Ant-Man and the Wasp (4/5 Stars)

Like an antidote to universe-sized seriousness, Ant-Man and the Wasp sneaks into theaters just a few months after Avengers: Infinity Wars. Importantly, it takes place before that movie. A good thing since the Ant-Man franchise is notable in its complete lack of bigness in both themes and superhero size. It stars the nice and cute Paul Rudd as a petty thief named Scott Lang who teams up with the reclusive scientist Hank Pym (played by Michael Douglas) who engineers for him a suit that shrinks his size but outsizes his strength, you know, like an ant. Hank’s daughter, Hope Pym (Lost’s Evangeline Lily), gets her own suit this time around and becomes The Wasp. Really, she was better at this thing than Paul Rudd was even in the first movie. She was the one who trained him after all.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is all fun and action. I mean really, it is a Paul Rudd movie (everybody is nice or at least means well) but with car chases and quantum mechanics. However, to explain anything that happens in this movie takes a stupid amount of exposition. In fact, this movie could serve as a screenwriting class on exposition. There are some really good examples and others not so good.

Exposition is something that all movies need to do. Since Ant-Man and the Wasp is like the twentieth movie in an intertwined Marvel Universe, much exposition is needed to explain what this particular movie is about. The best exposition in this movie happens in the first ten minutes as a soliloquy performed by the scene-stealing Randall Park. (I’ve been doing this for so long that I can say about Randall Park what I said about Paul Rudd after “Knocked Up”, I think this guy is a leading man who needs his own movies). Randall Park plays a FBI agent who is checking in on Scott Lang during his house arrest. Scott Lang’s seven-year-old daughter asks why the FBI doesn’t like her daddy. Randall gets down on his knee to better connect with the little girl. “It must be hard to understand for you,” he relates and then speaks at length in a direct and literal tone about the various legal codes in effect since Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. Classic. This does three things: One it explains the most important events of past Marvel movies concerning Ant-Man’s situation. Two and Three: It is a character-defining joke, the FBI agent seemed like he knew how to relate to a girl by getting down on her level but comically revealed that he was too straitlaced to do so.

The worse exposition concerns all the explanations concerning Hank Pym’s wife being lost in the quantum realm, how the quantum realm works, and the nature of the movie’s bad but not so bad guy Ghost. These do not come along with jokes or character development. They are necessary scenes but pales in comparison with good exposition as above. In fact, it pales in comparison with a scene of unneeded exposition provided by Luis (played by the scene-stealing Michael Pena) who answers the simple question “Where is Scott Lang?” in a very funny not simple at all way.

But besides the exposition, what is this movie like? Well, it’s got a bunch of good people trying to figure out problems. There are a few bad guys but they are either kind of goofy (Sonny Burch played by Walter Goggins) or mean well (Ghost played by Hannah John-Kamen). They have car chases over and about the hills of San Francisco. You may have seen that before, but have you seen it with cars that shrink and unshrink and sometimes a huge Ant-Man? It is good times.

This movie has notable diversity. It is a casting laundry list of the better actors of various ethnicities in its supporting roles. Obviously Paul Rudd is the straight white male. But two main superheroes beside him are both female (The Wasp and Ghost). Paul Rudd’s friends who run a security agency are hispanic (Luis), some sort of Eastern European and black. The FBI agent is Korean. The lesser bad guy is a southern gentleman (Walter Goggins) who employs at least one Indian. Given the movie’s location, San Francisco, the cast seems possible and besides me, I don't think anybody has made a point of it.

The Ant-Man franchise adds another complexity to the nature of the Marvel Universe. Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy added the vastness of the universe. Dr. Strange added new dimensions. Ant-Man adds the minute quantum realm. The science behind these complexities is real if thinly realized. What is more interesting perhaps is how these various thin interpretations of real science will interact with one another. This is bound to happen in the next Avengers movie given how Ant-Man ends.

