Ant-Man and the Wasp

Them!

Grade: B –

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Michael Douglas, Laurence Fishburne, Hannah John-Kamen, Walton Goggins, and Michelle Pfeiffer

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.

Ant-Man and the Wasp registers as a slight, but otherwise witty diversion amid the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As complimentary as that may sound, it’s the same curve used to grade Thor: Ragnarok. And Guardians of the Galaxy. And certain elements of Spider-Man: Homecoming. And the first Ant-Man. The quirky exceptions in the MCU have become the norm, and as has we learned with Guardians Vol. 2, droll diversions that don’t develop a sensible, substantive underpinning flounder when stripped of their sense of discovery.

Director Peyton Reed returns for Ant-Man and the Wasp, this time aided by five credited screenwriters who notably don’t include Edgar Wright (unlike Ant-Man). The mishmash plot feels both busy and barren, erected around a standard four-pronged framework: good guys, bad guys (who aren’t truly bad), the cops, and the foil. Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), wife of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and mother to Hope (Evangeline Lilly), was lost in the Quantum Realm decades ago, and now the good guys wants to find and free her. They reluctantly enlist the help of erstwhile Ant-Man Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who apparently mind-melded or whatever with Janet when he drifted into the Quantum Realm during the last movie.

The “bad” gal is Ava Foster, aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who lost her parents as a child during a science accident that also left her afflicted with an ultimately fatal ability to phase through objects and dimensions. The U.S. government previously conscripted Foster as a kid into a life working as an espionage assassin, a past we learn via montage even though it’s really the movie we’d far rather see.

Foster wants a cure, with the help of an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist (Laurence Fishburne), and her plan involves draining healing power from the Quantum Realm even if it kills Janet, though as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious to everyone except Foster that if she just waits literally a minute or two, both aims could be accomplished.

The cops are around only because they’re trying to catch Lang violating the two years of house arrest he’s serving for violating the Sokovia Accords back in Avengers: Civil War. Like much of Ant-Man and the Wasp, this is a cute subplot that quickly become wearisome, a description that also applies to our foil, Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), a black market widget dealer whose function in this narrative menagerie is specious and unnecessary.

Oh, there are also Lang’s workmates, who’d only clutter matters more if not for Michael Peña’s Luis, whose rapidfire repartee and oddball non sequiturs steal every scene and better suit Reed’s farcical sensibilities.

The rest of the film comprises a series of zippy action sequences built around the eponymous heroes, whose powers to shrink and enlarge both themselves and any other object now seem devoid of rules and limitations, besides Lang’s constantly malfunctioning suit. Hope is now the Wasp, inheriting her wingsuit from mom, but unlike Lang’s gradual indoctrination to heroism that formed the spine of Ant-Man, Hope is already busily bustling around at the start of this sequel.

It’s refreshing that there isn’t an infinity stone in sight or people vaporizing into ash (well, if you stick around long enough …). While the film is breezy and light, it never feels like much is really at stake, and the kooky caper that remains seems stitched together. Ant-Man and the Wasp still generates buzz, but it doesn’t have much sting.

12 Strong

Thor: The Dark Stallion

Grade: C +

Director: Nicolai Fuglsig

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Peña, Navid Negahban, Trevante Rhodes, Thad Luckinbill, William Fichtner, and Rob Riggle

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 9 min.

Thor gets promoted to Captain America in 12 Strong, in which Chris Hemsworth plays Green Beret Captain Mitch Nelson, inspired by real-life Green Beret Captain Mark Nutsch, who led a twelve-soldier U.S. Special Forces team in Afghanistan during the months following 9/11. Their daunting, three-week mission is to link up with local warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum (Navid Negahban), one of several tempestuous leaders of the Northern Alliance, and fight their way to retake the Taliban stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif.

This is a true story about laudable gallantry, yet a film built around a novelty—the fact that members of Nutsch/Nelson’s ODA 595 unit rode horses alongside their Afghan counterparts to traverse the treacherous terrain. The rest of the time it’s all camo and camaraderie colliding with a hail of bullets, bombs, and bombast. Ted Tally and Peter Craig’s script is full of gung-ho platitudes and agitprop—yes, the Taliban’s treatment of women is horrific, but a scene in which the baddie de jour executes a mother for teaching her children how to read it utterly untethered from the rest of the narrative.

