#AND HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HUSBAND TO MICHELLE PFEIFFER

[luthientinuvielss]

suicide back on: found out Matthew McConaughey was apparently set to star in Yellowstone spinoff, but ultimately dropped out.......

[helvegenhq]

THE AVENGER

NAME: Ylva Rykkel née Bakken

OCCUPATION: Maid/Gatherer

AGE: 57

RACE: Human

GENDER: CIS FEMALE

PRONOUNS: She/Her

SEXUALITY:Heterosexual

FACECLAIM: Michelle Pfeiffer

PERSONALITY TRAITS

Nurturing

Ambitious

Vengeful 

Delusional 

BIO

COMING FROM A LINE OF CURSED WOMEN, Ylva Bakken was always taught to fear her powers rather than embrace them. According to her mother, these powers were dangerous and should not be used at all. Ylva, however, was curious about her abilities (after finding out her truth) and would often creep away to practice in an abandoned cave. She would practice for hours after sunset but still managed to come home before sunrise. How she kept up with this ruse for so long was a mystery even to herself. It became her regular routine and nobody bothered a young girl who was able to slip past the warriors at night.

It was during this time in her youth that she met her soulmate (Havardr Rykkel) and made a new enemy; her recklessness. Whilst she was practising her spells, trying to be extra careful, that she heard the most intriguing thing; a gasp. It wasn’t a bat but a person and, as she turned, to face the person they were gone. Ylva ran out of the cave, trying to pinpoint who had caught her but all she saw was a figure running back to the village. Fearing the worse once she was at home, she began to become more cautious and lessen the times she would slip away. It was to her surprise that nobody bothered her and there were no rumours of a witch about the town. She did, however, feel the eyes of someone watching her and one day, she caught the perpetrator; a boy around her age and it wasn’t just a simple boy. He was of noble blood and the son of the current king. Ylva was sure that he was the one who had seen her but she supposed there could be another meaning. She was hesitant, to her own surprise, and it took time until she was confronted by the boy. He was more fascinated than scared, she realised and that made her heart beat flare up. She had never known such a feeling and it continued to haunt her the more she hung out with him. He could have ratted her out by now but something was obviously holding him back. It wasn’t until they were alone in her cave that the pieces fit together. Ylva was annoyed that day (by something unrelated) and blurted out how confused he made her. The boy waited until she calmed before kissing her. He told her that he didn’t care that she was a witch and made a vow to protect her from harm. Ylva believed him as her feelings won her over. As soon as he became king, she became his wife with nobody knowing the truth to who she was.

Ylva led a happy life during her married years, her husband was kind and they added three children to the Rykkel brood. A son who would become the next king of Hedeby and two girls who were just as beautiful as their adoring mother. Becoming a mother really slowed Ylva down and she was more content in forgetting her magic. Her family was all she needed and her love clouded her judgement. In reality, her husband had become a drunkard who didn’t care for his army and one of her daughters was showing signs of familiarity. How could Ylva not see it until later on? Wasn’t she weak when Ingrid (her daughter) was born? Perhaps it was because she wanted to be more loving than her parents ever were? Was her own mother right to be cautious of her daughter’s powers? Ylva could see it now and wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Ingrid was powerful, more so than herself, and that was evident as the years went by. No matter what, however, Ylva wasn’t going to become her mother and discourage something that could preserve their future. Instead, she decided to show her daughter how to control it and gave her some tips on clever magics. Her reasoning was that a loving mother should teach her children and never discouraged their gifts.

Ylva tries to forget the last few years that tore her family apart. From the painful death of her husband and the shame of being made a sacrifice, she has been through a lot. The stares that she gets are a reminder of the fact that the flames didn’t work on her. Perhaps it was the will of the Gods or something to do with her powers? All she remembers is the shockwaves it caused throughout the village. These are the invisible scars that she has to carry with her, always. Through her own hysteria, she has made the vow to take vengeance on those who harmed her family and plot in her own solitude. Ylva has learned to trust no one in the plight and hopes to reconnect with her children, only Ingrid seems to give her the time of day. That is the most painful for her; her son and other daughter not speaking to her. It is as if she is dark, practising harmful magics. Perhaps she should do just that as what everybody believes? All she wants badly to take her revenge on the man that killed her husband and turned two of her children against her.

EXTRA

Her daughter is known as THE WITCH. 

As stated above, Ylva has three children; a son who resembles his father in looks and two beautiful daughters.

She only maintains a close relationship with one of her children which breaks her heart and doesn’t help to keep the dark thoughts at bay.

As an ex-queen, Ylva has to bare witness to changes that her husband’s murderer is making to their home.

[cinema-tv-etc]

Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t

Yesterday, Kristen Stewart fell out of the con-artist comedy Focus after Will Smith replaced Ben Affleck as the male lead; according to Variety, she was nagged by "the feeling that the age difference between the two would be too large a gap." For the record, Smith is a mere four years older than the 40-year-old Affleck, and if it seems a little odd that either of them would be considered a romantic partner for the 23-year-old Stewart in the first place … well, welcome to Hollywood. It seems like time and time again, male movie stars are allowed to age into their forties, fifties, and even sixties while the ages of their female love interests remain firmly on one side of the big 4-0, but is this a perception borne out of reality? To find out for sure, Vulture has analyzed the data of ten middle-aged leading men and the ages of the women they've wooed onscreen; you'll see the results in the charts below.

How'd we arrive at our conclusions? For each of our leading men, we tried to pick a representative sample of films — usually ten — where that A-lister had a notable love interest or wife, then we plotted the age gaps on our charts over the course of that star's career. (Because production dates for older movies can be hard to come by, we measured the stars' ages on the day the film in question was released.) The results confirmed our suspicions: As leading men age, their love interests stay the same, and even the oldest men on our list have had few romantic pairings with a woman their own age (or even one out of her mid-thirties). If our actor was sharing the screen with an A-lister of commensurate star power like Julia Roberts or Angelina Jolie, the age difference would drop somewhat, but in movies that relied solely on our guy's big name, the lesser-known love interests would nearly always be decades younger.

Scroll down to check out our findings in-depth.

DENZEL WASHINGTON Denzel Washington's pushing 60, but you wouldn't know it from his love interests, who tend to stay 35 and under. Perhaps that's because Washington rarely gets to romance an actress as formidable as he is (a fact of life that may owe more to Hollywood's racial prejudices than gender inequality), because when he went toe-to-toe with Angela Bassett for Malcolm X and Whitney Houston in The Preacher's Wife, the age differences weren't quite as egregious. (He did pair with Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie when they were newbie superstars, but those films — The Pelican Brief and The Bone Collector — were cautious and chaste when it came to suggesting a love connection). The older Washington gets, the less it seems to matter to his love interests, as the last three notable ones — Paula Patton, Lymari Nadal, and Kelly Reilly — were all more than twenty years younger than he was.

HARRISON FORD Ford rose to stardom in his late thirties, but the first time he had a notable love interest in her late thirties, it was in 1999's Random Hearts … when Ford was an age 57 to Kristin Scott Thomas's 39. The vast majority of Ford's love interests have been at least fifteen years younger than him, and some were far younger than that: When Six Days Seven Nights came out in 1998, pundits debated whether the sexuality of Ford's co-star Anne Heche might prove a distraction, paying little mind to the fact that Ford was 26 years older than the woman he was supposed to woo.

JOHNNY DEPP Johnny Depp likes 'em young: Nearly all of his notable love interests have been 25 or under, and a few of them — including Winona Ryder, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Keira Knightley (who shared a kiss with Depp in the second Pirates film) — would have been carded at the time they swapped spit with the star. In fact, the cradle-robbing Depp has only had two notable love interests in their mid-thirties, and all Juliette Binoche and Angelina Jolie had to do to make that cut is win an Oscar beforehand. Easy!

TOM CRUISE Tom Cruise has had an interesting romantic trajectory onscreen: At the start of his career, almost all of his love interests were older than him. Shelley Long in Losin' It, Rebecca De Mornay in Risky Business, Kelly McGillis in Top Gun … time and time again, an older woman would seduce the sexually inexperienced Cruise onscreen. It's no wonder women used to love him! In the nineties, though, Cruise began squiring the five-years-younger Nicole Kidman, and he's remained the older man in all of his romantic encounters since. From Vanilla Sky on, the closest Cruise will let a woman get to his age is ten years; in the new Oblivion, he's a full seventeen years older than his female lead, Olga Kurylenko.

GEORGE CLOONEY Compared to Cruise, the women that George Clooney screen-dates are a smidge more age-appropriate (most of them are only eight or nine years his junior), and twice he even wooed actresses who were three older than him: Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day and Holly Hunter in O Brother, Where Art Thou? When it comes to co-stars, Clooney tends to have his pick of classy actresses in their mid-thirties, though as he gets older — Clooney will turn 52 in May — the age of his love interests still seems to have plateaued.

RICHARD GERE Former Sexiest Man Alive winner Richard Gere is a good-looking 63, but his love interests haven't aged much in the three decades he's been a star: From Pretty Woman on, Gere's female co-stars have been 10 to 30 years younger than him, a trend that shows no signs of abating now that he's in his seventh decade. To be fair, he's played husband to the three-years-older Susan Sarandon in both Shall We Dance and Arbitrage … but in the former, he spends far more screen time with the much younger Jennifer Lopez, and in the latter, he's stepping out on Sarandon with supermodel-turned-actress Laetitia Casta, who's separated in age from Gere by a solid 29 years. At least Gere had the tables turned on him somewhat in Unfaithful, where his fifteen-years-younger screen-wife Diane Lane had an affair with a younger man, Olivier Martinez. How much younger than Lane was Martinez? Well … one measly year, actually.

STEVE CARELL When your breakout film is called The 40 Year Old Virgin, it ensures that audiences will forever be aware of your age … even if you were actually 43 when it came out, as Steve Carell was. In that movie, he fell in love with the three-years-older Catherine Keener, and ever since, Carell has looked most at home with romantic partners nearer to his age, like Lauren Graham, Tina Fey, and Julianne Moore. Every so often, though, Hollywood will insist at throwing a twentysomething starlet at Carell, and it's just awkward: Movies like Get Smart, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone had more than a few problems, but the main issue in all three is how ill at ease Carell seems when romantically paired with an actress who's twenty years younger. Let's hope Carell got the memo and will continue to be the rare male star who mostly sticks to love interests in their forties (as his new screen paramour Kristen Wiig will be when Anchorman 2 comes out this winter).

BRAD PITT Brad Pitt began his career as a romantic idol by taking a page straight out of the Tom Cruise playbook: After his roll in the hay with the eight-years-older Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise, he then began screen-dating the much younger women he was seeing in real life, Juliette Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow, who were both around a decade Pitt's junior. (That's apparently his sweet spot, as Angelina Jolie would later be able to attest.) The rest of his romantic history runs the gamut, though Pitt did once take a screen-wife his own age: Mary-Louise Parker, who only got a handful of lines in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

LIAM NEESON Remember how Depp only allowed a love interest within striking distance of his own age if she was an Oscar-winning actress? The same more than holds true for Liam Neeson, who was partnered with older Oscar winners Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep in the mid-nineties. Aside from that brief moment in time, Neeson usually robs the cradle by wooing actresses around fifteen years younger than him, and ever since Taken reestablished his box-office virility, the age of his love interests has dropped precipitously: More than two and a half decades separated Neeson from his screen-wife January Jones in Unknown, and in Paul Haggis's next film, Third Person, the 61-year-old Neeson will bed 29-year-old Olivia Wilde.

TOM HANKS Well, here's something novel: an A-lister whose leading ladies actually age alongside him (though they still tend, on the whole, to be a bit younger). There aren't any egregiously age-inappropriate pairings in Tom Hanks's portfolio, since Hanks keeps his love interests within at least ten years of him at all times. He also aims high: Most of his female co-stars are Oscar winners or nominees, from Helen Hunt to Halle Berry, and he'll co-star with two-time nominee Catherine Keener (who's only three years younger) in this year's fact-based drama Captain Phillips. Then again, maybe it shouldn't surprise us that Hanks is an A-list aberration in this group: For 25 years, he's been married to the same woman, actress Rita Wilson … and both Hanks and Wilson are 56.

* The charts for Steve Carell and Tom Hanks have been updated.

By  Kyle Buchanan

http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/leading-men-age-but-their-love-interests-dont.html?mid=twitter_vulture

This is neither perfectly accurate nor complete, but here is a rough comparison with Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep: Susan Sarandon OLDER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009- The Greatest: Susan, 63 / Pierce Brosnan, 56 2007- In the Valley of Elah: Susan, 61 / Tommy Lee Jones, 61 2007- Mr. Woodcock: Susan, 61 / Billy Bob Thornton, 52 2004- Shall We Dance: Susan, 58 / Richard Gere, 55 1998- Stepmom: Susan, 52 / Ed Harris, 48 1988- Bull Durham: Susan, 42 / Kevin Costner, 33 YOUNGER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009- Solitary Man: Susan, 63 / Michael Douglas, 65 2002- Moonlight Mile: Susan, 56 / Dustin Hoffman, 65 1992- Lorenzos Oil: Susan, 46 / Nick Nolte, 51 1987-Witches of Eastwick: Susan, 41 / Jack Nicholson, 50 In Summary: in 10 movies spanning 22 years, Susan Sarandon has been OLDER than 6 of her leading men (including Tommy Lee Jones, who is 1 month younger than she), and YOUNGER than 4. In the films where she is OLDER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 9 years (Bull Durham). In the films where she is YOUNGER than the actors, the biggest age difference was also 9 years (Witches of Eastwick & Moonlight Mile). Meryl Streep OLDER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2009: Its Complicated: Meryl, 60 / Alec Baldwin, 51 2009: Julie & Julia: Meryl, 60 / Stanley Tucci, 49 2002: Adaptation: Meryl, 53 / Chris Cooper, 51 1998: One True Thing: Meryl, 49 / William Hurt, 48 1996: Before and After: Meryl, 47 / Liam Neeson, 44 1990: Postcards from the Edge: Meryl, 41 / Dennis Quaid, 36 YOUNGER THAN HER LEADING MAN 2012: Hope Springs: Meryl, 63 / Tommy Lee Jones, 66 2009: Its Complicated: Meryl, 60 / Steve Martin, 64 1995: The Bridges of Madison County: Meryl, 46 / Clint Eastwood, 65 1994: The River Wild: Meryl, 45 / David Strathairn, 45 1991: Defending Your Life: Meryl, 42 / Albert Brooks, 44 1986: Heartburn: Meryl, 37 / Jack Nicholson, 49 1985: Out of Africa: Meryl, 36 / Robert Redford, 49 1982: Sophies Choice: Meryl, 33 / Kevin Kline, 35 1981: French Lieutenants Woman: Meryl, 32 / Jeremy Irons, 33 1979: Kramer v. Kramer: Meryl, 30 / Dustin Hoffman, 42 In Summary: in 15 movies spanning 22 years, Meryl Streep has been OLDER than 6 of her leading men, and YOUNGER than 10. In the films where she is OLDER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 11 years (Julie and Julia). In the films where she is YOUNGER than the actors, the biggest age difference was 19 years (Bridges of Madison County).

