Tag Archives: ant-man

“You put a dime in him? You have to let the whole song play out.” Marvel’s Ant-Man and The Wasp

6 July 2018

5 Comments

 

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Ant-Man and The Wasp is fun, whimsical, kind-hearted, and a welcome palate cleanser after the ominous, rather gloomy Avengers: Infinity War. The flick is a bit like Everybody Loves Raymond in Spandex … with shrink-ray powers. If Marvel ever aims to create a weekly sitcom, they should start here. 

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The first Ant-Man was an amiably frothy trifle that somehow still managed to achieve a lovely emotional resonance around the importance of family.

Director Peyton Reed, who has helmed both films so far in the series, maintains a light touch regarding the super-heroics in the second film, while diving deeper into the ties that bind Scott Lang (Paul Rudd as Ant-Man’s alter ego) to his daughter Cassie (a thoroughly natural Abby Ryder Fortson), to his ex-wife and her new husband (Judy Greer and Bobby Cannavale mugging for the cheap seats), to his adopted crime-busting buddies Hank Pym (a sparkling Michael Douglas) and Hank’s daughter Hope (an a**-kicking Evangeline Lilly, who’s never been better), and to his fellow-ex-con-now-business-partner Luis (endearing Michael Pena, who could read the phone book onscreen and still get laughs without detracting from the story or his fellow performers).

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The actors collectively seem to be thinking, “We’re making a sequel? We didn’t think they’d make one, let alone two, movies about a character named ‘Ant-Man’!?!” That loose, grateful, and frisky camaraderie is blessedly evident onscreen.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

To Reed’s credit, the film slyly defies the conventions of its genre. There is a ton of action, but it all follows the rhythms of a musical comedy or a silent film, more than it does those of a violently cathartic summer blockbuster. Car chases don’t kill time or amp up excitement but seem designed solely to stack up the sight gags: a giant-sized Hello Kitty! Pez dispenser is used to dispatch a gang of motorcycle thugs, for instance.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Sequences that could have been milked for unnecessary suspense (and to pad screen time) end logically and efficiently, but only after maximizing any comic returns. For example, Ant-Man and Wasp skulk about Cassie’s school in a manner that is more Bringing Up Baby than Mission: Impossible. They are there to a find a piece of tech which the little girl has inadvertently brought to show and tell, and, rather believably, they find what they are seeking with minimal shenanigans (albeit after a couple of really funny sight gags) and are back on the road in no time. (Unfortunately, that scene does say a little too much about how easy it is to sneak in and out of a public school.)

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

To be honest, the fact that this is a movie about super-heroes almost seems incidental to character development. How about that?

Furthermore, there really aren’t any true villains in the film. At least not in the traditional “comic book” sense. No flame-haired antagonist wants to see the world burn or redirect global resources to his faux-martyred tribe. No, that story line is unfortunately playing out in (sur)real-life these days.

Instead, narrative complications arise from the various characters’ self-interests being at cross-purposes or from the characters having just plain old bad-timing, such as …

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

  • Hank and Hope have cooked up some cosmic doo-hickey to rescue Hank’s wife/Hope’s mother Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer who basically just plays Michelle Pfeiffer any more) from the “Quantum Realm” (think: lava lamp meets Spirograph) but don’t have all the geegaws they need to make it work.
  • An international arms dealer (Walton Goggins, always a pleasure in his otherworldly Bruce Dern-on-amphetamines way) AND the FBI (led by a comically inept Randall Park, serving as a timely punching bag for the many Comey-haters in the audience) are both after Hank and Hope for assorted-basically-inconsequential reasons.

    [Image Source: Wikipedia]

  • Scott is the only one who can help Hope and Hank find mama but they’re ticked at Hank for stealing technology from them … PLUS he is on house arrest so he really shouldn’t be gallivanting around San Francisco in his Ant-Man costume.
  • Luis is trying to get Scott to focus on the security business they have started, specifically on a big bit of business they are pitching to a potential client.
  • There’s a creature named Ghost wandering around and causing trouble (a creepy Hannah John-Kamen laying the angst on a bit too thick). Ghost is slowly dissipating into the ether and, in order to survive, needs to do something vaguely vampiric to Janet van Dyne, that is if and when Janet gets rescued from, yes, the “Quantum Realm.”

    [Image Source: Wikipedia]

  • Oh, and Laurence Fishburne is in this thing too, as befuddled as the rest of us by the plot. And that’s just fine.

