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What if an alien invasion really happened? Danish essay documentarian Michael Madsen (“Into Eternity”) answers that question with this “simulation,” in which real-life experts imagine their responses to a visit from another world. Filled with sleek and often surreal imagery, “The Visit” is served at a cool temperature; it fluctuates from fascinating to banal depending on the logistics under discussion. A feat of speculation that amounts more to a curiosity than a major sci-fi movie, it is likely to engross anyone intrigued by the topic while remaining in the outer orbit of a conventional theatrical release.
Billed as “an alien encounter by Michael Madsen” (complete with pretentious signature in the opening credits), “The Visit” begins — in a showman’s touch — with a thank-you from the producers “to the experts and scientists who agreed to participate in this simulation.” The conceit is that “you,” the viewer, occupy the role of the alien in mankind’s first encounter with intelligent extraterrestrial life. “You” are sometimes even addressed as such by the talking heads and the narrator, although the experts seated together also speak to one another, and some of the presentations play in a more straightforward manner.
The interviewees include individuals associated with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and NASA. The subjects covered are not just procedural but also historical and philosophical. Who should speak for humanity? John Rummel, from the Committee on Space Research Panel on Planetary Protection, appears suited up in some sort of padded biohazard tent, explaining the concept of swabs. Christopher McKay, an astrobiologist with the NASA Ames Research Institute, raises the possibility of life that can’t be detected via DNA tests. Fearing even inadvertent biological competition between life forms, he favors separation and barriers, at least initially. (“Nothing personal,” he adds.) In the most eye-roll-prompting digression, Chris Welch, of France’s Intl. Space U., closes his eyes as if he’s some sort of medium and imagines boarding the spacecraft that has arrived.
The bureaucratic protocol appears far more complicated than it might be in another instance of worldwide news. We go to the Ministry of Defense in London, where the retired colonel Paul Beaver and Vickie Sheriff, a former U.K. government spokesperson, debate the wording of an announcement to the public (“We believe no one is in imminent danger”); they cite the need to keep the language simple, the fear over media reports of an “invasion,” and cooperation with other nations.
Doug Vakoch, director of Interstellar Message Composition with the SETI Institute, mentions a spacecraft that was launched in 1977 with recordings designed to present a summary of humanity — and the debated question of whether our self-presentation should mention war and other elements of our dark side. Ernst Fasan addresses interplanetary legal and moral issues. Sheryl Bishop, a social psychologist, speaks of humanity’s collective anxiety in the event of an arrival, illustrated with enacted footage of persons running in slow motion. She also addresses the possibility that we may be slighted. “The scenario in which they get on their ship and take off — I think the entire species would go into collective depression,” she says.
In some ways, Madsen’s free-floating approach bears a similarity to that of film essayist Patrick Keiller (“Robinson in Ruins”). As the interviewees speak, there are simulated scenes involving biosuits, ultra-slow-motion pans of crowds, shots of a military springing into action and many scenes of the camera roving lab and space equipment and museum displays. The scoring is chockablock with fractured radio transmissions and beeps. We hear everything from Arvo Part’s strings to “The Blue Danube” (a tip of the hat to “2001: A Space Odyssey”) to echoing metallic “high frequency” sounds. The use of ‘Scope, unusual for a doc, subtly enhances the idea of a simulation, lending the images composed, artful quality.
Tech contributions ensure that all of this is a fluid, slightly lulling mix. The frequent use of sterile-looking, hyper-clean locations gives even Earth an otherworldly sheen.
A director’s note in the press kit says that, after “Into Eternity,” which examined what might happen to stored nuclear waste 100,000 years from now, this film is the second part of a planned trilogy. The title is bound to prompt confusion with that of the forthcoming M. Night Shyamalan picture. Original Source
A missed train sets the stage for Chris Evans’ directorial debut, “Before We Go,” but dramatically speaking, this talky, contrived and ultimately tedious actors’ exercise never leaves the station. While Evans deserves credit for wanting to reveal a more serious, thoughtful side to himself than the Marvel universe will allow, a tepid homage (in title and form) to Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s “Before” trilogy may not have been the best idea. It’s tough to see this late-festival Toronto premiere (picked up by Radius-TWC for a 2015 release) gaining any real critical or commercial traction. Dear Captain America: Don’t quit your day job just yet.
