Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and the Wasp; fantasy action, USA, 2018; D: Peyton Reed, S: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Walton Goggins, Michael Douglas, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Tip "T.I." Harris, David Dastmalchian, Hannah John-Kamen, Abby Ryder Fortson, Randall Park, Laurence Fishburne, Michelle Pfeiffer 

Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, is counting the last days before the official end of his house arrest. However, he has to use the shrinking suit to secretly flee from the house and help scientist Hank Pym to find and enlarge his wife Janet who is trapped in a sub-atomic level shrunk state, but a Ava Starr, who became the victim of a failed experiment that made her molecularly unstable, wants to use Janet to become solid again, in an experiment that may kill Janet. Scott also teams up with Hope, Hank's daughter, who uses another shrinking suit. At the same time, criminal Burch wants to steal Hank's technology to sell it to the black market. Using the shrinking suit, Scott stops Burch, Janet is returned to normal levels, and Ava is healed. When Scott goes to sub-atomic level for an experiment, Hank and Janet dissolve due to Thanos' snap, leaving Scott stranded there.

The 2nd film in the Ant-Man stand-alone film series and the 20th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Ant-Man and the Wasp" is a rather routine and bland story that was saved thanks to a great action chase sequence in the finale. Paul Rudd is charming as the hero Scott Lang, yet most of his lines seem as if they were written on the spot, without much ingenuity or strategy planned beforehand. Like most of marvel films, this one is also a naive, carefree kids movie with a 100 million $ budget, a light fun that has no pretense to aim at anything higher, yet it is like sweets: you just can't resist it. The silly-bogus story is enriched thanks to a lot of humor. Most of that humor is hackneyed: in one sequence, Ant-Man's suit malfunctions, so he is shrunk to be 3'5 ft tall, so when the secretly exits a school to enters the car, Hank makes a joke: "Hiya champ, how was school today?" There is certainly too much 'exposition' in the plot, buying time all until the great chase sequence, which is where the authors rise to the occasion: several creative ideas in using the power of shrinking and enlarging are used there. For instance, how to steal a laboratory? By simply shrinking the entire building to the size of a box, and then taking it away in the car. How to stop someone during a car chase? Enlarge a PEZ toy and throw it out on them. While driving on the streets, Hope shrinks her van to the size of a toy, goes under the vehicle of the bad guys, and then enlarges her van again to normal size, thereby tipping the villains underneath. And Ant-Man's suit malfunctions again, so he enlarges himself to be 20 ft tall, and uses a trucks as a skateboard. If at least the whole first 90 minutes of the film were as fun at this finale, "Ant-Man and the Wasp" would have been better, yet it is enough to enjoy it.

Grade:++

The Navigator

The Navigator; silent comedy, USA, 1924; D: Buster Keaton, Donald Crisp, S: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Frederick Vroom

A rich guy proposes a girl, his neighbor, but she declines. However, he still decides to go on a honeymoon, all by himself, on a luxury ship. Spies send the ship of their rival country at war adrift in the sea at night, with the guy asleep inside. Unbeknownst to him, the girl was also on the ship. The two thus try to survive out in the sea, all alone on a ship, cooking and waiting to meet another ship. They get stranded on an island where cannibals attack them, but the couple is saved on the sea when a submarine emerges and picks them up.

One of Buster Keaton's lesser films, "The Navigator" isn't a classic due to several empty walks, but it has several well thought out jokes and creative stunts to still offer an enjoyable experience. The idea of a 'Robinson Crusoe'-couple stuck on a ship sailing in the middle of the sea is a hit-and-miss affair, since at times it works (the funny sequence where the girl, who thinks she might be alone on the ship, is calling out for someone, while the guy tries to reach her, but since they are running around and around the ship's cabin they keep avoiding each other due to equal distance), but at other times feels overstretched and not always interesting. The highlight is the genius sequence where the couple thinks the ship is haunted: during night, the girl throws away a painting of a scary looking man, but the painting gets stuck and swings outside the window of the guy, who sees a face appearing and disappearing in the dark, so he runs away in panic, with a sheet over his head, thereby scaring the girl who came out to the hallway, who thinks it is a ghost. Afterwards, it takes a whole 20 minutes until the film repeats anything that comes close to being so much fun, the couple fighting off cannibals storming their ship, and the guy having a "sword duel" with a swordfish underwater. A fun film, to a certain extent, while Keaton is again dedicated to his performance.

