Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018): based on characters created by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and others; written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Paul Rudd, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari; directed by Peyton Reed; starring Paul Rudd (Scott Lang/Ant-Man), Evangeline Lilly (Hope Pym/The Wasp), Michael Pena (Luis), Michael Douglas (Original Ant-Man/Hank Pym), Laurence Fishburne (Bill Foster/Goliath), Michelle Pfeiffer (Original Wasp/Janet Van Dyne), and Hannah John-Kamen (Ava/Ghost):

Genial sequel to Ant-Man gives Evangeline Lilly's Wasp the first titular mention of a female superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Actually, it's a two-fer. Michelle Pfeiffer, playing Lilly's mother, was the first Wasp just as Michael Douglas was the first Ant-Man. And hey, the hero called Black Goliath in the 1970's comics, played here by Laurence Fishburne, also appears without the superhero name that had that adjective because that's how we did it with non-white superheroes in the 1960's and 1970's!

At about 105 minutes, this breezy caper-comedy of cosmic dimensions would be about perfect. It's 15 minutes too much, pretty much all of it devoted to a plot thread starring Walton Goggins as an annoying super-tech black-marketeer. I guess if it were the seventies, he'd be Black Marketeer, but only if he were played by Jim Brown.

The stakes are personal in this movie, a nice change from the universal stakes of the last Marvel Joint, Avengers: Infinity War. Michael Douglas wants to save Michelle Pfeiffer from The Quantum Realm. Paul Rudd just wants to make it through his house arrest for being a superhero in contravention of the Sokovia Accords so that he can have fun with his daughter and stuff somewhere other than his house. The deftly, hilariously used Michael Pena just wants to get the new security firm he and Rudd are running into the black. Ant-Man's daughter wants him to embrace his superherodom. Superheroness? Whatever.

So there's lots of shrinking and growing action. Ant-Man spends about as much time being Giant-Man as he does Ant-Man. Oddly, the Wasp never grows. If she does, does her superhero moniker change to the Hornet?

Walton Goggins, though, and his crew. Phew. Killjoys' Hannah John-Kamen plays Ghost, a villain who really isn't a villain because she's trying to cure herself of a bad case of reality cancer. The real villain is... who again? A rogue agent of some kind, in it for the money. There's some cosmic trippiness in the Quantum Realm. Michelle Pfeiffer looks great. Certain things seem to be set up for Avengers: Infinity War, as I assume Ant-Man will get to participate in that superhero slugfest. Here, Peyton Reed keeps things light and semi-jokey. There are zingers that are actually funny. And Pena gets an extended monologue in the same style as the first Ant-Man, and it's hilarious.

So too his (true!) observation that "Latinos love The Mozz!" The Mozz is Morrissey, formerly of The Smiths, btw, and Latinos and Latinas really do love him, though not for The Mozz's increasingly xenophobic politics. 

The ants continue to squeak and vocalize, which is impressive for creatures without lungs who communicate through smell. Nitpicking the science in this movie is pointless, unless you want to note that shrinking into the Quantum Realm while keeping one's mass would eventually cause a hero to turn into a miniature black hole. Where the Hell does the mass come and go from with these crazy Pym Particles? And can you make a Pimm's Cocktail with Pym Particles? I'm asking for a friend. Recommended.

Tent-pole Sitting

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: adapted from the TV series created by Sam Rolfe by Guy Ritchie, Lionel Wigram, Jeff Kleeman, and David C. Wilson; directed by Guy Ritchie; starring Henry Cavill (Napoleon Solo), Armie Hammer (Illya Kuriakin), Alicia Vikander (Gaby), Hugh Grant (Waverly), and Jared Harris (Sanders) (2015): Enjoyable spy romp set in the early 1960's would probably have been better served had the producers gone with another title. Not many people remember the TV series from the 1960's. Heck, the movie itself doesn't bother explaining the title until the last five minutes.

Nonetheless, Guy Ritchie seems to have a lot of fun with period detail and European settings -- it's more like a James Bond movie from the 1960's than any Bond film has been since that time. Henry Cavill as American spy/super-thief Napoleon Solo plays suave/smarmy very well, and Armie Hammer is surprisingly good playing stolid, occasionally psychotic KGB strongman Illya Kuriakin. The plot involves a nuclear threat to both the Soviet Union and the United States, so the spies have to team up. Yes, it's a origin story for a TV series almost no one remembers. The eternal quest for a tent-pole series based on a property a studio already owns continues. I'm pretty sure tepid box office ensures this series won't continue, but it's far from being a disaster. Recommended.

Captain America: Civil War: based on characters and situations created by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mark Millar, Stan Lee, and others; written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely; directed by Anthony and Joe Russo (2016): Fast-moving, crowded film pits lots of Marvel super-heroes against lots of other Marvel super-heroes. The movie stays moderately zippy as it leaps from location to location. It also manages to bring Spider-man into the main Marvel Cinematic Universe in fairly rousing fashion. 

Things go on about one super-hero battle too long, in part because the best part of the whole movie occurs during that second-to-last battle as the movie goes all-out comic book. Boy, though, the Vision's costume is terrible. If nothing else, the film suggests that Marvel's Damage Control comic, in which super-powered cleaners clean up the aftermaths of super-battles, should be turned into a movie franchise. Stat. Recommended.