Saddled with a fundamentally dull, obvious script credited to “Rain Man” scribe Ron Bass and three other writers, Evans casts himself as Nick, a trumpet player on the eve of a career-making audition who just happens to be busking in the resonant corridors of Grand Central Station when the beautiful, flustered Brooke (Alice Eve) passes through in a blur, rushing to make the 1:30 a.m. train to New Haven — but alas, not quite fast enough. So Evans’ hipster knight in flannel armor offers to help this clearly distressed damsel, whose purse has been stolen and whose cell phone is conveniently bust.
Long on charm but short on cash, Nick can offer Brooke only maxed-out credit cards and a protective arm around her shoulder as they set off through the Manhattan mean streets in search of her errant Prada bag. Thus the stage is set for a long night of walking and talking amid the pre-dawn neon and manhole steam. They’re like many a couple one might pass in New York en route to the subway after a late night out — except that Evans requires you to spend a very long 90 minutes in their none-too-interesting company.
After some initial hesitation (on her part), these two wayward souls begin to bare themselves to one another. She’s an art buyer in town to close a deal, while hubby is away on business (read: monkey business) in Atlanta. He’s still on the rebound from a bad breakup — he was about to propose, she called it quits — and has spent the night avoiding a friend’s wedding reception where he might bump into … sorry, dozed off there for a sec. Various low-key hijinks ensue, including Nick’s ill-fated attempt to rescue Brooke’s pesky purse from the clutches of some Chinatown black marketeers, a mildly amusing scene in which the couple pose as the musical entertainment at a posh hotel party, and a visit to a storefront psychic (the great John Cullum, by far the liveliest presence here) who knows exactly what folks want to hear. But mostly, the script labors to keep these travelers together (and away from credit lines and phone chargers) as they prattle on about their hopes, their fears, all the wrong decisions they’ve made in their thirtysomething lives, and the meaning of the word “depaysment.” For those who don’t know, it’s French for “a screenwriter’s heavy hand.”
From the minute Hawke’s Jesse and Delpy’s Celine first spied each other on board that Vienna-bound train some 20 years ago now, they seemed like two vibrantly real, complex individuals sharing a passionate connection of body and mind. But “Before We Go’s” Nick and Brooke never seem much more real or complex than the smiling suburbanites in the Sunday-circular ads, their myriad crises plastered on top rather than felt from within. Even when Evans tries to inject some suspense into the proceedings by giving Brooke a secret reason for needing to be home before daybreak, you never really feel there’s much at stake. The other big question — will these lonelyhearts eventually throw caution to the wind and bed down together? — generates even less heat.
Fleet location lensing by d.p. John Guleserian (“Like Crazy”) stands out among generally solid production values. Original Source
Robert Redford and Nick Nolte go for “A Walk in the Woods” in Ken Kwapis’ broad, bland adaptation of Bill Bryson’s 1998 tome. Like that mildly amusing travel-memoir-cum-elongated-humor-column, there’s light diversion but little substance in this tale of two grumpy old men making a predictable hash of their effort to hike the Appalachian Trail. The appeal of the cast names and the equally venerable scenic vistas should lure older audiences, though whether they’ll get out to theaters or wait for home-format delivery is an open question.
With his grandkids coming of age and peers dying off, Bill (Redford) here worries he’s losing his mojo with little time to spare; ergo his very random decision to hike the 2,200-mile trail, a determined whim that his English wife, Cathy (Emma Thompson), considers foolish and dangerous at his age. She insists that at least he not travel alone. No one else is tempted to sign on, however, until out of the blue, Bill gets a call from fellow Iowa native Stephen Katz (Nolte), who invites himself along. Stephen hasn’t been heard from for decades, not since the duo had a youthful falling out while traveling in Europe.
Bill hasn’t been much of a hiker for a good 30 years or so. But he’s in Olympian shape compared with the careening wreck of Stephen, who tumbles off the plane in New Hampshire looking like a diabetic hobo. He’s overweight, and his status as a recovering alcoholic is a bit questionable. (There’s a whisky bottle in his rucksack.) Nonetheless, the duo soldier on to Georgia to commence their wheezing trek in the spring, intending to make it all the way to Maine before winter.