Grade:++

Venom

Venom; fantasy, USA, 2018; D: Ruben Fleischer, S: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, Reid Scott

Two symbiotic alien lifeforms brought from a comet through a space probe to Earth escape. One keeps changing from body to body of humans and hiding there. The other one is studied in a lab run by CEO Drake, who experiments if it can merge with humans by locking it up with homeless people, who always die from the symbiosis. Investigating these criminal experiments, reporter Eddie Brock is accidentally infected with the symbiote, Venom, but somehow survives, and is able to either hide it inside his body or use its powers for help. When the other symbiote takes control over Drake, it wants to use a spaceship launch to bring the other symbiotes from the comet to attack Earth. However, Venom is able to cause and explosion on the rocket, killing the symbiote. Eddie makes up with his ex-girlfriend, Anne.

An adaptation of Marvel comic books, "Venom" is a standard fantasy with more routine than interesting moments, yet those interesting moments which are there stand out. "Venom" works the best in these scenes when it aligns itself with the director Ruben Fleischer's sense for outrageous humor, and they appear mostly in the middle of the film, when the protagonist Eddie (Tom Hardy) has surreal reactions to his symbiosis with the alien Venom in his body, some of which almost reach the levels of comedy. One is the restaurant sequence, where a demented Eddie tries to talk to Anne and her boyfriend at their table, but suddenly stretches out his hand, grabs a steak from a waiter, bites it, spits it out, and complains: "This is dead!" Eddie then feels hot, and so he walks into a water tank, and eats a lobster there. In another sequence, Eddie walks by a pedestrian (cameo by Stan Lee) and pets its dog, but Venom's voice tells him: "Wait, this looks delicious", reffering to the dog. The movie needed more of such sequences, since the story is rather lukewarm, with bland, banal dialogues, though with some better action and chase sequences. Michelle Williams was sadly underrused in her one-dimensional role as Anne. While not much of a point other than being an introduction to a film series, "Venom" is still a solid entertainment.

Grade:+

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World; disaster film tragicomedy, USA, 2012; D: Lorene Scafaria, S: Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Adam Brody, Derek Luke, William Petersen, Martin Sheen, Patton Oswalt

An asteroid is approaching Earth and will destroy all life in three weeks. Among the people who accepted their fate is Dodge, whose wife left him. He encounters his neighbor, Penny, who also broke up with her boyfriend. After a riot around their neighborhood, Dodge and Penny embark on a journey in a car to Delaware, where Dodge's former crush, Olive, lives. She wrote a letter that Dodge was the love of her life, but he just recently found the notice. Finally at Olive's home, Dodge just leaves her a letter and returns to Penny, since he fell in love with the latter. Dodge's dad, a pilot, is supposed to fly Olive to England to her family, but she returns to Dodge. They lie in bed, confessing love, as the asteroid hits in the background.

An unusual apocalypse (tragi)comedy that works as some sort of humorous eddition of von Trier's "Melancholia", "Seeking a Friend..." is a good, albeit only moderately successful blend of funny-optimistic and depressive-bleak elements, since this mishmash of disparate moods is not able to unify the movie into a whole. The most was achieved out of its two great actors, Keira Knightley in an unusual turn as a comedian, and the always wonderful Steve Carell, an experienced comedian on the field. In one of the best jokes, their characters, Penny and Dodge, have to bury the assassinated truck driver Glenn, who picked them up. Just as Dodge places the last piece of soil on the grave, he asks her: "I'll drive. Do you have the keys?", and Penny looks down, at the burial site of Glenn. Dodge gets it, then picks up the shovel and starts digging up the soil all over again. In another inspired moment, Penny realizes she forgot to forward an important letter to Dodge, so they have this exchange:"I did ruin your life." - "No you didn't. I had a really long head start." The movie's themes contemplate about fatalism, existentialism, and how people sometimes have to accept the inevitable fate, in this case an asteroid crash, so Penny and Dodge are two people trying to experience one last adventure before death. The whole movie is basically about dying, especially in the second half, yet it is a pity it is limited at conjuring up some more profound, poetic moments with a higher ingenuity and philosophy, since many dramatic moments feel flat. Luckily, the movie avoids turning melancholic or melodramatic, and is restrained for most of the time, delivering a different kind of movie than expected. 