If it sounds like the story-line is a big pile of indigestible spaghetti, it kind of is, but it doesn’t matter. The film keeps everything small (pun intended) and relationship-driven. These characters are thoughtfully drawn and are portrayed by a team of pros, none of whom take any of it too seriously, but nonetheless weave believable and compelling situational dynamics. The film unspools episodically, meandering here and there, yet it never is boring. No character in the film seems to have any real command of their own lives – save Evangeline Lilly’s Hope who is about as inspiring and self-assured a character as we’ve seen since Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. That alone is quite refreshing.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In one of the more absurd asides, Luis, late in the film, is injected with a truth serum. With his voice emanating from all of the various characters/actors, we are treated to a blow-by-blow, side-splitting re-enactment of everything that has transpired heretofore in both films. The scene is completely unnecessary, utterly brilliant, and totally bonkers; I’m not doing it justice in my description. Regardless, the sequence exists not solely to entertain but to remind us of character and of humanity and of family in its many permutations. As one of Luis’ compatriots’ observes in that moment, “You put a dime in him? You have to let the whole song play out.” And isn’t that true for any one of us?

Go see Ant-Man and The Wasp for some much-needed escapism in these dark times. Stay for the essential reminder that we all have stories to tell and that we all want to love and be loved in return.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“But … are you Thor, god of … hammers?” Thor: Ragnarok

5 November 2017

13 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Marvel Studios’ latest – Thor: Ragnarok – is about as delightful a film to come from the Marvel/Disney machine as we’ve yet seen.

Marrying the free-wheeling whimsy of Ant-Man with the trippy nothing-is-too-zany visual style of Dr. Strange, layering in the heart and humanity of the Captain America films, and playing off the wackadoodle Shakespearean promise of Kenneth Branagh’s first Thor, director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) nonetheless delivers a completely unique vision and a superhero flick for the ages.

There is nary a shred of evidence of the micromanaged focus-grouping that seems to have plagued other entries in Marvel’s now 17-movie strong cinematic universe: the unfunny, overbaked narrative mush of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2; the ponderous “how-many-action-figures-can-we-cram-into-this-for-merchandising” clutter of Avengers: Age of Ultron; the just plain dull-as-dishwater “end-is-nigh” pretense of, yes, Thor: The Dark World.

No, Thor: Ragnarok belies its title with a light-as-air zip and a screwball comic touch that plays beautifully to star Chris Hemsworth’s Cary-Grant-trapped-in-Tab-Hunter’s-body charms. Hemsworth’s gift is in simultaneously embracing the absurd and the self-serious, mining Thor’s lovable arrogance in uncertain circumstances for “fish-out-of-water” laughs. Akin to Shakespeare’s better “history” plays (say, Henry IV with its introduction of the iconic Falstaff), Ragnarok honors the operatic complexity of its source Norse mythology by juxtaposing the light and the dark, the goofy and the grand, to play out the prodigal son’s/hero’s quest to overcome both palace intrigue and the intoxicating lure of interstellar adventure to find his proper path to the throne.

The film shouldn’t work as well as it does. Waititi is obviously fueled by a love of the corny sci-fi box office bombs that littered HBO’s schedule in the early and mid 80s (post-Star Wars) like Krull, Beastmaster, Flash Gordon, Buckaroo Banzai, and so on – movies that I myself watched in a constant loop, attracted to the gonzo so-bad-it’s-great storytelling and campy visuals. In fact, Mark Mothersbaugh’s Moog-synth score sounds like it was written for an arcade game in 1983. And that’s a fabulous thing. (There is also an epic use of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” in segments that bookend the film. It’s a touch that not only enlivens the two sequences in which the tune is used but adds a nice layer of meta commentary – “we come from the land of the ice and snow” – about finding one’s home and one’s place in this world.)

However, Waititi isn’t on a nostalgia trip; he isn’t interested in self-indulgence. Rather, with a Howard Hawks-esque (Bringing Up Baby) command of pacing, set-up, visual jokes, and patter, Waititi delivers a character-driven romp that celebrates a lost soul embracing his destiny and learning a touch of humility along the way. Of course, in this case, the lost soul happens to be the Norse God of Thunder and a superheroic Avenger who pals around with the Hulk, but that’s beside the point. Odin (a wry Anthony Hopkins) consoles his son at one point, when Thor is bemoaning the loss of his magic hammer Mjolnir, “But … are you Thor, god of … hammers?”

The plot is almost impossible to encapsulate, but I’ll try. Thor and brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston reclaiming the smarmy twinkle that made the character such fun initially) are on a search to find their father Odin who is hiding out in Norway. Early on, they encounter Benedict Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange in a witty cat-and-mouse sequence that telegraphs that Ragnarok won’t be your typical Marvel flick.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Eventually, Loki and Thor discover that their father has concealed both a dark history from them and the existence of a sister Hela (Cate Blanchett, all slither and swagger and having a devil of a good time) who has returned to Asgard to take over the universe and wear some really fierce eyeliner and multi-horned headgear. Thor and Loki get shunted by Hela to Sakaar, a planet of garbage and misfit toys, where Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster runs a Let’s Make a Deal-meets-Gladiator “Contest of Champions.” (This is the best use of Goldblum’s insidious, out-sized, googly-eyed demeanor in years.)

Lo and behold, Thor’s old buddy The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo fully embracing the sweet/sour rampaging baby characterization from the Avengers films) is somehow on Sakaar too. The boys fight; they make up; they fight again; and eventually, with the aid of new compatriot Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson bringing the boozy, bossy fun), return to Asgard and save the day (more or less) from Hela’s machinations. Whew.

