Review #1,377: 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' (2018)

After the fate-of-the-universe shenanigans of Avengers: Infinity War just three months ago (two months if you live in a country where football isn't that popular), Marvel's twentieth entry into their unstoppable cinematic universe, or MCU, understandably plays the role of palette-cleanser. Infinity War included every Marvel superhero so far, except Hawkeye, and while we still await a solo outing for nobody's favourite Avenger, Ant-Man - who was also absent from the cosmic battle against Thanos - is back for a sequel. The first Ant-Man somehow survived the loss of director Edgar Wright and emerged as a lighter, smaller-scale branch of the ever-expanding MCU. It may have followed the formula of Iron Man's origin very closely, but it was incredibly inventive when its hero suited-up and scaled-down to dodge everything from huge feet pounding a dancefloor, a hungry rat, or the sight of his giant best friend naked. Without the comforts of the origin story however, Ant-Man and the Wasp and returning director Peyton Reed are at a loss which direction to go, and end up throwing multiple storylines at the wall to see what sticks. Sadly, not much does.

It's been two years since Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), aka Ant-Man, was drafted into Captain America's crew for a battle against Tony Stark and the Sokovia Accords in Germany. As we saw from the ending of Captain America: Civil War, Lang was imprisoned, but is now being allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest, under the watchful eye of FBI agent Jimmy Woo (a scene-stealing Randall Park). With his new friends off fighting global threats and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) not talking to him for stealing one of his suits, Lang passes the time building huge play-houses for his superhero-obsessed daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), as well as playing drums, watching a lot of television, and crying reading The Fault in our Stars. At night, he is plagued by nightmares of the Quantum Realm, the microscopic world he found himself in during his showdown with Darren Cross, where time and space become irrelevant. He doesn't know it, but Hank and his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) are also thinking about the Realm, in the hope of finding their wife/mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), who disappeared thirty years earlier during a mission with her husband. When Lang starts to receive strange messages seemingly from Janet, Pym has no choice but to bring the cat-burglar back into the fold in the hope of nailing her location.

The first Ant-Man kept its exposition zippy, sweeping you up into its flow so that all the scientific jibberish being explained simply washed over you. Ant-Man and the Wasp must hold the world record for the number of times the word 'quantum' has been used within two hours. Janet can communicate with Lang through quantum entanglement, where particles interact in ways that essentially make them indistinguishable, even when they are separated by a huge distance. The film's 'villain', Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) experiences molecular instability due to an accident during a quantum experiment, meaning that she can phase through solid matter at will. At one point, Lang questions if the boffins tasked with explaining all of this to us simply put the word 'quantum' in front of everything. This is played for laughs, but doesn't necessarily absolve the film of the problem. Also thrown into the mix is slimy businessman Sonny Burch, played by a wasted Walton Goggins, who wants his greedy hands of Pym's tech and will stop at nothing until he has it. For a series that now prides itself on a lighter tone, it's a lot of plot to take in. The trippy Quantum Realm was teased in the first Ant-Man, and it remains a tease here. There's literally a whole new world to explore at sub-atomic level, yet it remains a frustrating mystery.

While there's way too much going on plot-wise, Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn't disappoint with its set-pieces. As glimpsed in the trailer, the heroes turn everything from a salt-shaker to a Hello Kitty pez dispenser into a weapon, normally hurled at their enemies and used to block their path. With her ability to fly and shoot from the wrist, Wasp gets to kick the most ass, dispensing a vehicle full of baddies with speed and efficiency, and all brought to life with stunning special effects. Lang's motor-mouthed associate Luis (Michael Pena) also returns for a beefier part, with his gift for story-telling once again proving a highlight. Laurence Fishburne helps establish some gravitas whenever he is on screen as Bill Foster, Pym's former co-worker on the G.O.L.I.A.T.H. project and whose existence was teased as far back as Iron Man 2. It's ultimately two hours of fluff and Peyton Reed (along with his five writers, including Rudd) knows it, and while this was very much part of the character's charm the first time around, many jokes here fall flat. There are nice touches, such as Pym's laboratory, populated by giant ants carrying out maintenance work and tiny objects blown up in size stitching the whole thing together, which can be shrunken down to luggage size with the click of a button. Lang's relationship with his daughter is also very touching. But Reed never fully commits to one idea and refuses to run with the many promising ideas the film touches on. With the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok willing to embrace the crazy, Ant-Man and the Wasp was always going to pale in comparison.