Grade:++

Birdies

Birdies; comedy, USA, 2022; D: Troy Carlton, S: Ryan O’Flanagan, Zach Hanner, Nate Panning, Jamie Lane, Sydney Penny, Richard Wenz, Lily Nicole, Aerli Austen

Jake, a cockroach exterminator, loses his job and thus accepts the position of a golfer at the Twin Pines golf club, a derelict establishment run by Conroy. When Jake was in a college golf team, he caused trouble while drunk, which made him quit alcohol and golf, so he is hiding anything golf-related to his girlfriend. When Jarvis, the Head of the rival Magnolia Pointe club, places a bet with Conroy over a golf tournament, Jake is tasked with heading the Twin Pines team “Birdies”. Jake thus enters the match against Adrian of Magnolia Pointe...

Made in the vein of “Caddyshack” and “Happy Gilmore”, independent golf comedy film “Birdies” is a fun little ‘slacker’ flick that has enough wacky humor to fill out its running time. It has crassness, yet it luckily avoids vulgarity. However, it charms more with the enthusiasm of its actors than with actually successful jokes they should be transmitting: the humor is good to lukewarm, but it lacks a truly hilarious sequence that would stand out in the film. Rather, its humor is in the package of numerous little chuckles and giggles dispersed throughout. Adrien, the rival from the Magnolia Pointe club, played by the very energetic and enthusiastic Jamie Lane, is the highlight of the movie, and steals every scene he is in. In one sequence, he storms the Twin Pines facility with his two assistants and then proceeds to make fun of protagonist Jake and the Twin Pines staff. After a heated argument, Adrien turns to his two assistants and says: “Hold me back!”, as they place their arms over him, and then he starts jumping angrily: “Hey, man, you’re lucky they are holding me back, bro!” Afterwards, he again turns to Jake and shouts: “I promise you Baxter, I am a huge asshole!”, as Jake replies: “Why are you bragging about that?!” Here and there, certain snappy dialogues are bound to cause a chuckle, proving that with a little effort, the screenwriters can come up with clever jokes (“I am Pansexual”. - “What does that mean? You have sex with cookware?”). For the most part, they settle for low-brow humor that is accessible, and it mostly works (when Conroy is given his mobile phone in the hospital, he admits to his assistant he will just be using it for porn, as he types in aloud: “Grandma goes wild...”), displaying the old rule that the viewers root for the underdogs trying to prove themselves against the snobby villains. A big problem is that the tournament in the finale lacks jokes, since it seems the movie ran out of punchnlines in the last 15-20 minutes, settling for a standard sports contest. Despite its omissions and lukewarm moments at time, it doesn’t matter, since the only thing that matters here is just the way it makes you feel: it is a ‘hangout’ film that has a positive vibe thanks to the easily relatable characters.

Grade:++

The Worst Person in the World

Verdens verste menneske; drama, Norway / France / Denmark / Sweden, 2021; D: Joachim Trier, S: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum

Oslo. Julie (28) first studies medicine, but then changes her mind to study psychology, and then to study photography. She meets a comic book artist, Aksel (44), and starts a relationship with him after he told her they should separate. However, Julie becomes bored with him, too, and starts an affair with Eivind, a coffee barista. When Aksel expresses his wish to have a child, Julie breaks up with him and starts a relationship with Eivind, who breaks up with his girlfriend, the ecological extremist Sunniva. Julie finds out Aksel has pancreatic cancer, and thus breaks up with Eivind. She was pregnant, but lost the fetus is a miscarriage. Aksel dies. Years later, Julie is a film set photographer, and spots Eivind with his wife and child.  