Oh, and Karl Urban (Star Trek, Dredd, Pete’s Dragon) pops up as Hela’s right-hand thug Skurge the Executioner, and, as always, Urban brings a nuanced inner-conflict and a compelling screen presence to a character who in lesser hands would have been a screaming, raving slab of testosterone. One day, I’d like to see him in a movie that doesn’t require special effects, if they make those any more.

In the end, though, the film is a showcase for Hemsworth’s effervescent wit and steroidal comedy and for Waititi’s sure-handed cinematic voice and eye-popping visuals. Hemsworth is at a difficult career crossroads: a household name actor in international box office blockbusters who doesn’t yet seem like a star. Perhaps this turn will change that. If not, he and Waititi need to team up again posthaste and, maybe this time, sans capes. Hemsworth is that rare performer – a beautiful human specimen with the comic genius of an ugly duckling. Waititi is that rare director – one who loves all films and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the best and the worst but deftly avoids self-indulgence and derivativeness. As Goldblum’s Grandmaster says in response to Thor’s use of his lightning powers, “Out of your fingers … was that, like, sparkles?” Indeed, Hemsworth plus Waititi generate nothing but cinematic sparkles. Here’s hoping for more.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“Be careful in the world of men, Diana, for they do not deserve you.” Wonder Woman (2017)

10 June 2017

15 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I loved Wonder Woman as a little kid – the escapist kitsch of the Lynda Carter TV version with the spinning costume changes and the disco theme song and that Pepsodent-grinning Lyle Waggoner.

As I entered adolescence, the DC Comics version went through her own renaissance, led in great part by one of my favorite writers/artists George Perez (and later advanced in equal measure by Phil Jimenez and Greg Rucka). Diana, Amazonian princess, rediscovered her mythic Greek roots, fully embracing all of the soapy sudsy sturm-und-drang that being the daughter of Zeus and Hyppolyta can bring with a whole heaping helping of jealous demi-god cousins, stepmothers, and half-siblings biting at her heels. Those stories were great fun (for the reader … not so much for Diana herself.)

I’m happy to report that the new (and first?!) cinematic treatment of Wonder Woman honors all that has come before, even incorporating a bit of original creator William Moulton Marston’s skeezy blend of feminist kink (see: Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor exiting an Amazonian glowing warm springs hot tub while Diana’s gaze sizes him up – literally – but she is ultimately more interested in his wristwatch than anything else.)

Whether or not Wonder Woman finally breaks the Zack Snyder-invoked curse of stinkeroo movie-making that has blighted DC Comics’ cinematic output to date or is merely the brilliant exception that proves the rule remains to be seen. Nonetheless, director Patty Jenkins (Monster) working from a script by Allan Heinberg (who rocked the comics world over ten years ago with the similarly humanistic Young Avengers) gives us a return to form for classically majestic comic book movie making (Richard Donner’s Superman, Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy) with a nod toward Marvel’s postmodern humane whimsy (Captain America, Ant-Man) but with a surety of voice and purpose that is wholly its own.

Is it feminist? Of course it is! Unapologetically and utterly inclusively so.

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” Diana, as portrayed with warmth and fire and wit and steel by Gal Gadot, is a stranger in a strange land to whom all creatures (man, woman, child, animal) deserve respect and love … and if you are incapable of showing that love, she’ll unequivocally kick your ass.

Making the interesting choice to set the action during WWI (Wonder Woman has traditionally been more associated with WWII), Jenkins and Heinberg make absolute hay with a setting where war was arguably at its peak of muddy, bloody brutality and where the nascent suffrage movement continued to make waves (pro and con) for women in society.

In Wonder Woman, Gadot fulfills the promise of her all-too-brief screen time in the comparatively glum and humorless (and horrifically titled) Batman v. Superman: Dawn of  Justice, delivering a star turn for the ages. It is not a showy performance (ironic, I know, since she is wearing a glittering metallic bathing suit, wielding a mammoth sword, deflecting lightning bolts with her bracelets, and, you know, flying) but is layered with beautiful notes of heartache, ironic detachment, utter bemusement, and complete bewilderment over a world designed chiefly to destroy.

She is joined by a stellar supporting cast – the aforementioned Pine who turns his character actor good looks into matinee idol charm as mansplaining sidekick Steve Trevor, glowering Danny Huston as a German warmonger, David Thewlis as a British idealogue whose rhetoric seems to urge a quick and speedy armistice, Elena Anaya as a bruised soul whose distaste for humanity leads her to develop poisonous gasses of mass destruction, and Lucy Davis stealing every scene as bantering “secretary” Etta Candy whose delight at being in the presence of a woman (Diana), who could give two whits about societal decorum, is utterly infectious.

The film is at its most thrilling when Diana leads a ragtag band of adorably mismatched soldiers across the Western Front, herself marching directly through the battle lines, armed only with her wits, her magic bracelets, and her righteous indignation over the horrors she has just witnessed befalling everyday families (and horses). I may have cried a little (a lot) during that sequence.