[shrecksassistant-blog]

ok. since the movie has zero information about selina’s backstory, if you don’t count the annoying phone calls from an over-involved mother and a shitty boyfriend...

a bio for MY selina, to conform to the things laid out in the film. or less a bio and more a set of statements that set a mood, a feel, a background. this paints the sets that came before the pink apartment, the idea of a history that explains her struggle to butt in and raise a voice in a male-dominated conference room, the theory that her expectations of relationships was broken from the start. here we are- lets go.

[ please note that this backstory/headcanon is specific to the selina kyle in batman returns. i am perfectly aware that it does not work for the selina of comics or most other media, where the canon is significantly more set. burton selina is a lot more vague, and this is me, filling in the empty spaces to allow for background. ]

QUICK STATS:

Name: Selina Kyle

Nicknames/Aliases: Catwoman

Family: Brian Kyle- father, Maria Kyle- mother

Occupation: Secretary / cat burgler / villain

Sexuality: Ambiguious

FC: Michelle Pfeiffer

BIO:

all it takes is one bad choice, and a life can be decided, outcome laid in stone.

For Selina, it wasn’t actually her choice, that led her to that window, that moment, that fall. It was her mother’s choice. Her mother’s choice to marry Brian Kyle on a drunken whim, and move with him, away from Gotham. Fast forward, and there she was, sidecar in one hand, vacuum in the other. Maria Kyle hated the suburbs in which she lived with a man she often outright resented, too introspective and self-important to notice anything else. Brian Kyle, equally drunken, equally selfish, for his part, also resented Maria, and the daughter he felt she forced on him, living most of his life at his office, and avoiding the family home. The only time all three came together was for family photographs, and when the neighbors were watching. The only time her parents got along was when they were fighting. The only time either paid much attention to Selina was when something was very wrong.

Catholic school, community college, and the jump to the big city were supposed to be Selina’s escape from the downward spiral trap of the modern housewife with dish water hands. Her determination to not become her mother was not, however, enough determination to bolster her backbone, and the shy, quiet girl who had grown up in the postmodern ranch-style subdivisions and cookie cutter towns that ringed the filthy heart of Gotham never stood much of a chance against the confident, brash, street-wise young women she was up against. She would never be as pretty, never be as bright, never be as quick witted.

A degree, and a job at Shreck’s was the best she could hope for, the best she could manage, and she tried to tell herself, repeatedly, that it was just a step. Her business degree would earn her a place at the table some day- some table, any table. Unlike most secretaries, she wasn’t in it for the CEO husband, she really did want to prove herself, make something of herself, prove her parents wrong, prove her friends back home wrong. Prove the world wrong.

Being pushed out a window…actually really helped with that.

Or rather, the Selina that emerged from that trauma was no longer bound by petty morality, by social constraint, and possibly, by sanity. Her rage at the way she had been shunted aside, repeatedly, her entire life, looked down on if not overlooked entirely, the fact she had been murdered, the fact she wasn’t dead…all of it boiled over until it formed around her like armor, until it made her into Catwoman.

Bruce Wayne, Batman, the Penguin, the death of Max Shreck…diversions. Her lives were ticking down, but not spent yet, not by far. And with the disappearance of mousy secretary Selina Kyle, emerged a completely different woman. Selina Kyle, femme fatal. Selina Kyle, cat burgler. Selina Kyle, villain.

[champignehq]

THE KINGMAKER

full name: ANNALISE COLLETE GUERRA ( maiden name DELACROIX ) birthday & age: february 13th, aged FIFTY-SEVEN pronouns: SHE/HER sexuality: BISEXUAL occupation: BUSINESS TYCOON / BOOKKEEPER for the mafia district: BOIS DE ROSE MANOR in CRYSTALVALE lives with: THE DAUNTLESS & children resident for: THEIR ENTIRE LIFE affiliation: BABINEAUX MAFIA / HIGH SOCIETY — ORIGINAL FAMILY positives: sangfroid, dutiful,  articulate negatives: stubborn, slightly haunted, private faceclaim: MICHELLE PFEIFFER

[ triggers: death tw, murder tw,  ]

YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND THEIR STORY …

THE PAST

no two closer siblings ever existed within the delacroix family than did THE KINGMAKER and THE INIQUITOUS. they were like two sides of the same coin and nobody dared to separate them. she was the light to the darkness he carried and there was nobody they trusted more than each other. their bond was even known to make their siblings jealous as nobody else shared what they did. they were special and they received an ample amount of attention from their parents almost as if to emphasis this.

though it became clear early on that THE KINGMAKER didn’t share her brother’s enthusiasm for the family business. of course, she liked all the wonderfully luxurious things it could afford them and she never protested aloud to the heinous crimes committed by her own family, but she was less than willing to get her own hands dirty for the sake of the delacroix family.

she knew better than anyone the plans THE INIQUITOUS had for the babineaux as she’d been listening to him talk about it for many years and she truly believed he could do all the things their father had hoped. they all knew THE TRICKSTER would get his day in the sun first, but none of them had faith his reign would last, not like their father’s before him. and when the time did indeed come and THE TRICKSTER decided to pass on the mantel prematurely, they were taken by surprise with his choice; THE LEADER.

THE KINGMAKER could sense the distance growing between them as soon as it happened, feel him pulling away from her and purposefully keeping her in the dark. a place she’d never liked to be. his erratic, suspicious behavior wasn’t something she was willing to stand by idly and allow to continue so after a few months of snooping and following her brother she uncovered a nefarious scheme that would end her younger brother’s life and destroy her family forever. unwilling to let her own other half ruin their family so completely, THE KINGMAKER did all she could and went to her other brothers with the information.

it’s thanks to the eldest delacroix daughter that the BABINEAUX MAFIA still exists and thrives in the fair coastal city. though she’s never been able to forget the price she had to pay to do it.

THE PRESENT

now, annalise has four children who she would do anything for, and she’s always stressed one thing to them, above all: stay loyal to each other. protect each other. even from the rest of the family.

maybe this importance comes from THE INIQUITOUS’ betrayal; maybe it comes from her own; maybe it comes from both. either way, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that her life has been shaped, for better or for worse, by her decision to save her younger brother and the babineaux organization. she thinks it’s for better, even though she’s haunted by the ghost of her twin, in memories and the blank space by her side where he should be. after all, she wouldn’t have had the life she has if THE INIQUITOUS had succeeded, and she can’t complain about the position she’s in. her children are strong, her marriage is happy, and she has her brothers in her debt.

she loves them, she does - THE TRICKSTER, THE LEADER, THE LAWLESS all - and she knows they trust her like she trusts them, but bargaining chips are still useful, are they not? and being the reason the mafia is still around…the extra power isn’t worth the price; it’s dirty, stained with her own twin’s blood, her best friend’s blood, and she hates it, but she has it. she has it. kingmaker and kingslayer aren’t too far off, she supposes. maybe the latter is more accurate than the former.

THE INIQUITOUS would have been great if he’d been given power. but they got THE LEADER instead, and anna loves her brother, believes in him, and so she does not complain, does not stir up ghosts while others are around, does not think about what-ifs. she did her duty to her family. she will have to live with that. she will also make sure that none of her children are forced to do the same. she wouldn’t wish that burden on anyone.

                                CONNECTIONS

THE LEADER, THE TRICKERSTER, & THE LAWLESS — her brothers who to this day believe they are eternally indebted to their eldest sister as the mafia wouldn’t still be around today if it weren’t for the action she’d taken against her own twin.

THE CATALYST & THE NURTURER — her younger sisters. those in her family she is closest with after losing her other half.

THE DAUNTLESS — her husband. the marriage was more or less arranged by their fathers, but anyone who saw them would never have been able to guess it. almost as if they were a match made in heaven.

THE INTELLECT, THE ALTRUISTIC, THE ENIGMA, & THE DAMSEL — her children. they are without a doubt her pride and joy and THE KINGMAKER is rather eager to see them climb the ranks of the mafia but more importantly to see them protect each other, even against their own family if they need to.

THE OUTCAST — her new bodyguard and by far the youngest bodyguard she’s ever had assigned to her. from the NOYER family and cousin to THE ACE, nobody really knows why he’s suddenly been sent to champigné and joined the ranks of the BABINEAUX, but THE LEADER wasn’t going to turn down another soldier for the upcoming war. though THE KINGMAKER has sensed there’s something quite off about him, she just has yet to place it. 

THE TACTICIAN — former best friend. THE TACTICIAN grew up alongside the delacroix siblings but was especially close with the twins, closer than most outside the family. he stood behind THE INIQUITOUS and believed whole-heartedly it should have been him to wear the metaphorical crown, and nearly lost his life while making that opinion known. ever since THE INIQUITOUS’ death, things between THE TACTICIAN and THE KINGMAKER have been different—and how could it not be when he’s there as a constant reminder of the betrayal.

THE PANJANDRUM — good friend. THE PANJANDRUM only just moved to champigné but the two hit it off at a High Society event and became quick friends.

CONSEIL DE SOUTIEN — originally composed of the remaining six Delacroix children: THE TRICKSTER, THE KINGMAKER, THE LEADER, THE CATALYST, THE NURTURER, THE NARC, & THE LAWLESS. they formed the council after THEINIQUITOUS’ failed coup, to protect themselves and their heirs from any future lapse in judgment their family might have. and thankfully they did, as it helped bring to light THE NARC’s guilty conscious and plan to spoil everything for the family; which they swiftly put an end to in 2014. ever since its been smooth sailing in terms of internal unrest thanks to the council.

the role of  THE KINGMAKER is taken by AMALIA

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the day the movie is first shown in the U.K, now I know that is over a month after it was released elsewhere but I have been told not to post any spoilers about these films until certain people have the option of seeing it. In any case if you have not yet seen the movie go and see it then come back and read on.

Ant-Man and the Wasp vs Incredibles 2:

Before going into my character analysis for the movie I want to reaffirm what I said in my non-spoiler review about the connections between this movie and Incredibles 2 and why I think Disney has self-sabotaged itself and the victim is Marvel.

Firstly I enjoyed both movies, I saw both movies before the mainstream U.K. and at the time of this review have already posted my spoiler review for Incredibles 2 so don’t feel I’m spoiling anything here. But yes I thought Incredibles 2 was a near perfect movie, it had been 14 years in the making and the wait paid off. I also thought Ant-Man and the Wasp was a very charming and enjoyable movie and a good follow up to the first film.

The only issue with the two being released so close together, again mainly in the U.S. rather than here in the U.K, is that both movies and franchises are essentially family superhero movies. Yes Incredibles centres on that family dynamic but Ant-Man deals with father-daughter dynamics as a B storyline both with Scott & Cassie and Hank & Hope, but also now in the sequel we have the mother-daughter dynamic with Janet & Hope as well as the husband-wife dynamic with Hank & Janet.

In my opinion, having both movies so close to each other particularly both being Disney properties, was a mistake. Not only because both had a lot of expectation going in but also when you look at the opening weekend box office for both movies. Incredibles 2 made over $182 million whereas Ant-Man & the Wasp made just under $79 million, both of which obviously don’t count the U.K. because the U.K. had over a month to wait for either film and yes Ant-Man did beat its first movie opening weekend but a Disney Pixar movie has beat the latest movie in a 10 year juggernaut franchise.

Characters:

Scott Lang/Ant-Man:

As I have said before, this is Paul Rudd’s franchise and he certainly proves why just in the first 10/15 minutes. The scene where Scott is playing with daughter Cassie in his house because he can’t leave the house were very charming. I love the fact he built those cardboard tunnels and giant ants to simulate what it is like to be Ant-Man pulling off a heist was very cool. I especially like how it played into Cassie’s arc in the movie but I will get into that when I talk about Cassie.

Speaking of him not leaving the house; I loved the exposition as to why he couldn’t leave, it was because he sided with Cap against the Sokovia Accords but was released from the Raft on the condition he completed a 2 year house arrest stint. It brings the movie into somewhat present day minus a few months and also gave exposition as to why Hank or Hope weren’t in Civil War.

Also I liked seeing repercussions to him going to the Quantum Realm at the end of the first movie, not only with that “dream” state he was in but also the link he gained with Janet. I was slightly worried when it first started that it was going to be another PTSD story akin to Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 but thankfully it was not.

This did also get him back into his superhero antics. When he was essentially abducted by Hope, I liked the fact that the chemistry was still there, I did not really see it there in the first movie so thought this time around it was still there but again I didn’t vest much into it.

Paul Rudd’s comedy when in scenes with Hank & Hope was excellent. I loved how he stated that he destroyed the suit under Hank’s orders but then Hank got mad saying it was his life’s work but then when he revealed he didn’t actually destroy it his reason for not doing so was because it was Hank’s life’s work. It was really funny. Also the wing and blaster envy he was getting from seeing Wasp in action was also funny.