“The Worst Person in the World” from the title, at least within the world of this film, is Julie (very good Renate Reinsve), a symbol of ADHD generation that can never be satisfied in the long-term with something and thus always gets bored after a few months, thus destroying two lives of her boyfriends with her spoiled nature, yet she never does it deliberately, which makes her a tragic character who never knows what she really wants in life. Julie thus carries the entire film, an example of the idiom “You can’t sit on two chairs at the same time”, yet she is so indecisive because she doesn’t know how to find her place in the world or what she wants (at one point, she even says she feels only like a supporting character in her own life), which makes the story more human. The film starts off conventionally, slowly, yet it picks up after half an hour and starts to intrigue more. The director Joachim Trier shakes up the stale story with two surreal sequences that liven it up: in the first, poetic one, after her dissatisfaction with boyfriend Aksel, Julie presses the light switch in the kitchen, and time suddenly freezes all around her, as she imagines to flee the apartment, walk on the street through dozens of “frozen” pedestrians, to go to her new love, Eivind, who works in a coffee shop, as the two walk away and spend the night (!) while for everyone else time stopped. In the second one, the nastier, more grotesque one, Julie tries a drug in the apartment, and has weird hallucinations that her young head is on a body of a naked 70-year old woman. Trier also uses humor to expand on these ‘slice-of-life’ characters, such as the funny moment where comic book artist Aksel laments to his acquaintances that the movie poster for his darkly satirical comic book about a lynx has been turned into a kid’s movie akin to Chip and Dale. Not everything works, though. The terminal cancer subplot feels awkwardly misplaced, even though Trier avoided turning it into a melodrama; some plot threads lead nowhere; whereas the script needed better dialogues. Overall, “The Worst Person...” is very good, but there is still something missing to be a truly great film.  

Grade:+++

Reversal of Fortune

Reversal of Fortune; drama, USA, 1990; Barbet Schroeder, S: Ron Silver, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Annabella Sciorra, Jack Gilpin, Fisher Stevens, Christine Baranski, Felicity Huffman

In December 1 9 7 9, the rich heiress Sunny von Bülow falls inexplicably into a coma, but is revived in the hospital. A year later, the maid finds her unconscious in bed, lying next to her husband, Claus von Bülow, and calls the ambulance. Sunny falls into a coma to never wake up again, having 14 times higher blood sugar levels than normal. An insulin syringe is found in the house. Claus would inherit millions of dollars in the case of her death. Her two kids hire a private prosecutor who indictes Claus, who is sentenced on a trial for attempted murder. For the appeal case, Claus hires lawyer Alan Derschowitz, who reluctantly accepts the case. Alan questions Claus, who claims to be innocent. New details emerge, including that Sunny had hypoglycemia, yet still ate a lot of sugary foods, drank alcohol and took pharmaceutical drugs. At the appeal, Alan convinces the court that Sunny was not injected with insulin, but that the coma came from alcohol and drugs. Claus is declared not guilty.

Based on the Sunny von Bülow case, “Reversal of Fortune” starts out like an Agatha Christie-style whodunit crime mystery, yet it gradually shifts to a meditation on the legal standard of “Beyond a reasonable doubt”, contemplating how difficult it is to reach a conclusion if someone is guilty or not when weighing the totality of the evidence, thereby reaching philosophical spheres of the limits of epistemology. The film’s opening act has Sunny’s body narrating from a coma (!) in an ingenious metafilm idea reminiscent of Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard”, explaining to the viewers what was found, and it really seems suspicious: Sunny is lying unconscious in bed, her husband Claus sitting right next to her, reading a book, until the maid has to persuade him to call an ambulance. An insulin syringe is found in the house, even though Sunny is not a diabetic. 