Wonder Woman‘s only misstep is in its length. At nearly 2.5 hours, the film’s running time strains audience patience. Though beautiful and transporting, the movie’s opening third, set in Diana’s home Themiscyra or “Paradise Island” amidst a utopia of warrior women, is, well, kind of a bore. While it is essential to show Amazonian society, which is designed through reason and equality, contrasted with man’s ugly world, locked as it is in the plague of war, we could have used about 20 fewer minutes of pristine beaches, jewel-hued skies, horseback-riding, and Queen Hyppolyta (Connie Nielsen) and her dutiful General Antiope (Robin Wright) stumbling to mimic Gadot’s irrepressibly undefinable accent. (At times, I wondered if the Amazon nation settled off Greece by way of Transylvania.)

Hyppolyta warns Diana early in the film, in a line that foreshadows thematically all that is to come, “Be careful in the world of men, Diana, for they do not deserve you.” Indeed, we do not deserve Wonder Woman, but we do need her and her message of inclusion and peace, tolerance and integrity  … now, more than ever.

P.S. And, rest in peace, to that other superhero icon of my youth, Adam West, whose Batman introduced me to a universe of colorful characters that I still love to this day.

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Thank you to Rose McInerney of WomanScape​ for her kind words and for referencing the above Wonder Woman​ review in her fabulous site’s latest and greatest. Rose writes, “So, while Wonder Woman is undoubtedly good storytelling with a sizable marketing budget, its success is also explained by key factors in our changing world. The first of these is the growing number of men like movie reviewer Roy Sexton who are joining with women to help promote the Diana-like warriors in our world. Roy lends his unabashed support and writing talents advocating for feminism and equal rights.” Read here.

 

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“You view the world through a keyhole.” Marvel’s Doctor Strange (2016)

20 November 2016

11 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

“You view the world through a keyhole,” intones an  eyebrow-less (and bald) Tilda Swinton (Trainwreck), as the Ancient One – yet another in her long-line of eyebrow-less fortune cookie-philosophizing androgyne Yoda-lite characters – in Marvel Studios’ latest offering Doctor Strange.

Let’s face it, her synthetic ethereality is a lock for movies like this. How she isn’t sitting beside Stan Lee (on a bus, in a plane, on a boat, in a car) for every single one of his corny, ubiquitous cameos in these Marvel flicks is beyond me.

The recipient of her philosophical guidance in the film is one Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game, August: Osage County, The Fifth Estate, Star Trek Into Darkness), every bit her interplanetary match in the wide-eyed, chiseled-cheek-boned, glacial-foreheaded race for cinematic space alien beauty. Cumberbatch plays Dr. Stephen Strange, an egomaniac neurosurgeon whose egomania is totally justified by his remarkable skills in the operating room. Cumberbatch’s Strange wisely takes a page or two from the Robert Downey, Jr./Tony Stark “charming spoiled cad” playbook, layering in a welcome dollop or two of dyspepsia, contempt, and petulance.

As in any fairy tale … er … Marvel movie, our hero has a tragic flaw: Strange is a jerk.

  • He’s punished for it:  while driving his fancy sports car like an entitled and distracted prat, Strange finds his elegant surgeon hands crunched to paste in a grinding car accident.
  • He seeks redemption: under the tutelage of Swinton’s Ancient One, he learns some gobbledygook about not letting fear hold one back, realizing that what gets one here won’t get one there, and identifying who might have moved one’s cheese … or something that sounded vaguely like the counsel of a bad business self-help book one might be forced to read in an MBA class.
  • AND, voila!, he gains magical superpowers (plus, a nifty cape that behaves a bit like the mischievous, yet helpful, mice in Cinderella).

It’s all great fun with just the right touch of solemnity – the latter, no doubt, chiefly a contribution of the one-note, award-winning Brit gravitas that Swinton and Cumberbatch bring to everything they do. Director Scott Derrickson has cast the film exceedingly well. We also have Rachel McAdams (The Notebook) as Strange’s medical peer, confidante, and, yes, sometimes girlfriend (we can’t have everything). McAdams brings spark and wit, fire and intelligence, elevating Strange’s backstory in a compelling and heartfelt way. Mads Mikkelson (who seems consigned to always have black or bloody tears emanating from his unearthly peepers – see: LeChiffre in Casino Royale) is capably understated as Strange’s villainous foil Kaecilius. Benedict Wong (The Martian) delivers wry comic timing as Strange’s tutor/librarian/sidekick Wong, and Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) successfully counterbalances Wong with ambivalent notes of resentful admiration toward Strange as friend/rival Mordo, foreshadowing intriguing future conflict.

