The amount of hype surrounding the release of the latest Marvel superhero film has reached levels not seen for blockbuster films in years. So I won’t bury the lede here: Black Panther is definitely worth all the praise it has received so far—and then some. Much of what makes the film a success can be […]
Ryan Coogler
Fruitvale Station Makes a Man of a Martyr
In the early hours of New Year's Day 2009, on a platform of Oakland's Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit Station, a young man named Oscar Grant III was shot in the back by a BART transit officer. The officer later claimed he meant to reach for his Taser and not his revolver, but his mistake […]
Sundance 2013: America's Black Indie Film Renaissance
You could hear a pin drop during the first Sundance screening of writer-director Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale, an enormously powerful and moving debut feature based on the shooting death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by Oakland transit police in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009. Coogler opens the film–one of the standouts of this year's […]