At first, the case seems clear, he is guilty, but as lawyer Alan Derschowitz appeals the case and questions Claus, one is not so sure what happened anymore. Claus is played brilliantly by Jeremy Irons, the acting maestro who hereby gives his role of a lifetime. Claus is sleazy, spoiled, a wannabe aristocrat, yet he also has some strangely appealing ‘sleaze charm’ and impeccable manners. During a dinner with Alan and his law students, he even jokes on his own behalf: “What do you call a fear of insulin? Claus-traphobia”. As they are walking outside, Alan and Claus have this exchange: “All right, my friend...” - “Friend? I like that.” - “Nothing personal...” The movie makes a “Rashomon”-style presentation of mutiple possibilities—in one, Alan allows for a possibility that it was an accident, caused by a deadly combination of Sunny’s hypoglycemia, alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs; in the other theory, he presumes that Sunny deliberately tried to kill herself, and that Claus didn’t want to react, but just remained passive to let her go—allowing for the viewers to decide for themselves. The biggest flaw is that director Barbet Schroeder didn't show the appeals trial at the end, since it would have been interesting to hear the witnesses, and instead just focused of Alan's preparations for the trial. "Reversal of Fortune" is something like a 'Schrödinger's cat' among crime trial dramas—he may have been guilty, or he may have not been, yet either way the movie intrigues until the end.

Grade:+++

The Sucker

Le Corniaud; comedy, France / Italy, 1965; D: Gérard Oury, S: André Bourvil, Louis de Funès, Venantino Venantini, Henri Genes, Beba Lončar, Alida Chelli  

Paris. While driving, Saroyan, a CEO of a company, accidentally hits and destroys the car of Antoine, a man who wanted to go to a vacation. Saroyan feigns to compensate this by offering Antoine a paid gig to drive a Cadillac from Naples to Bordeaux, but in reality, Saroyan is connected to the mob, and is smuggling heroin, diamonds and gold to France hidden in the car, and the naive Antoine is an ideal mule. Saroyan secretly trails him in another car. Antoine picks up a girl, Ursula, and they travel along the coast before she goes in a different way. At the border inspection, Antoine spots the police searching Saroyan's car. He realizes he was framed, and thus calls his friends at the police and has them arrest Saroyan and his gang. When crashing the Cadillac in a store, and finding a diamond in the car's horn, Antoine is himself arrested and sent in the same car with Saroyan.

The first out of four joint movies made by the director Gerard Oury and comedian Louis de Funes, “The Sucker” is a light, accessible comedy that works as a parody inversion of the “The French Connection”, following a naive man who is unaware he is a mule who smuggles heroin and diamonds in a car through the border, as well as a restructured forerunner to “Smokey and the Bandit”, since the driver is secretly trailed by the CEO in another car. “The Sucker” became a surprise success, becoming the 4th highest grossing French film in France of the 20th century by selling 12,000,000 tickets at the local box office, yet today it fares less and did not retain its popularity factor due to a routine execution of the interesting story. The most was achieved out of de Funes, here in an untypical role of the villain, CEO Saroyan, who already gains charm in the opening sequence: even though his car hit him, and Antoine's car collapsed in pieces as a consequence, Saroyan simply says: "It's not that bad, it's only a scratch!" A neat running gag has Antoine accidentally losing all the secret goods along the way—he sends his bent car bumper for a repair, but as the car mechanic starts melting it, all the gold flows out of it; during a chase, a shootout hits the Cadillac's rear, and its two holes "spray" all the heroin in the air; Antoine throws away the old accumulator into the sea, and as it falls, hidden diamonds fall out of it—and thus by the time he reaches the border, he is inadvertently cleared of all troubles, since the border police cannot find anything left in the Cadillac. A lot of gags fail or feel forced (for instance, one lame one just has the chubby Saroyan taking a shower with a bodybuilder, and thus stares at the latter who looks at his muscles in the mirror), whereas the movie needed more ingenuity, which is why the viewers welcome the ending, since the story overstretched itself beyond its prime by the time it reaches the finale. Oury and de Funes were in better shape in "The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob".

Grade:++

Little Man

Little Man; comedy, USA / Canada, 2006, D: Keenen Ivory Wayans, S: Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Kerry Washington, John Witherspoon, Tracy Morgan, Lochlyn Munro, Chazz Palminteri, Alex Borstein, Molly Shannon, Brittany Daniel   

Dwarf criminal Calvin and his accomplice Percy rob a diamond from a store, but when the police shows up, they hide it inside the purse of couple Vanessa and Darryl. Calvin thus disguises himself as a baby in order to get the diamond back. Vanessa and Darryl “adopt” Calvin at their home, leading to many problems. Upon finding out the truth, Darryl returns the diamond to the police and allows Calvin to stay at his home.  