I also enjoyed the size jokes with the new Ant-Man suit malfunctioning causing Scott to not be able to control the size he goes. Particularly at Cassie’s school when he was stuck as essentially a midget but realistically child-sized, Paul Rudd sold those scenes beautifully.

Hope van Dyne/Wasp:

Just for the record, Hope is not my second favourite character in this movie, but because her name is in the title and she is who she is I thought I should put her second, in reality she comes just above Cassie.

The reason for this is, Evangeline Lilly essentially played an angry nagging den mother in this movie and I was promised The Wasp. Now yes I have made my peace with the fact the comic-book version is Janet van Dyne and to be fair we did see her as the Wasp so I am okay with that but considering throughout the first movie Hope was vying to be put in the field and then the look on her face when she finally got the suit at the end was so rewarding that we were left gagging for her to shine here...then it didn’t even seem like she appreciated it half the time. She was moaning at Scott for leaving to go to Germany with the Avengers, she was moaning when Scott told Luis where the laboratory was which then led Burch to them, she just seemed like she was looking for any reason to be mad at Scott.

Also, I have said it since I saw the first image of her from the movie, I HATE the fact she has long hair in this movie. Wasp is supposed to have a short messy bob or a pixie cut. How she had it in the first movie was perfect for the character yet here, I know it has been two years and hair does grow, but it just seemed unrealistic to have that much hair in that small helmet. The two theories I have for this is Evangeline Lilly said she just wanted long hair or they wanted her to resemble Michelle Pfeiffer. Either way I was not keen. It seems that every female character in this universe needs long hair and a face full of makeup regardless of the tone of the actual character.

And that’s another thing, there were times in this movie when Hope’s hair looked shabby and she wasn’t wearing make-up, yet in the next scene after she’s suited up and finished fighting she retracts her helmet and suddenly her hair looks silky and she has a full face of make-up...either that suit deals in great hair and beauty or there is a continuity error right there.

Now despite my issues with the character, I did still like Hope in the movie, mainly when she was fighting as the Wasp and at the end when she’s reunited with her mother. She had one of my favourite lines in the movie which was when the heroes were cornered by Sonny Burch before that brilliant car chase and after seeing him she just goes “Seriously? This guy again?!” which made me laugh because I also didn’t understand why he was in the movie.

I wasn’t a big fan of the costume; Yes it was supposed to match the Ant-Man costume of this universe which is very much motorcycle attire but this time around with wings however, I thought the costume at the end of the first movie looked a lot better. Yes bare arms on a protective suit aren’t exactly practical but that’s more or less how the character looked in the comics, or with no helmet.

Now there were apparently plans to debut the Wasp in Captain America: Civil War and have her accompany Ant-Man, after seeing this I am thinking maybe they should because it wouldn’t have been for a whole movie and maybe she would have come across better both there and here for being included. Although I did like her line to Scott saying “If I had come, you wouldn’t have got caught”.

Overall I am not overwhelmed by Evangeline Lilly’s first on-screen outing as the Wasp but I don’t think I am underwhelmed either. I am slightly disappointed both because this is the first instance of a female Marvel superhero to have her name in the title of a movie and also the fact there are talks of Wasp leading the new Avengers team after Avengers 4 which going from this I have doubts in, but she was still good my watch.

Hank Pym:

I loved Michael Douglas in this movie, he was so much funnier and personable here compared to the first movie. I love how the movie showed us a glimpse of gritty and dark Hank Pym from the comics in his relationship with former friend Bill Foster and pretty much creating Ghost yet showing no remorse for any of it, I would have liked to have seen a hint of the fact in the comics he was physically violent towards Janet at one point but I get this is a light-hearted movie.

On the subject of his comedy, he was fantastic in his snide remarks towards Scott, very much playing the disapproving father-in-law role and Scott and Hope weren’t even together in this movie. As I said before, I love that back and forth between Hank and Scott about Scott destroying the original suit then revealing he didn’t for the same reason Hank gave as to why he was angry he thought he had. Also when it looks like Scott and Hope are on a more even level in the relationship, the fact Hank turned around after this somewhat tender moment and said “If you;re doing making eyes at my daughter, could you go get my lab back?” This was definitely my type of comedy I love blunt dry humour with a dash of cynicism and Michael Douglas provided that in spades.

I really liked him in that opening scene where they once again de-aged him and in my opinion he looked better here than in that opening scene from the first film, it was more believable that this was Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne of 30 years ago. Also yes the superhero scene with them is pretty much the same as the one during Hank’s explanation of Janet’s death from the first one but just to see Hank Pym as Ant-Man is something I will take in any form.

Also I liked in the end it was him who went into the Quantum Realm to rescue Janet, it was pretty much the only action he had all movie because otherwise he was behind a computer. I thought the reunion with his wife was very sweet and touching although it did very much play like a traditional elderly couple or a prim and proper greeting of just almost a peck. These are two seasoned actors and yes while they are slightly elderly it wouldn’t have hurt the movie to allow a true passionate moment to make the audience feel the joy of the original superhero couple being reunited after 30 years.

Like I mentioned in my non-spoiler review, the size-jokes in this movie were better than the first one and they were pretty much shared between Scott Lang and Hank Pym. Scott provided the physical comedy while Hank provided the technological gags. I loved that Hot Wheels toy car storage set being used as various different transportation for them, I really liked shrinking the lab as a travel case and the fact that Hank probably designed it because of the retractable handle was brilliant. Also the workforce of giant ants in the lab were brilliant. Slightly silly in places but it’s that kind of movie.

Janet van Dyne:

Michelle Pfeiffer is back in the superhero universe and I am personally thrilled with her performance here. I loved how comedic she was particularly in that opening scene, I never knew she could be that funny. That 80s wig sold her de-aging but also how they de-aged her face took me right back to seeing her as Selina Kyle in 1992′s Batman Returns.

The fact there was that massive easter-egg of seeing her as a shadow in the Quantum Realm in the first movie but then expanding on that by having her meet Scott and create that mind-link with him was really quite clever. I also was very intrigued by her newfound powers, I like how they explained it was essentially a mutation from the Quantum Realm and I am glad it wasn’t a physical mutation but the fact the powers don’t seem to be specific to anything and instead seems to be energy that can do various things intrigues me and makes me want to know more.

The fact we see her when Hank Pym reunites with her looking like a hermit but still having her Wasp suit on just without the full helmet was very cool. It did kind of make her look like a Sand Person from Star Wars especially with that coat that came out of nowhere but I thought she looked great.

Also her promo image mislead me as I have been thinking since they were released that her hair was typically Michelle Pfeiffer and would be blonde, but I am happy it was grey and that her hair was brunette in the opening as Janet should be.

I am slightly disappointed we did not see her take part in any action particularly since she was one of the better Catwomans for her action scenes but I do also get why she wasn’t involved.

Ava Starr/Ghost:

Just when you think the MCU has solved its villain problem after a string of successful villains first with Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming and then from Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 through to Thanos finally making an impact in Avengers: Infinity War, we take a step back with Ghost.

Now that is not to say Hannah Jon-Kamen was in anyway bad, in fact I liked her quite a bit as an actress. I thought her emotional backstory of how she went back to save her father but was caught up in the explosion that killed both her parents and left her constantly in pain struggling between two realms was compelling and made for a very interesting character. Also as a villain I thought she was spectacular to watch from a VFX standpoint.

The fact she was constantly stuck in quantum entanglement made for some of the best VFX I have seen for any character in a comic-book property in quite some time. It was chilling but awesome. Also made for some excellent fight sequences between her and Ant-Man.

However, while I understood her motivation, it did not ring true with going full villain, because she wasn’t she was just someone who was doing bad things for personal reasons not because she is villainous herself. It's almost Killmonger-esk as both were villainous to avenge their parents.

Also I didn't understand why we have a second Scott Lang/Ant-Man movie, but the villain targeted Hank Pym again. Scott just seems to be fighting Hank's battles now he has retired and it just screams out the fact Hank Pym should have been Ant-Man in Phase 1.

Then you have the fact that she is once again a one-movie villain but rather than dying she is somewhat reformed when Janet heals her almost instantly after returning from the Quantum Realm despite the fact that Ava was trying to kill her in order to gain quantum stability.

Overall I do see a future for this character but I am going to explain how when I talk about the future of the MCU further down because it does involve a lot from this movie.

Cassie Lang:

I loved Cassie here, I thought she stepped up her game from the first movie and the fact she was so willing to be a superhero bodes very well for the future.

Particularly with how this movie ends and sets up Avengers 4, I am fully behind the explanation as to why she is recast from Abby Ryder-Fortson here to Emma Fuhrmann there. Especially as it seems to indicate the arrival of Stature. Yes currently in the comics Cassie is Stinger rather than Stature but I hope they do go with Stature first at least and then see the evolution into Stinger.

I really enjoyed her wanting to be her father’s partner in crime until she realized Hope was a more fitting partner for the time being. Although the fact that the end of the movie happened, it may mean when we see her in the future she has drawn from the comics where she became Stature after her father’s death at the hands of Scarlet Witch.

I also liked how Cassie stalled for her dad when Agent Woo came knocking and he was speeding back to the house. It did show a lot of promise for her ability to cover for heroic deeds.

Luis, Dave & Kurt:

I did think if you just had Luis in this movie it would have been enough, Kurt and Dave were very much just there. Luis was on point as always and that scene where he explains situations but everyone is talking in his voice for this movie was spectacular. It helped to fill in the gaps between the first and second movies.

I did think the three of them jumped the shark a bit particularly with the forced humor in places but I loved the fact Luis again got in on the action more-so than he did in the first movie. He is proving himself to be a great civilian sidekick to Scott.

Also it did only occur to me in this movie that David Datmalchian, who plays Kurt, has really been jumping back and forth from Marvel to DC, he was in the first Ant-Man then in between the two movies went over to DC TV to be in not only Gotham as cult leader Dwight Pollard who is responsibly in that universe for resurrecting Jerome and cutting off his face, but after that he was in The Flash as Abra Kadabra. I have to say, he has a brilliant range as an actor because I did not click any of the three characters were the same actor until watching this.

Bill Foster/Goliath:

I do feel slightly sorry for Laurence Fisburne because, just as David Datchmalchian has jumped between the two comic-book franchise juggernauts. he has effectively jumped ship from DC to Marvel first playing a race-bent Perry White in the DCEU and now playing Goliath here. Both are very well known characters but in my opinion I prefer him as Perry White, because here he did not make much of an impact.

As I said when talking about Pym, I did like seeing the fact that both these scientists were former friends but now effectively hate each other, even though Bill was willing to lie to the FBI about not seeing the heroes because of that reason. However, while yes I understood why Bill did not like Hank, I do feel that jibe about Janet was a low blow particularly when Bill and Janet seemed to still be on friendly terms.

In terms of his superhero days, he is retired from action at present much like Hank and Janet, although Janet was forced into retirement due to being presumed dead for 30 years, and we do not even get a flashback of him in action like we do with the Pyms. I did like when he and Scott were comparing sizes because it is such an easy joke but never really been used in this manner, however I would have liked to even of seen a picture of him in his Goliath suit on his wall or something.

Also the fact that in the comics Goliath was killed by a fake Thor in Civil War does pose the question of where this character goes from here, if at all because as I said I was not really a fan of him here.

His relationship with Ava I thought came across very genuine in the belief that they were surrogate father and daughter, I liked how Bill took Ava in to somewhat try and make a better life for her despite the fact she was then made an Agent of SHIELD and somewhat used by them. It was very much a struggling father angsty child sort of relationship but it worked well for the movie.

I am glad he somewhat redeemed himself and by the end of the movie I was glad he didn’t die but once again I do not know where the character goes from here.

Jimmy Woo:

Agent Woo was very much the new Agent Coulson, hopefully this means he will not be demoted to his own TV show but I would not mind seeing him turn up in a Marvel TV series because I feel he’d be better suited there.

He had some funny lines like wanting to learn Scott’s slight of hand trick and he was great exposition when he was explaining to Cassie at the start of the movie what happened to Scott between Civil War and this movie. But overall I saw him as just an obstacle in this movie much like Paxton was in the first.

Jim Paxton & Maggie Lang:

Speaking of Paxton, he and his still fiancée Maggie were very much just there in this movie. I really am growing to detest seeing Bobby Cannavale in all movies I see him in because yes he was good in Will & Grace but that character worked with his acting range, Paxton in the first movie was yes an obstacle for Scott and had some believability as Scott’s ex’s new man but here it’s almost like he was on happy pills or something and Scott’s BFF.

I am glad to see Scott and Maggie are getting along better as co-parents but again aside from that the two did not really leave an impression.

Sonny Burch:

Again, Hope said it best when Burch showed up and she said “Seriously, this guy again!” Because I felt Walter Goggins kept walking or driving into the wrong movie, yes this was a somewhat heist movie and in a good heist movie there are either multiple jobs or parties at once but Butch had zero presence or anything really to do with the main storylines despite the fact he kept trying to obtain Pym’s lab for the technology inside.

End-Credits Scenes:

So there were two end-credits scenes here, one meaty one after the title card appeared mid-credits and one throwaway one right at the end which involves Scott’s giant pet ant playing the drums after silent shots of his house.

The meaty one involved Scott, Hope, Hank & Janet setting up a portal to the Quantum Realm in order to harvest more quantum energy for Ghost to remain stable. While he is in there, the Pym-van Dyne family all disintegrate along with everyone else who disintegrated at the end of Infinity War. This leaves Scott trapped in the Quantum Realm and sets up where we’ll find him in Avengers 4.

MCU Future:

This sets up the plot for Avengers 4 rather well as it does seem as though Scott will time travel through the Quantum Realm and appear in the future which is why we have an aged Tony and older Cassie. They will probably then time-travel back to the Battle of New York in 2012 which is why we have the original Avengers still alive and Thor back with his long hair.

