Tenoch Huerta Archives - Silver Screen Riot

Long Live the King

Marvel Studios don’t really make movies so much as installments. Each new entry to their ever expanding stable of (increasingly disconnected) films feels like little more than a stepping stone towards more. The next sequel. The next phase. The next saga. There’s never a minute to rest. And even when there is a rare moment of quiet, that beat becomes just another opportunity for an incoming quip or a chance to tease the space with allusions to some eggy comic book lore (never forget Thor in the sauna). What a breathe of fresh air then Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is actually a real movie unto itself; an individual story about legacy and loss, complicated by real life grief and the guilt of carrying on. Read More

Subtlety has never been the aim of James DeMonaco, the writer-director of the first trilogy of Purge flicks as well as screenwriter for the remaining sequels and all-around franchise figurehead, and that’s never been more clear than in The Forever Purge. Claiming to be the final film in the franchise that spawned four sequels and two seasons of a now-cancelled USA Network series, The Forever Purge puts our turbulent American politics front and center, creating a not-too-distant vision where MAGA-inspired insurrectionists continue the “legalized violence” at the film’s center beyond the allowed 12-hour window of the purge. A new dawn brings the continuation of violence as America enters a “forever purge”, a state of bullet-ridden eternal mayhem; a nightmarish ever after of racially-motivated violence. Read More