Out of This World

BLACK PANTHER (C-minus) - We intentionally avoid super-hero movies, so we're not the best source here, but aren't they supposed to be fun? "Black Panther," an epic for the ages from the talented Ryan Coogler ("Fruitvale Station," "Creed"), is surprisingly dour and humorless. Chadwick Boseman is perfectly fine, if typically bland, as our hero, but it's Michael B. Jordan who adds all the sizzle as the rough-hewn brooder, N'Jadaka.

It's a heartening sentiment to suggest that a black culture in the heart of Africa, blessed with a rich natural resource and immune to outside forces, would forge a utopian world. And it's always aces when good wins out over evil. Coogler, a natural storyteller and powerful visual craftsman, merely plays with computer graphics and other silly toys for sequence after sequence of fantasy and cartoon violence. And check out the Wikipedia page's Plot section and tell me that whole narrative is not confusing as hell.

Coogler and the crew manage to tie the mythical Wakanda to modern-day social ills, but the overt suggestion that the kid from the Oakland streets (and abandoned by his father) is almost preternaturally corrupt and irreparably emotionally wounded comes off as unsettling, at the least. Luckily, the Good Guy has a way of returning from the dead at key plot points. (Did he cling to a branch after being hurled off a cliff?) Meantime, fancy fighter jets zip around and land on a dime, because they can do that in the movies. The women mostly stand around in service to the men and the needs of the narrative. And Martin Freeman seems tossed in as a CIA agent who is pressed into a little White Savior duty. Let's hope Coogler has gotten the Hollywood glitz out of his system and can go back to real life.

ISLE OF DOGS (B-minus) - Technically spectacular, this stop-action labor of love from beloved artiste Wes Anderson dog-paddles furiously to justify a raison d'etre. While I enjoyed it in the moment, it quickly fizzled from my memory. Maybe it's the animation, but it's not nearly as clever as Anderson's last such effort, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox."

As usual, Anderson meticulously crafts a unique world, this one dystopian; and here, it is a cadre of dogs who have been exiled to an island off Japan for health reasons embarking (sorry) on a "Green Beret"-like caper to rescue one of their own.  The detail in every frame can be breathtaking -- individual hairs in the dogs' fur flutter in the wind; expressions are human-like; contraptions are marvels of ingenuity.  There is so much detail included that the average viewer couldn't possibly take it all in. I alternated between a state of awe over the scrupulous production values and a state of frustration trying to decide if all that effort was worth it for a movie. It was for Anderson and his battalion (including an impressive array of voice talent, including many of Anderson's usual suspects), and I'm happy for them. Too often, though, this comes off as a retread, and art for art's sake.