Small-scale hero generates big laughs
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP (12A, 118mins)
ANT-MAN’S second solo adventure is everything I hoped his formulaic and slightly-too-serious 2015 origins movie would be. Returning director Peyton Reed has seemingly worked out that there is no point casting great comedy actors if you’re not going to milk every laugh.
The first Ant-Man film introduced us to Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, a retired cat burglar and a divorced dad of one who was recruited by Michael Douglas’s Dr Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man from the comic books) to wear his size-altering suit. Most of the time the suit makes Scott the size of an ant, but occasionally it malfunctions and makes him massive.
The plot isn’t so straightforward. The film opens with Scott serving the final days of his house arrest for fighting against Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War. Then Hank recruits him again because he thinks Ant-Man can rescue his wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has been stuck in the miniature world of the “quantum realm” since the 1980s.
The veteran scientist thinks Scott forged a psychic link with Janet when he “went subatomic” at the end of his debut film. So with the help of his daughter and Ant-Man’s new romantic and crime-fighting partner Hope, aka the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Hank has built a quantum gateway. “Do you guys just put the word quantum in front of everything?” Scott asks.
But of course there are villains to throw quantum spanners in the works. A black marketeer (Walton Goggins) wants to steal Hank’s lab which the so-called genius scientist has shrunk down to the size of a suitcase, making it exceptionally easy to pinch. The other main villain is The Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a figure from Hank’s past whose molecules were churned up during a failed experiment. The Ghost blames Hank for her misfortune which has left her looking like a double-exposed photograph. She wants to get her hands on his lab to undo the damage.
Then there is stressed-out FBI man Jimmy Woo (a very funny Randall Park) who is rightly convinced that Scott has found a way to slip his ankle monitor.
The laughs come thick and fast. Paul Rudd has a string of deadpan one-liners, the manic Michael Peña has two hilarious rambling monologues as his sidekick Luis, and the special effects team craft punchy, size-based visual gags. Whenever the story gets a little too heavy, Marvel has a light-hearted ace up its sleeve.
The film’s standout action scene, a chase in San Francisco, uses the film’s scale-swapping setup in a variety of ingenious ways.
Compared to the apocalyptic plots of the Avengers films, the stakes are low and you’ll have to wait for a mid-credits teaser to discover how all this nonsense ties together with the grim ending of April’s Infinity War. But a change of scale was precisely what this bloated franchise needed.
TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES (PG, 88mins)
THIS frenetic feature-length cartoon is aimed at children but it is a lot smarter than DC Entertainment’s supposedly grown-up films such as the dour Batman V Superman.
And you wonder whether this relentless superhero spoof also allowed DC’s producers to let off some steam, with Batman V Superman’s much-ridiculed twist just one of its targets. Adults should also appreciate the clever jokes aimed at the clichés of the genre from gravelly villainous voices to the endless recycling of origins stories.
Based on a Cartoon Network show,
the film features a gang of teenage superheroes desperate for their own hit movie. Sadly for leader Robin (voiced by Scott Menville), his crew – Starfire (Hynden Walch), Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), Raven (Tara Strong) and Cyborg (Khary Payton) – are more interested in performing musical numbers than fighting crime.
So he is delighted when he thinks he has found a proper nemesis in Deadpool-like Slade (Will Arnett). Sadly, like the grown-up heroes, Slade thinks they are something of a joke.
How much you laugh will depend on how well you know your comic books.
Some of it went over my head but I spat out my popcorn at a parody of Stan Lee’s movie cameos.
SICILIAN GHOST STORY
(15, 118mins) FANS of scary movies may feel a little cheated by Sicilian Ghost Story’s title. This stylish Italian language drama occasionally dips a toe into the world of the supernatural but its horrors are firmly rooted in the real world.
It is based on the 1993 kidnapping of 12-year-old Sicilian boy Giuseppe Di Matteo who was held by the Mafia for 779 days in an attempt to silence his “supergrass” father.
Directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza tell the grisly story from the perspective of a fictional classmate. The film invites us to interpret the word “ghost” in two ways. Giuseppe is a metaphorical spirit in the sense that his sudden disappearance haunts the adults in his village. But they are too afraid to openly acknowledge his fate. A besotted and frustrated Luna (Julia Jedlikowska) tries to fight this conspiracy of silence.
But Giuseppe also appears to be a literal ghost. Luna sees him in visions and is directed by dreams towards clues about his disappearance.
This mixture of fantasy and historical violence invites comparisons with Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish Civil War horror Pan’s Labyrinth but this beautifully constructed tale is told with its own quintessentially Sicilian voice.
Very real monsters have ruled here for centuries, filling the island with ghosts and feeding off the spirits of the living.
THE ESCAPE
(15, 101mins) LIKE a lot of our home-grown films, this gritty drama boasts impressive cinematography and a powerful lead performance.
Sadly it also falls into a very British trap. Director Dominic Savage is so preoccupied with style that he forgets to tell a compelling story.
The Escape focuses on Tara (Gemma Arterton), a depressed 30-year-old housewife and mum-of-two who lives in suburban London.
To her mother (Frances Barber) she has “got it made”. Husband Mark (Dominic Cooper) “brings in good money” and they have “two cars, a beautiful house and a conservatory”.
But Tara is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And after watching her mope around the house and stare out of windows for the laborious opening half-hour, we know how she feels, conservatory or not. One day she discovers a book about a French tapestry and decides an art class might cheer her up.
But the kids keep screaming, her selfish husband keeps snapping and the maudlin soundtrack keeps eating away at our nerves. Tara needs to find a way to escape. By this point, you might be ready for one too.