The movie that signaled the end of Marlon Wayans’ career as a comedian, “Little Man” is a movie where the only things that are smaller than its dwarf protagonist are its miniscule inspiration and creativity, which are microscopic. Following the insane, but at least tolerable “White Chicks”, where Wayans and his brother disguised themselves as white women, here they took on an even more insane concept, in which Wayans’ face was digitally added on to the body of a dwarf, yet the result is unwatchable, a typical populist vulgar comedy where the only attempts at humor are throwing primitivism at the screen, without any higher upgrade of finesse or sophistication. The only sources of ideas are sexual harassment jokes (the “baby” Calvin wants to be held by Brittany so that he can try to grope her breasts), pedophillia jokes (Vanessa kisses “baby” Calvin on his stomach, but he holds her head and wants her to go lower, towards his crotch), rape jokes (“baby” Calvin had sex with Vanessa at night, and she thiught it was Darryl), and the trademark of low quality movies—kick in the balls jokes. The only funny moment is the opening sequence, in which only the close up of Calvin's face is shown as he is training lifting his body up on a pole, as the prison guards inform him he is about to be released, which hints at a planned strategy of the filmmakers with a pay-off. And indeed, it pays off when the prison doors open, a giant shadow of a "tough" man is seen on the ground—yet as the camera tilts up, it is revealed that Calvin is actually 2'6 ft tall, as he walks pass two prison guards towering over him, which is a hilarious contradiction intro to his character. Sadly, this joke is amusing for only about 5 minutes, yet after the viewers get used to this unusual concept of Wayans' face on a dwarf, the remaining 90 minutes of the film have nothing more to offer, and thus the story feels dead, forced and unfunny pass the 5 minute mark.

Grade:-

Licorice Pizza

Licorice Pizza; romantic drama-comedy, USA, 2021; D: Paul Thomas Anderson, S: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Danielle Haim, Este Haim, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Tom Waits, Benny Safdie, Skyler Gizondo, Mary Elizabeth Ellis  

San Fernando Valley, 1 9 7 3. Gary (15), an aspiring actor who starred in a small role in a TV show, befriends photography assistant Alana (25) on whom he has a crush on, but she keeps him at distance since she thinks he is too young for her. They go into waterbed business, yet it goes belly up after the oil crisis makes vynil too expensive; Alana tries to be an actress, yet later becomes a campaigner of a politician running for Mayor, whereas Gary opens up a pinball store after the game gets legalized. Alana and Gary return to each other and become a couple.  

One of Paul Thomas Anderson’s lesser films, “Licorice Pizza” (a weird title considering that a pizza doesn’t even appear in the story) is a gentle, cozy, humorous, but also lukewarm coming-of-age rom-com combined with nostalgia movies. Overall, it is good, but at the end of the day one ultimately has more nostalgia for the lost touch of Anderson’s earlier movies, when he established himself as one of the best and most inspired new filmmakers of his time. The only truly great ingredient here is the excellent leading actress Alana Haim, who is genuine and charming in her refreshing performance, while everything else is good, yet never really rises to her level. It seems as if Anderson placed three different stories together here, which makes the storyline uneven: we go from Gary and Alana working in the waterbed business; being struggling actors; up to Alana working for an election campaign of a politician who is secretly gay. Unfortunately, many subplots thus feel lost and lead nowhere—for instance, Alana pursued a role in a movie with star Jack Holden, yet he suddenly disappears and never appears again in the story, while Alana’s acting career is never brought up again, nor does it play a role for the rest of the plot, which is confusing. The episodic narrative hits the field once in the episode involving the arrogant producer Jon (Bradley Cooper) where Alana and Gary leave the water running at the former's bedroom as revenge, and then Gary even smashes the windshield on Jon's car, yet just then, Alana's and Gary's truck runs out of gas, and they realize they cannot flee from the scene. The movie needed more of these kind of moments, or a more focused approach towards the relationship of the couple, since in this edition it looks more like a showreel for the two lead actors.

Grade:++