A rather limp panther

Rating: 4/10 (7 August 2019)

Late to the party, I watched this Best Picture contender on dvd, which means that a lot of the visual WOWness went to waste. Knowing that I still say that the overall image quality was bland, impressive only when presenting some great visions such as Wakanda city.
Not being overwhelmed by the visual bombardment, it was easier to focus on what was actually said and what was actually happening. And I was disappointed. Interesting social commentary went largely undeveloped. Content-WISE, "Black Panther" is a kid's movie, and not particalularly refined at that. Dialogue was stock and characters largely cardboard.
I was very disappointed, to my surprise, of the cast. Chadwick Boseman, in particular. He is a tremendously gifted actor, but took T'Challa so seriously, that it became stilted. His slow reading of the lines alone made any resonance on the comical register impossible. Michael B. Jordan fared much better, but the character motivations for him were a bit confusing. Andy Serkis did a very good job with his ridiculous character. In the end, Martin Freeman was for the umpteenth time the best actor in a movie he appears in, without really getting his due share of the raves.
Coogler directs fluently, but, for example, the inauguration challenge fight was noticeably clunky. Also, this being a Marvel movie, most of what you see on the screen is actually CGI, or CGI enhanced (those rhinos really don't work). So you're watching an animation, basically. And it doesn't look that good. And, this being a Disney production, the lack of blood is incredible. There is a scene, where a person's throat is slit with a sword, and not a drop of blood is seen. If you can't show blood, don't shoot such scenes.
I honestly don't quite know what to say about "Black Panther", I was so much anticipating a better and more different movie. "BlacKKKlansman" is a far, far better movie about similar themes. "Black Panther" needed a more experienced filmmaker to pull it through.