I wouldn't have the vision for Tenouttaten that I do if it weren't for Film Crit Hulk. His brilliant, post-modern dissections of cinema are among the most thoughtful and inspiring validations of criticism that exist in the pantheon of the internet, and he consistently makes me want to be better than I am. In his essay on Gone Girl, he cites an interview with Gillian Flynn in which she addresses some of the criticism leveled at her work for being sexist; that Amy Dunne was nothing more than the 'psycho bitch' trope. Gillian's response is that Amy isn't a psycho bitch, she's just psycho. More than that, women deserve a character like this; a character that transcends their gender to become a monster. The media we consume projects women to be either to-their-core nurturing and good, or outwardly negative through their 'bitchiness'. Both of those extremes still hold gender to their identity. In his essay, Hulk takes these quotes to theorise that in Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn finally offers women a female Hannibal Lecter, a character whose identity doesn't stem from being a man, but from being a monster. And, in that regard, with Trainwreck, Amy Schumer offers women a female Bill Murray in Groundhog Day; an affirmation that you are allowed to be damaged, and to be a shitty human being, because you are human, and you're trying your best. And maybe, if you can finally admit that you have a problem, you can start to get better.
There's a scene in Trainwreck where Amy (Amy Schumer) is eulogising her late father. As we see in the first scene of the film, he's the one who taught Amy that monogamy is a fallacy, and set her on her path of having as good of a time for herself and herself only. She starts off professional, and well-meaning, before acknowledging that her dad was kind of a shithead. He was a racist homophobe, and with a show of hands, everyone at the funeral had been personally offended by him at some point in their lives. But in the same thought, she also acknowledges that he was honest about himself, and his shortcomings, and each person who had raised their hands could leave them raised for a time in which he had touched them with the good person he was at his core. To me, the only scene that even comes close to as accurately portraying the deep pain beneath Amy's surface is when her boyfriend Aaron (Bill Hader) suggests that they take a couple of days off and walks out the door, leaving Amy on the couch desperately trying to hold back sobs before hard-cutting to her getting wasted and dancing against her workmates in a club. There may have been a point in Amy's life when this lifestyle was exactly what she needed, and she should not be held accountable for that. This movie is not slut-shaming anybody. But Amy's at a point in her life now where that lifestyle isn't reaping the same benefits. Her flippant, carefree lifestyle is now hurting people. Her boyfriend at the start of the film, Steven (John Cena), finds out about her promiscuity, and when she can't see how it could possibly be hurtful for him to have this knowledge, he says, "Fuck you, Amy. You are a mean person." Try as she might to continue looking out for number one, she spends the film losing the battle inside of herself that's trying to tell her she's looking for something more. And it all comes from that eulogy: her parents were just as damaged as she is now, but they were good people deep down, and so is she. So are we all.
It could be argued that the fact that Amy gets the guy in the end in spite of herself isn't an earned victory. To me, it wasn't a victory, it was a second chance, and to say that she wasn't deserving of that is to say that Fight Club celebrates Tyler Durden. Trainwreck makes you work hard to see the good person beneath Amy's shell, but it is there. I can name innumerable situations in which I've been unbelievably selfish, with little to no regard for those I care about, but I still consider myself to be a good person. Why? Because I can admit the times when I wasn't good. Amy's efforts to win back Aaron demonstrate a person admitting that she needs to get better, and she wants to try. This transcends her gender, and demonstrates, as I've mentioned before, feminism as it truly is: equality. Feminism is about recognising that every human being has the capacity to be the same person. More so, in her final act of penance, a synchronised dance with the Knicks City cheerleaders, she transcends the deep, cultural understanding we have that only one body type can dance, and dance good, and look good. She knocks it out of the fucking park because she's a human being laid bare, and you can trace that back through the rest of the film. We don't see her and Aaron old and happy together; for all we know, he is but a chapter in her life. What we do know is that Amy has acknowledged that she isn't happy with who she is, and she wants to change. She doesn't win the guy, she earns the opportunity to try and get better. She's a character that is more than her gender. She's Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. She's fucking brilliant.
