ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
1/2 PG-13, 125 minutes. Through tonight only at Stonington. Still playing at Waterford, Westbrook, Lisbon. One of the nicest things about “AntMan,” the 2015 origin story of the eponymous Marvel superhero, was its modesty and congeniality: Sure, “Guardians of the Galaxy” had already come out, injecting welcome humor into a genre that had all but succumbed to self-seriousness and bellicosity. But as “Guardians” and, later, “Deadpool” doubled down on the snark, “Ant-Man” kept things light, its playfulness made all the more endearing by the boyish, twinkle-eyed persona of its star, Paul Rudd. Returning in the title role, Rudd brings those same exuberant values to bear on “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” which makes up in brio and adorability what it might lack in narrative complexity. As the movie opens, Rudd’s “real-life” alter ego, Scott Lang, is finishing up his house arrest since the mayhem of “Avengers: Civil War.” With only three days to go, he spends his time fooling around on his drum machine, practicing card tricks and amusing his daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), by staging pretend heists with Rube Goldberg-like contraptions and props. Ostensibly, Lang’s past life of crime will now be erased by the domestic duties of a single dad and the security firm he runs with his former cellmate, Luis (Michael Peña). But before the LoJack comes off, he’s drawn into another adventure with inventor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Pym’s daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), and Hope’s long-lost mother, Janet, the Wasp in question who has been miniaturized and trapped for 30 years in the quantum realm, but who now might be capable of returning — with Ant-Man’s help, of course. The plot isn’t the thing in “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” The joys of the movie lie in its utterly gratuitous but amusing digressions, whether in the form of Rudd’s constant stream of witty asides, Peña’s motor-mouthed recollection of Lang’s emotional journey under the influence of truth serum, running gags involving close-up magic, Morrissey and the Russian fairy tale figure Baba Yaga, or a hilarious sequence involving a tiny Lang wearing a lost-and-found sweatshirt in an elementary school that puts a similar sight gag in “Deadpool 2” to shame. — Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
THE EQUALIZER 2
R, 120 minutes. Through tonight only at Niantic. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. You won’t usually find Denzel Washington in a movie sequel. He just doesn’t do them. Something about not wanting to repeat himself. So there must be something special indeed for him to break his own rule for “The Equalizer 2.” Fans of the first film will instantly know why Washington is drawn to the character of Robert McCall, a quiet middle-aged retired special-ops agent who fiercely believes in justice, likes to help others and dispenses the occasional lethal killing for those deserving. “We all have to pay for our sins,” he tells a group of very bad guys in the new, highly satisfying edition, before vowing to hunt each one dead. His only regret? He can kill them only once. “The Equalizer 2” reconnects many of the people behind the 2014 debut alongside the always-vital Washington — Antoine Fuqua returns to direct, as does writer Richard Wenk, and actors Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo. In the sequel, McCall is now a Lyft driver, selectively helping people he encounters. When a group of smarmy, cocky Wall Street types abuse an intern during a coke-fueled party, Washington drives her to the hospital and then returns to wreck vengeance, slicing one dude with his own luxury credit card and then taunting his bleeding victims with “I expect a five-star rating.” It takes him a scant 29 seconds to destroy the room full of rich snobs; he times it, naturally. The film somewhat confusingly toggles through various initial threads before landing on the main one — someone crucial to McCall’s murky past is murdered in Brussels and that reveals a barrel of bad government apples. The film thus strays far from its roots as a vehicle for McCall to be the avenging angel for a needy stranger. But we get to see McCall solve the crime from his Boston apartment by putting himself in the crime scene like an episode of “Crossing Jordan” and then avenge the death.