After the first of our two pandemic years, when we created last year’s preview of 2021 movies we admit we thought the year was looking iffy from a movie standpoint–so many films delayed or held back, others expected but canceled early in production, etc. All year we wondered what we’d get to see and what we wouldn’t–and thanks to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Vudu, and similar streaming services, a smaller but still impressive array of movies kept us entertained, especially by way of genre content.
Genredom. As always, we’re after the best genre content of the year–with our top categories from the Best in Movies. There are thousands of other places that cover plain vanilla dramas and the rest of the film world, but here we’re looking for movies we want to watch.
Come back tomorrow for our best print media picks and our annual borgHall of Fame inductees. And if you missed it, check out our Best Kick-Ass Genre Heroinesof 2021here and Best TV of 2021here. Wait no further, here are the Best Movies of 2021:
Best Superhero Movie– Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony). Overlooked like the original Venom, sharp writing and faithful adaptation of the comics made for the best, most fun superhero movie of 2021. Runner-up: Black Widow (Disney). Despite the delays it was worth the wait, and it stands as a rewatchable and fun movie. Honorable mention: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Disney), a great tie-in to characters from throughout the MCU.
Best Action/Adventure Film, Best Visual Effects: Jungle Cruise (Disney), another Disney rollercoaster ride translated to the screen; a film that surprised us as the next incarnation of a Raiders of the Lost Ark-level adventure. Runner-up: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Disney). A solid martial arts adventure, a bus scene out of Speed, and great finale action.
Best Film, Best Drama, Best Director (Simon Stone), Best Cinematography (Mike Eley) – The Dig (Netflix). A powerful film, exploring life at the precipice of change, missed and almost missed opportunities, the fleeting nature of life, and the survival of humanity through what we leave behind. Runners-up for Best Film: The Courier (Amazon), Black Widow (Disney), one of the MCU’s best contributions.
Only a year ago I called director Craig Brewer’s 2019 biopic Dolemite is My Name–the theatrical return of Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes from Netflix–the big Oscar miss of the year. It begged the question: When was the last time Murphy and Snipes were this good, and why did they ever leave the top spot on marquees of movie houses everywhere? Brewer is back again with Murphy and Snipes, this time in a sequel to director John Landis’s quirky 1988 comedy Coming to America, a two-time Oscar nominee for costumes and one of Rick Baker’s makeup nominations for turning Murphy and co-star Arsenio Hall into a host of characters, a box office success that gained favor over the years thanks to video rental stores, and today it’s a nostalgic trip back to the 1980s. The sequel Coming 2 America is a big surprise: a big budget marvel not from Netflix but Amazon Studios, a thoughtful, funny, surprisingly deep sequel we didn’t know we wanted, and a result that is even better than the original. More than “just another sequel,” it’s a fairy tale like The Princess Diaries, a bit A Knight’s Tale, a bit Crazy Rich Asians, and a worthy sequel in concept and art design to Black Panther. It’s also a celebration of the career and characters of Eddie Murphy, and it expands to be a celebration of black culture and comedic films via dozens of great Easter eggs. In short, it’s one of the best direct-to-television movies since studios started moving from movie houses to home screens.
Already taking in more than $1 billion at the box office, Marvel’s Black Panther is one of the biggest and most successful movies to come out of any genre or studio. This is the third day and final look at the major tie-in books that have been developed for Black Panther fans here at borg.com. The first book (reviewed here) consists primarily of concept art for the film, the second book (reviewed here) features the history of Black Panther in the comic books, and this next book, Black Panther: The Official Movie Special showcases the film in photographs with a behind the scenes view of the making of the film.
Fans of the film will love the many 8″ x 11″ stills featuring key characters and scenes. The book includes interviews with actors Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Florence Kasumba, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, and Winston Duke, stunt/fight coordinator Clayton J. Barber, costume designer Ruth Carter, special effects coordinator Jesse Noel, Marvel Studios president and “mastermind” Kevin Feige, and director Ryan Coogler.
Part souvenir book, part photo guide, Black Panther: The Official Movie Special also includes sections on the setting of the film in Wakanda and on the film’s newly designed fantasy-world props. The section on Ruth Carter includes images of costumes and some of her early concept designs. Other interviews are interspersed throughout the book with behind-the-scenes set photos.
With this year’s hit blockbuster film Black Panther, Marvel Studios has offered superhero genre fans a truly original movie in its 18-film arsenal of live-action adaptations from the comic book world’s best-loved superheroes. A few new books on Black Panther that we’re reviewing here at borg.com delve into everything from the comic book history of T’Challa in Marvel Comics to a photographic review of the best scenes from the film. The concept artwork behind the film takes center stage in The Art of Black Panther from Marvel Publishing, compiled by Eleni Roussos, and featuring a foreword by director Ryan Coogler.
The Art of Black Panther reveals all the ways the hidden country of Wakanda might have looked, giving fans insight into the process taken by the production designers, set designers, and digital artists. The environmental designs for the hidden world of Wakanda, including several versions of concept art created for each set and location, make up roughly half of the book. The rest features multiple incarnations of costumes, jewelry and cultural props considered for both key cast and background characters. The book consists mostly of digitally created art, but plenty of painted work and pencil studies are included, too. As with previous books in Marvel’s film artbook series, don’t look for much explanatory text as this is primarily a visual compilation of the concept art without reference to the final as-photographed images from the film (if photos of actual sets and actors in costume are what you’re after, come back later to borg.com as we review another new book that features photos from the film).