As they slog north, they have encounters with a cartoonishly obnoxious younger backpacker (Kristen Schaal), take a few pratfalls, scare off some bears, and occasionally stop to recoup at the nearest hotel. At one of the latter, Bill flirts with an attractive innkeeper (Mary Steenburgen) while chubby chaser Katz gets in hot water pursuing a local lass who turns out to have a very jealous husband.
Casting the 78-year-old Redford lends this quest a fear-of-mortality undercurrent duly spelled out in Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman’s competent but uninspired screenplay. His character keeps insisting, “I’m not writing a book” — but it was obvious from reading Bryson’s original (penned when he was just in his 40s) that the trip was little more than an excuse to drum up some funny anecdotes for just that purpose. The material remains essentially slight, buoyed along, but given precious little surprise, by its star thesps.
Given some of the author’s zingers, Redford (who originally planned to co-star with his iconic screen buddy, the late Paul Newman) gets to flash more crusty humor than he has in some time. Taking on his most prominent role in a few years, Nolte is entertaining but could hardly be more typecast — he’s been playing variations on this shambling rascal since “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” 29 years ago. While his always phlegmy delivery is good for some laughs, it’s so raspy now that at times he’s downright unintelligible. Supporting players are given little to do, even less of it interesting.
Sitcom veteran Kwapis has seldom been an inspired bigscreen helmer —his best such effort may well be “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” — and this workmanlike entertainment, comfortably paced and bereft of notable atmosphere, nuance or twists, does nothing to change that assessment. It’s pleasant enough cinematic comfort food, but even so, you may be hungry again soon afterward. The pro package is inevitably highlighted by some splendid aerial location shots in John Bailey’s widescreen location lensing. Not adding a whole lot of flavor is a sometimes overamped soundtrack dominated by unmemorable rootsy rock-folk songs by indie band Lord Huron.Original Source
The Transporter Refueled (2015)
EuropaCorp has moved the U.S. release of “The Transporter Refueled” back two and a half months from June 19 to Sept. 4.
The company said the fall release for “Refueled,” the start of a new trilogy in the Transporter franchise, will help capitalize on the cast’s ability to promote the film. It noted that the previous three “Transporter” films, starring Jason Statham, were also released during the fall, in 2002, 2005 and 2008.
“Transporter Refueled” stars Ed Skrein (“Game of Thrones”), Loan Chabanol, Radivoje Bukvic, Gabriella Wright, Anatole Taubman and Tatiana Pajkovic. Camille Delamarre directed from a script by Bill Collage and Adam Cooper, based on the characters created by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.
The new trilogy was announced at Cannes in 2013. Besson and Mark Gao from Fundamental Films produced the film.
The Labor Day date will also see the U.S. launches of Relativity’s “Jane Got a Gun,” Sony’s zombie-vampire comedy “Kitchen Sink” and the Weinstein Co.’s action-thriller “No Escape.”
“Transporter Refueled” is the first release going out through the EuropaCorp label in the U.S. The slate includes “Shut In,” starring Naomi Watts with a Feb. 19 release; “The Lake,” starring Sullivan Stapleton and J.K. Simmons with a July 15, 2016, date; and “Nine Lives,” starring Kevin Spacey and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, which has not yet been dated. Original Source
Fantastic Four (2015)
Joining Spider-Man in the annals of dizzyingly rapid reboots, Fox’s second stab at “Fantastic Four” comes just eight years after the first try and its sequel, which didn’t set the bar inordinately high. Yet if this latest version, with a significantly younger cast (one’s tempted to call it “Fantastic Four High”), clears that threshold, it’s just barely, drawing from a different source to reimagine the quartet’s origins without conspicuously improving them. All told, the movie feels like a protracted teaser for a more exciting follow-up that, depending on whether audiences warm to this relatively low-key approach, might never happen.
Where many recent superhero movies have risked overstaying their welcome, “Fantastic Four,” at 100 minutes, actually feels a tad rushed at the end, with a hasty climax that nevertheless produces some solid moments — at least a few of which, given the slow pace initially, probably should have come at least a half-hour sooner. Instead, filmgoers are treated to a lot of science, with the central characters gazing intently into computer screens.
Using elements from the original Stan Lee-Jack Kirby comics as well as a 2004 revision of them, “Ultimate Fantastic Four,” director Josh Trank — sharing script credit with producer Simon Kinberg (a veteran of the “X-Men” franchise) and Jeremy Slater — goes way back into the group’s past. The story thus begins with brilliant science prodigy Reed Richards (played by Miles Teller as a grown up) back when his biggest problems are getting people to take his teleporter device seriously, and experiencing puberty.