Strange is visually sumptuous, taking the MC Escher stylings of Inception or Interstellar, losing the ponderous Christopher Nolan self-righteous self-aggrandizement, and amping up the kaleidoscopic fun. Skyscraper-lined city blocks fold upon themselves like origami; mirror images bend and twist and deceive; entire galaxies devolve into motes of dust. This movie is trippy, playfully updating, for the Millennial crowd, gonzo artist Steve Ditko’s 1960s psychedelic visuals of Doctor Strange’s original four-color adventures. Like Marvel’s recent Ant-Man, Doctor Strange succeeds by embracing the free-wheeling whimsy in its source material, but grounding the proceedings (and its audience) in our common humanity and the very real consequences of our bad judgment.

I have a confession to make. For the past month or maybe longer, I have not much felt like writing. Or had much interest in seeing movies for that matter. The results of our recent election (not to my liking) have thrown me for a bit of a loop. Additionally (and from a completely selfish perspective), in the past few weeks, I’ve had some heartbreak in my theatre life, we have had some of the mind-numbing/back-breaking “Money Pit” unforeseen distractions that all of us share as middle-aged homeowners, and I find myself looking down the barrel of an impending holiday season that (any more) seems to bring more mania than holly jolly.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Yet, I keep thinking about that line from Swinton’s Ancient One character. Albeit cliched, the line is spot on (as cliches often are): we do view the world through a keyhole, a self-constructed self-pitying sliver of perspective, forcing us to lose the moment and live out-of-sync with our loved ones, with our surroundings, and with ourselves. That is the magic of loud, plastic, silly, allegorical movies like this. Every fable has its very important lesson, and we should never be too old to listen.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

 

“I can do this all day!” Captain America: Civil War

8 May 2016

14 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Marvel’s latest offering Captain America: Civil War made me a bit cranky. The film is perfectly fine – good-to-great, in fact. So, why do I feel bowed and broken by the 2.5 hour superhero slugfest?

Returning to this fan-favorite character – after their exceptional work raising the genre to dizzying, political potboiling heights with Captain America: The Winter Soldier – director brothers Anthony and Joe Russo now take on the unenviable task of adapting a year-long Marvel Comics event (2006’s Civil War) that encompassed hundreds of characters and decades of lore and centered on a contentious feud between Captain America and Iron Man over the very civil liberties that are sliding off the rails in the present-day 2016 presidential election.

Importing this plot, that benefited extensively from comic readers’ knowledge of Marvel Comics’ 50+ years of canon, into a popcorn blockbuster cinematic universe still in its infancy is no mean feat.

More or less, the Russos succeed brilliantly. The directors deftly juggle a baker’s dozen of colorfully clad Avengers, throwing some new ones into the mix (Marvel has to set up Phase 27 of this merchandising empire, naturally!), yet somehow still retaining focus on the character (Chris Evans’ Captain America) around whom the film ostensibly revolves.

Thank heavens for THREE factors which prevent the enterprise from becoming the kind of overpopulated, unholy, confusing movie slog we tend to associate with Marvel’s Distinguished Competition: 1) the Russos balance their reverence for the comics source material with a surgical ability to excise the nerd-centric minutiae, capturing the essence of this allegorical battle for the soul of America; 2) the filmmakers smartly realize Captain America works well onscreen as a sweet-natured, noble everyman whose motivation will always be, first and foremost, that of a 98-pound weakling out-of-touch with the ways of the modern world yet not giving one damn if his desire to put down bullies of every stripe sets him at odds with current mores; and 3) Chris Evans.

Yes, Robert Downey, Jr.’s motormouth Tony Stark (Iron Man), whose oily hustle as a Tin Woodman on steroids is all sparkle and no soul, slapped the verve into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the first place. (He is dynamite, and, while his rust is starting to show, it plays well through that character’s arc as the cynical pragmatist of The Avengers.) However, my money for the heart and soul of these films is and always will be on Evans’ Captain America.

The best bits of the extended Marvel television universe (Agent Carter, later seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) took root in the Captain America films, and the strongest humor and the most heart-tugging pathos have always centered around the character. Captain America: The First Avenger is as kind, humane, and inspiring a film as Marvel has produced, and Winter Soldier was a crackling spin on America’s obsession with a stalwart greatness we’ve never actually possessed.

So why am I a bit crabby this afternoon after viewing Civil War? Maybe it’s just because the pollen count is woefully high here in Michigan. Or the fact that summer is suddenly barreling down upon us, with the idea of five months of yard work less-than-thrilling.

It’s certainly not because there are any issues with Civil War‘s cast, a collection of champs as fine as they come: Scarlett Johansson (bringing Black Widow new levels of compelling internal conflict), Sebastian Stan (a haunted, hulking Winter Soldier), Anthony Mackie (his gleaming loyalty cut with a sly anxiety as Falcon), Jeremy Renner (a world-weary Hawkeye), Don Cheadle (a world-wearier War Machine), Paul Bettany (with a nice touch of metallic angst as The Vision), Paul Rudd (welcome comic relief as Ant-Man), Elizabeth Olsen (dodgy Slavic accent notwithstanding as the tortured Scarlet Witch), newcomers Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland (a glowering, intense Black Panther and a cagey yet-wheeling Spider-Man respectively) and a whole busload of “non-supers” caught in (or causing) the cross-fire (William Hurt, Emily VanCamp, Martin Freeman, Daniel Bruhl, John Slattery, Alfre Woodward, Marisa Tomei, Hope Davis).

