Fruitvale Station (2013)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray

Have I Seen it Before: Here we are. My 1,000th review. I had a list of potential candidates for this entry, but something became clear when I considered this one. I have long put off watching this film. Clearly, there’s an impulse to wait for a particular kind of mood to watch a film dealing with this subject matter. But I swear, the main reason I’ve delayed watching the film is that something was exciting about perpetually having a new Ryan Coogler film to watch.

Ah, well. I’m glad I picked one that I felt some anticipation for as number 1,000.

Did I Like It: Yes.

You probably want more. Okay.

I have a deep, unrelenting suspicion of anyone who can get to the end of this film and not feel palpable anguish. The story unfolded that way in real life, and you can’t escape it, outside of burying yourself in cynicism. Don’t do it. There’s no hope for the world to get any better without confronting the worst parts of the here and now, and the events of January 1, 2009 are very much still the here and now.

But that doesn’t begin to cover Coogler’s calling cards of the skills he has only built upon in the ensuing years. His debut feature is a ruthless machine of character development. In a flash of a runtime, we know, like, and feel for Oscar Grant III (Jordan). There is no knee-jerk impulse on display to artificially graft on a traditional plot to the proceedings. This is Grant’s life. We’re just guests.

But there is a degree of slyness still here. Coogler can’t help it. I run through the entirety of the film and feel like I know where everything is heading. I’m living in the here and now. I know how these stories end, but I didn’t know this story. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a misdirection coming up ahead. Tragedy looms, but is it a tragic end for Oscar? Is it a tragic end for another character? Is it an end at all, and the tragedy will just continue ad infinitum?

There is no misdirection. Somehow, that becomes the greatest misdirect of all. We’re left with an exquisitely crafted portrait of a life, all told in its last day. Had Coogler moved on to diminishing returns, we would still be able to look at the film and see something remarkable.

Thankfully, Coogler was just getting started.

Sinners (2025)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: A review like this is more than a bit daunting. I love the movie so much that I get the distinct sense that I’ll be chewing* on parts of the movie for years to come. A simple review won’t be able to hold everything I want to say about it. An episode of <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods> won’t be able to cover everything I want to say about it.

Ryan Coogler hasn’t missed yet, and shows no signs of stopping now. He made a seventh movie in the Rocky franchise into something not just watchable, but essential. His biggest hit Black Panther (2018 demanded a sequel. Fate took away his star, which would spell disaster for lesser mortals, and he turned the whole affair into a meditation on grief at a time when big budget fair is positively allergic to anything resemble a theme.

Here, Coogler has made what is quite possibly the best vampire movie ever made. By equal turns startling, dread-inducing, and sexy**. His cast is perfect. One could make a case for Jordan being the MVP here, playing two roles, having them both be distinct characters, and managing to have chemistry with himself. But don’t turn on either Caton or O’Connell. Caton is either a born blues musician who also has tremendous screen presence, or one of the authentic screen acting finds of this century who can also play the blues like you wouldn’t imagine. O’Connell would be forgiven for playing a typical vampire villain role, but even he too has charisma and pathos (and not none musical talent) so that it is impossible to find the weak link in the chain. Not that I’m of a mind to go looking that hard.

This is about the length of a typical review, and there’s so much more I want to go into. The spiritual implications. The depiction of cultural appropriation. The sexiness, again***. But you know what? The review may never be able to contain it all. Come find me and talk to me about, I’m sure I’d love to chat.

*Pun accepted, if not entirely intended.

**To my mind, this might be the most pro-cunnilingus film since—no judgments—Gigli (2003).

***Really, it may be one of the sexiest films ever made, and that’s before the vampires show up and start to ruin everyone’s good time.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Guria, Danai Guria, Angela Bassett

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Feel weirdly guilty coming to it so late, but holiday movies are a weird feast or famine schedule for me.

Did I Like It: It’s astonishingly difficult to make a good movie.

Things don’t get any easier when you’re trying to make a movie in the studio system, to say nothing of the largest and still growing studio conglomerate on earth.

It’s even more bordering on the improbable that someone can make a good movie out of a sequel (to say nothing of the thirtieth entry in a larger franchise).

Can a person possibly make a good movie when all of those things are swirling around him, and the star of his franchise died?

Apparently Ryan Coogler can*. Filled with all-time great performance on top of all-time great performance, and held together with a plot which actually holds up under it’s run time (for the most part; I’ll get to that in a minute), and enough spectacle to make me somehow less interested in what Avatar: The Way of Water has to offer (and completely disinterested in anything Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, should that film ever see the light of day). I’m almost tempted to give the film a pass on my usual criticism of most films, in that every film needs more Lupita Nyong’o*. The amount of Nakia we do get in the film is still time well spent.