Outside of the next movie, I see a S.H.I.E.L.D. prequel in the works, yes there was one penned after The Avengers which was then altered to a Black Widow solo movie before being scrapped for the Black Widow movie we have now coming up, but now I see more potential for an actual S.H.I.E.L.D. prequel. First of all the de-aging technology in this movie on Hank, Janet and Bill were all better than on Michael Douglas at the start of the last movie, but also it will be a chance to see Hank, Janet & Bill as the original Ant-Man, Wasp and Goliath in action. It would also be a way to bring back Ghost and see her arc as an Agent of SHIELD explored over the span of a movie. Something to consider and something I would be very keen on seeing.

Overall I rate the movie a 7.5/10, it was a great movie but I am not sure if it holds up to the first movie which I rated a 9. It has some great fight scenes, it’s great seeing both Wasps on the table and Ghost was great but there were a lot of unnecessary plot points and characters as well as a lack of comedy the first movie had which lowered the score a bit.

So that’s my spoiler review for Ant-Man and the Wasp, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Marvel Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

[sawyerinwonderland-blog1]

You were the difference..

1. Nicholas Hawthorne - Late Husband - Playby: Jesse Lee Soffer.

When Laylie first moved to New York she had been studying at NYU and doing Ballet for Broadway. She hadn't known many people in the area and stuck to her small circle. Leaving her life behind in Georgia she wanted to be closer to her father. She had never seen eye to eye with her mother often. She met Nick while at the club with some friends from college. He had just finished the academy and was out with some of his friends. The moment after that had been history for them. There had never been a moment in either of their lives where they weren't by one another side. They have both been though some intense stuff and with him being a NY cop things got pretty unsafe from time to time. They lasted a good 4-5 years before Nick was killed on the scene while doing an undercover job. Her life had never been the same since he had passed away. He taught her it was alright to make mistakes, how to be brave, tougher than she thought she was, how to love, let someone love her among many other things. She holds everything so dearly to her heart and will love him until the day she says goodbye to the world.

2. Alexander Daniels - Father - Playby: Robert De Niro.

Growing up Laylie had always been close to her father. He had pretty much taught her every single thing she knew. There hadn't been another man in her life aside from her late husband that Laylie would trust. Sometimes she wonders if all of his work and good faith helping those sick is what made him sick in the long run. Losing her father to cancer was not easy. She knew deep down that it wasn't anyones fault he had become sick. She will forever be grateful for the woman she grew up to be. It was all thanks to her father.

3. Mary Daniels - Mother - Playby: Michele Pfeiffer.

Laylie had never really seen eye to eye with her mother. When she was just born things were wonderful. She had the best time with her family. It was when Laylie was older that she learned of her mothers behaviors and she didn't believe they were right. This is someone who made a negative impact on Laylie's life however later down the line it turned out to be a positive one. There had to be that one person who would be able to bring down the goodness in ones life only to teach them in a negative way just how to not be like them. For this was a little hard for Laylie down the line she was grateful.

4. Tabitha Daniels - Sister - Playby: Teresa Palmer.

Tabitha was the oldest of the girls. She was an absolutely trainwreck and never really come around unless she was in trouble (when she learned Laylie had married a cop she figured she would be able to get a few free passes) or if she needed money. This was something that always annoyed Laylie because it was so simple as her sister just getting a job. However when her sister learned of the life Laylie was leading when she was in New York she couldn't help but want to make a change for herself. Laylie being her inspiration she was able to turn her life around. In doing so she taught Laylie how to be a little bit more free. She helped guide Laylie through the loss of her husband and encouraged her to move to California and start her life over. To open her shop and not be afraid of what would come.

5. Amelia Montgomery - Bestfriend - Playby: Amanda Leighton.

This girl had been the most welcoming soul since moving to California. She was one of the first few people Laylie got to know extremely well. She is also the one who knows everything about Laylie from the childhood she lived to losing her husband. She is the only one she spoke to about the details that even Laylie herself was not supposed to know. She had helped lift her spirits up every single time she could feel she was about to jump off the wagon and drown in her own emotions. Amelia was the definition of the sister Laylie had always wanted but never really had, despite having a sister of course. Laylie can only hope to see their friendship bond grow stronger over time. She is beyond grateful to have met her.

[ryanmeft]

Ant-Man and the Wasp Movie Review

Avengers: Infinity War wanted us to take grown people in tights very, very seriously. Ant-Man and the Wasp has different ambitions. It marries superhero-ing and parenting, scales the stakes down to a personal level, and tosses in a dollop of 1960’s gee-whiz fun on top of it. When it works, it’s a trick-a-minute heist caper that makes great use of the franchise’s signature size-changing gimmick. When it doesn’t, it’s often trying to being funny.

At this point you can’t pick and choose Marvel franchises, and this sequel picks up not after the original Ant-Man, but after Captain America: Civil War. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), the now-former Ant-Man, is in the last days of two years of house arrest for his role in that movie. He spends his time learning drums and magic tricks, soaking in the bath, and creating indoor amusement park attractions for his precocious daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). He’s out of contact with former allies Hank (Michael Douglas) and Hope (Evangeline Lilly) Van Dyne, who are a wee bit miffed that he accidentally made them fugitives. Reconciliation is inevitable, of course, and it comes when Scott has a dream of Hope’s long-missing mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is trapped in a void-like place called the Quantum Realm. For mysterious reasons, a person named Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) in a white suit who can walk through anything wants the tech they need to rescue her. Helpful against the new villain is that Hope is now the Wasp, with a suit that can shrink like Scott’s but can also fly and, well, sting people. Lilly and Rudd have considerably more chemistry here than in the first go-round; Douglas’s paternal hits to Lang’s ego also feel natural and amusing.

The plot mostly consists of those convenient screenwriting obstacles thrown in front of heroes to stymie them from what should be a straightforward goal. These include several Mcguffins; Hank’s machine for reaching the Quantum Realm, as well as the film’s super-suits, seem to keep suddenly needing parts they did not need ten minutes ago. There’s also a goofy FBI agent (Randall Park) whose goal in life seems to be catching Lang out-of-bounds, and Walton Goggins hamming it up as a black market tech dealer. The story, and what all these characters want with which plot device, matters about as much as this stuff ever matters in a popcorn flick. What’s fun is the multi-layered chase these characters engage in while terribly important bits of comic book malarkey change hands.

Like any good heist flick, this game of keep away is given a lot of exciting attention. The powers complement the good old-fashioned steal-and-chase stuff, with less time than usual spent on fisticuffs between super-people. The character of Ghost is a spoiler in the mix, tossed in whenever the action gets a little too stale; her ability to pass through anything basically renders the characters’ powers irrelevant, so they have to outwit her. This all culminates in a big showdown that’s more a car chase than a fight, and includes Ant-Man utilizing a truck-bed as a scooter, cars the size of Hot Wheels, a Pez dispenser used as a weapon against motorcycle thugs, and our three circus acts shrinking, enlarging, flying and phasing around one another as the thingamajigger they are all after changes hands many times.

This is a lot of fun, but the only time Peyton Reed, the five-deep writing team and the army of special effects wizards get to really play around with the weirdness of the character is in the eventual excursion into the Quantum Realm. How you feel about that depends on whether you’re at peace with what modern superhero films are. With the exception of something like Thor: Ragnarok or Logan, truly personal touches are more the exception than the rule, and something as unique as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man work is probably in the past, for now. While I would have loved to see more wackiness out of Ant-Man’s less grim plot, I go into these movies knowing what to expect, and I got it. Should I knock it for not being something it was never going to be?

Since real uniqueness is off the table, the creative team instead differentiates the film by doubling down on Lang’s parenthood. The original gave us probably the only on screen superhero we’ll ever see scooping ice cream at work, and while he’s got a bit more illustrious job now, Lang’s still trying to balance being a superhero and a daddy. This outing makes that feel less like a set-up for the film’s plot and more like who Lang actually is. He goes to wonderfully ridiculous lengths to entertain and educate Cassie while being housebound, and is visibly frustrated with the Van Dynes when they don’t seem to care as much about him possibly trading in his family for prison as they do about their own family problems. Rudd is perfectly cast for this type of heroism, right down to making dad jokes. This makes Ant-Man a valuable addition to the MCU stable, as the only character in it who feels like he leads a truly believable adult life when he’s not in tights.

There are places where the film falters, and sadly, one of those is Lang’s hyper-active, motor-mouthed partner Luis. He’s played by Michael Pena, a successful Latino actor in a world where Latinos haven’t benefited from outrage at the whiteness of Hollywood, and is one of the few such characters in the MCU. That’s what makes his reduction to annoying comic relief all the more unfortunate. The bottom line is his character just isn’t funny or endearing, and while he fit in the first film’s story, here he and his buddies (David Dastmalchian and Tip “T.I.” Harris) feel like they are around to fulfill a contract. Also in obligation roles are Judy Greer and Bobby Cannavale as Lang’s ex-wife and her husband, respectively. These are five talented actors reduced to trying to break up the tension with awkward jokes. Ant-Man is already one of the less urgent feathers in Marvel and Disney’s massive hat; it doesn’t need more comedy, and in fact could stand to take itself a bit more seriously. Laurence Fishburne is better utilized as one of the Pyms’ old colleagues.

Get past the failed attempts at jokes and the lamentable waste of some high-class acting talent, and Ant-Man and the Wasp is an admirable, family-oriented addition to the MCU. If at times it doesn’t believe in itself as much as it should, at others the dynamic of family relations elevates it. Younger viewers will thrill to see a 65-foot-tall man walking in San Francisco bay, while their parents might smile at the fact this behemoth would rather be coloring and playing house.

Verdict: Recommended

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts. I suppose you could consider each one as adding a star.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

[stark-park]

Once Upon a Child (5/9)

Chapter: 5 - Eat Your Heart Out

Other Chapters: 1  2  3  4  6  7  8  9

Summary: With their daughter enjoying her happy beginning and their infant son still young, Snowing decide they need a hobby, or at least, a way to help Storybrooke in the ways they used to with their kingdom in the Enchanted Forest. Therefore they decide to help those most unfortunate: the orphaned and lost children at Misthaven Home for Children. But when one child is unlike the others, their hearts and their home go out to him in the hopes they can help.

Rating: PG, there's nothing too horrifying, mostly fluff

Disclaimer: Based on ABC's Once Upon A Time and I do not own any of their characters, plots or locations. I am but a loyal fan, loving of the show and simply borrowing the beautiful characters.

"Well?" Emma quizzed Dr Whale.

"You were right." He confirmed, "Kind of."

"Kind of?" Snow repeated, "Is he deaf or not?"

"Partially."

"That certainly explains a lot." David stated. It certainly did. Aside from being Ancient Greek, the poor boy struggled to even hear. No wonder he didn't communicate with anyone.

"Is there anything we can do for him?" Snow asked Whale.

"Well, judging from the degree of damage-"

"Damage?" David repeated.

"Yes, it looks as though there's been some physical trauma to the skull around, particularly his right ear but there's also trauma to the left one."

"Could someone have done this to him?" David asked, his mind spilling with various scenarios of what Ellion could have gone through before he arrived in Storybrooke.

"It's possible. It's also possible he was involved in a crash of some sort."

"So," Snow said, trying to steer the conversation away from this tangent, "Is there something we can do?"

"Right, yes, but how successful it will be, we won't know until we try. We can implant hearing aids to try relieve some of the pressure on the inner ear and allow for some, if any, sound waves to perforate the barrier the damage has created. It's more likely to work for the left ear as there is less trauma, but of course-"

"We won't know until we try." Emma finished.

The adults exited Dr Whale's office with more of an understanding about the boy, but there were still so many mysteries to be solved.

"Hi Love." Killian said. He sat in the waiting room with Ellion asleep across the chairs beside him. At the behest of his wife, he'd joined them at the hospital - without his hook, who knows what the child would have insinuated from that - to keep an eye on the boy whilst Emma, and her two thoroughly confused parents, tracked down some answers.

"Tad late for a bit of reading isn't it?" Killian observed, nodding at the storybook Snow had been holding since they left home.

"What? Oh! This, yes! Henry thinks he found what story Joe is from!" Snow explained.

"Really?" Emma said, "And you only thought to tell us now?"

"I'm sorry, our minds were on finding him and then you found out why he didn't talk and-"

"It's okay, I get it." Emma intervened, "So? Can we take a look?"

"Page 70." Charming noted as his wife flicked through the pages of Once Upon A Time Volume VII.

"Here it is," Snow declared. The trio occupied the three chairs adjacent to Killian.

"The story of Tristan and Yvaine." Snow read aloud.

"I recognise those names!" Emma cried.

"Dammit, I forgot where they're from." She huffed.

"It's okay, maybe it'll come to you while I keep reading." Snow suggested. "Tristan, in comparison to everyone else in this story, was rather normal. That is, until he journeyed through the wall into the kingdom of Stormhold-"

"Oh!" Emma cried, her hands frantically flapping about. "I know this story! I remember! It's Stardust!"

She grinned until she noticed the bewildered expressions of her family. "You haven't watched Stardust?"

"Cursed." Snow justified.

"Pirate." Killian added.

"Ugh." She grumbled, "You guys have missed so much."

"So, what happens in Stardust? Anything about a little boy?" Snow asked hopefully.

"No, not that I remember."

"Why don't you briefly tell us the story and maybe we'll have a better understanding?" Charming suggested.

"Well, this guy Tristan goes to Stormhold to find his mom with this magic candle but he starts thinking of his girlfriend instead, well, she's not really his girlfriend. She's a pretty horrible person actually, manipulative, materialistic-"

"Love," Killian paused her, "Is this maiden truly pertinent to the story?"

"Uh, no. Sorry." Emma blushed with embarrassment. "Okay so, he starts thinking of this fallen star him and his girlfriend saw and how she would marry him if he brought her the star. But it turns out that the star is actually a person, a woman, called Yvaine."

"How can a person be a star?" Snow asked.

"I... I don't know, magic I suppose? How can a daughter be the same age as her parents with her century-year old husband? Magic." Only when Emma said it out loud did it dawn on her that her bizarre explanation was in fact her current situation, and it was all thanks to magic.

"Okay, but does she look normal? Or is she, you know, shiny?" Charming pressed, still confused by the Stardust world.