There is not one false note among them – which is remarkable given that many of these pros receive mere minutes (if not seconds) of screen time. They all make the most of every moment, neither chewing the scenery nor fading into the background amidst all the pyrotechnics. That is a testament as much to the Russos’ direction as it is to the respective actors’ abilities.

I guess I’m a bit sour because the Marvel Cinematic Universe has started to feel like all work, no play. (And we know what effect that had on Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Not good.) The early films were rife with a joy of discovery and a whimsy that is starting to dissipate around the edges. The evolution of this vast Marvel machinery – all the cogs and spokes and wheels and widgets from the movies to the ABC shows to the NetFlix series to the tie-in books and cartoons and merchandise – is a wonder to behold but can also seem stiflingly corporate. It’s become terribly self-serious, all gravity, no air – each Marvel film trailer now peppered with phrases like “nothing will ever be the same,” “forget everything you know,” “this is the moment everything changes.”

The unrelenting bigness seems antithetical to the “little guy taking on the world” joie de vivre that makes Captain America such a special and uniquely American creation. As Evans’ Cap often declares in these films, to comic effect under the most dire of circumstances, “I can do this all day!” Unfortunately, where the Marvel empire is concerned, that sounds like more of a menacing declaration of war than a scrappy assertion of hope.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.  My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

You’ll never look at Thomas the Tank Engine the same way: Marvel’s Ant-Man

24 July 2015

9 Comments

"Ant-Man poster" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ant-Man_poster.jpg#/media/File:Ant-Man_poster.jpg

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

So, for us comic book nerds, the fact that an “Ant-Man” film even exists is a remarkable achievement. If you’d asked me at age 11 – the absolute peak of my superhero, four-color mania – whether I could envision a day when a character this seemingly obscure to mainstream America would one day get the big budget blockbuster treatment by no less than the Walt Disney Company (by way of Marvel Studios), I would have passed out in a fit of hyperventilating giggles.

Well, geeks do grow up. And make movies, apparently.

So how does Ant-Man, Marvel Studios’ latest cinematic installment (number 12 in the official “Marvel Cinematic Universe” which began with Iron Man), fare with this now-middle-aged, possibly-more-jaded, arguably-cape-and-spandex-fatigued comic fanatic?

Blessedly, its off-kilter quirks ultimately outstrip its more pedestrian corporate intentions, culminating in a zippy fourth-act that marries Marvel’s trademark frat boy jollies with a more subversively refreshing sense of play.

So, said with less pretension, I (more or less) dug it.

The film began life in the hands of celluloid anarchist Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) who eventually walked away from the picture, no doubt when the oppressive merchandising hounds at Disney likely felt things were getting too gleefully weird. In stepped director Peyton Reed (Bring It On, Down with Love – wtf?!?) and screenwriter Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) to bring the film to completion.

Strangely, what we all predicted would be a stylistic train-wreck works better than it should. The bro culture of McKay, the TV-movie pacing of Reed, and the middle-finger-to-the-sky of Wright have yielded the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of superhero films: a little salty, a little sweet, utterly predictable, and pleasantly forgettable.

For the uninitiated, Ant-Man is a character from the early days of Marvel Comics, and his claim to fame (other than being one of the founding members of The Avengers) is that he can shrink to microscopic size and command an army of friendly ants to do his bidding. Now if that isn’t a natural fit for a multi-million-dollar motion picture, what is?

Fortunately, Wright was savvy enough to cast Paul Rudd in the lead role, Rudd’s shaggy dog Gen X entropy having calcified in his 40s into chiseled leading man cynicism and loopy dyspepsia. Rudd’s skewed charms work beautifully in this minor epic, stitching together the otherwise meandering script and giving the proceedings a wide-eyed, mischievous sparkle.

The film is less save-the-planet-from-obliteration (though no film in the genre can totally escape that cliched trope) as it is bonkers heist film. Rudd’s Scott Lang, recently released from prison on a burglary conviction, falls back into old (bad) habits in the hopes of catching up on child-support payments for his estranged daughter. Lang’s ex-wife, portrayed by Judy Greer (again, criminally underused in a big budget tent-pole), is playing house with a cop (Bobby Cannavale – why is this ham still cast in anything?), and Lang takes up with his old gang of misfit toys (led by a preciously addled Michael Pena) to try to set things right.

Eventually, their hijinks lead them to scientist Henry Pym (Michael Douglas being all Michael Douglas-y … boring) and his daughter Hope (a luminous – but tragically bewigged – Evangeline Lilly). Y’see, back in the day, Pym invented the Ant-Man suit to fight big, bad Russkies in the Cold War (or something); Lang steals the suit to make a quick buck (’cause Pym secretly wants him to … of course); and then they all set out together to defeat the real big bad Darren Cross (Corey Stoll, all meaty, glistening sleaze), Pym’s former protege who has taken over Pym’s company and wants to make teeny tiny super soldiers to take over the world.