Ant-Man is the right movie to follow up Avengers: Age of Ultron. Love A:AOU or not, there's no denying it's exhaustive qualities; an inevitability when you're combining four film and one or two television universes into a single digestible experience. I've made my thoughts on it clear, but I'm not about to say it wasn't a well-made, as good as good can be experience. It was heavy, however, and heavy only has weight in film when it's the exception to the rule. The fate of the world/universe is a high stake, one that us as audience members can immediately impress ourselves upon, but if that's all that's ever at stake, why should we continue to worry whether or not the good guys will prevail? The audience isn't dumb; give them something deeply personal, and write it well, and they'll still see themselves in the shoes of the hero. Mercifully, Ant-Man gets this. While the world is still in danger through its events, it's only by proxy. The third act usually reserved for nerve gas, or nukes, or floating cities recreating the impact of an asteroid, is instead here a father fighting to save his daughter inside of her bedroom. It's bizarre to call a film with a budget of $130,000,000 small-scale, but reflected upon the norm of today's cinema, that's exactly what it is.
What it drops in scale, however, it replaces with heart. The stakes are smaller, but they feel so much more personal. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a thief who is fighting tooth and nail to, as mentor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) says, "be the hero your daughter already thinks you are." Scott is desperate to prove to his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) that his daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) deserves to have him in his life, something that Maggie's new husband, Paxton (Bobby Cannavale), is vehemently against. It's here that Ant-Man really shines and, ironically, takes some giant strides. Paxton isn't a villain in this piece; he's just a step-dad concerned for the safety and upbringing of a child now in his care. As a police officer, he's seen what people like Scott can be, and it's not a responsible role model. But, of course, it's Scott's movie, so he has to prevail in the end. Having said that, where a movie like this would normally end with Paxton being humiliated, or murdered, or to simply have Maggie realise how much happier she was with Scott, Ant-Man instead simply shows Paxton and Maggie that Scott has changed for the better, and the film ends with all of them having dinner together. Cassie has done a cartwheel for the first time, and Paxton shows Scott the footage on his phone. The divorce is amicable, and they've found a way for Cassie to still have a complete family. Even a throwaway gag of Cassie feeding an ant that was enlarged to the size of a dog during the climax demonstrates Paxton and Maggie's willingness to integrate Scott's new identity into the family dynamic. This level of sensitivity and care also demonstrates itself during the action set-piece the majority of the film is building towards: a heist on the headquarters of the film's villain, who is dangerously close to replicating Hank Pym's shrinking technology (oh yeah, the suit makes you really small and ant-strong) for weaponised purposes. Scott enlists the help of his thieving buddies, as a chance for them to, as well, do something better. His best friend of the bunch, Luis (Michael Pena), is ecstatic at the opportunity. "We get to be the good guys? We're the good guys now?" he asks with joy. The heist culminates with Scott and crew blowing up the building. During the escape, Luis runs past the room in which he'd knocked out a security guard prior. He stops, sees the tied up body, and sprints inside to help him out. "We're the good guys now," he reminds himself. It's such a small, utterly wonderful moment, that is 100% more heroic than any action taken in something more focused on wanton destruction like Man of Steel.
Here's the really great thing about Ant-Man, though: I can hardly remember it. Apart from the aforementioned staple moments, I'd really struggle to tell you what actually happened. And I think that's great. As I've already said, this is a movie that feels smaller (it's even filmed in a lower aspect ratio than its counterparts; 1.85:1 as opposed to 2.35:1), and it's very well aware of its place in the universe. This is not trying to be Iron Man; this is not trying to reinvent the superhero movie. It's just out to tell a heartfelt, personal story of who this guy fights for. It's also well aware of its inherent silliness. This is a guy who gets small and talks to ants. It tries to instill as much pathos as possible into that, and when the ant Scott formed a bond with, calling it Antony, catches a stray bullet and falls to its death, there is a brief emotional sting...before Scott drops onto the next available ant and flies away. Because it's a fucking ant. People are, and likely will continue, arguing about what Edgar Wright's version of this movie would have been before he got too creative for his own good. To those people, I say that you need to forget about it. You didn't read his script, you didn't see his movie. It didn't happen, so just appreciate Peyton Reed's Ant-Man for what it is: light entertainment. It respects your intelligence as much as it respects its place in the universe. It wants to entertain you, and then it wants you to go home and forget about it. I really want to stop doing this, but fuck you, Jurassic World, this is entertainment.