First Reformed (4/5 Stars)

It is hard to explain the appeal of devotional Christianity. That is, the type of Christianity in which one lives alone in prayer without any earthly comfort. Many saints lived in that way, some of which would endure what would be defined as torture, if it had not been self-inflicted. The early Christians had a reputation for suicide. Historians like Edward Gibbon argued that the downfall of the Roman Empire was in part caused by the many Christians who did not believe their civilization was worth living in: they opted out of Roman life, thus depriving the state of the citizens and soldiers it desperately needed to stave off internal revolution and outside invasion. In that way, the fall of the Roman Empire was caused in part by a Christian rejection of its unjust and unequal society. The Romans could not be beaten in a fight, so the Christians gave up all earthly ambitions in lieu of participating in a society they deemed sinful. In the end, Christianity defeated Rome by hollowing it out from within.

Can this devotional Christianity still hold appeal in our society today? In many ways our civilization is far better than the Romans in terms of equality, rule of law, health and happiness. But this movie makes a strong argument that there is still room for it, without sounding too much like Ezekiel or Jeremiah. If this polemic concerned the sexual revolution, crime, or immigration it could be dismissed by the scientific evidence that show either the problem is overblown or closer to being solved than it ever has been. However, what causes the despair in Pastor Toller (played by Ethan Hawke) is actually backed by the science. Pastor Toller becomes concerned about climate change due to encounters he has with a parishioner, a deeply troubled environmentalist.

Pastor Toller is the prime candidate for this form of Christianity before the film begins. He is recently divorced. His wife left him because he had encouraged his son to join the military (like he had done and his father had done before him) and his son was killed in Iraq in a war with no moral justification. He lives simply, alone, and in deteriorating health. He works at First Reformed, a museum church with a very small following that is being funded by a richer, fuller, and more entertaining church called Abundant Life. Abundant Life is headed by Pastor Joel Jeffers who is played by Cedric Kyles (better known as Cedric the Entertainer) in a rare dramatic role. The juxtaposition between what Christianity started out as and what is now being called the Prosperity Gospel may by itself cause despair. In one scene Pastor Toller when volunteering in a youth ministry, one of the kids explains that her father goes to church and prays all the time, so why she asks, is he still unemployed? Pastor Toller tries to explain that Jesus is not calling people to be successful (at least in the commercial sense). He is angrily attacked for this view by another one of the kids. At another point he finds out that Abundant Life has accepted charitable funds from the area’s main polluter, Balq Energy. What is Pastor Toller going to about all this? What would Jesus do?

Like most movies that deal with heavy philosophical questions, this movie could descend into unbearable melodrama. It was written and directed however by Paul Schrader, who has had much experience in bringing these types of moods and themes to our screens. (He is best known for his Scorsese collaborations Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ). This can be noticed almost immediately when he chooses to devote what has to be at least ten minutes of conversation in one room between two people, Pastor Toller and Michael, the despairing environmentalist. In most other movies, the scene would have ended five minutes earlier. But Schrader stays and flushes out all the arguments about life, forgiveness, hope, and despair. The result is fascinating, half because it is almost never done (perhaps the last time I saw something similar was the fifteen minute conversation between the priest and Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger) and half because all the arguments both for and against make sense.

Schrader has had a famously uneven career as a movie director. His last one starred Lindsay Lohan and James Deen and I’ve heard was particularly bad. It is nice to see him return to form here and make one of his best movies. Ethan Hawke is also very good and Cedric Kyles once again proves that comedians can be the perfect choice for certain dramatic roles. First Reformed does not end tidily and given the existential problems it explores, it probably could not do so. But its journey will take you places most other movies would not know how to find. I recommend watching it alone at home in a dark room with no distractions and a bottle of scotch.