Discovered seven years later at a science fair by Dr. Franklin Storm (“The Wire’s” Reg E. Cathey), Reed is whisked off to the Baxter Institute, a sort-of science academy and think tank, where he meets Storm’s adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara) and her hotheaded brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan). Alas, he has to leave behind his longtime buddy Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), though when Reed decides to put his device to the test, he enlists Ben to join in the enterprise.
Rounding out the group is Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), a former prized pupil of Dr. Storm, lured back to help Reed finish a project in which the mercurial Victor had previously dabbled. The ultimate goal is to use Reed’s creation to reach an alternate dimension, potentially providing the resources to cure man’s ills, but also bringing with it all the expected perils.
An unscheduled attempt to visit those forbidding environs gives the group its extraordinary powers: Reed the ability to stretch; Johnny to burst into flame and fly; Sue to turn invisible and cast force fields. Ben, meanwhile, is transformed into a brutish rock creature, whose enormous strength has an officious bureaucrat-type (Tim Blake Nelson) practically salivating at its more pragmatic applications.
Alas, it takes a long time before anyone gets around to clobbering much of anything. And because it’s hardly a mystery that the heroes will end up united and facing off with Doom, there’s a sense of killing time in the early going that’s not adequately compensated for by the fate-of-the-world-in-the-balance action sequence that finally ensues. Part of that, frankly, stems from uncertainty as to what exactly Doom’s powers are, after a fleeting demonstration of them that feels closer to horror than the superhero genre.
If the original comics were defined in part by the interaction of the characters — from Ben’s depression at having become a “monster” to the budding relationship between Reed and Sue to Johnny and Ben’s squabbling — those dynamics emerge only fitfully. And while comicbook aficionados will likely welcome the seriousness of tone, the near-absence of humor and lengthy emphasis on building the interdimensional portal largely handcuffs the cast, with only a hint, for example, of the ebullience Johnny gleans from his newfound powers.
Technically, the look has improved — starting with the Thing, who loses his shorts but picks up computer-generated size, muscle and menace that was mostly lacking in the prior incarnation. As for the costumes, much as in the first “X-Men,” they’re built for utility, with the spacesuit motif offering enough similarities to satisfy all but those who won’t settle for anything less than spandex and a big “4” insignia. The collaboration of Marco Beltrami and Philip Glass also yields some intriguing riffs in what ultimately sounds like a pretty conventional score.
Ultimately, Fox’s stab at reviving one of its inherited Marvel properties feels less like a blockbuster for this age of comics-oriented tentpoles than it does another also-ran — not an embarrassment, but an experiment that didn’t gel. And having seemingly missed twice in trying to get “Fantastic Four” right, the studio, unlike Reed, might want to think seriously before making any more trips back to the drawing board. Original Source
Minions (2015)
A “Despicable Me” prequel that traces Gru’s comic-relief henchmen all the way back to the time when they were single-celled organisms, “Minions” hilariously imagines centuries in which the little guys have sought to serve the greatest villain they could find, but quickly settles into more conventional cartoon territory once they fix on a dastardly new master named Scarlet Overkill, voiced by Sandra Bullock. Delivering more Minions but less heart than their two previous outings (which earned $543 million and $970 million worldwide), this by-popular-demand detour proves that as boundless as the yellow creatures’ appeal may seem, they work better as supporting characters than as the main attraction — not that the Minions will be wearing out their welcome anytime soon. They’re still the funniest cartoon characters in town, hitting that silly sweet spot capable of delighting everyone from toddlers to Kim Jong-un, bound to reach new international box office heights for Universal’s Illumination Entertainment.
When it comes to franchise adventure pics, each successive installment is only as strong as its villain — a notion “Minions” illustrates by introducing a new baddie who isn’t nearly as good as Gru. But long before Scarlet Overkill makes her entrance, directors Pierre Coffin (the French comedy genius who dreamt up the Minions in the first place) and Kyle Balda (a Pixar vet who co-helmed “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax”) win us over with a tightly compressed, laugh-a-minute prologue designed to provide some much-needed backstory for these tiny yellow freaks of nature, tracing the Minions’ evolution from prehistoric times.