The real monotony is saved for the action sequences, ostensibly the film’s hallmark. When they’re not galloping into battle, Nelson and Dostum size up each other’s killer eyes under the cover of American aerial armaments. Director Nicolai Fuglsig spends a lot of time with the heart-pattering particulars of how to map bombing coordinates, then revels in the shock and awe of explosives delivered by unseen B-52s. When the firefights do occur, they’re fraught with confusion, shot from disjointed perspectives and backdrops. Moreover, Fuglsig adopts the Lone Survivor school of modern military filmmaking, where it takes a dozen bullets to take down a single American soldier yet the endless reservoir of faceless cannon fodder are dispatched with single head shots. The film is constructed like a video game, with avatars instead of characters and each village serving as a new level.

The only things lending 12 Strong any verisimilitude are its “Based on a true story” prologue and its end card reciting the legacy of Mazar-i-Sharif’s liberation and what happened to its liberators. Earnestness abounds, but this war-meets-cowboy-meets-superhero movie from producer Jerry Bruckheimer doesn’t rise above its mise-en-scène.

The Martian

AAA is soooo slow

Grade: A

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel, Ejiofor, Michael Peña, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie and Mackenzie Davis

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 21 min.

Combining heart and mind, The Martian is an ultra-modern technical achievement wrangled into a throwback cinematic experience. There’s the grand backdrop of space operas like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff, but in service to jarringly accessible narrative and characters. It’s Matt Damon’s best film in at least five years, maybe more. It’s director Ridley Scott’s best film in 15 years, maybe 33.

During the scurry to abort a manned mission to Mars in the midst of a fierce storm, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is clobbered by flying debris and disappears in the abyss. Presuming Watney dead, his commander (Jessica Chastain) and the rest of the Ares 3 crewmates leave him behind and embark on the long voyage home. When Watney awakes, begins the arduous task to contact Earth while subsisting on the hostile red planet.

Watney, a botanist with an exponential (and perhaps unrealistic) level of technical acumen, fashions part of his climate-controlled dwelling pod into a greenhouse, creating water through alchemy and growing potatoes in a compost of Martian dirt and discarded feces. It goes swimmingly for a while, but the technological safety blanket is always bound to go awry, suddenly and spectacularly.

The film has three fronts. Watney’s Martian homestead, the Hermes spaceship carrying his crew back to Earth (its exquisite, zero-G interiors evocative of Kubrick) and NASA’s best and brightest furiously conceiving ways to rescue Watney and keep him alive in the meantime. There are no silly stereotypes, no ill-conceived character conflicts. Ted Sanders (Jeff Daniels) is the starched-shirt head of NASA who funnels success through bureaucratic constraints. Vincent Capoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor, so good), head of the Mars Mission project, breathes a bit more fiery idealism. Kristen Wiig provides just the right amount of comic relief as a PR flack

The most daunting obstacle in The Martian isn’t the inhospitable Martian landscape, but the clock counting up the number of days Watney remains marooned, and for the Hermes to reach Earth, and for NASA to merely ready a resupply rocket. This isn’t some garish Michael Bay action flick hardwired into our era of instant gratification. Scott’s 141-minute running time allows the storyline to unspool logically, furthering the tedium of time, space and progress.

As the plot crystallizes into an amalgam of Cast Away and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the disco music accompanying Watney’s isolation is more than a kitschy device. It’s the soundtrack of an era replete with ingenuity and can-do human spirit. The Martian doesn’t shove these ideals—or its emotions—in your face, but rather permits them to permeate your synapses. It’s a celebration of science and intelligent problem-solving. And it’s also an epic whose climax combines the visual grandeur of Gravity with the thrills of an Avengers movie.

The Martian is a paean to humankind’s capacity for advancement, exploration and, yes, moviemaking.

Ant-Man

You're gonna need a bigger mound

Grade: B +

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Peña, Tip "T.I." Harris, Bobby Cannavale and Anthony Mackie

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 57 min.

The saying “big things come in small packages” as it relates to Ant-Man doesn’t just refer to the tiny titular super hero. It also speaks to the easy, breezy air surrounding another sturdy Marvel Studios stand-alone not distended by angst-filled demigods, interdimensional villains and overstuffed storylines.

As ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is being recruited by scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to assume the Ant-Man mantle, Lang asks why they don’t just call the Avengers to fix the apocalyptic problem du jour. “They’re probably busy dropping cities out of the sky,” Pym retorts.

The tension between Ant-Man’s connection to and detachment from the Avengers ethos runs through both the film’s plotline and its production history. Edgar Wright, who wrote/directed Shaun of the Dead and the rest of his Three Flavours Cornetto film trilogy, and writing partner Joe Cornish worked on their Ant-Man movie treatment for over a decade. In mid-2014, Wright, also tapped as director, left the project due to creative differences. Enter Peyton Reed, the Raleigh, North Carolina native whose directorial credits include the pastel Down With Love and the Jim Carrey vehicle Yes Man.

What remains is a self-contained heist film steeped in charisma and humor, with its toe dipped just far enough to integrate it into the overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe. During the film’s 1989 prologue, Pym—the original comic book Ant-Man created by Stan Lee in 1962—parts ways with Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., mothballing his subatomic research and shrinking serum in the process.

Decades later, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), Pym’s former protégé, is on the cusp of cracking Pym’s research and militarizing it. When Lang—a petty crook behind on job opportunities and child support since being released from prison—burgles Pym’s house, he only finds the Ant-Man suit. Pym decides that Lang is the right choice to become the new ant whisperer and stop Cross, despite the doubts of Hope (a remarkably buff Evangeline Lilly), Pym’s daughter, who has a contentious history with Pym following the mysterious death of her mother.

In contrast to Marvel enemies motivated by Infinity Stones and sundry disfigurements, Cross is driven by pure greed and betrayal. He eventually dons his own Yellowjacket shrinking suit to wreak havoc, but there’s more palpable menace earlier when Cross zaps a disapproving business partner into a dollop of bloody tissue, which he blots with a tissue before unceremoniously flushing it down the toilet.

At the same time, Reed maintains a deliberate distance with the danger. When Ant-Man and Yellowjacket engage in explosive combat atop a runaway locomotive, Reed pans out several times to remind the viewer that it’s actually taking place aboard a miniature train set behind propelled by a Thomas the Tank Engine.

The levity runs through the supporting cast, from Douglas as the droll straight man to Lang’s buddies in crime, played by Tip "T.I." Harris, David Dastmalchian and a scene-stealing Michael Peña as Lang’s former cellmate.

While Rudd’s comedic credits don’t suggest big action hero, the actor’s sardonic script contributions and wiseacre persona suit the film’s cheeky tone. Lang doesn’t crave hero status or even deserve it. He’s an everyman with a checkered past, overdue obligations, failed marriage and daughter he wishes he could see more. He also yearns direction in his life, something he’s unable to divine before Pym plucks him from rudderless obscurity.

Ant-Man’s visuals are passable. Reed adroitly handles the action sequences, particularly Lang’s constant shrinking and enlargement. But Ant-Man’s miniature world evokes a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids pastiche, and the special effects rendering of Lang’s ant army reminded me of the 1954 nuclear monster classic Them!

The seamless segue for Ant-Man’s eventual insertion into the Marvel storyline comes when he faces off with the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) while breaking into Avengers’ HQ to purloin some gizmo widget. There are also two teasers during the closing credits—one in the middle and one at the end—that preview a new heroine and how Ant-Man might feature in the next Captain America sequel.

Until then, Ant-Man is a—dare I say—delightful origin story propelled by Wright’s wit, Reed’s light touch, and the wry delivery of Rudd, Douglas, Peña and the rest of the cast. Like an ant, the movie dutifully fulfills its entertainment obligations despite carrying a film franchise far above its weight.

Tower Heist

From 48 Hrs. to 15 Mins.

Grade: C –

Director: Brett Ratner
Starring: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

The acting nebbish populating the comedy caper Tower Heist are ill-equipped for director Brett Ratner’s persistent but ever-inadequate action movie propensities. At the same time, Ratner and (count ‘em) four credited writers extract comic ore from their cast with the precision of a dragline. The result is a movie with an identity crisis whose edgiest trait is its stupefying dullness.

Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is building manager for a Manhattan high-rise whose employees lose their pension to a Ponzi scheme run by Madoff doppelganger Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), the tower’s penthouse occupant. Once the fed’s case against Shaw starts crumbling, Josh and four coworkers (Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck, Michael Pena and Gabourey Sidibe), aided by a motor-mouthed ex-con (Eddie Murphy), conspire to rob Shaw’s condo of ill-gotten loot.

As the hole-ridden plot staggers from one half-baked scene to another, its stars are left to yammer and mug for the camera in a desperate group salvage operation. The biggest heist here happens whenever someone buys a ticket to watch millionaire performers make a meager movie about stealing other people’s money.

Neil Morris

30 Minutes or Less

Amos 'n' Aziz

Grade: C

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari, Nick Swardson, Dilshad Vadsaria, Michael Peña, and Fred Ward

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr 23 min.

30 Minutes or Less describes the approximate length of time the premise of this merrily profane, hyperactive buddy action-comedy merits your attention. Unfortunately, common sense departs the theater not long after the opening credits.

Two do-nothing slackers – Dwayne (Danny McBride, temporarily hitting the snooze button on his 15 minutes countdown) and Travis (Nick Swardson) – split time between strip clubs, assembling homemade explosives and dreaming of opening a tanning salon/brothel. All they lack – other than couth and rudimentary aptitude – is the startup cash, which Dwayne hopes to inherit from his lotto-winning father, a ramrod ex-Marine nicknamed “The Major” (Fred Ward).

To speed up the line of intestate succession, Dwayne and Travis first need $100k to hire a Latino killer (Michael Peña) to take out The Major. So, they devise a plan to strap a vest full of dynamite to some stranger and threaten to explode it unless he robs a bank and delivers the would-be blood money to them within 10 hours.

Their hapless patsy turns out to be Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), a harried pizza delivery boy whose only pal, Chet (Aziz Ansari), defriends him after learning that Nick once deflowered and still harbors feelings for Chet’s twin sister, Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria).

If for no other reason, the story’s madcap frenzy is needed to squeeze out any encroaching questions about the puzzling plot before they take cerebral root. Who knows why Dwayne presumes his disapproving dad hasn’t willed his wealth elsewhere, or why Dwayne and Travis just don’t get Nick to steal enough money to start their business and cut out the middle hitman? There’s little to explain why Chet, a school teacher, readily agrees to help Nick carry out multiple thefts – including a getaway car from a neighbor – or how Nick can’t manage to elude Dwayne’s watchful eye in order to elicit help from the police when he’s able to duck out long enough to climb a rooftop and profess his love to Kate. And, when the two yokels kidnap Kate to pressure Nick into finally delivering the stolen loot to them, you wonder why they bothered with the vest in the first place.

However, the most perplexing aspect about 30 Minutes or Less is why director Ruben Fleischer – whose last film, Zombieland, also starred Eisenberg – thought it was good idea to make a zany knee-slapper obviously patterned after the tragic true story of Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza deliveryman killed in 2003 by a time bomb strapped around his neck after being forced to rob a bank by two co-conspirators. For this to work, Fleischer and writer Michael Diliberti needed to fashion a Coen Bros. facsimile, teasing the inherent farcical elements of this dark comedy with a sidelong perusal of the cultural and sociological rot that spawned it.

What keeps the film palatable is the absurdist chemistry exhibited by Eisenberg and Ansari (TV’s Parks and Recreation) along with McBride and Swardson. While their characters make little sense, their snappy repartee references dated touchstones (Arsenio Hall and Point Break) and skewers contemporary tableaus like Netflix, 5-Hour Energy drink, and Facebook – Nick/Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, tells Kate that he didn’t review a friend’s status because “(y)ou know I don’t check that s*#t; I’m off the grid.”

Still, even at 83 minutes, 30 Minutes of Less feels protracted. Unlike late pizza, you might not necessarily want your money back. But, you won’t be coming back for seconds.

Neil Morris

Everything Must Go

That Deangelo-Office stint didn't go so well

Grade: B

Director: Dan Rush

Starring: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern, Michael Pena, Stephen Root, and Christopher Jordan Wallace

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.

