Tag: Brie Larson

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Captain Marvel

Brie Larson (center) is perfectly adequate as Captain Marvel.

Maybe the best part about making a Captain Marvel movie is that you don’t have to care about continuity or canon, because, where that particular character is concerned, there basically isn’t any.

I knew the basic outlines of the saga of Captain Marvel, but in boning up for the Big Movie Event (TM), I dove into the story, and it’s more convoluted than I remembered. Captain Marvel was a Superman knock off, created the year after Action Comics #1 was published, who became the most popular comic book character of the 1940s. After Detective Comics (DC) sued the tights off Fawcett Comics, they took control of the character and changed the name to Shazam, which had been Captain Marvel’s catchphrase. Meanwhile, Marvel comics figured they need Captain Marvel for obvious reasons, and made a legally questionable deal with the smoking ruins of Fawcett to introduce their own Captain Marvel. Marvel’s Marvel never really caught on, but the terms of their contract said they had to publish at least every two years or lose the copyright, so they kept rebooting the character for decades. Captain Marvel has been an alien super soldier, a New Orleans cop, a clone, the sister of a clone, and some other stuff. She’s been a woman on and off since about 1982, but DC already beat them to that punch with their only good movie, Wonder Woman. So as far as the Marvel Cinematic Universe is concerned, they could go nuts with Captain Marvel—if they wanted to.

Say what again to Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Maybe it would have been better if they had gone nuts. But the MCU has reached such a state of complexity, story wise, that many of Captain Marvel’s beats have been preordained for years. Ironically, in the light of the post-Oscar kerfuffle about Netflix productions not really being movies, but rather TV productions that should instead be eligible for Emmys, the theatrical business’ current cash cow is basically a TV series in its last season. (Further evidence of the film/TV narrative convergence: The final season of Game of Thrones will be six episodes, each as long as a feature film.) This prompts the question I’ve seen on social media: “Will I enjoy Captain Marvel if I’ve only seen less than half of the Marvel movies?” The answer is, sure, if you like going to the movies, you’ll probably dig it. The craftsmanship is impeccable, the actors likable, lasers are blasted, stuff blows up real good, and there’s a cute kitty. Besides, after Avengers: Infinity Wars, we all know how it ends, right? The ship sinks, and Captain Marvel is the deus ex machina.

Surf’s up for Ben Mendolsohn as Talos the Skrull.

Playing the infinitely powered god in the well-oiled Marvel machine is Brie Larson, one of her generation’s finest screen actresses, stacking that paper. The current comic Captain Marvel (who is actually younger than the MCU) is a test pilot turned irradiated super-being Carol Danvers, so Larson plays her as basically a gender flipped Chuck Yeager. She’s got a few wooden moments here and there, but really shines in the middle passage, when the film becomes a buddy cop movie between an amnesiac uberwoman and a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson as young, binocular Nick Fury.

This is, of course, a “hero finding her powers” origin story, but it’s not quite by the numbers. What writer/director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck get right here is Danvers’ shifting identity, and uncertainty of who, exactly, the good guys and bad guys are. This gives Ben Mendelsohn, who previously worked with Boden and Fleck on Mississippi Grind, a lot to chew on as the shapeshifting Talos the Skrull. Annette Bening was no doubt happy to add “Supreme Intelligence” to her IMDB listing. She, Jude Law as Kree commando Yon-Rogg, and Clark Gregg as beloved Colsen, Agent of Shield, are all welcome presences. Lashana Lynch is good as Danvers’ human partner Maria Rambeau—a character who herself was Captain Marvel in the mid-’80s.

Sometimes Brie Larson glows.

I’ve said before that all you need to do to get a good review out of me is to get the fundamentals right, and Captain Marvel certainly does that. It’s a state-of-the-art entertainment product, just like Alita: Battle Angel, the other $150 million film currently in theaters about a woman with amnesia who turns out to be a morally compromised alien super soldier with a heart of gold. Only this one has more familiar branded characters from Disney. Enjoy, consumers!

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Film Features Film/TV

Free Fire

The only time I ever fired a gun, I did so at the behest of coworkers on a lunch break. Terrified of holding something that could accidentally kill, I immediately pointed in the direction of the target, fired until it was empty so I could hand it back, and took no joy. Guns are primarily a filmic thing for me. They are how a character declares dominance over another or mastery over the plot. They deliver tragedy, finality, and twists.

Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump’s Free Fire is squarely in the canon of purely cinematic bulletry. In a rundown 1970s American warehouse, gun dealers and IRA members meet to facilitate a sale of M16s. The deal goes bad, and all parties become trapped in the warehouse shooting at each other. They’re character actors (Sharlto Copley, Noah Taylor), at first expressive in outdated slang and hair and then, as everyone is nicked and becomes woozy from loss of blood, through increasingly odd pronouncements. They tease each other across the way, laugh, call timeouts, forget which side they’re on, and generally behave like little kids at play. The gunfight is the entire film. Like other action movies, it doesn’t lead to much more than murder, but Wheatley and Jump’s art-film care is evident. The fun is in how intricately far gone the situation can become. Each person gets pinned down in his own little corner of the warehouse. Geography-wise, we often can’t tell who is aiming at whom, but the lack of clarity adds to the tension. I worried every talking head onscreen would explode.

Free Fire is an improvement over the couple’s previous High-Rise, which also concerned slow entropy toward murder in a ramshackle space. Adapting J.G. Ballard’s novel about a societal collapse occurring only within one 1970s apartment building, they never found a way to make its absurdity more than clinical and detached, full of beautiful images but airless. Here there is mood and momentum, but the visuals are less intricate. The warehouse starts as a color-corrected swath of yellow and black, but as the fight goes on, the colors open up: the red of a van, the brown of Armie Hammer’s scruff, the various liquids and solids that come out of and fall onto everyone.

Hammer’s Ord (probable surname Nance) stands out for his goofy self-regard. As bullets weaken him, he goes from broad-shouldered alpha male to chummy raconteur using a crowbar for a cane. Lounge lizard Vern (Copley) is also memorable, a more insecure showboat. Blood loss leads him to dress in cardboard armor to protect against sepsis, and the various substances that coat him eventually make him look like a gray-headed werewolf. As their arms and legs start failing, I took it as metaphor for old age felling cocks of the walk.

Brie Larson and Cillian Murphy, the prettiest and with the least disagreeable traits, play the nominal audience-identification figures. Wheatley and Jump care about the plot a little in regard to Larson’s femininity versus all the boys, who forego shooting at her for a while out of gentlemanly courtesy. But the bro-hood that develops among the shooters, the sense of comradeship and childlike play, is the film’s best note.

Free Fire is more successful than the recent Belko Experiment, which used a Battle Royale template to satirize the workplace and rang hollow. Here we have Reservoir Dogs crossed with the comedic fights from Pineapple Express. What the tone does is undermine action like the lionized shootout in Heat, where the accurate, deafening gunfire sounds and military precision of the bank robbers subconsciously celebrate their form and machismo. Free Fire brings to mind a nice moment in The Assassination of Jesse James, when an 1800s gun behaves accurately for the period and misfires, costing its owner his life.

Cinema is love of image, and a man with a gun is a conductor with a baton, calling the world to his will. It is important to be able to call him a buffoon. The men dying in this fictional warehouse are venal, squabbling, and manic. Their anthem is an ironic John Denver eight-track left playing in a van. There is nothing ennobling about their violence. But there is humanity in the mistakes that bump them off, and black comedy in the stupid, small ways life can drain from us all.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Year in Film 2015

It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.

Worst Picture: Pixels

I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.

Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.

Most Divisive: Inherent Vice

Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.

Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room

Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.

Chewbacca

Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca

Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.

Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.

Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace

In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.

Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows

What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.

Best Animation: Inside Out

The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.

It Follows

Best Horror: It Follows

The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.

Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl

2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.

Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.

Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy

The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.

Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.

Sicario

Best Cinematography: Sicario

From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.

He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies

While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”

To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”

Well, yeah, I am.

Hot Topic: Journalism

Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.

Had To Be There: The Walk

Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.

MVP: Samuel L. Jackson

First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?

Best Documentary: Best of Enemies

Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.

Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road

From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.

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Film Features Film/TV

Room

A lot of things happen when you grow up, but one of the most important is a widening of your point of view. That’s the major theme of Room, the remarkable new film by Irish director Lenny Abrahamson — although at first glance, it might not be obvious. But the pleasures of Room (not to be confused with The Room, the so-bad-it’s-good cult hit by Tommy Wiseau) aren’t dependent on immediately grasping the deeper meaning. It’s an extraordinarily well-crafted indie film that shows what is possible with a limited budget, a good screenplay, and a clear vision.

The point of view that gets expanded in Room belongs to Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a 5-year-old boy who starts the film with a long, luxurious head of hair that would be the envy of a L’Oréal model. His hair is so long because he has been trapped in a single room with his mother Joy Newsome (Brie Larson) for the entirety of his short life. It is also, like Samson, the source of his “strong.”

