Timothy Spradling

This movie was extremely boring. To even call it Black Panther is disingenuous. I won't go into anything that would be a spoiler, but a better name for the movie would have been Shuri is Sad. In my opinion, they should have recast T'Challa. Even so, I still think they could have made a better movie than this. The pacing was slow, the special effects were not great, The villain was more whiny than compelling (and he's a cool character!), and there's a whole story line with "the colonizer" that may be setting something up for the future but seemed unnecessary in this movie. On a positive note, Angela Bassett is predictably fantastic, and the mid-credit scene was very moving and hopefully a storyline that Marvel will continue to develop. Marvel's Phase 4 has been underwhelming at best, absolutely dreadful if I'm not being kind. The characters they've chosen to highlight have been mostly boring and it has been tough to connect with them the way you could with the original slate of characters. Ms. Marvel, Wandavision (except the first two episodes), and Moon Knight are exceptions, but unfortunately Moon Knight has been repeatedly said to be a one-off, and WandaVision won't get a season two either.. She-Hulk is the worst thing in the MCU, Thor was embarrassingly bad, and the TV shows were definitely a mixed bag. Bring on Phase 5!

When I heard there was going to be a fourth Matrix movie, my first thought was, “you can never go home again.” Sadly, the movie lives up to that saying. This movie is poor. It’s dumb, it’s boring, the fight scenes are repetitive, and the special effects somehow look worse than the original. The story is convoluted at best, and its meta-analysis comes off not so much thoughtful or smart as a blatant cash grab preying on nostalgia. It’s sad, really. Sure, everyone of a certain vintage remembers being blown away by the original, but even the sequels didn’t do that. This movie was garbage on its own merit. The bar was low and yet this movie still failed to clear it.