Given the Minions’ own linguistic limitations (though they babble constantly, their speech comes across as 90% nonsense, punctuated occasionally by words that sound familiar, like “banana” and “kumbaya”), Geoffrey Rush proves a welcome guide in the opening stretch, supplying narration to explain the strange species’ hit-and-miss history. Clumsy, foolish and helplessly herd-oriented, the Minions are the ultimate beta personalities, desiring nothing more than to serve the most despicable master they can find — the more ferocious the better. It’s no coincidence that one English word stands out amid their chatter: “boss.”
But the Minions are better at finding a master than at keeping one, and more often than not, they’re directly responsible for their own unemployment, whether that means bumping a T. rex into an open volcano or accidentally exposing Dracula to full daylight. As a direct result of the Minions’ unsolicited assistance, their early bosses suffer an unusually high fatality rate, whereas no Minions appear to have been harmed in the making of the film — a missed opportunity if ever there was.
The film’s sense of humor is already Mad-magazine macabre: Just imagine the potential laughs in watching the lemming-like creatures’ trial-and-error process reduce their number by a few hundred or so. Establishing the Minions as expendable, rather than virtually immortal, might also have helped to set the stakes for the trio who serve as the film’s main characters. Instead, even a nuclear blast doesn’t seem to faze their cockroach-like resilience.
After losing the battle of Waterloo for Napoleon, the Minions are sent into exile, where idea guy Kevin (slightly taller than the others, which might allow room for an extra brain cell or two) hatches the plan to leave their icy cave and seek out a new master. At least, that’s what it sounds like he’s proposing in his speech, though one can never be too sure when Minions are talking (nearly all of their dialogue is performed by Coffin himself). Asking for volunteers, Kevin enlists one-eyed, ukulele-toting Stuart and easily distractible Bob, an affable runt with different-colored irises. Together, they leave their tribe and set out to find a villain ambitious enough to require a support crew.
Though it might not feel like Illumination’s most ambitious film to date, “Minions” certainly covers the most ground, featuring scenes in different eras and international cities. The trio’s first stop is New York, washing ashore in Manhattan at the height of the hippie era (which explains why vintage pop tunes, some of them sung by Minions, have replaced the funky Pharrell Williams score heard in the “Despicable Me” movies).
Finding the city severely lacking in evil masterminds, they happen to tune a borrowed television to the top-secret Villain Network Channel just in time to catch a promotion for Intl. Villain Con in Orlando — no doubt an ideal recruitment opportunity for potential bench creatures like themselves. (And why not? There are wacky confabs for every other special interest under the sun, though this development suggests yet another path not taken, had they instead gone to Comic-Con and hooked up with some cosplay fanboy merely pretending to be a villain.)
Hitchhiking to Florida, Kevin, Stuart and Bob catch a ride with a family of bank robbers named the Nelsons (the father is voiced by Michael Keaton, the mother by Allison Janney), getting a renewed taste for how great it feels to serve a human master. Turns out the Minions are constantly looking to upgrade, so upon arrival, they quickly ditch the Nelsons and go searching for the worst meanie they can find: Scarlet Overkill. With her rocket-powered red dress and crazy plans to steal the Queen of England’s crown, she’s flashy and just the right degree deranged, but there’s something off about the chemistry between Scarlet and her newfound assistants.
Already supported by Mod-scientist inventor Herb (Jon Hamm), Scarlet’s much too capable, for starters, whereas Gru (who shows up later in the story) really does benefit from the Minions’ help, while they in turn drew a misfit-family satisfaction from the arrangement that’s missing here. Anyone who’s ever worked for a bad boss should appreciate the suffering Scarlet puts her underlings through, and yet, the filmmakers opt to use this wacky sado-maso dynamic more for suspense than humor, building up to a gonzo action sequence involving a kaiju-sized Minion. Stronger on concept than story, Brian Lynch’s “Minions” script emphasizes scale over quantity, cutting back to the cave where the rest of the gang are sitting idle at regular intervals, rather than taking advantage of their numbers to generate more of the crowd-based comedy seen in the earlier films.