The room Joy and Jack share is tiny and squalid, with an open toilet set next to a sink, and only a tiny TV for entertainment. But mother and son have carved out a simple existence that is, if not happy, at least content in each other’s company. Despite their isolation, Jack has learned to speak and evolved a fairly consistent worldview. Because there is only one of everything, there is not much need for articles such as “the” and “a,” so “door” refers to the only door he’s ever known, the thick, steel one with the number pad-operated lock that keeps him from finding out about the outside world. He knows that “TV people are flat and made of colors,” a little Zen koan containing hidden wisdom if ever I heard one. But he’s not too clear on just what goes on beyond the sole skylight in Room‘s ceiling, or what happens when Joy’s captor Old Nick comes to visit, and he is forced to spend the night in the tiny closet. But from the sounds his mother makes, it’s not good.

Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson in Room

I went into Room knowing basically nothing about it — a strategy I find increases my engagement with the many movies I review — and I found the slow revelation of the facts of Joy and Jack’s imprisonment in Room extremely rewarding. Knowing how to dole out information at exactly the right pace is one of the hardest skills to learn for a director. Hitchcock was a master at it, as you can tell from watching Strangers on a Train, to cite just one example. Abrahamson’s clearly been studying Hitch, and I don’t want to spoil his hard work by revealing too much plot detail here. Suffice it to say that Jack and Joy do finally find their way into the outside world, where they find much greater challenges than mere survival.

Given the hermetic nature of the first hour or so of Room, its success depends solely on the performances of its two leads. Larson is more than up to the challenge. She was most recently seen as Amy Schumer’s uptight, judgmental sister in Trainwreck, but the depth of her performance here has only been hinted at in her previous work, including her starmaking turn in Short Term 12. We follow Joy from maternal happiness to grim determination to exultant freedom and on into existential despair, and it all plays out on Larson’s subtle, expressive face. Equally impressive is Jacob Tremblay, who gives the kind of unself-aware performance as Jack that most older actors can only dream of. I can only imagine the depth of the collaboration between Larson and director Abrahamson that put this 9-year-old into the proper headspace to create such a rich character. I expect to see Academy Award nominations for both actors. Superbly constructed and passionately made, Room is the kind of rare indie jewel that only comes around once every few years.

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Trainwreck vs. Ant-Man

Last weekend’s box office race involved two seeming opposites: Marvel’s Ant-Man and Trainwreck, the collaboration between comedy titans Amy Schumer and Judd Apatow. But after a Sunday double feature of the two films, I was struck by their similarities and what they say about the current risk-averse environment in Hollywood.

Ant-Man stars Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, a former electrical engineer whom we first meet as he is being released from San Quentin, where he was doing time for a Robin-Hood robbery of his corrupt former employer. His wife Maggie (Judy Greer) has divorced him and is living with their daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) and her new boyfriend, Paxton (Bobby Cannavale). Scott tries to go straight, but after he’s fired from his job at Baskin-Robbins, in one of the more creative product placement sequences in recent memory, he takes his friend Luis (Michael Peña) up on his idea to break into a Victorian mansion and clean out a mysterious basement vault.

But, as the comic book fates would have it, the mansion is the home of one Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), an old-school superscientist who discovered a way to reduce the space between atoms and thus shrink himself down to the size of an insect. For years, he and his wife operated in secret as a superteam of Ant-Man and the Wasp. After a desperate mission for S.H.I.E.L.D. to stop World War III, she disappeared into subatomic space, and he took off his supersuit and vowed to keep the world-changing and potentially dangerous technology under wraps.

Under Pym’s tutelage, Scott sets out to stop the scientist’s former protegee Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) from selling his own version of the shrinking technology to the evil forces of Hydra by stealing a high-tech Iron Man-type suit called the Yellowjacket.

Ant-Man is not as good as this year’s other Marvel offering, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, but it scores points for originality. Written by Attack the Block‘s Joe Cornish and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World‘s Edgar Wright, who was originally slated to direct, the film tries — and mostly succeeds — to combine an Ocean‘s Eleven-style heist flick with a superhero story in the same tonal range as Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. It’s burdened with the traditional origin-story baggage, but the sequence where Scott discovers the powers of the Ant-Man supersuit by shrinking himself in the bathtub and fleeing running water, hostile insects, and a vacuum cleaner is another triumph for special effects wizards Industrial Light & Magic. Rudd, a veteran of many Apatow comedies, including Knocked Up, is exactly the right guy to sell the mix of comedy and superheroics, and some sparks fly with furtive love interest Evangeline Lilly as Pym’s double agent daughter Hope van Dyne. For the sections of its 117-minute running time when it’s focusing on its core plot, Ant-Man is a good time at the movies.

