18 Movies Like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) On Amazon Prime (Page 2)

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Chasing the feel of watching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ? Here are the movies we recommend you watch right after.

, 2023

Sayen is the kind of film that ultimately feels like it was written by a focus group: ample representation for a worthy cause funneled into the sort of escapism that should theoretically hit the widest demographic possible. But even with its solid production values and a determined performance by Rallen Montenegro, the film lacks the emotional bite that a less corporate-driven project likely would've had. It's not that Sayen comes off insincere about the plight of Indigenous peoples in Chile; it's that its desire to appear sincere stops most of its good ideas halfway. The action isn't particularly thrilling, the story doesn't develop so much as it stretches itself thin, and its supposed representation begins and ends with some terribly obvious—borderline tokenistic—scenes and character types.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Actor: Alejandro Trejo, Álvaro Espinoza, Aron Piper, David Gaete, Eduardo Paxeco, Enrique Arce, Loreto Aravena, Rallén Montenegro, Ramón González, Roberto García Ruiz, Serge Santana, Teresa Ramos

Director: Alexander Witt

There's a novel idea at the center of World's First Christmas, but the film's unfortunately takes it through the least interesting route available. There's a rich opportunity here to unpack what the holiday season really means to people, or to poke fun at how this occasion for togetherness and celebration has been co-opted by corporations trying to make a buck. But the film never gets there, running through a series of occasionally funny scenarios only to end up becoming an unconvincing advertisement for Christmas as a consumer holiday. The main gag here is that everyone has been left miserable by the absence of Christmas, which is an idea that falls apart immediately once you start asking even the simplest questions about it.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy

Actor: Fabiana Karla, Ígor Jansen, Ingrid Guimarães, Lázaro Ramos, Rafael Infante, Theo Mattos, Wilson Rabelo

Director: Gigi Soares, Susana Garcia

At one point in The Whale, Brendan Fraser’s Charlie —  a morbidly obese, reclusive teacher — describes an act of abject cruelty as “not evil” but “honesty.” Darren Aronofsky seems to believe the same about his movie, but alas, he's gravely misled, because The Whale is flooringly glib. From the outset, the film actively and incessantly tries to choreograph audience disgust for Charlie, all so that it can pull off a manipulative “he’s human, actually” swing later on — a “twist” that won’t work if you, you know, already accept people’s humanity irrespective of their appearance. 

Cinematography, makeup, and score all conspire to paint Charlie as grotesque: the camera laboriously over-emphasizes his size and mobility issues, while histrionic music chimes in to frame trivial moments (like Charlie reaching to pick something up from the floor) as grand, tragic dramas. Even if you ignore all its needless cruelty, The Whale — which is adapted from a play — can never shed its stagy origins: the writing frequently reaches for transcendence, but its efforts are as subtle as its evidently retroactively-shoehorned-in-title. If it’s as sincere as it purports to be, this is one of the worst movies of recent years, and if it’s not — which is almost preferable — then it’s a landmark exercise in trolling.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Allison Altman, Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Jacey Sink, Lance Oppenheim, Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan, Ty Simpkins, Wilhelm Schalaudek

Director: Darren Aronofsky