"Um, I guess she's pretty normal looking. Pale skin, white blonde hair... oh and she's a star so she shines when she's happy."

Snow and Charming looked at each other, clearly questioning the same thing.

"You don't think?" He asked his wife, staring into her eyes for certainty.

"He might be." Snow admitted.

"Wait..." Emma knew when her parents had twigged something, it was only a matter of time before she too worked out their revelation.

"Seriously? You think Joe is a star?"

"For all we know, he could be." Snow whispered, as if unsure whether to fully commit to the possibility.

"Why not finish the tale love?" Killian offered, hoping the story would provide some more concrete answers.

“Okay. So Tristan and Yvaine meet but there’s people looking for her. There’s this witch, I don’t remember her name but she’s played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and she wants to cut out Yvaine’s heart and eat it so she can stay young.”

“That’s horrible!” Snow gasped, throwing her hands to her mouth. “Do you think that’s why he ran away?”

“What? No!” Emma rushed, cursing herself for sending her mother into panic, yet again. “Mom, that’s just the movie! I could be wrong. I probably am- I, uh...” She trailed off, looking to her father desperately in the hopes he could instrument a reasonable and calm plan.

“Snow, Honey, why don’t we read the rest of the book? Maybe that will shed more light. Movies are just fantasy, this book is what really happened.” Oh thank you so much! Emma’s eyes screamed.

“Alright.” Snow agreed, her head nodding less and less ferociously as the seconds passed.

Ellion, on the other hand, had been calm and peaceful all while he slept. His pirate guardian subconsciously patting the boy’s back softly as he dreamt.

*****

Lights danced amongst the darkness, their ambient shine getting lost as it travelled through the vacuums of space. Whirlpools of luminous serenity collided angelically with indistinct patches of obscurity; concealing the deepest secrets of this galaxy and the next. It was as if someone had taken the sky as their canvas, spilling over an array of blues, reds and golds into a mist of ivory and shadows. Flickering silver sparks captivated those who stared up at the night's sky, especially those that waltzed alluringly across it, becoming the pinnacles of their dreams and desires.

Ellion looked out at the myriad of pulsating lights, the humming of ancient songs, where beings fantasised over joining the stars, drifted softly through the atmosphere. Amongst the hushed lullabies, sung to aid those falling asleep beneath the night sky, was the whispering of others directly to Ellion.

"Tell them!" Urged the wise Altair.

"You are safe." Came the echo from one winking from afar amidst an ominous blackness.

"He could use the book!" Flashed another, providing Ellion with the crucial counsel he needed.

Just then, a peculiar sound arose, forcing Ellion - however unbearable it was - to leave his homeland. He slipped from the blinkering suns and swirling darkness back into the embodiment of the young boy.

*****

A piercing alarm sounded in the hospital, making Snow and Charming stand up instinctively, ready to be called upon for aid.

"Mom, Dad, it's okay, the doctors have got this." Emma reminded them, her hand pulling at the storybook Snow was still holding (the only thing she could reach from her laid back position in her chair). However, instead of sitting down Snow let the book leave her grasp and it dropped with a thud to the floor as Emma just failed to catch it.

"Do you think they need some help?" Snow asked her husband, both lost in a trance as they worried over the bustling nurses and doctors. While Emma pulled herself from her chair to wave unsuccessfully in front of her parents, Killian recovered the neglected storybook, flicking through to the star-eating witch story.

"Maybe we should just see-" Charming insisted, him and Snow creeping over to the reception desk with the intent on "helping". It was at this point the alarm was switched off and the snoozing child began awaking from his slumber.

"Hey, you're awake." Emma noted, her observation pulling her parents from their urge to involve themselves in the hospital's emergencies.

Ellion rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms. His gaze landed on the book Killian was holding, now showing the last pages of the story with a rather artistic drawing spreading across an entire page.

A lonely, winding path led the eye from the corner of the page into the fantastical world of Stormhold and onto the foot of a mountain. Engulfed in buildings; the top of the mountain was home to the monarchy with their impressive construction, resembling, somewhat, an ancient Greek colosseum. A magnificent tower, built into the rim, soared above the rest of the buildings, it's structure ablaze with golden lights as it depicted a celebration of sorts. A brightness paralleled only to that of the glistening stars above.

As soon as the little boy noticed the picture, he tapped his index finger upon the golden shapes replicating the stars, smiling at Killian as he did so, before pointing at Emma, then back to the stars in the picture.

The surrounding adults were held in amazement by the sudden change Ellion displayed. Not only was he engaging with them, trying to send a message, but he was glowing. Or as they would have described it: shining.

The little boy, apparently unaware of his highlighted body, continued his actions; tapping the book, pointing at Emma, then tapping the book again.

"Yeah, nice." She murmured eventually, her sarcasm lost on the deaf boy. She looked to her parents for help, hoping they would at least have an inkling at what he was trying to say. Alas, they were equally as puzzled.

From out of nowhere, Killian marvelled: "Awe, he thinks you're a star Love." His tone was tender, as if he already knew this to be true.

"Why?" Emma choked, her nose wrinkling at her husband's analysis.

Then Charming piped up, slightly aghast at the remark, "Because you are a star! And don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise!" Whoa, protective dad mode activated, Emma thought. A hint of a smile on her face let slip she secretly loved the overprotection.

The thought of denial crossed her mind, but Emma couldn't bring herself to shut down the little boy shining in front of her. Instead, she smiled and pointed at him, knowing full well what his answer would be by now, "Are you?"

A relieved grin spread across his face. To think, before tonight he'd been so cautious the entire time he'd lived in Storybrooke, just in case someone discovered he was a star. The adults weren't completely sure of why his nap had warranted such a reverse in behaviour, but they were thankful it had. They could finally begin to understand his anxious glances and mute responses, but more importantly, help him to overcome the obstacles he had faced alone.

A tear escaped Snow's eye as the boy not only smiled, but nodded in response to Emma's question.

"So," Dr Whale said, coming round the corner with a clipboard, "There's been a cancellation so I can fit the hearing aids tomorrow morning at 10:20. How does that sound?" He paused in horror, realising the poor choice in words before swiftly shrugging off the guilt.

"Tomorrow sounds great." Snow replied, apparently not cottoning on to the pun.

When it came time to leave, Emma and Killian parted ways with the three, leaving Ellion quietly upset. He clutched the storybook while Snow crouched to his level, "It's okay, we'll see them soon enough."

The pair were not the type to force something, so Charming gestured towards Ellion, walked his fingers in his direction then paused to himself and Snow, asking, "Do you, want to come home, with us?"

There was a pause while Ellion considered what they were asking, Charming and Snow meanwhile, were silently hopeful. The message was understood, and after a moment longer, he eventually took Charming's hand.

Other Chapters: 1  2  3  4  6  7  8  9

[booknymph02]

Mother! Review/PSA:

Warning: spoilers (but they are necessary), cursing (I apologize, but I am angry), description of something that caused me to have a full-blown panic attack.

I get to the point at the end, just bear with me.

Okay, first off, I have read explanations of the metaphor being brought out in the movie, and in theory, I think it’s a very good thing to bring out the fact that we are destroying the earth, and make people upset about it. However, the movie made me upset for so many different reasons.

When it first begins, and throughout the rest of it really, I was so fucking lost. It starts out with J-Law waking up and the rest of her day just being her walking around, looking as lost and confused as I felt. And then this old, crusty bastard who’s about to die and shit comes to her house, and her husband, John fucking Winchester (who is supposed to represent God, but I find him more akin to Satan- we’ll get to that later) invites the bastard to stay in their home without asking how she feels about it.

This man says he’s a doctor, but then you find out differently??? I think, anyways...I was still so fucking confused by what I was watching. So, the guy stays the night, getting sick at one point as J-Law’s husband (hereafter named Mr. Douchebag) helps him as he empties his stomach in the toilet. The morning after, he wakes up and is perfectly fine, none of them except J-Law seeming to recall he was ever sick.

Cue doorbell, which J-Law answers to find Michelle Pfeiffer (I don't fucking know how it’s spelled, so I hope that’s correct), the doctor man’s wife whom we didn’t know existed. Cue Mr. Douchebag also inviting her to stay, despite J-Law looking as confused and outraged as I felt, yet again. This proceeds to them blatantly being rude and overstaying their welcome, trashing and exploring the house as much as they want. They even break something extremely important to Mr. Douchebag, at which point, despite the multiple reasons (which were only happening to J-Law, so who cares, right? It’s not like he’s her husband and should listen to her when she feels this has gone far enough...) they should have been kicked out earlier, he finally decides they should leave. Instead, the couple proceeds to go have sex in the guest room- after which the man gets sick again- blatantly ignoring J-Law and acting as if they didn’t do anything wrong when she asks them again to leave.

Cue the first born son of bastard doctor and Michelle Pfeiffer barging into the house without permission and acting like he owns the place, seeking out his father. Cue second born following him and starting a fight in which he kills the first born. Cue J-Law having a nervous breakdown (one of several- we will also discuss this later) as she is left alone to mop up the blood while Mr. Douchebag takes bastard doctor, Michelle, and their now-dead son to the hospital (because he somehow deems that his job, despite them still being fucking strangers who have been nothing but rude). Second born walks out, returning later that night through the same door (which J-Law had locked, so, wtf???) to pick up what I assumed to be his wallet and give J-Law a weird speech about being left behind, before again leaving the way he had before.

Cue return of Mr. Douchebag, before they both return to bed and the audience believes everything is done with this random family. Cue middle-of-the-fucking-night return of bastard and Michelle, followed by impromptu funeral gathering of friends and family, whom we and J-Law have never seen. Cue J-Law finding out her husband had again approved of something without asking her. Cue mass destruction as unwanted guests pile into the house and continue doing everything J-Law asks them not to, leading to two particularly disrespectful guests destroying the kitchen sink and causing the pipes to burst. Cue everyone leaving for what we believe is forever. 

Cue fighting between J-Law and Mr. Douchebag, who then decide to have sex. Cue time-skip, and now suddenly everything is ok, and they are a happy couple. Mr. Douchebag is on his way to finishing his masterpiece, a poem he started at the beginning of J-Law’s pregnancy. (Let me just say, no matter how much writer’s block I’ve had, I can finish a poem in- at most- two to three days.) Suddenly, J-Law feels the baby (I’m am still so angry- you’ll see why) kicking, and runs to tell Mr. Douchebag, who has now finished his “poem.” They have some weird, semi-sweet semi-I-don’t-fucking-know moment, then you find out he has already sent the poem to his publisher, despite having just finished it seconds ago, and despite there being no modern technology in that house, except for a landline phone. He literally writes the “poem” with a quill pen, and has no way of even faxing it.

Cue more time passing, and J-Law is cooking a nice dinner. We still believe everything is great between her and Mr. Douchebag. At this point, she has reached full maturity in her pregnancy, and is ready to pop that baby out (although I’m fully aware that it doesn’t work that easily). Just before they can sit down to a peaceful dinner, not bothered by anyone, people (crazed fans) show up to take pictures with Mr. Douchebag and proceed to crash their house, this time stealing things and ripping apart walls (at one point, J-Law tries to call the police, before the phone is ripped from the wall).

Mini rant before I continue with this: the “poem” was most likely actually prose, because it takes up a whole book, and we are only led to believe he wrote one piece. However, when J-Law reads the final handwritten copy, it only takes up one page, so none of this actually adds up at all. Also, it’s extremely difficult to get a full book of just poetry published which is written by only one author, unless they have novels written that were successful before that. And we are led to believe he has successful writings other than this, but I believe they were also poems, because his fans continuously refer to him as “The Poet.” (This ends my mini rant.)

After multiple strange, apocalyptic happenings representing the progression of society to this day, and different parts of the house being destroyed, J-Law is knocked into multiple objects and people, and she has multiple breakdowns, during which her anger somehow shakes the house. After being hit in the stomach so many times that it probably should have caused the baby to die while in the womb, she goes into labor. When searching for a safe place to give birth, she tries to leave the house (she never leaves the house during the entire movie, and I believe she and her baby would fucking survive had she been allowed to, but that wasn’t in the cards for their fate) but is pulled back by Mr. Douchebag to the only unoccupied room in the house, which I think was the bedroom, but could have been the study. She then gives birth to a surprisingly healthy baby boy, and there is a moment where the audience believes everything was a dream and she will wake up in a hospital bed, perfectly safe. However, the audience is always wrong to have any slice of hope.

Mr. Douchebag wishes to show his fans the baby, but J-Law will not let him even hold the baby for a second (rightfully so). Sadly, though she does guard him diligently, two days pass with her sitting in the same position without sleep, begging at intervals for Mr. Douchebag to please tell everyone to leave (his response is to stare menacingly at her). She finally succumbs to sleep for a few seconds, waking to find her baby has been taken by Mr. Douchebag, who proceeds to showcase him to the awaiting crowd. This crowd rejoices, taking the baby and crowd-surfing him, as he cries and J-Law chases him, not being able to reach him in time before he is passed too roughly and his neck is snapped, killing him. At this point, I ran out of the theater crying and having a panic attack, followed by several people, apparently agreeing with me that that action was horrendously in poor taste. Minutes later, my friend came out of the theater to tell me she also couldn’t finish the movie because at the point which she had left, the crowd was chopping up and eating the now-mutilated baby.

I bring you to the closing statement of what I want to say. I am simply posting this to give warning to people like myself, who might be triggered by the events in the movie. I could feel my panic sink in every time she had a panic attack, and it all escalated at events that I don’t want to mention, other than the fact that they are recreations of what ISIS has done when executing people, and allusions to sexual assault. The baby was the breaking point for my panic attack. I don’t want to say that the movie is terrible, but I think if you are like me, and have depression, anxiety, etc., it can be harmful to watch. I’m only putting this out to say what I wish someone had told me before I watched it. I understand that some of you are going to tell me I just shouldn’t have gone to an R rated movie, but here’s the thing. I’ve been to R rated movies before, but never have I been so disturbed and triggered by one that I had to walk out. I would have appreciated being told that I would hear the sound of a baby’s neck snapping echoed around a theater, so that’s why I’m telling you guys so you don’t go if you are especially freaked out by such a grotesque and awful thing.