For Trainwreck, Amy Schumer’s vehicle for transforming basic cable stardom into a feature film career, she surrounded herself with some very heavy hitters. First and foremost is Apatow, the producer, director, and writer with his fingers in everything from The 40-Year-Old Virgin to Girls. The pair execute Schumer’s first feature-length screenplay with verve. Schumer stars as Amy, a New York magazine journalist who is basically a fleshed-out version of her public persona. In a sharp inversion of the usual romantic comedy formula, she is a quick-witted, commitment-phobic hookup artist dating a hunky man-bimbo named Steven (John Cena), who just wants to get married, settle down, and raise a basketball team’s worth of sons in a house in the country. Soon after her chronic infidelity torpedoes her relationship, she is assigned to write about a prominent sports doctor named Aaron (Bill Hader), who counts LeBron James among his patients. The two hit it off, and she soon violates her “never sleep over” rule with him.

If this were a traditional Rom-Com, and Amy’s character were male and played by, say, Tim Meadows (who is one of the dozens of comedic talents who have cameos), I would be calling him a ladies man. Schumer is practically daring people to expose the double standard by calling her a slut. Her effortless performance proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that she has chops to carry a feature film. Apatow is savvy enough to give her a long leash, giving her scenes time to breathe, selecting some choice improvs, and letting barrages of comic exchanges live in two-shots. Hadler finds himself in the unfamiliar role of the straight man to Schumer’s cutup, but he acquits himself well in what is essentially the Meg Ryan role from When Harry Met Sally. Practically everyone in the film’s supporting hoard of comics and sports figures also gives a good turn. Tilda Swinton is stiletto sharp as Dianna, Amy’s conscience-free magazine editor boss. Dave Attell is consistently funny as a homeless man who acts as Amy’s Greek chorus. Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei slay as the leads in a black-and-white art film called The Dogwalker that the film’s characters keep trying to watch. Matthew Broderick, Marv Albert, and tennis superstar Chris Evert share a funny scene. But the biggest surprise is LeBron James, who shines with confidence and humor every time he’s on the screen. For the sections of its 124-minute running time that it focuses on Amy’s romantic foibles, Trainwreck is a good time at the movies.

But that’s the rub for both Ant-Man and Trainwreck. They both spend way too much time straying from what an M.B.A. would call their “core competencies.” In the case of Ant-Man, the distractions are twofold. First is the now-predictable, awkward shoehorning of scenes intended to connect the film to the larger cinematic universe. As his first test, Pym assigns Scott to steal a technological bauble from a S.H.I.E.L.D warehouse, prompting a superclash between Ant-Man and fellow Marvel C-lister Falcon (Anthony Mackie). The allegedly vital piece of equipment is never mentioned again.

Second is the turgid subplot involving Scott’s efforts to reconnect with his daughter Cassie, and her would-be stepfather Paxton’s attempts to put him back in jail. When Scott is having trouble using Pym’s ant-control technology, Hope tells him to concentrate on how much he wants to reunite with his daughter. The moment rings completely false in context: If you’re trying to talk to ants, shouldn’t you be concentrating on ants? The intention seems to be to make Scott a more sympathetic character, but Rudd’s quick-quipping charisma makes that unnecessary. Why spend the time on flimsy sentiment when we can be playing to Ant-Man’s strengths?

Similarly, Trainwreck gets bogged down in a superfluous subplot involving Amy’s sister Kim (Brie Larson) and their father Gordon (Colin Quinn). It starts promisingly enough in the very first scene of the movie when Gordon explains to young Kim and Amy why he and their mother are getting a divorce (“Do you love your doll? How would you like it if you could only play with that one doll for the rest of your life?”). But then, we flash forward to the present day, and Gordon has been admitted to an assisted living facility, which becomes a source of friction between the sisters. Quinn is woefully miscast as a disabled old man, especially when he’s sitting next to veteran actor and actual old man Norman Lloyd. The subplot is seemingly there only for cheap sentiment, and it drags on and on, adding an unacceptable amount of running time to what should be a fleetly paced comedy. As we left the theater, my wife overheard a woman asking her friend how the film was. “I like it okay,” she said. “I thought it was never going to end, though.”

When Ant-Man is kicking pint-sized ass and Amy Schumer is schticking it up, their respective movies crackle with life. Hollywood is filled with smart people, and I can’t believe that an editor didn’t point out that the films could be improved by excising their phony sentimental scenes. So why didn’t these films achieve greatness? I submit it is another symptom of the studio’s increasingly crippling risk aversion. All films must be all things to all audiences to hit the so-called “four quadrants” of old and young, male and female, so raunchy comedies get extraneous schmaltz and lightweight comic book movies get weighed down with irrelevant family drama. Both Ant-Man and Trainwreck end up like rock albums with lackluster songwriting filled with killer guitar solos. They’re entertaining enough but haunted by the greatness that could have been.

Ant-Man
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Trainwreck
Now showing
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