Ant-Man is a great addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's funny, it's full of action, it serves as its own story while still being part of the rest of the MCU (filling in parts and setting up for Captain America: Civil War). I just wonder what would have happened if Edgar Wright had stuck with the project to the bitter end.
The movie is basically a heist film, where former thief with a heart of gold Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is tasked to steal some very confidential stuff by the first Ant-Man, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). The jokes flow well and it adds a lot to giving these characters life. But deep inside my gut, somehow, I could feel which parts were written by Wright and which parts were probably rewritten - and if my gut is correct, the parts that weren't rewritten were often the funniest and of the best quality.
Paul Rudd surprisingly turns in a great performance as Ant-Man, giving an off-beat interpretation of the character that hasn't been done in superhero movies as of late. I look forward to his contribution to the MCU, especially his probable inclusion in the Avengers films one or two years down the road.
The first thing that I thought of when I watched Paper Towns, the adaptation of John Green's best selling novel, is "their parents sure are rich to afford their children's shenanigans." Personally I'd never be able to do half the things these kids did in the movie without being grounded for life. The film does, however, succeed in targeting the core audience of similar films like last year's The Fault in Our Stars: young teens and twentysomethings that either want to bask in nostalgia or want to experience love like this once more.
At its core, Paper Towns deconstructs the Manic Pixie Dream Girl type of character (Green reportedly dislikes the archetype and makes it a point to do this often), although in the process our male protagonist does go through a life affirming change in his humdrum life nevertheless. His epiphany near the end is a bit cheesy, but I daresay it's the best part of the film. His journey is full of the joys and sorrows of youth, and to be fair the movie does a good job of showing it. Regardless of age or social status, someone will remember something from their youth when watching this film.
Paper Towns is really, really good at what it does, refining its techniques from experience gained from its predecessors. It's refreshingly free of cliches and ends up a frank, and perhaps a little optimistic, look at youth and the days ahead.
David Robert Mitchell's It Follows is a movie that calls to an earlier, refined era of horror. It eschews the fast frights that have populated modern horror films, and replaces jump scares with paranoia and dread. I haven't seen anything quite as effective in western horror for a long time.
Its premise is simple enough: a malevolent entity that stalks its victims slowly and deliberately, and is spread through sexual contact. What happens when "It" catches you is mostly implied for most of the film; what makes the premise scary is the undeniable fact that someday, somehow, "It" will catch you, and you will die.
This dread and paranoia are helped by amazing cinematography, using wide shots and slow pans that make us search the background frantically for "It" approaching our hapless protagonists. The universe of It Follows is one that is slightly off, one that is reminiscent of 80's suburbia, with both old (CRT TVs) and new (digital readers) technologies existing within its space. There are no cellphones and, as far as I remember, no computers either.
Sex, as it is utilized in It Follows may draw comparisons to the stigma of sexual diseases such as AIDS. "It" may represent the specter of guilt from people moving out of traditional sexual norms and into their own personal open sexuality. However you may deem to interpret the movie (or not), It Follows is a breath of fresh air in a horror movie landscape that is quickly getting stale.
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