know if I can say I would have expected. It’s one thing to be impressed with how Tom Cruise still manages to remain as extremely physical as he does, but in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, he already manages to find a way to take this to a new level as he reunites with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie (his second film for this franchise) – and somehow what they already managed to create is perhaps the most exhilarating result out of what could have been made with the stories that the Mission: Impossible films could have set up. It already seems like a near-impossible feat, but given as all the stakes in Mission: Impossible – Fallout are raised as high as they can, it just makes the ride every bit as satisfying as you can imagine.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Black Panther – Review

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The king of Wakanda himself finally takes the screen as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after having appeared briefly in Captain America: Civil War. Directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Chadwick Boseman as the titular king, the most pleasing thing to report about Black Panther is that they had indeed given royalty the proper cinematic welcome for audiences of all sorts. It feels relieving to see a Marvel Cinematic Universe that I can comfortably say that I liked, without any “buts” to get in the way – for after this and Taika Waititi’s entry with Thor: Ragnarok, it would be easier to hope for more superhero films that give their own directors enough room to express themselves properly without much interference getting in the way.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Malcolm X – Review

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The closest that Spike Lee has ever gotten to touching what he managed to leave behind in Do the Right Thing was his own presentation in Malcolm X, a biopic about the famous Afro-American activist. I still remember when I first watched Malcolm X quite vividly, I was only reading about him during one of my history classes and in order to prepare for an essay, I turned on Spike Lee’s feature about the man, for I didn’t see only what I would have thought I could learn about Malcolm X only from reading a textbook. By the time I came out, I still found it hard enough even attempting to finish the essay although it seemed I knew what Malcolm X was like and I got a greater understanding of how he succeeded. He was not a man without his controversies but it’s amazing to see what Spike Lee made of his own life story in here: arguably one of the most important American films of its time, and still a subject worth noting in the present.

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