Good googly wooglies, that is a convoluted plot to try to synopsize. Definitely a script written by a schizophrenically focus-grouped committee.

Regardless, there is more goodhearted fun in any five minutes of Ant-Man than in the entire bloated excess of Avengers: Age of Ultron (a film, by the way, which I didn’t hate … but I don’t remember liking very much three months later either). Ant-Man‘s cast (with the exception of Douglas who just comes off stiff and constipated) is all loose-limbed fun, reveling in a succession of tart and tasty character moments and never taking one damn bit of it too seriously.

The film ends with a Tex Avery high-wire-act of a fight sequence, mining all the comic tension possible from having a hero (and antagonist) who can hide among carpet fibers. You will never look at Thomas the Tank Engine the same way ever again. I only wish the filmmakers (any and all of them) had been so creative, so brave for the entirety of the film. Maybe the next set of Marvel Studio focus groups can offer that feedback for the inevitable sequel(s).

____________________________

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

La Cage Aux Mormons: Derek and Julianne Hough and The Move Live Tour at the Fox Theater, Detroit

18 July 2015

5 Comments

11221501_10206285578157274_7488430663654299396_oSo, for those of you hoping for a review this week of, say, Marvel’s Ant-Man or even Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck? You are getting neither.

Nope, you are getting an (albeit brief) overview of Mormon siblings/Dancing with the Stars alumni Derek and Julianne Hough’s Move Live dance extravaganza at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. 905771_10206285578077272_4772899360683282822_o

Yup, you read that correctly. 11109697_10206285578117273_4376833428147160117_o

John’s birthday present this year consisted of tickets to tonight’s show, given that last year ago he saw Derek on an episode of MTV’s Ridiculousness and got a kick from the Y-chomosomed Hough’s joie de vivre. And I, being the nice, thoughtful soul that I am, bought us tickets.

10985489_10206286234733688_4257423839131278927_oSo, how was it? Not bad. In a Donnie-and-Marie-meets-Magic-Mike-why-are-we-still-so-weirdly-repressed-it’s-2015 sort of way. It’s basically a two-hour episode of DWTS with blessedly little commentary and a few too many inspirational pep talks, all glitz and glamor, fox-trots and lip syncing – a K-Tel cornucopia of pop music and flash-dancing.

11217826_10206285578197275_1372892054322846085_o

11707816_10206286323015895_3521239936071060505_o

Move Live

Back to the show? It is so Branson, Missouri-meets-Baz Lurhmann that I kinda dug it. Move Live is high-energy, filled with up-to-the-minute pop hits, and the Hough siblings can move – no pun intended. Hence, the show is aptly named.

Downside? Julianne (d*mn painful in one of the lead roles in the recent film adaptation of Rock of Ages) insists on singing. A lot. And her voice (charitably put) is like hearing two latex balloons rubbed together. Someone needs to intervene.

However, as a dancer, Julianne is divine … albeit she does remind me of desperate-for-validation cheerleaders with whom I went to high school, so I found her a wee bit exuberantly repulsive at times.

(Some of those aforementioned cheerleaders are firmly in the camp of those who think “pig wrestling” is really awesome now, so that didn’t much help Julianne’s cause. My worlds are colliding in a really unfortunate way this evening.)

11713854_10206286222093372_7765995984257500901_oDerek on the other hand is pretty darn charming. I hadn’t warmed to his gifts from that one episode of Ridiculousness, but, watching him in Move Live, I thought, “Yeah, there’s a star. He has the face of a rat and the body of Michelangelo’s David, but that’s a star.”

Derek sang as often as his sister, and, while his voice isn’t going to put Andrea Bocelli out of work, it’s stronger than Julianne’s.

He also has an engaging presence that had the DTWS-sycophants in the audience eating from the palm of his hand.

Move Live

The numbers ran the gamut from Bruno Mars’ au courant “Uptown Funk” to Christina Aguilera’s pastiche “Candy Man” to Elvis Presley’s moldy chestnut “Jailhouse Rock.” All were delivered with a polish and a joy that one only sees in a Broadway-caliber musical revue. 10873632_10206286215893217_1080407561164823413_o

My snide sh*tty snark aside, the Hough siblings are really d*mned adorable, and I enjoyed myself greatly. I felt like I’d time-traveled to 1979, watching a super-special, family-friendly episode of Solid Gold, starring Donny and Marie, The Carpenters, and Captain and Tennille. 11705498_10206286714585684_924200078516691853_o

And you know what? That’s just fine. If that’s the niche these fabulously talented siblings are destined to fill, then I dare say that this sad and troubling era could use a touch of their Me Decade-inspired sparkle.