Analyzing the result — as opposed to merely sitting back and enjoying it, as so many around the world are sure to do — one quickly realizes what a crazy challenge the film must have been. Not only are its characters incapable of expressing themselves in plain English (though “Wall-E” demonstrated the relatively highbrow potential of that restriction), but their personalities are so ripe for exploiting that there must have been a million Minion ideas that Lynch and everyone involved simply weren’t able to incorporate into the film. Here’s hoping the best of them find their way into “Despicable Me 3,” due out summer 2017. Original Source
The Marvel Cinematic Universe can be an awfully big, noisy and repetitive place to spend your time and money, but at its best, it can also allow for humor, whimsy and lightness of spirit — all qualities that come into play in “Ant-Man,” a winningly modest addition to the ever-expanding Disney/Marvel family. Though we can mourn the more stylish and inventive stand-alone caper we might have gotten from director Edgar Wright (who left the project over creative differences and was replaced by Peyton Reed), this enjoyably off-the-cuff franchise starter takes a cue from its incredible shrinking protagonist (played by a game Paul Rudd) and emerges with a smaller-scaled, bigger-hearted origin story than most comicbook heroes are typically granted. Insofar as it feels like a bit of a tonic next to this summer’s more bloated offerings, this July 17 Stateside release won’t reach the box office heights of the recent “Avengers: Age of Ultron” or last year’s chart-topping “Guardians of the Galaxy.” But worldwide box office should nonetheless prove quite a picnic, aided by 3D showings and solid word of mouth.
Certainly Marvel devotees will swarm to this final entry in what the company has termed “Phase Two” of its ongoing and largely successful plot to colonize the known moviegoing universe. (For those not keeping track, this phase began with “Iron Man 3,” launched “Guardians of the Galaxy” and included the sophomore installments of the Avengers, Thor and Captain America franchises.) That sort of easy integration with the MCU’s bigger, better-known properties seems to be precisely what Wright was trying to avoid with his telling, which he and writing partner Joe Cornish first pitched years ago, well before “Iron Man” kicked off Phase One. And while Wright and Cornish retain story and screenplay credit (the latter shared with the rewriting team of Rudd and Adam McKay), their eventual parting of ways with Marvel stands as a sadly instructive example of what can happen to a talented filmmaker who dares to prioritize personal vision over studio synergy.
Still, whatever has been compromised by turning “Ant-Man” over to the director of “Yes Man,” there’s no denying that Reed’s movie succeeds well enough as a genial diversion and sometimes a delightful one, predicated on the rarely heeded Hollywood wisdom that less really can be more. After a brief 1989-set prologue introducing Dr. Hank Pym (a younger-looking, digitally airbrushed Michael Douglas), a brilliant scientist whose particle research is highly coveted by the forces of S.H.I.E.L.D., the movie settles into a loose-and-casual vibe as it shifts to present-day Northern California, where we first meet Scott Lang (Rudd), a skilled cat burglar who’s just spent three years in San Quentin. He’s picked up by his old cellmate Luis (a scene-stealing Michael Pena), who tries to coax him back into a life of petty crime with his current associates (Tip “T.I.” Harris and David Dastmalchian), but Scott is determined to go straight and reconnect with his young daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). That means paying child support to his disapproving ex, Maggie (Judy Greer), whose cop fiance, Paxton (Bobby Cannavale), doesn’t think much of Scott’s ability to turn over a new leaf.
Paxton has a point, as Scott is soon cracking a giant safe in someone’s basement, where he finds a slightly battered-looking, ’60s-era black suit (the work of costume designer Sammy Sheldon Differ) and soon experiences its properties firsthand: Not only can he shrink to the size of an ant, but thanks to some miracle of atomic compression, he also takes on cannonball strength and bullet speed. As it turns out, both the basement and the suit belong to Hank, who devised his shrinking technology years ago as a powerful U.S. military weapon (as we see advertised in a mock-propaganda film from decades earlier) but ultimately shelved it, lest it fall into enemy hands. Now, however, Hank needs someone able and willing to don the suit again, and he has settled on Scott, whose impressive stealth, agility and talent for thievery are just the skills Ant-Man needs.
The requisite mid-movie training montage (niftily assembled by editors Dan Lebental and Colby Parker Jr.) finds Scott learning not only how to throw a punch and dive through keyholes, but also how to communicate mentally with four different species of ants, entire armies of which will eventually swarm forth to do his bidding. Putting their own spin on a subgenre defined by Jack Arnold’s classic “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957) and later popularized by Disney’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (1989), Reed and his crew deftly orchestrate Ant-Man’s shifts in size and the camera‘s subsequent fluctuations in p.o.v. and scale: A splash of water in a bathtub becomes a veritable tsunami, while a Thomas the Tank Engine train set triggers a railroad-hopping chase sequence straight out of an old Western, complete with cutaways that place the action in amusingly tongue-in-cheek perspective.