[notesomi-blog]

‘mother!’: The Most Ambitious Movie of the Year

mother! | 2017 | Director: Darren Aronofsky | Country: US

Warning: Full Spoiler Review

I’ve been eagerly anticipating this latest Darren Aronofsky’s movie called “mother!” ever since I saw its first poster. It shows Jennifer Lawrence’s character in a white dress holding her bleeding heart (literally). I was transfixed by its aura of beauty meets horror. This poster alone can be interpreted in some ways. Then months later, the official trailer finally arrived. I watched it with sheer delight because the tone of this movie―from the confused female character to some of the surreal imagery―reminded me a bit of “Black Swan”, Aronofsky’s much lauded psychological horror movie. I also got some “Rosemary’s Baby” vibe from it. So I was excited to find out that some of the promo posters look like some homage to “Black Swan” and “Rosemary’s Baby”. By then, I thought I had figured out what this movie is about. Man, how wrong I was.

The story of “mother!” revolves around a couple who lives in a secluded house. The husband, who’s much older than his wife, is a poet facing writer’s block and in need of greater inspiration. His house was destroyed by fire and he had lost almost everything until he met his wife. His wife was the one who helped restoring his house from scratch. “We spend all our time here... I want to make it paradise,” she said. Their seemingly serene life was disturbed when an old man suddenly came to their house one night. This stranger’s arrival was only the beginning of stranger things to come.

From its promo materials, I was pretty sure that the story of “mother!” would be revolved around some cult or satanic theme, hence the “Rosemary’s Baby” vibe I felt. As I said before, I was wrong. I still can feel the similar atmosphere though, mainly through the perspective of the paranoid main female character. But this movie as a whole is more than just a paranoia-filled offering. The whole concept is so ambitious that I needed some time to wrap my head around it after the movie ended.

First, let’s talk about the title. It uses exclamation point after the word “mother” and I feel some aggressiveness from it. There are, indeed, a lot of aggressive acts against the mother character throughout the movie. Who does mother refer to anyway? Yes, mother is the main character played by Jennifer Lawrence. Now, the mother in this movie isn’t supposed to be seen from the maternal context, because this character is actually the personification of... mother earth? At least that was what I can assume after finished watching this goddamn movie. My expectation was destroyed. This is not a psychological horror a la “Black Swan” or paranoia-filled horror a la “Rosemary’s Baby” as the promo materials suggest. Those promo materials were deceptions, guys. But hell, I was sure glad that this movie turned out to be something entirely different.

There were some moments throughout the movie where I uttered to myself, “Is this thing actually about the...? Hmmm... never mind... let’s keep watching.” And the other time, I was like, “Holy fucking shit, what is this?” My mind was going places and I felt like I need to replay some of the scenes immediately. By the end of this movie, I was thinking that maybe it is about the birth and death of planet earth, going in circle. I also have suspicion about the role of some of the characters and realized that they don’t have an actual name. So I started to pay attention to the credit title. Then realization dawned on me and I thought to myself, “Is this true? It’s actually about the Bible? OH MY GOD yes I think it is.” In the credit title, the character of Javier Bardem is written as Him, with capital H, whereas the other characters are written all in lowercase. My suspicion is true. He is the personification of God. That’s why the title, “mother!”, is also written all in lowercase. Goddammit! Then my mind replayed some of the scenes and started to connect the dots. So Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer’s characters are Adam and Eve, and their two sons are Abel and Cain? Are the frog and the spray of blood some cues for the ten plagues? Okay, I won’t go far from this scenario because I think that’s not my place and I just don’t have the knowledge for it. I don’t know if Aronofsky has actually crammed all of his interpretation of the Bible into a two-hour giant metaphor... I mean, movie. If that is the case, it means that he has made a movie adaptation of the Bible. That is one big ambition, sir.

Despite that metaphor thing, Aronofsky also infuses some criticisms into “mother!”. One of them is about the violent human behaviour towards environment, or should we call it mother earth? As I mentioned before, Jennifer Lawrence’s character can be interpreted as the personification of mother earth and there are various aggressive acts against her by almost all of the characters throughout the movie. Those acts were some of the reasons why this movie was quite uncomfortable to sit through.

For me, the casting of Jennifer Lawrence is spot on. I felt that her physical appearance here is accentuated, from the choice of her outfits to the way the camera frames her figure. Before calling it objectifying, note that it’s in line with the concept of the character. Mother earth is supposed to appear attractive, almost bare so everyone can see her whole beauty. I think Lawrence fully embodied this character. Most of the time, the camera frames her face in close-up, so we can see her facial expression clearly. She appears innocent at first and becomes more bewildered when random people start to flood into her house. Her face says it all. I’ve been a fan of her since I saw she her breakthrough role in “Winter’s Bone” and I think mother is her bravest role yet.

Another criticism that is infused by Aronofsky into this movie is about an artist’s obsession and relationship with his art. He also depicts how fame and idolatry can be destructive. All of them are presented in such extremity, particularly during the last half of the movie. It becomes more and more fucked-up towards the end.

All that aside, there is one particular plot point that struck me the most: the intrusion of personal space. I can relate so much to the mother character when she feels disturbed by the arrival of strangers into her house. As an introvert, I highly value my personal space and I can be extremely uncomfortable when some people invade it without invitation. I feel you, mother earth. I guess “Intruders!” could be a more appropriate title for this movie, no?

In the end, I think I understand the polarizing nature of “mother!”. This movie surely has potential to offend some people. For the other people, may they be amazed by its big ambition and bold narrative. I, myself, fall into the latter spectrum. I believe that this movie will spark some conversations and it deserves to be talked about for years to come.

Let’s give props to Darren Aronofsky and all the team involved who have pushed the boundaries and presented one of the most ambitious movies of the year. They prove that Hollywood’s major studio still has some guts to bring interesting “left field” concept to life. Cinema has limitless possibilities and a lot of potential to be explored after all.

[millenialmoviereviews-blog]

mother! (2017)

SPOILERS!

“mother!” is a psychological horror-drama written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. It stars Jennifer Lawrence (as Mother), Javier Bardem (as Him), Ed Harris (as Man), and Michelle Pfeiffer (as Woman). I have never in my life, and probably never again will see a movie like this. After it concluded, I sat in the theater in awe at what I had just witnessed. But in all honestly initially, I didn’t fully understand it. Its a rollercoaster of insanity, keeping you wondering about everything that is put before you on screen. Several hours after I had left the theater, it all hit me. I believe that I have found the true meaning of this film. The story revolves around Jennifer Lawrences character Mother, and her “tranquil existence” she has set up for herself and her husband (Javier Bardem’s character Him), who is a famous poet. This tranquility is interrupted however, by the arrival of Ed Harris’ character Man, and his wife, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character Woman. IF THERE IS EVEN REMOTELY A CHANCE THAT YOU WILL SEE THIS FILM, STOP READING NOW. This movie can lose its effect and shock factor when you know what the end goal is. You have been warned. My final take on this film is that Mother is Mother Nature, our earth. The movie opens with a scorched house, being almost brought back to life. We see Mother wake from her sleep, looking for her husband. Early on, it is obvious that mother is “one” with the house she lives in. She will often put her head against a wall and see the homes heart beating full, and plump. This in essence is her heart. Javier Bardem’s character, Him, is essentially God. He is in a relationship with mother, but not an fully intimate one. However its evident that they both want children. When they are alone in their home, everything is tranquil. This shows the peaceful existence of earth and God before the arrival of gods second most coveted creation, man. Ed Harris plays the original Man, in biblical terms this would be Adam. He arrives at the house one night and Him welcomes Man with open arms. But Mother is not so accepting. Man is very kind, but its obvious that his presence is an intrusion. He smokes, which makes mother uncomfortable. She asks man to not smoke in the house, but she soon finds that he disobeyed her and has been secretly smoking all along. This is a subtle plot point and if you’re not paying attention, it is something that you can overlook. But this is how man, humanity, has begun to treat earth with disrespect. Him invites Man into his study, where he gets all of his writing done. In the study, is a magnificent crystal that is obviously very, very, special to Him. Man tries to touch it, only for Him to quickly pull away and inform Man that the crystal is to be admired but not touched. The study is a reference to the Garden of Eden, or even the Tree of Knowledge, and the crystal is the Apple. Adam is obedient and keeps from touching the apple. This scene is followed with mother being awoken at night to find that Him is not in bed. She hears hurling coming from the guest bathroom, and walks in on Him comforting Man as he pukes into a toilet. She sees that Man has a severe cut along his rib. Him quickly covers it and asks mother to leave. My first initial thought was confusion. But in retrospect, this was the movie telling us that God (Him) has just created Woman from Mans rib. And soon after, Woman appears at the front door. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Woman, and her portrayal of Eve is astounding. Him once again invites her in with open arms because she is Mans wife. Mother once again in uncomfortable with Woman’s intrusion. Woman is rude, and she is brash. She gives off this vibe as though she knows everything. On the same day as Woman’s arrival, Him takes Man on a walk (which is a direct reference to the walks that God would take Adam on in the Bible), and mother is left alone with Woman. Woman is very curious about the room where all the magic happens (the study where Him writes). She says over and over that she just wants a peek into the room, but mother makes it very clear that Him doesn’t like anyone being in his study without him being there. This is Eves curiosity getting the best of her. Him returns with Man, and Mother has a short conversation with Him. Their conversation is interrupted by a crash, the sound of something breaking on a hardwood floor. Him and Mother run upstairs and see that Man and Woman are in His study and Woman, overcome with curiosity, has touched the crystal and broken it. This is a clear reference to Eve, biting the apple to gain knowledge (Woman says to Him that she just wanted to know what it felt like to think as He did) and it backfiring. Him is enraged and yells at Man and Woman. Woman says she is sorry, but it is obvious that she really isn’t. He banishes them from his study and boards it up, so that no man can every set foot in there without his permission. This is Adam and Eves banishment from the Garden of Eden. Him allows them to stay in the house (because the house is Earth), but mother wants them to leave. When mother goes to kick them out the next morning, the confrontation is interrupted by the arrival of Younger Brother. He is there to warn Man and Woman that Oldest Son, his brother, is enraged after reading the will that Man wrote (Man is dying). Oldest Son soon arrives and an altercation ensues. There is a struggle and Oldest Son ends up killing Younger Brother. This is a reference to Cain and Abel. In the Bible, they are the sons of Adam and Eve, and Cain kills Abel for fear that Abel was Gods “favorite”. Soon after, Him allows for a reception to be held at the home for Man and Woman and their friends and family following the death of Abel. Mother does not want all of these people in her home, but Him allows them to be there, disregarding the discomfort that mother feels. Woman is rude to Mother and Man mourns. Suddenly people fill her house, and Mother is overwhelmed. Many of the “guests” ask why Mother is there and she responds, “this is my home”. Every time she mentions that the home is hers, she is met with a sarcastic response, many of the guests saying that that He (Him) says that the home is everyones. This is humanity saying that God has given the Earth to them. It belongs to everyone, and they come and go when they want and do as they please. They don’t care about Mother Nature, because God has allowed humanity to trample over her, use and abuse her. The guests trash her home, and mother kicks them out despite what Him says. She is left to clean up the mess (she must pick up the pieces of humanities disregard for Earth; nature; her) and an argument between Mother and Him ensues. The intense argument turns into intense passion and Mother becomes pregnant. Him is inspired and his writers block is lifted. He writes and he writes until he finishes his “perfect” completed work. This is, in essence, is the Bible. Mother is upset to find out that Him has let his publicist (who is credited as Herald and played by Kristen Wiig) read his completed work before mother. Once again, God is putting humanity before Mother Nature. Mother can feel her heart deteriorating. Mother and Him decided to celebrate the critical success of his work but having a quiet dinner, alone as one. This dinner is interrupted by the arrival of spectators, people who seem worship His work. Mother wants Him to get rid of them, but Him wants them there. This is God, wanting to be worshiped. His creation loves him after the Bible is given to them and he can’t get enough of it. Mother Nature continually wonders why she is not good enough for Him. We are then introduced to Herald, who is played by Kristen Wiig. Herald is Hims publisher in the film. I believe this is a take on the pastors of the world, people that preach the gospel. Soon, mothers home is once again filled with people. It is evident that they worship Him, who is overjoyed with the attention he is being shown. But the strangers start entering the house unannounced, entering the house through back doors, then, waiting in long lines to enter the home, then resulting to just breaking in. They fight to get a look at HIm. They make shrines for Him, hang his picture all over the home, they dance in his name, they worship Him as a deity. Mother screams at the people to leave, for she is pregnant with His child and cannot take the chaos that is ensuing. But the strangers steal, they curse at her, they make advances even though she is married, they are rude, and belligerent. To worship their god (Him) they completely and utterly disrespect mother nature. Soon the home is turned into a literal war-zone. There are police, rebels, explosions, gunshots, the whole nine. This scene is CHAOS. This is take on the infighting between humans over religion and its effect on earth. People are held as slaves, and one of the masters is the Herald, who was supposed to be preaching the gospel. I believe that this is supposed to be a look at the corrupt pastors and clergymen, that preach one thing, and live life as another. Mother is very close to having her child, and soon finds her way back to Him, through all of the fighting. Him reopens his study (The Garden of Eden) in order for his son, THE Son to be born. When he is born, the strangers outside the locked study become silent. They wait to see the child of God. Mother refuses to let Him touch their son however. For a split second she falls a sleep, and Him snatches the child from her and allows his creation, humanity, to take the baby (he says that they just want to touch him). Mother is distraught and pushes through the crown to find her baby, and when she does she sees for a second that the baby breaks his neck being amongst the strangers. This is a parallel to the killing of Jesus. God gave humanity his only son to act as their savior and in return, humans killed him. When mother reaches the alter, she sees that the strangers have completely dismembered her only son, and are eating him. This is an obvious parallel to the body of Christ being blood and wine consumed by his devotees. She screams and starts to attack the strangers. The strangers then jump her, kicking and beating her into a pulp. Him comes to her aid, stressing that he only wanted to help his creation, and that he didn’t believe that they would kill their son. Mother runs down to the basement of the house where her organs are located (remember that she is one with the house) and blows it up. Mother Nature has killed off humanity, Gods second most revered creation, in order to keep them from harming Earth anymore than they already have. Him and Mother survive the explosion. Him is unscathed but Mother is burned, scorched beyond repair. She allows Him to take her heart so that he can start anew. Him reaches into her chest and pulls out her heart, which contains a crystal, a crystal just like the one that he cherished so much in the begging of the movie. He puts the crystal on a mantel and we are brought back to the opening scene, the restoration of a ruined house. we see a woman rise from the bed in the same way Jennifer Lawrence did in the opening scene. But the woman is different. Him, has started anew. Mother Nature, killed off humanity in order for God to start over. It is a cycle of trial and error, and it never ends, God will always create from the ground up in an attempt to perfect his second most revered creation behind nature, humanity. This movie is exhilarating. Every person on this planet has a differing opinion, but this movie is near PERFECT in my eyes. I have never seen a movie that was so tantalizing, claustrophobic, and breathtaking. Aronofsky offers his heart out to us, telling us the ultimate tale, the tale of creation and destruction. The tale of life, and the tale of death. I give this movie a 9.8/10. It blew me away. The only regret I have is that in seeing this, I feel a movie can never make me feel the way this did again. Now I’m not religious, but in terms of Aronofsky’s “mother!”, seeing is definitely believing.

[mcsanders278]

Intro message / Mother!

I haven’t had a blog in many years and figured that the release of the film Mother! was the perfect artistic venture prompting me to get back into such. For those who know me it is not difficult to guess what my blogs will revolve around; for those who don’t, you’re in store for my thoughts/interpretations/whatnots about all things artistic. It will be heavy on film with some sprinklings of music, books, art, etc. There will likely be spoilers so you are forewarned.

Without further ado, I felt it was important to delve into the recent Darren Aronofsky film Mother! as after reading a slew of comments and reviews on the film it is quickly turning into one of the most polarizing and probably misunderstood films ever made. I have always appreciated Aronofsky’s style and have enjoyed all of his films to some degree, even if they are not the most re-watchable movies. Strangely enough, I have always viewed another one of his films, The Fountain, as a misunderstood masterpiece as well. On a side note, The Fountain is probably Hugh Jackman’s best performance aside from Prisoners (another underrated film) but I digress / that’s a subject for a different blog.

I analyzed Mother! pretty much all day yesterday after watching it and I think the first question a person must ask themselves before beginning to try and interpret such a film is whether you feel that cinema is a form of art. This may be a simple question with a simple answer for many of you but I feel it is a more complex question than one may think. I feel (and always have felt) that cinema is an art form just like a painting one views in an art gallery. The importance of this correlation is that a viewer of a painting in a gallery may not necessarily understand what is hanging in front of him/her and may downright hate it but that doesn’t make it any less art than the painting down the hall which is more aesthetically pleasing. 

Aronofsky is one of the few filmmakers today who reminds us that cinema is an art form and not solely for entertainment. Just like art, music, or books, a film’s purpose may only be to stimulate someone intellectually or emotionally or to challenge a person to think beyond the regular narrative construction. Mother! is one of the most challenging, thought-provoking films I have seen in years and I ate up every piece of it. Needless to say, as much as I loved the film I can completely understand people outright despising it. Of note is that the previews / marketing campaign makes it look like a horror film when it isn’t, which probably didn’t help with the outpouring of negative reviews. I supposed it could be group into “psychological thriller” films; however, even the “thriller” part is a stretch. If I had to categorize it, I would call it “psychological drama”. 

And now for the unraveling of my interpretations (with spoilers)...

From the opening scene it is quite clear that we are in store for a unique experience as Bardem’s character is placing an illuminating piece of glass on a display stand (more on this later). To quickly summarize the story, Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem are a husband and wife (no characters are given names) living in a large house in some remote area. Bardem is a poet with writer’s block and Lawrence is on an ongoing quest to renovate the house to help Bardem focus on his work. Lawrence is in almost every scene of the movie and Aronofsky does a fantastic job of using close-ups for most of the film to convey a sense of claustrophobia. The entire film takes place in the house and the viewer is very aware of the house’s constraints early on. In my opinion, this is Lawrence’s best performance to date as the character shows a meek, vulnerable side which none of her other film characters possessed.

Very early on an unexpected guest (Ed Harris) then his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) come to the house and essentially do as they please with no objection from Bardem’s character but to the chagrin of Lawrence. In the course of the narrative it is explained by Bardem to the unexpected guests that the piece of glass (mentioned earlier) was the only thing which survived a past house fire and in turn is a source of his inspiration. As the guests become more unwelcome in Lawrence’s eyes it is revealed that Pfeiffer’s character is an alcoholic and that Harris is dying of cancer. Even at the urging of Lawrence to not do so, the unwanted guests inevitably break Bardem’s glass source of inspiration.

There are some conflicts and happenings thereafter which leads to Lawrence’s character becoming pregnant and Bardem no longer having writer’s block. It is at this point that the film spirals into unconventional territory and likely lost most of the viewers. The last 30 minutes of the film is a complete cacophony which starts somewhat mild then falls into complete insanity. The house is overtaken by unknown people who start to tear apart everything Lawrence has worked on in the house and proceeds to have clans viewing Bardem as a deity due to the success of his newly published work. Lawrence has her baby amidst the craziness, which Bardem wants to show to the masses as almost a Christ-like figure. In a relatively unsettling scene, Bardem takes the baby from Lawrence, which the masses then proceed to tear apart and eat...

Now is probably the time to interject that the viewer needs to keep in mind that Aronofsky has clearly made an allegorical film but to what degree is the question. There have been many theories online that everything is a slight to religion but I have to disagree. My take on the film is that it is an allegory to the insanity of the creative process. Let’s breakdown what we know thus far...through the course of the film Bardem keeps citing to the visitors and other characters that Lawrence is his inspiration (along with the glass shard); however, my take is that she is quite literally Inspiration. As pointed out previously, Harris’ character is found to have cancer and Pfeiffer is an alcoholic and through their collective efforts they break the glass shard of inspiration. Again, allegorically, this is a direct relation of alcoholism and cancer’s (whether it be physically or emotionally; ie, doubt in creative abilities) effect on inspiration. Simply put, it kills it.

As harsh as the scene with the baby is, one must think what the baby represents in relation to the allegorical story. Seeing that we have already established that Bardem is the writer and Lawrence is Inspiration and knowing that Bardem is the father of the child it can be deduced that the baby is his physical piece of writing/his creative work. Through the unwinding of insanity scenes earlier in the film there are some key moments which can help the viewer establish what is outlined, for instance, there is a time where Bardem is going through the house and speaks to a group of people locked in a cage yearning to get out, to which he states, “I won’t forget you”. Although there can be many different associations of the angry mob of people in the house, in its simplest form, they are Bardem’s thoughts and ideas. He is telling this ideas which want to get out (presumably through the writing process) that he will keep them locked up until he is ready to put them on paper. Viewing it in this context of the baby scene, his thoughts (again, possibly self-doubt) and ideas tear apart his writing as he is not happy with the outcome. The ending of the movie only seems to further prove this interpretation as it ends with Lawrence setting the house ablaze due to the murder of her child and Bardem pulling the heart from her charred body...which ends up being the glass shard introduced at the start of the film. We are then interjected into what appears to be a cyclical story; however, the woman/Inspiration is no longer Lawrence but has the same opening scene (including dialogue) as Lawrence. 

For anyone who has attempted artistic creation on any level this film is an understandable allegory to the creative process as it is not uncommon to have the inspiration to create something (book, etc) but the creative process also requires tearing the work apart and changing things (even slightly; ie, at the end the new woman looks very similar to Lawrence and speaks the same words yet it is not her) to get the desired outcome. We are left with the impression that this “rebirth” of creation has happened multiple times for Bardem and will likely happen many more times before he is happy with the outcome. My closing thought on the allegorical aspect of things is that the clans of people viewing Bardem as a deity figure is presumably a stoking of his own ego during the writing process.

As I have suggested to others, this is not a movie for people who want their stories wrapped in a neat bow with everything explained when you leave the theater but if you are open to a challenging, thought-provoking cinematic experience for a film that can undoubtedly spawn hours of conversations, this won’t disappoint. I won’t presume that my interpretation is exactly what Aronofsky went for in making the film but it is how I construed it after hours of mauling it over and isn’t that really the point of art? What it means to you? 

[purecinema23]

mother! - 2 Stars.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky.

 Please note that while I always try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, this is quite difficult with this movie.  At the start of this review I’ll try my best to keep it spoiler free and will give a clear warning when potential spoiler discussions are about to happen.

 In ‘mother!’, Jennifer Lawrence plays a woman who is married to a poet, played by Javier Bardem.  They live together in relative solitude in a house that he has owned for many years that was destroyed in a fire.  She lives with him, loves him and helps him to rebuild his house.  She loves the house almost as much as she loves him, while he walks aimlessly around the house searching for inspiration for his next creation.  When a man (played by Ed Harris) arrives out of the blue one night and reveals that he is a fan of the husband’s work, the wife becomes suspicious of the stranger while the husband revels in the extra company, and of a fan no less.  The intruder invites his wife along (played by Michelle Pfeiffer), and when she is quite rude to Lawrence’s character and Bardem’s character does nothing but lap up the praise and attention, it begins to drive a wedge between their once loving and exclusive relationship.  Then more people arrive.

 A major problem that I had with this film was that I didn’t connect with the characters at all.  You can see that J Law is trying her little heart out to deliver an emotional and visceral performance, but for me, her status in the movie industry has rendered her unable to transcend her star power and allow me to really feel for her character.  I found myself thinking ‘oh, here’s J Law yelling’.  ‘Oh, here’s J Law crying, boy she does this in a lot of her movies’.  I found my mind wandering to ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, to ‘The Hunger Games’, to ‘American Hustle’.  Her talent is undeniable and through no fault of her own, I found myself thinking only of the struggles of the actress, not the character (which is the same issue I had with Leo Di Caprio in The Revenant).  

 And it’s a shame, because her character is pretty much the only character that acts like a real human being.  There’s a few reasons why this might be deliberate which I will discuss later, but it had such a jarring effect on me as a viewer because I just couldn’t make sense of why these people were acting like this.  Yes, the camera always shows J Law or her direct point of view, so she is the one we are meant to tie ourselves to emotionally.  Yes, that confusion at the actions of others is meant to be a shared feeling between the viewer and the character, but that has its limits.  For me, the moment that Pfeiffer comes in swilling her alcohol talking about J Law’s sex life in the very first conversation they have is the moment I go, “yeah, bullshit”.  The point is to make you distrust Pfeiffer’s character and to pick up on the symbolism, but you can still achieve these things with realistic conversations.  For me, it’s a glaring error in the writing. And once I noticed all of these things, the film went straight to the ‘I don’t care about this thing’ basket.

 Potential Spoilers Ahead.

 Right, so there are lots of different ways to view this movie.  You can view it on face value, where it speaks to the trappings of fame and ego, particularly once Bardem puts the love of his fans above the love of his wife, who he rarely makes love to and is pregnant with his child.  Even then, the feverish final half an hour will make little to no sense.

 It is potentially commentary on the treatment of women, which exhibits a relationship between Bardem and Lawrence that is not equal at any stage (emotional abuse), before launching into a full-blown, very confronting physical attack towards the end of the film (physical abuse).  Still, much of the ending doesn’t make a lot of sense in that regard.

 The most obvious reading into the story is to accept it as a religious allegory, particularly of the Christian faith.  It became very obvious to me that this was the point of the movie when Bardem was seen as a God-like figure with the devout following that he has and the literal wars that happen between factions of followers and non-believers.  But I didn’t know what to make of the rest of the characters until I spoke to some of my friends and read about the movie. ��J Law plays Mother Earth, Bardem plays God and the various intruders are significant humans in the passages of the Bible.  Their house that she has rebuilt for him is ‘paradise’ and with every additional human that shares in paradise, the eventual proceedings of the Old Testament start to take shape, but then the New Testament kicks in.  You can probably guess who her baby is supposed to be.

 The story, then, becomes about the mistreatment of Mother Earth by humans, who ravage it with their own designs (roads, buildings) and have conflict all over her house in the name of God (or different iterations of God).  So is this an environmental movie with a heavily Green message?  Is this movie telling us that religion is a flawed concept and the root of all evil?  Is it telling us that there is a God and that we’re the ones that are screwing everything up? Is it telling us that God is the one that is screwing everything up and that humans are merely pawns that he keeps getting wrong?  It’s all well and good to work an allegory into a story, and my friends found satisfaction in piecing the allegory together and making sense of the somewhat confusing story, but if the allegory IS the entire movie, then what are we left with for those that didn’t piece it all together.

 The visceral and confronting last half an hour is supposed to register a huge emotional impact on its audience, yet as Mother Earth is literally stomped on and called a ‘cunt’ by random people in her own house, I felt literally nothing.  As there is a snapping sound that those that have seen the movie will surely recall, I felt nothing.  That is because, despite the allegory existing to give the movie some meaning, it did no groundwork to make me care about these characters at all.  I can see the skill in the set design, I can see that talented actors are at work here.  But I just don’t see why this movie had to exist.  What is it trying to say?  Because all I’m getting is a retelling of the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament, before a cautionary tale that everything will go to shit (and it’s probably too late to change, and besides that, what is it telling us to change?).  It tries to be too clever for its own good and, in comparison to Aronofsky’s other work, is much more ‘Requiem for a Dream’ than ‘Black Swan’. And that is not a compliment. It tried hard, but failed in my books and I’m going to give it 2 Stars.

[flickdirect]

This year, we saw no shortage of Marvel films and Ant-Man and the Wasp was among those released. The follow up to 2015's Ant-Man, this sequel once again follows Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd; I Love You, Man) as he maneuvers his life through the obstacles of being Ant-Man and trying to stay out of trouble.

After being put on house arrest because he disobeyed the rules of the Sokovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War, Scott finds himself mere days away from freedom. Part of the deal is having no contact with either Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly; Lost) or her father Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas; Wall Street). Scott breaks this rule, however, after inadvertently receiving a "message" from Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer; Batman Returns), Pym's wife, who has been stuck in the quantum realm since 1987. Scott receives the message because he also was inside of the quantum realm for a time. Seeing no other way, he contacts the father and daughter and finds himself involved in risking life imprisonment by helping Hank and Hope bring Janet back to this dimension.

Rudd proves again why he is the perfect man for this role. His natural charisma makes us relate to him as we watch him play this flawed but decent character. Lily also gives her usual kick-butt performance as the brilliant scientist and Wasp. She basically steals the whole movie out from under Rudd. Douglas, too, is well-suited for his role of Pym- brilliant scientist, husband, and father. Not surprisingly, Michelle Pfeiffer was excellent in her role as Janet. The cast is rounded out by a talented supporting cast including Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Judy Greer (27 Dresses), Bobby Cannavale (Blue Jasmine), Randall Park (The Interview), Hannah John-Kamen (Black Mirror) and Michael Pena (CHiPS).

Ant-Man and the Wasp is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.39:1 with a 2160p resolution upscaled from a 2K master. The colors are vibrant and true especially when looking at the costumes out heroes wear. The hues in the quantum realm pop off the screen with colors not previously seen in theaters or on the Blu-ray. Dolby Atmos continues to impress on this sophomoric platform. The audience is literally transported into the world of Ant-Man and surrounded by its audio from all sides. You can genuinely hear every separate special effect as opposed to being muddled together on a different mix.

There are numerous extras for fans to enjoy including an introduction by director Peyton Reed (Bring It On). There are also four 5-minute EPK style small featurettes, a gag reel that highlights a funny moment with Stan Lee and deleted scenes. The Digital movies anywhere digital HD copy offers some exclusive features including: It takes two, leader of the colony, online close-up magic and Ten years of Marvel Studios: The Art of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While the first Ant-Man struggled on screen because there were two different directors, Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn't suffer the same fate. It is a much more cohesive story that is infused with fun and humor. While Rudd is supposed to be the focal point, Lilly manages to shine while surrounded by a wonderful cast. Of course, one has to give extra special props to Pfeiffer simply because she is so awesome.

If you are a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe this is a terrific addition to your home entertainment collection. It also explains a very valuable plot point as to where this cast was during Avengers: Infinity War.

Grade: A

About Nathan M Rose Nathan Rose is chief executive officer and is in charge of overseeing day-to-day operations. In addition to overseeing operations of FlickDirect, Nathan has also appeared in various online productions and films.

Read more reviews and content by Nathan M Rose.

via FlickDirect Entertainment News, Exlclusive Interviews, and Film Reviews

[motherscrystalheart]

ILM Delivers Hellfire and Damnation for Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’

Industrial Light & Magic VFX supervisor Ben Snow details the range of destruction and fiery visual effects created for the Paramount feature starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem.

Animation World Network | October 22, 2017

Is Darren Aronofsky’s mother! “one of the most audacious and flat-out bizarre movies a major studio has released in years,” (Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com)? “The worst movie of the century,” (Rex Reed, New York Observer)? Or, as the New York Times’ A. O. Scott puts it, “A divine comedy dressed as a psychological thriller?”

According to the director, mother! is an allegory about mother nature and our place and connection to our home using stories from the Bible. Jennifer Lawrence plays the character called mother and Javier Bardem is her poet husband Him.

Early in the film, mother says to Him (the creator), “We spend all our time here. I want to make it paradise,” and opens curtains covering the front door. Soon, man (Ed Harris) and woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) walk through the front door into paradise, and henceforth, with an assist from make-up, practical, and visual effects artists, all hell breaks loose. Mother (nature) takes the brunt of the assault on paradise.

Two supervisors who had worked with Aronofsky on Noah led the visual effects effort: Dan Schrecker was overall visual effects supervisor, and Ben Snow supervised teams at Industrial Light & Magic’s Singapore studio, which created the fire and brimstone effects, as well as teams at Hybride and Whiskeytree.

“In the film itself there were several hundred shots, most of them the supporting, invisible type, and we had less than 100, also supporting but challenging and flashier,” Snow says.

“It was slow burn type of production,” he adds without irony. “About 30 people at ILM and 30 or so at Hybride worked on our shots.” Snow joined the production in Montreal during the last week of filming.

“At ILM, I’d been finishing post-production on Great Wall in Singapore, so I came in hot, all full of vigor and happy to be back on set,” Snow says. “They were shooting mother! in sequential order, and just finishing shooting the scenes where the house is being over-run. They had to wrap on time and had still had a ton of work, so it was an intense week. They were running three units. While they shot Jennifer [Lawrence] and Javier [Bardem], I was off working on fireball shots and Dan [Schrecker] was shooting burning beds. It was a crazy time. Long days. I don’t think I slept that week.”

Which shots in the film did ILM work on?

We had the shots throughout, but mainly at the beginning and end. Karim Sahai, our associate VFX supervisor, led the team in our Singapore studio that worked on the “Burning foremother and mother” shots, the un-burning house, the bed shots, and the fireball in the interior. We also supervised the shots that Hybride executed with Philippe Theroux and Francois Lambert supervising, and at Whiskytree with Brian Meanley and Joe Ceballos.

Burning foremother and mother shots?

The film opens on a disturbing shot of a woman standing amongst flames. We see her face start to blister and burn and her hair on fire. It was twinned to a shot later in the movie where Jennifer [Lawrence] goes through the same thing, so we shot the footage of Jennifer going through this effect first.

By this time, Jennifer’s character had been through a helluva lot so she wore makeup with lesions and bruising on her face. Adrien Morot [Makeup Effects Department Head] had also done interesting burn makeups that you see Jennifer wearing in other sequences, but we didn’t have time to shoot her in both the bruised and burned makeup. But, I was comfortable taking Jennifer from bruise to burn because it’s additive. So, we decided to shoot her bruised, and shoot the stand-in with burn makeup and mix the two later. Then we realized the “stand-in” was going to be the foremother character in the first shot, so we rushed her back to makeup and shot her bruised as a greenscreen element later that night.

How did you create the final burned effects on their faces?

In Singapore, FX simulation lead Goncalo Cabaca and CG supervisor Dominic Drane led teams that handled all the burning and fire shots. They matched the burned face in CG, animated the wounds closing, and reversed that using motion vectors to drive a simulation that opened the wounds. Then they match-moved the character in the footage and warped the CG simulations onto the face. Additional particle effects created the bubbling effect of her sweat boiling off before it dried. It was gruesome, no getting away from that.

Creating the burning hair was even more challenging. And, we got to do it twice. Plus, the character at the beginning of the film was not supposed to be Jennifer Lawrence, but the actress looked too much like her. So, we had to go back and change her look. For example, we gave her thicker eyebrows and as she burned, we singed them.

Why was the burning hair particularly challenging?

Jennifer preferred that we not blow her hair with fans. Considering everything else she put up with on the film, we were fine with that; we shot her with her hair tied back. Then, we shot wind tests on a stand-in. But, Darren [Aronofsky] was very exact about how the hair should blow. So, we decided it would be better to create it in 3D to choreograph and iterate to get what Darren wanted. Dan [Schrecker] shot some burning wigs that we used as reference for the CG hair.

We had three levels of simulation all interacting with one another: The fire around her, the flames on her hair, and the hair simulation affected by heat and blowing. A fluid simulation moved the hair simulation to lift it correctly according to the temperature. That all meant we needed a complex CG wig. Usually, we have guide hairs and instance the in-betweens. That didn’t work. Instead, we had nearly 100,000 hair curves, which is close to the actual number of hairs on a human head.

To create the look, we had fire particle VDBs [volume data] tell the hair groom when it should become crinkly, charred, shriveled, or curled as it burned. We also created a shading model that allowed transparency, so you could see flames through the hair. It was like running a glass BRDF [that defines how light is reflected].

How did you un-burn the house?

Dan [Schrecker] decided to actually burn the house. He and Mario Dumont’s practical effects team took a flame thrower to bits of set they had recreated. They’d burn the set, put it out, and roll some footage with a motion control camera. So, it became a compositing challenge for us, to make organic transitions between these different layers of burning as the house un-burns. The thing that was problematic was the plaster. It becomes brittle, cracks, and falls off as it burns, so we had to grapple with what to do about the piles of debris.

We tried simulating the plaster flying off the floor onto the wall, which was interesting but felt too magical. We got rid of all the debris in the shots, replaced it with CG debris, and shrank it during the transitions. That looked too much like soap melting. Then, we tried a combination of shrinking and stop-motion animation and that went well.

Stop-motion animation?

It was more of an aesthetic idea that we used to make the debris lift up. We made a CG version of the debris in the plates. Then we used maps to drive a procedural animation that shrank the size of the CG bits of broken plaster down and randomly popped them off until we got a clean floor and mantelpiece. Compositors created layers of wipes for the walls, but it didn’t feel like wipes or dissolves. Imagine waves of heat causing the effect. The result almost mirrored the direction of the fireball shots later. Having the real burned material to work with made a big difference.

So, let’s talk about the fireball shots.

They happen toward the end of the film. After Jennifer Lawrence’s character has been through a horrific experience, she takes her revenge by igniting an explosion. A fireball erupts around her and travels through the house, which is filled with people who have come to worship Javier Bardem’s character. To shoot it, we departed from Darren Aronofsky’s formal rulebook. He shot most of the film using three angles, a close-up of Jennifer, Jennifer’s point of view, or over her shoulder. We had a crane rig going up the staircase, a cable rig across the roof, and a descender rig that drops down. We shot it on the last two nights of production with interactive lighting effects and extras going crazy.

Also, most of the film was shot on super 16mm, but for this we decided to shoot digital for the higher frame rate and resolution. The filmmakers had a very defined sense of rhythm shot to shot -- the speed of the camera and the framing at the start and end all had to tie closely together. Matching that wasn’t trivial. Before we could add layers of flame and fireballs erupting through the house, we had to alter the digital plates by re-speeding, pushing in, and sometimes even doing set extensions so they flowed the way Darren wanted. Then we had to match the look of the 16mm filmed plates with grain, softness, and lens effects.

For the flames wrapping around the actors, rather than match animate 50 people in 3D, we rotoscoped those characters and created rough geometry to wrap the fire around them. To direct the fire, we used collision geometry matched to the set and injected velocity fields into the simulation to cause the fire to, say, hit the wall here, ride up the wall, and around a corner. The compositors combined layers and layers of flames, and postcards with images of Javier Bardem’s character that we simulated flying around.

After the fireball sequence, we see Javier carrying the burned Jennifer Lawrence. By this point in the production, everyone was exhausted and Jennifer wasn’t too keen about getting into that burn makeup again. It was a multi-hour process. So, Darren [Aronofsky] turned to me and asked how much it would cost if ILM added the burn makeup to Jennifer. I checked with ILM’s executive producer and we came up with a number. It wasn’t cheap, and this was a moderate-budget film. I tell Darren the number, and while I’m standing there, Darren tells Jennifer what it will cost. She said, “You know what, maybe I’ll pay for it.” But, she’s a trooper. She sat for the makeup, and it was amazing. We did a little digital intermediate work on top and did the transition from the burned makeup into an ashen husk at the end but it’s all Adrien Morot’s astonishing makeup.

What tools did the Singapore team use for the burning effects?

The fire was simulated and rendered in ILM’s Plume software. Effects such as the debris were simulated and rendered in Houdini. For the hair, we used ILM’s proprietary Haircraft software. The burning hair simulation pipeline was complex, using both Houdini and ILM’s Zeno software, and rendered in RenderMan 21.

Did you supervise other interesting shots?

We had the bedroom, where as a camera pushes in, a mattress un-burns. When the woman in bed takes the covers off, we see it’s Jennifer Lawrence. They had a rig to lift her out of a mattress. We didn’t have a burned bedroom to start with, but we did have stills of burned bed clothes. We created layers of the burn with digital environment work.

Hybride worked from ILM art director Chris Voy’s concept art and with compositors at ILM to create the “Darkness of Her Imagination” shots where Jennifer Lawrence pushes into a wall and finds a heart inside. Darren wanted an amorphous, soft, organic form so we wouldn’t know where the organ ended and the environment began, and a feeling that as the film progresses, the organ twists and tightens and gets more constricted. As we explored through concept art, Hybride started working on a CG heart. In the end, the Hybride team created a heart shape in Softimage and Zbrush that they textured in Mari using Arnold for subsurface scattering. They had a base keyframe animation of the heart and the organic matter, and then ran a simulation in Houdini of the constriction, with fine particles coming out and sinking back in as it pulsed.

Whiskeytree collaborated on a couple shots where Javier Bardem’s character looks at burned wreckage of the house and it restores itself. They created matte paintings for each stage of the unburning.

And, Hybride created some weird effects like a wound in the floor of the house, charring on the floor, and the “toilet chicken.”

The toilet chicken?

The blocked toilet was originally a practical effect, but Darren wanted something with more bone, that moved more, and was more disturbing. So, Hybride did a CG replacement that we call the toilet chicken. Because they had to replace the practical element, they also had to create a water effect on top. We’re in dailies and get a note that we need the thing to spurt stuff out its orifice. Yeah, it’s gross.

Did you take your family to see this film?

I took my daughter, but my wife thought it would be too scary. My daughter is 19, and she liked it. She related to Jennifer Lawrence’s character. I always felt that even though there are moments of visceral horror in this film, the net effect is something that outweighs all that. It isn’t a splatter film. And, it isn’t like sitting through a war. It’s fantastical enough you can distance yourself. It’s a complex, interesting allegory that I think is well worth the net effect. I can’t guarantee you will love it, but I really recommend that you see it.