#LaCageAuxMormons ____________________________

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital) In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“How can humanity be saved if it doesn’t evolve?” Avengers: Age of Ultron

1 May 2015

16 Comments

"Avengers Age of Ultron" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Avengers_Age_of_Ultron.jpg#/media/File:Avengers_Age_of_Ultron.jpg

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Avengers: Age of Ultron is all you might hope it should be. And that’s part of its problem.

I feel in writing this review that I may as well be discussing a plate of really fabulous spaghetti: so much tasty sameness, so many empty carbs, no discernible beginning/middle/end, satisfying a craving that I didn’t know I had, leaving me a bit bloated … and yet I will happily eat it again after my sense-memory has recovered.

Joss Whedon, beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer architect and director of the first Avengers, returns to helm this sequel. This will be blasphemy to some of my geek brethren, but Whedon is no auteur. (I hold out hope that Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors The Russo Brothers will be the ones who finally deliver The Godfather of superhero genre flicks. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was close but a bit too pompously high-falutin’ for my tastes.) Whedon carries an episodic TV sensibility to his film projects. And that’s ok, but, once you’re aware that he seems to work in 28-minute long “beats,” you start to feel the clock ticking.

And, wowzers, does the clock tick with Ultron. With trailers (and the need to get there so early that you aren’t sitting on the front row gazing up Chris Hemsworth’s flaring Asgardian nostrils), your rear is in a theatre seat nearly three hours. The film is straining at the seams with just so much Marvel muchness that you wonder if a cleaner, clearer narrative had been focus-grouped into this orgiastic merchandising hydra by the good folks at Disney.

Regardless, the film offers much to delight both comic book loons like myself and the average Marvel moviegoer who doesn’t know Ant-Man from an ant, man. (Sorry.)

Whedon wisely knows that the audience for these cinematic beasts adores brightly-lit four-color action peppered with jazzy comic asides and a healthy dose of soap-opera-lite character beats. He also (with the help of super-producer Kevin Feige, who really should be in the movie marketing hall-of-fame at this point) realizes that the perfect ensemble, gifted with acting chops that exceed the material but with a keen sense of wit and gratitude to enjoy the ride anyway, turns a workmanlike summer blockbuster transcendent.

Mark Ruffalo continues to steal the show as beautiful loser Bruce Banner (Hulk), with just the right hint of Bill Bixby’s gloom married to his own shaggy twinkle. Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow) gives as good as she gets in her cat-and-mouse flirtation with Ruffalo, and, while I’m sure most of the audience was squirming/snoozing as they awaited the next CGI-encrusted battle sequence, I really enjoyed those quieter moments.

Similarly, Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton/Hawkeye), who came off as a glowering dullard in previous installments, really gets a chance to exercise his comedic action chops and soulful humanity. I won’t spoil the cinematically invented back-story they layer on Hawkeye, but this fanboy for one was a fan of the fairly significant change the filmmakers made from long-standing comic canon. Hawkeye suddenly becomes the heart and soul of a franchise that hitherto kept him far on the periphery.

The rest of the cast is solid and fun as expected. Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Hemsworth (Thor), and Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man) are frothy delights, offering as much banter this time as they do alpha-male action. Downey is blessedly restrained, offering a hint of unintentionally gleeful malice – an ominous note of what may yet come to the franchise. He is counter-balanced nicely by Evans who telegraphs the audience’s own mounting anxiety over a planet that is quickly becoming overstuffed with people/creatures/beings with too many abilities/too few ethics.

Newcomers include twins Wanda and Pietro Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who weirdly enough played spouses in last year’s Godzilla reboot) and The Vision (Paul Bettany). They are all fine in rather under-written, slightly confusing roles. While it’s fun to see these Marvel legends in the flesh, they really weren’t necessary and detracted from the other characters we’ve come to know and love. This is the danger with all of these comic book movies – how do you keep the nerds (myself included) happy and sell lots of toys without devolving into carnival kitsch? The film skates a fine line and nearly goes over the edge.

Finally, though, this Marvel entry gets its villain so very right (not unlike the oily charisma of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki). Ultron, as voiced by slippery eel James Spader (I’m starting to wonder if Marvel films are where all smart aleck ex-Brat Packers go to die?), is frightening, ominous, charming, and essential. He intones early in the film, “How can humanity be saved if it doesn’t eeeeevooooolve.” (Darn right, brother – I need that needle-pointed on a pillow, stat).

Of course, robotic overlord that he is, Ultron – created by Stark himself as a means of creating “lasting peace” – asserts that the only logical way to create lasting peace is to render all of humanity extinct. Now there is an allegory for our fractious times. I won’t spoil the adventure on how he gets there (I’m not even totally sure I followed all the muddled machinations myself), but I got quite a perverse kick from Spader’s Ultron and his well-intentioned sociopathy.

(I should have never admitted that last bit, I suppose? Maybe Marvel will need someone to play the villain in their next summer opus? Sign me up!)

Go to Avengers: Age of Ultron for the Marvel-fied comfort food … but stay for the dark bon-bon (Spader) at the film’s anarchic core.

____________________________

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews 2

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital) In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.