Less than convinced of Scott’s ability — and thus immediately establishing herself as a promising love interest — is Hank’s combative daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly, rocking a pageboy), who would prefer to put on the suit and get the job done herself. That job, it turns out, will require Ant-Man to thwart the schemes of Hank’s ambitious former student, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who’s getting dangerously close to replicating his old mentor’s technology in the form of a newfangled shrinking-suit technology called Yellowjacket, with potentially disastrous results for a world still reeling from the cataclysms of “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” As readers of Stan Lee’s comics will know, Dr. Hank Pym himself was a founding member of the Avengers (a fact that goes unmentioned here) and the very first incarnation of Ant-Man, as we see in a brief flashback of him on an airborne mission with his equally shrink-tastic wife, Janet Van Dyne (aka the Wasp).
Janet’s absence in the present day goes some way toward explaining the nature of Hank and Hope’s estrangement, and their complicated father-daughter bond finds an obvious thematic echo in Scott’s determination to do right by Cassie. These connections place “Ant-Man” in a classically Spielbergian world of single parents and broken marriages, where the desire to protect one’s child is a force as potent and primal as anything a mad scientist (or the Hulk) could hope to unleash. In some ways, then, “Ant-Man” feels less like a full-blown superhero spectacular than a goofily amusing, warmly sentimental family drama with a pleasing overlay of blockbuster elements. (It’s telling that this is the rare Marvel extravaganza where a house sustains serious damage rather than an entire city; elsewhere, the film’s most significant location is the Pym family homestead, lovingly mapped out by production designer Shepherd Frankel.)
Some groundwork is laid for future Marvel cross-branding initiatives when Ant-Man must retrieve some crucial hardware from an Avengers base, where he finds himself duking it out with Falcon (the always welcome Anthony Mackie). Beating an opponent, of course, is far less useful than remaining undetected in the first place, and because Ant-Man’s powers are a matter of precision and agility rather than technological ingenuity or brute strength, the movie applies a similar economy and finesse. Notably, the action centerpiece here is not just another bombastic save-the-world confrontation, but rather a heist sequence that finds Ant-Man and his six-legged minions sneaking into Darren’s laboratory. The vibe throughout is playful and unpretentious, from the incorporation of a few upbeat Latin tracks by music supervisor Dave Jordan (with a particularly plot-specific use of “La Cucharacha”) to the film’s nimble yet largely functional visual style, though Reed does pull off one relatively eye-popping, mind-bending sequence that immerses us in the dangerous effects of shrinking to subatomic levels.
The refreshingly (and literally) down-to-earth scale of “Ant-Man” is largely a factor of Rudd’s charming performance as the nicest, most boy-next-door cat burglar imaginable — a most unlikely superhero who, despite his newfound abilities and washboard abs, refuses to take himself or his endeavors too seriously. Happily, the Ant-Man helmet conveniently flips open, allowing us regular access to the scruffy human face behind the red eye-shield and gas-mask-like protrusion (a fittingly ’60s-era touch). Douglas supplies a wonderfully wry presence as a stubborn old father/mentor figure who regards both his daughter and his protege with affectionate exasperation, and Stoll, always a charismatic supporting player, brings a marvelous tech-bro swagger to the role of the villainous Darren/Yellowjacket. John Slattery gets to reprise his “Iron Man 2” performance as Howard Stark in one scene, while Martin Donovan proves suitably sinister in a more extended role as one of Stark’s less trustworthy S.H.I.E.L.D. colleagues.
Yet the most memorable turn here may well come courtesy of Pena’s trusty sidekick Luis; with his aw-shucks grin and his charming habit of telling a story in the most digressive possible fashion, he comes across as one infectiously happy dude who seems thrilled to have stumbled into a superhero movie. “Ant-Man will return,” the film’s second end-credits stinger assures us, and so long as he and his story remain as appealingly human-scaled as they are here, it might be the rare Marvel kicker that legitimately gives us something to look forward to. Original Source
