Quick Hits: 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever', 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery', 'Armageddon Time', 'The Menu'

Holiday movie season is upon us and we're here to help you *keep the hell up*!

Like Judd Apatow, my natural instinct is to go long and never say in 200 words what I could say in 1500-3000. But as we’ve discussed, there are simply too many GD movies this fall — too many good ones, at that — and if I’m/we’re to have any hope of getting out alive, we’ve got to be light on our analytical feet. With that, here’s everything you need to know about four movies with very little connective thematic tissue between them.

‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’

Ryan Coogler and Co. were saddled with the almost impossible burden of 1) following up one of (if not the) best standalone Marvel films 2) dealing with, on both a cinematic and emotional level, the death of Chadwick Boseman (aka the titular character, Black Panther) and 3) the increasingly byzantine demands of the MCU, which now includes continuing and/or setting up episodes of television. Crunch the numbers yourself: in sheer math terms, there was never a world in which this movie was going to meet — let alone exceed — the standards of its predecessor.

And still it brings me NO pleasure to tell you ‘Wakanda Forever’ is the ‘Iron Man 2’ of the ‘Black Panther’ series: plotted like Charlie Kelly’s Pepe Silvia map

and wildly overstuffed with unnecessary subplots¹, most of which are there just to tease future MCU properties. This movie’s a mess! There are pockets of greatness, including a graceful, almost fourth-wall-breaking tribute to Chadwick Boseman that kicks off the movie. But ten minutes later it feels like a Disney shareholder PowerPoint masquerading as a meditation on grief². This thing wouldn’t be so disappointing if ‘Black Panther’ hadn’t been so good!

‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’

Is it worthless discussing a movie that played in select theaters for just one week before being shelved until a December 23rd Netflix premiere? That very obviously should have just been a wide release from the jump, where it would continue to benefit from its bona fide THEATER EXPERIENCE qualities for weeks on end, at least until ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ grabs the baton? Probably! But “worthless discussion” is of course on the masthead of Lifting Fog, which means we’d be shirking our duty completely to let this window pass. So, because you demanded it, here’s our definitive review of ‘Glass Onion’:

…it’s a fun movie you’ll definitely enjoy this holiday season!

‘Armageddon Time’

There are two and only two universal truths of filmmaking:

1. Eventually, everyone makes a movie set in space

2. Eventually, everyone makes a movie about why they make movies

James Gray has done both, first with the underrated ‘Ad Astra’ (aka Brad Pitt cries in space) and now with ‘Armageddon Time’, his “hold my beer” rebuke to the likes of ‘Roma’, ‘Belfast’, ‘Bardo’, ‘Hand of God’, ‘The Fabelmans’, ‘Clerks III’³, and the upcoming ‘Empire of Light’. It’s Hollywood (and/or the foreign equivalent), baby! Burnishing your own legend is what this town is MADE of.

To be fair, Gray paints his own “filmmaker coming of age” entry with a lot more — I’m sorry — gray, which is honestly refreshing when you consider how easily this genre can tilt into hagiography. His family stand-ins, the Graffs, are second-gen liberal Brooklyn Jews, removed enough from the Holocaust that they’re not thinking about it but tethered to it through grandparents who still very much feel its reverberations. Gray’s stand-in, Paul Graff, is largely disinterested in either the Jewish or liberal part of his family identity, content to nurture his talent for drawing and goof around with his Black friend, Johnny. The two of them get into trouble… except just how much trouble is dictated by their respective ethnic backgrounds.

That’s the most interesting thread in here, and one that ‘Wakanda Forever’ tries to unpack, too: the way one oppressed group can, in attempting to protect itself, inadvertently dismiss — or worse, fuck over — another oppressed group. Is a bid for assimilation a zero-sum game? ‘Armageddon Time’ posits that maybe there’s enough room for everybody, something Anthony Hopkins espouses in a speech that has “Best Supporting Actor nomination clip” written all over it.

The movie’s heart is in the right place, full of sentiments any good liberal can agree with, but they’re always just that: sentiments. Paul never has to actually stand for anything in a meaningful way, simply absorb lessons from other people to the point we can say “okay, good, he’s on the right path.” Johnny, meanwhile, is revealed to be less a character than a faraway symbol; the lesson Paul Graff/James Gray needed to learn and subsequently commit to film forty years later. It’s basically ‘The Blind Side, Jr.’ In the end, you’re not so much witnessing a creative awakening; you’re witnessing the birth of an ally.

‘The Menu’

I know the expression is “eat the rich,” but maybe we’ve taken it too far? (No one gets eaten in this movie.)

Wherever you live/work/play, by now you’ve at least heard about ‘The Menu’, a mid-budget comedy-horror-satire-whatever that asks the question “what if Voldemort were a Michelin star chef?” To say any more about the plot, or the characters, or even what the characters eat would be to deprive you of a true theater-going experience⁴ you should absolutely hop to if you have the appetite. So instead I'll just leave you with these three random thoughts:

• I enjoyed the movie even when I'm not sure it totally hit its targets

• Hong Chau remains an undervalued acting treasure (and yes, that includes the movie ‘Downsizing’)

• You just know Hollywood is desperate to make her boring but I implore Anya Taylor-Joy to Keep Austin Anya Weird and continue taking offbeat roles like this, ‘Last Night in Soho’, ‘The Northman’, etc. Follow your Furiosa forebear, Charlize Theron! Do not go gentle into that Jennifer Lawrence night.

1. RiRi Williams aka ‘Ironheart’; Michaela Coel’s ‘Midnight Angels’ series; Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ purple-haired pseudo-villain whose name I can’t remember; I could go on

2. Which any *true* Marvel stan will tell you is “the whole point of phase four,” or whatever the latest party line hive-minded from the bowels of Elon Musk’s Twitter™️

3. not kidding!

4. Much like ‘Glass Onion’ which, of course, you can no longer see in theaters