There's a moment in Inside Out that fucking destroyed me. It's one of the few instances in which the film jumps out of 11 year old Riley's (Kaitlyn Dias) mind, and into someone else's. Riley's at the dinner table, and something is clearly troubling her. Her mother (Diane Lane), is trying to visually communicate to her father (Kyle Maclachlan), that something is up. We then fly into her mother's mind and see that, like Riley, her mind is a control center manned by five primary emotions we all share: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. As the only mind we've seen into prior is Riley's, we assume everyone's is the same: Joy runs the show, and every other emotion does their best not to get in the way. Flying into her mother's mind, however, its revealed that her dominant emotion is Sadness. And when we then move into her father's mind, we see that his dominant emotion is Anger. This is not to say that these two people are outwardly sad or angry, because as their respective control centers show, their emotions have found a way to work with each other. But it does mean that every decision they've made, every action they take, is underpinned by this dominant trait. There's a quiet devastation to that moment that bleeds through to everything else the film offers. It's a moment primarily intended to work as a joke, but I began to cry, because I realised that this was going to be the central struggle of the film: which emotion is going to dominate Riley's life? And to see the way that the film very simply shows the utter complexity of emotion, and memory, and the relationship between the two terrified me for Riley. Because emotions and memory are complex, and it can be near impossible to understand that when you're a child.
So, I've mentioned that there are five emotions running the show in everyone's heads here, but Inside Out, as far as Riley is concerned, is about the relationship between Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). In Riley's infancy, she can't understand the need for Sadness, and neither can Sadness herself. Even though Joy stresses the importance for Sadness to stay in the corner and not interfere with the control panel, Sadness is still compelled to touch everything, infecting Riley's happy memories to remind her that there was a sadness to many of them as well. You see, Riley doesn't understand the second side to every coin yet, and it's something even adults struggle with. Who wants to acknowledge Sadness just because Joy is its opposite? Joy doesn't see the purpose of Sadness until she meets Bing Bong. Riley's past imaginary friend since forgotten, Bing Bong is a big, pink amalgam of different animals that wanders the banks of Riley's long-term memories, hoarding those that the two shared together, unaware that doing so gets Riley further away from remembering. At one point in their journey, Bing Bong acknowledges his irrelevance to her, and begins to cry. Sadness sits beside Bing Bong, and together the two embrace each other and weep. Then, much to Joy's surprise, Bing Bong and Sadness feel better. It's this acknowledgement that allows Bing Bong to reconcile that he's no longer a part of Riley's life and sacrifice himself so that Joy can get herself and Sadness back to the control center. Sitting in the recesses of Riley's Memory Dump as Joy rockets to safety in the magic cart Riley and Bing Bong created as a child, Bing Bong says, "Take her to the moon for me, Joy." It's important to stress that though these are separate characters with unique personalities, they're all elements of Riley's singular existence. So the emotional gut punch that is that moment has a second hit on the way when you realise this is Riley subconsciously letting go of Bing Bong to save her maturity.
I've talked before about this incredible interview with Louis C.K.; of the profound truth that resides in the declaration to embrace both extremes of the emotional spectrum because of the mutual relationship the two extremes share, and it's just as relevant here. In Riley's infancy, she possesses a desire to store memory in stark black and white, happy and sad. A memory of her parents sitting on a tree branch with her in the winter is something Sadness feels compelled to interfere with, to Joy's horror. Their incompatibility leads to their accidentally being ejected from Riley's control center, leaving Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Fear (Bill Hader) in control, and Riley depressed and apathetic towards life. It's only when Joy finally sees Sadness's capacity for positive effect that she revisits that fond memory and remembers that Riley was sitting on that branch because she'd lost the hockey game that day, and was thinking about quitting sports forever. Reunited in the control center, Joy and Sadness create a new control panel, that allows for cross-emotional networking, and together, they help Riley break down and tell her parents that she wishes they hadn't moved, that she misses her old life. And together, they break, and they cry, and they piece each other back together. This is Inside Out's most profound lesson, something so simple and so crucial to a child's emotional upbringing: life is really, really hard, and it's okay to be sad about it sometimes.
