Ant-man and the Wasp and Sorry to Bother You Reviews

Ant-man and the Wasp

3 ½ stars

I enjoyed the first Ant-man a surprisingly amount. I thought the small-scale adventure was a perfect response to high-stakes, world-ending superhero movies. This movie works in a similar way, providing a lighter story after the harrowing epic that was Avengers: Infinity War. The stakes are still relatively low, Paul Rudd is charming, and the action scenes are quite inventive. However, it didn’t have the same wow factor as the first one. I thought the villains and side characters had potential but were mostly underused. I was interested in the ghost character and I liked the effect but ultimately she was not well fleshed out and a little underwhelming. The only villain with clear motivations was Walton Goggins as a black market arms/tech dealer. What I was most disappointed in the film was how long they dwelled on the Janet Van Dyne rescue mission. From the press material and the beginning of the film, we know that Michelle Pfeiffer is in the film and there wasn’t really a big payoff when she gets rescued. And while the action sequences were fun, I thought a lot of them had been spoiled by the trailers and weren’t as fresh as the first film or the ant-man scenes in civil war. I did think the movie was funny; Michael Pena and Randall Park were hilarious side characters with great comic timing and interaction with Rudd. Still a highly enjoyable film, you just won’t find any surprises.

Sorry to Bother You

2 ½ stars

This movie is pretty indescribable but it is something to see. It’s part surreal satire and part experimental filmmaking. While this movie didn’t completely work for me, I’m glad that this type of film exists in the mainstream media. Boots Riley clearly had a personal vision of what this was and it did touch on some interesting issues of race and pop culture in today’s America, even if it felt a little disconnected at times. The costumes and sets are great and the cast, including Armie Hammer, Tessa Thompson, and Steven Yuen, are all in for this vision.