Is the film too long? Almost certainly, and that is the only problem I have with the whole thing. Honestly, find a different way to introduce a few (hardly load-bearing) pieces of exposition, and Martin Freeman lifts right out of the movie. Right along with him you can remove Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and for that matter (and it pains me to say so) Richard Schiff. All of those scenes seem unenthusiastically interested in setting up more of the Dark Avengers stuff that was started in Disney+’s series, Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I know, I know… A Marvel movie is weighed down by the strange need to set up other films. I was surprised, too.

*Sorry, J.J. Abrams. I’m sure you have many other fine qualities.

**Except Us (2019). That one has precisely the correct amount of Nyong’o. Just barely…

Black Panther (2018)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira

Have I Seen it Before: Several times. Surprising given both the age of this film, and, for that matter, the age of this blog.

Did I Like It: If you don’t love this movie, you must have a reason. I’m beyond certain that reason is pretty dumb.

I could use this review to talk about everything everyone has already unpacked that makes this film great. The triumph of representation. The revolutionary depiction of people with agency with agency over their own lives who can still embrace their traditions and ancestors. The villain Erik Killmonger (Jordan) is lethal and ruthless, but kinda has a point (something some of the Marvel movies have struggled with).

I could talk about all of these things, but that would be falling short of the challenge Coogler has set for us by going three for three on making unlikely, astounding films that cannot be ignored. He has yet to fail to bring us something new, and I feel I must reach for something more.

Thus, I will dwell on the moment where the film threatens to collapse in on itself, but does not relent in being next level. I’m talking about the film’s first few minutes.

N’Jobu (Sterling K. Brown) tell his son, the future Killmonger about home. The movie opens with what amounts to a voice over narration. With characters—like Black Panther—that may have less cultural ubiquity, this may be a necessary evil. At the same time, it’s death on a cracker. Here, however, Coogler does what VO fails to do and embraces the visual medium he is beholden to. This sequence shows us so many things that N’Jobu doesn’t say about the world in which Black Panther exists. By the time the title of the film comes to find us, we are steeped in this world.

In lesser hands, this movie would have failed in the first few minutes. In Coogler’s hands, it never fails to compete for one of the Greatest Of All Time.

The point is this: Ryan Coogler is better than we deserve. If you’re not aware of this, you will be.

Creed (2015)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, and (against all odds, as it should be) Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa

Have I Seen it Before: Man, I was there opening weekend.

Did I Like It: What a stupid idea for a movie, and yet it was executed flawlessly.

As the end credits for Rocky Balboa (2006) begin, a feeling always came over me. This is it. This is the end. It was great while it lasted, Rock. Thanks for coming back one last time.

And here we are, again. And man am I glad.

Just to pitch the idea for a seventh Rocky movie takes a certain amount of bravery-to-the-point of insanity, to then turn around and make such a vital, necessary film is an act of subtle, but superlative genius. To wit, this moment that I may be paraphrasing:

ADONIS

Why do you want to be a singer?

BIANCA

It makes me feel alive.

ADONIS says nothing, smiles slightly.

That is amazing. New and fresh and interesting and incisive like a blade.

And yet, it is Rocky through and through. The film is so steeped in the mythology of the previous entries in the series. The whole movie wouldn’t exist without Rocky IV (1985). Rocky would be a completely different character without Rocky V (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006). Ever wonder who won the top secret fight at the end of Rocky III (1982), well this movie has your answer. Coogler and company love making a great movie, but they love every Rocky just as much. These movies have a format, but when the inevitable third act training montage comes barreling down the tracks, even it is born again, without ever being ashamed of its roots. 

When the book on the greatest directors of all time is finished, Ryan Coogler will get his own chapter, and Black Panther (2018) is only a piece of that.

As sharp as Coogler’s choices are, he would be nowhere without his cast. Michael B. Jordan cements himself as a bona fide movie star while still channeling Carl Weathers just enough. Tessa Thompson is such a fabulous actress, with a naturalistic chameleon quality that I only just now realized she is the same actress from Thor: Ragnarok (2017). And then there is Stallone. Frankly, he deserved the Oscar for this round as Rocky. He so thoroughly abandons any sense of ego he might have once had—and his self-image in the 80s was undeniable—to play a Rocky laid low, but still resolute. That there is more Rocky to explore is staggering.

Just as an aside, a weird moment that I hadn’t fully digested in previous viewings: The moment where Adonis (Jordan) does an impression of Brando from The Godfather (1972). Which leads me to this strange question: In the Rockyverse do both Adrian Balboa and the actress Talia Shire exist? Maybe Creed II (2018) will finally shed some light on that. Maybe it’ll take several more movies before we get that answer. That suits me just fine. Keep ‘em coming, Rock.