Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) – Doubles down on what characterized the first movie, both good and bad. The humor and creative uses of shrinking/enlarging are played up, and the science gets even stupider. The “quantum zone” is even more ridiculous than last time: There’s not just the “how to people see if they’re smaller than photons?” question I had last time but “How do people breathe?” and “Why is there some semblance of gravity?” and “Biological time has obviously passed for Janet Van Dyne, so what’s she been eating?”
Special props to Abby Ryder Fortson, the most impressive child actress I’ve seen in a long time. Here’s hoping she banks her money from the Ant-Man movies and gets the hell out of the Hollywood meat grinder before it eats her alive.
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991) – The story is unremarkable: A martial artist who took revenge against a street thug for the death of his girlfriend now enters a prison with a quasi-official pecking order and a corrupt warden, all of whom he pisses off. What sets this movie apart? The completely over-the-top cartoonish violence (appropriate, as it’s based on both a manga and the resulting anime). Fists punch clear through heads and abdomens from almost the first minute, eyeballs pop out and pop back in, and then things get really silly. All of the FX are at best unconvincing, and at worst primitive; despite all the blood and viscera, you’re not going to mistake this for torture porn.
It’s also not very emotionally engaging — let’s face it, you don’t feel any anxiety about the fate of a character who can kick through concrete walls — but it’s fun to watch.
Castaway on the Moon (2009) – A thoroughly delightful sideways-version of the premise of Tom Hanks’ Castaway (as the on-the-nose English title advertises): A young Korean man, socially adrift and drowning in debt, attempts to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge. Instead, he washes up on the mid-river island supporting the pylons of another bridge further down the river. He can see the city on both sides, but can’t get anyone’s attention, and there’s no way to get off the island… so he lives there, constructing his life from the detritus that washes up on shore.
Meanwhile, an agoraphobic young woman whose only two contacts with the outside world are her wholly fictitious internet personas and her moon-gazing telescope accidentally catches sight of him on the island, and after observing him for weeks, reaches out with a message in a bottle.
(The Korean title translates as “Kim’s Island,” because both the man and the woman are named Kim. Clever, huh?)
Honestly, this is the most enjoyable movie I’ve seen all year. Highly recommended.
Abandoned movies: Five Bloody Graves (1969), Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman (2012).
No way to get off the island? He couldn’t swim? I’m guessing there’s a reasonable explanation given in the movie or something I’m missing. It does sound intriguing, though, so I think I’ll have to find out for myself.
Actually, no, he couldn’t swim — when he tried do, we got cool flashbacks of him failing swimming lessons as a kid and being berated by his father as a failure, and then downing becoming a metaphor for his entire life.
And the agoraphobic is also a telephone-phobe? Really? I’m gonna have to find and rent this one, to see if I can suspend that much disbelief.