Nicely designed with gorgeous concept art, The Art of Black Panther is a 240-page hardcover welcoming readers to Wakanda in a glossy binding, housed in a slipcase holder featuring artwork from the film. Readers can see how production designer Hannah Beachler and her team of artists went beyond the source material for the inspired designs that became Marvel’s newest fantasy world, incorporating Jack Kirby and decades of his artistic progeny from the comic books. Each of the key characters you’d expect get plenty of coverage. Readers will find hundreds of images of Ruth E. Carter’s costume designs for King T’Challa, Killmonger, Nakia, Okoye, Shuri, W’Kabi, Queen Ramonda, Zuri, T’Chaka, the Tribe Elders, and more.
Ryan Coogler, the young writer-director of the excellent Rocky sequel Creed, has put his Creed star Michael B. Jordan against Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson in 42 and Thurgood Marshall in last year’s film Marshall. The result? The next great Marvel superhero movie, Black Panther, opening this weekend in theaters everywhere. Boseman is back as King T’Challa, the suave and poised Black Panther of the comic books who audiences first met in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. The new film fills in the blanks of T’Challa’s origin story, populated with a dozen of the best characters from any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe entries, matched to some of today’s best actors. On the heels of last year’s wildly successful surprise hit Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther is just as good if not better, but completely different. It’s a more serious tale, a one-off in the MCU similarly spliced into the ongoing Avengers narrative as was done with 2016’s supernatural Doctor Strange. It also supplies a new, rich superhero mythology populated primarily with black characters–a film first featuring a black superhero title character in a major studio release. Coogler’s layered, multifaceted film is even more successful at accomplishing what Zack Snyder tried to do last year with the DC Universe film Wonder Woman, which first put a woman in a title role in a major superhero movie. Coogler makes great strides with Black Panther, not just a mere first step.
Beginning with a father teaching his son about a hidden country in Africa called Wakanda, we learn that a powerful resource called vibranium gives the people of this land incredible power, which they hide from the known world. The story is straight out of Shakespeare or Roman and Greek histories: three princes compete for the throne of Wakanda when the King dies in a terrorist attack at the United Nations. Boseman’s T’Challa is the heir-apparent who is challenged for the throne first by Prince M’Baku (Winston Duke), then by Jordan’s Erik Stevens, a special forces soldier from the States whose death toll in battle earned him the nickname Killmonger. Not just a one-note villain found so often in superhero movies, Erik has his own complex backstory that converges with T’Challa’s efforts to capture the film’s villain, Ulysses Klaue (pronounced “claw”), one of Marvel’s best villains yet, played by Middle-earth native Gollum and The Planet of the Apes’s series’ star Andy Serkis. Although his antics are unique, here Klaue is the crazed villain you’d expect from a superhero story. Erik also assumes a villain role, but his story and particularly his life in parallel to the new King is more biblical in its roots. Erik’s father is N’Jobu, a compelling supporting character at odds with Wakanda, played by Marshall co-star and Supernatural’s Sterling K. Brown, and his past sets up a compelling tragedy arc within the film for Erik.
For those who go to superhero movies for badass superheroics, it’s the women of the film that fill that niche. Our own early borg.com nominee for the annual badass heroine of the year goes to the fan-favorite actor from The Walking Dead, Danai Gurira, as Wakanda General Okoye. Her steely resolve and loyalty alone is enough to get us to race back to the theater to watch her all over again in the theater tomorrow. A Wakanda spy and confidante of the King is Nakia, played by Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Jungle Book star Lupita Nyong’o, a fierce and savvy ally. But a favorite of the film for many will no doubt be T’Challa’s young sister Shuri, played by Letitia Wright (Doctor Who, Ready Player One, Humans, The Commuter). The film doesn’t completely find its voice and reach full throttle until Shuri lets out a howl in a conversation with her brother. By that point the entire audience is onboard. Shuri is very much derived from Q in the James Bond movies, supplying her brother with the latest tech. After movie audiences got a peek at what a woman would look like as James Bond with South African actress Charlize Theron as a superspy in last year’s Atomic Blonde, those looking for the first black James Bond need go no further than Boseman’s smooth and stylish take on T’Challa. Coogler even inserts a spectacular casino mission scene straight out of 2012’s Skyfall, and borrows another great character from the Bond playbook with The Hobbit and Sherlock actor Martin Freeman as a very, very Felix Leiter-esque American CIA agent named Everett Ross. A scene pitting Freeman opposite Serkis again will be a fun reunion for fans of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies.
We had a first look at Chadwick Boseman in the role of T’Challa, the ruler of the kingdom of Wakanda whose alter ego is the Black Panther, in last year’s great superhero mash-up Captain America: Civil War, and a teaser trailer back in June. Next year Marvel Studios is giving Boseman his own solo movie in the big screen release of Black Panther, based on the comic book superhero created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the pages of Fantastic Four. The latest preview of the film arrived today.
T’Challa must defend his kingdom from being torn apart by enemies outside and within. Boseman, who portrayed both Jackie Robinson in the 2013 biopic 42 (reviewed here) and Thurgood Marshall in last week’s release of Marshall (reviewed here), brings along an impressive supporting cast. Adonis himself, Creed star Michael B. Jordan will play Erik Killmonger, Star Wars: The Force Awakens stars Lupita Nyong’o is Nakia, and Andy Serkis is Klaw, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s Forest Whitaker is Zuri, The Hobbit and Sherlock’s Martin Freeman is Everett K. Ross, and Green Lantern’s Doctor Waller, Angela Bassett is Ramonda.
Creed’s Ryan Coogler directs the film with Creed’s Hannah Beachler providing some impressive production design work and Ruth E. Carter (Marshall, Selma) created some incredible new costume designs for this new Marvel world.