Directed by: Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michael Peña, Hannah John-Kamen, Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Pfeiffer, Walton Goggins, Randall Park
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,283: 'Mother!' (2017)

Darren Aronofsky's Mother!, or mother! as it is often printed, has already generated more controversy than most movies can achieve in an entire lifetime. A fever-dream of chaos, violence and nightmarish imagery, Aronofsky's latest seems to provoke extreme reactions from both sides of the spectrum. After its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the film received both a standing ovation and a chorus of boos. Whether you love it, hate it, or simply cannot make up your mind, Mother! will be successful at yanking a reaction out of you, be it repulsion, confusion or laughter. Yet the biggest shock is not the orgy of brutality at the climax or the religious undertones, but that a major studio would ever fund this at all. Paramount were apparently convinced when star Jennifer Lawrence signed on, but there is little here for fans of The Hunger Games, and not much more for those hoping for a straight-forward haunted house flick.

We open with a woman burning, before apparently jumping forward in time. The house in which the stranger met her demise has been repaired, and is currently being turned into a paradise by 'Mother' (Lawrence). She wants to shape the home into a place of tranquillity for her much older husband, 'Him' (Javier Bardem), an artistically-blocked famous poet who has failed to write any new material in over a year. Things seem peaceful, but something isn't quite right. The house is in the middle of nowhere, hidden away from civilisation, so Mother is shocked when a doctor - billed as 'Man' and played by Ed Harris - turns up at the door claiming to have mistook the house for a B & B. Mother wants to be left alone but Him seems eager for the company. It becomes clear than Man has no intention of leaving when his wife ('Woman', played by Michelle Pfeiffer) turns up at the door. She is obnoxious and rude, carrying a clanking glass and glazed eyes with her wherever she goes, and events start to spiral out of control when their bickering sons (played by Brian and Domhnall Gleeson) also show up.

Things seem to calm down when Mother becomes pregnant, and the couple withdraw into isolation once again. Fatherhood reawakens the artist in Him, and he soon has a new book published. But this only starts to attract more outsiders, which rapidly turns from a small crowd of book fans to a hoard of crazies, who start to systematically destroy the house. Think Gaspar Noe meets some of Ben Wheatley's more extreme works and you can start to grasp the tone of Mother!'s climax. It's a clusterfuck of unpleasantness and claustrophobia, like a house party crashed by Satan himself. Aronofsky makes sure that you're uncomfortable from the very get-go, with camerawork nearly always from point of view of Mother, or directly in her face. Classic horror elements also establish feelings of unease, such as a bleeding floorboard, a dingy basement with a bricked-up wall, and a strange instrument heard through the walls with the appearance of a beating heart. Aronofsky possibly thinks he setting the audience up for the nastiness about to be inflicted on the heroine, but nothing could have really prepared me for the last 40 minutes.

Mother! is one of only a few films I've really had to wrestle with. As I was watching, I felt disgusted, patronised, and in need of a good wash, and the end credits made me feel like I was exhaling for the very first time. As time passed, I could only admire the way in which Aronosky had forced such a physical reaction out of me, and the many ways in which the film can be read. Essentially it's a story of motherhood and creating a home for your family, but it also works as a religious parable, with certain characters clearly stand-ins for figures from the Bible. Most of all, this is an artist's reaction to terrifying reality of our times, with nuclear war, global warming and terrorism a constant threat, and dangerous, unpredictable leaders seated at the head of some of the most powerful countries in the world. The director himself stated that he woke up one morning and spilled out Mother! over the course of four days, and the film certainly reflects Aronofsky's urgent, scribbled approach. It's hard to recommend Mother!, but I would urge anybody to see it at least once. You may find it to be preposterous nonsense or a cathartic masterpiece, and you'd be right either way.


Directed by: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brian Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Kristen Wiig
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie