Ant-Man and the Wasp is a breezy, fast-paced sequel that goes out of its way to provoke buckets of laughter and massive sighs of wide-eyed awe in pretty in equal measure. It’s a fun film, and other than that I have little more to say.
While nowhere near the superlative achievement The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi proved to be, this latest anthology effort is nonetheless easy to enjoy, the joyful exuberance of Solo: A Star Wars Story difficult to rebel against.
I cannot get past the simple truth that, in the end, as bad as it all appears, as amazing as the heroics might be and as astonishing as the fighting is, nothing happens in Avengers: Infinity War, all of the answers to the various questions aggressively put forth by the filmmakers to be answered in future MCU endeavors yet to be released.
A Wrinkle in Time might not be as magnificent as L’Engle’s novel (and I can’t say I expected it to be), but even so DuVernay’s adaptation is still a spellbinding family-friendly adventure worth venturing out to see.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle might not be a great movie, but sure as heck it’s an entertaining one, and unlike its forerunner this is one kid-friendly action spectacular I wouldn’t mind watching again.
Unlike the last film, The Last Jedi uses nostalgia and one’s knowledge of this universe against the viewer, ideas as to what can happen, who can and cannot survive and where things go from here as they head into the ninth and final chapter blown into smithereens like a fourth Death Star.
Thor: Ragnarok proves to be so creatively loopy, not to mention so consistently hysterical, I found it hopeless not to enjoy myself while sitting in the theatre watching things play themselves out to their conclusion. Waititi delivers the goods, and for fans of the MCU his arrival ends up being a breath of fresh air worth getting excited about.
As ludicrous and as unfocused as it all might be, Kong: Skull Island kept me amused for practically every second of its two-hour running time. While not a great movie, it’s still an awfully fun one, and as big budget, visually resplendent monster mashes go I’m somewhat eager to give it another look relatively soon.
With Rogue One, Edwards doesn’t attempt to redo what has come before, isn’t interested in any already established template. He and his team have crafted a film that exists inside a known universe yet still manage to plant their own idiosyncratic stamp upon it. This is a marvelous piece of entertainment, as wondrous as anything I’ve seen in 2016.