The first five minutes of Everything Must Go are very bad for Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell). He gets fired from the company he’s worked at for 16 years, has his car repossessed, and returns to his suburban Phoenix, Az. home to find that his wife has left him, but not before strewing his belonging across the front yard, changing the locks to the house, freezing their bank accounts, and cancelling Nick’s cell phone service.

Alone and adrift, Nick settles into the recliner situated on his lawn and, with a fridge full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, imbibes the alcoholism that caused this adversity in the first place. City ordinances and complaining neighbors soon convert camping outside into a yard sale, an obvious metaphor for Nick finally unloading his past. Vinyl records recall memories of Nick’s drunk, deejay dad; a yearbook reminds him of an old classmate (Laura Dern) he decides to visit; a projector allows him to revisit old home movies.

We learn more about both Nick’s flaws and dormant heart thanks to two strangers who wander into his orbit. In an example of art imitating life, a terrific Christopher Jordan Wallace, the 14-year-old son of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G., plays a fatherless youngster who mirrors Nick’s expressionless melancholy as he bikes throughout the neighborhood looking for someone to just teach him how to play baseball.

And, across the street is a new pregnant neighbor, Samantha (Rebecca Hall), whose absent career husband portends a woman experiencing the same early woes that eventually plagued Nick’s wife (whom we wisely never see).

Directed and adapted by Dan Rush from a Raymond Carver short story, Everything Must Go is at times too minimalist for its own good, and the storyline progresses to a predictable end despite its the semi-surreal setup.

But, the film works on two particular levels. First, it is an earnest fable about a man who must confront and let go of his past in order to embark on a better future. Ferrell dials back his normal oafish shtick in favor of the low-key humorous persona he used in Stranger Than Fiction.

Second, there’s a commentary about the artificiality of suburbia, in which denizens suffer the same problems as everyone else but craft covenants and regulations intended to wall away life’s ugliness, even the peculiarity of a man living with his own stuff on his own lawn. Everything bad, indiscreet, or just unusual must go…out of sight and mind.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com - http://goo.gl/UdY4t

Observe and Report

Here, take these. You'll need them
after watching this movie.

Grade: C +

Director: Jody Hill

Starring: Seth Rogan, Ray Liotta, Michael Peña, Anna Faris, Celia Weston, and Collette Wolfe

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 26 minutes

It is the darkest of dark comedies that draws inspiration from Taxi Driver. But, it is not the visage of the lone, deranged vigilante that demarcates director and North Carolina native Jody Hill’s Observe and Report. Instead, shopping mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogan) is the unhinged byproduct of the Bush-era delusion that sees evildoers around every kiosk and the calls to arms as a proletarian path towards otherwise elusive notoriety and self-worth. So, when a serial flasher turns the mall into his personal peep show, Ronnie’s bipolar-fueled obsession to bring the perp to justice serves as a springboard towards applying to become a real police officer, protecting the “homeland,” and impressing a slutty cosmetics salesgirl (Anna Faris, benefiting most from the film’s hard edge).

The inanity is offbeat and uproarious at times, but Hill’s (Foot Fist Way) script is rudderless, depressing, and overly mean-spirited – there are only so many laughs you can comfortably draw from tableaus of mental illness, substance abuse, racism, and date rape. Not long into the film, Ronnie morphs from semi-sympathetic oaf to self-absorbed, dangerous tool, rendering the portrait of his boozy, slatternly mom (Celia Weston) quite sad and the advances of a sweet young pixie (Collete Wolfe) working in the food court quite incredulous. So, in his alpha-male rivalry with a police detective played by Ray Liotta, the audience embraces the profanity-laden, classic-Liotta rant he screams into Ronnie’s dimwitted ear. Later, we quietly cheer when a horde of cops go Rodney King on Ronnie’s violent, dysfunctional noggin. Ronnie isn’t an anti-hero; he’s just non-heroic.

The setting and subject-matter invite inevitable comparisons to that other, recent mall cop comedy, Kevin James’ appropriately titled Paul Blart: Mall Cop. But, there is more authentic insight into the shopping mall subculture in Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead remake than here, and the putrid laughs play more to the Bad Santa cheap seats. To borrow a quote from a cop who eavesdrops on Ronnie being rejected for the police force, “I thought this was going to be funny, but it’s really just kinda sad.”

Neil Morris