The Incredibles 2 (5/5 Stars)

 A benefit of animation is the ability to stop time. Bart Simpson has been the same age since 1989. Here, the time between original movie and sequel was a full fourteen years. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, The Incredibles 2 starts immediately after the first film ended. Now, you will know exactly what happened when the villain Underminer (looks like a mole) burrowed beneath the city with a big drill to rob several banks. The human actors certainly look older but all they lend here are their voices and those are the same. Actually, there was a casualty. The young boy who voiced Dash in the earlier movie had to be be replaced by a different young boy. Still everyone else is back. Craig T. Nelson voices Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible, Holly Hunter voices Helen Parr/Elastigirl, Samuel L. Jackson voices Lucius Best/Frozone, Sarah Vowell voices Violet Parr (the author Sarah Vowell did not turn the ingenious bit of casting that landed her this part, and her first role in a movie, fourteen years ago into a voice career, The Incredibles 2 is her second role), and the Director Brad Bird again voices Edna Mode that tribute to old Hollywood costume design.

The Incredibles 2 is above all an action film. The superheroes fight villains and do so at regular intervals. At the beginning of the movie, they fight the Underminer together. The collateral damage from this fight has superheroes banned again (the bank after all was insured, so if the Incredibles had done nothing, things would have turned out better). As the government program is terminated, a billionaire philanthropist steps into the void. This man is voiced by the incorrigible excitement of Bob Odenkirk, perfect. The billionaire believes that superheroes have an image problem. He proposes that they wear cameras on their clothes and present their best sides first. By that he means, only Elastigirl and not Mr. Incredible because she wrecks less things while saving them. Mr. Incredible comically fights to hold onto his dignity and Elastigirl goes on to save runaway trains and fight villains every twenty minutes or so in spectacular display.

Meanwhile, Mr. Incredible is relegated to taking care of his family. Never has such a task been presented in such a heroic light. Those who are old enough will remember when American education “changed math” much to the chagrin of old men trying to help their sons with their homework. And can you really help a teenage girl deal with anything? The most pressing problem however is the toddler Jack Jack who is budding with new random and frightening superpowers. The movie’s best moment has to be when Jack Jack fights a raccoon, who starts the fight with way too much confidence and is continually surprised by the toddler’s more and more dangerous capabilities. Jack Jack is taken at one point to Edna Mode who goes crazy with the creative possibilities of a super-suit for such a superbaby.

The Incredibles franchise is notable in its slightly conservative tone. The first movie took swipes at bureaucracy and personal injury attorneys. The Incredibles 2 continues on this thread. This can be seen first in the billionaire’s modern liberal idea to present superheroes in a more favorable light by not highlighting the white man (I say that this discrimination is from a conservative point of view because it presupposes that the movie’s world would find a woman to be more acceptable than the white man. We all tend to see ourselves as the victim). That poor white man, it really hurts to not be wanted. At another point, the villain of the story, the Screenslaver, presents a very compelling reason for why it wants superheroes to remain illegal. Screenslaver posits that when there are superheroes around, normal people become complacent about their place and situation. Why should they try to better themselves or fight back when they can just call on superheroes to save the day? Superheroes, this villain reasons, make people weak. This is essentially an argument against patriarchal, i.e. big, government. The movie is not completely about this point. It is very funny and action-packed, but it is notable that a kid’s movie would so articulately make this point (even if, you know, the villain is ultimately vanquished). Pixar is a company that contains a multitude of voices.

Pixar has unfortunately gotten so successful they feel compelled to make sequels for their best films, i.e. most of them. If they were a less successful company, this movie may have been made ten years ago. (Instead it had to first wait for sequels of Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, and Cars (twice) to be made). The Incredibles 2 is notable in that it is better than the first one. It is as funny and action-packed (perhaps more so) but also has a better villain and a better point to it. After fourteen years, and a stupid amount of other super-hero movies produced in the meantime by other studios, this sequel had much more to say about the genre than it had before. Give Pixar another Oscar. I most likely won’t see a better animated movie this year.

p.s. Samuel L. Jackson currently has the record for most box office receipts for movies he has acted in, $5.589 billion dollars to be exact as of now. He just reswiped this record from Harrison Ford, $4.963 billion dollars. How did he do it? Well, apart from being a reliable work-a-holic, he is also a big team player. He added substantially to his record this year with supporting roles, first in Avengers: Infinity War and now as Frozone in Incredibles 2.