I Still Believe in Heroes

Peyton Reed is back to direct  Ant-Man and the Wasp , the sequel to his 2015 surprise hit,  Ant-Man . The film takes place roughly two years after the events of  Captain America: Civil War , which saw Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) get arrested for helping Captain America during the airport battle in Germany. Lang, who has been under house arrest since  Civil War , now finds himself focusing on being a better father instead of being a superhero. When Hank (Michael Douglas) and Hope (Evangeline Lily) come to Scott with an urgent new mission, however, Scott must once again work outside the law and risk losing everything.  In a year that has already seen two heavy and dramatic films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe,  Ant-Man and the Wasp provides a much-needed breath of fresh air. One of the things I really appreciate about the  Ant-Man films is how small they are in scale. They are a reminder that not every superhero film needs to have serious global sta...

The great horror films are the ones that have something important to say. Yes, scares matter, but they need to amount to something. For a while, it seemed like horror films had nothing of importance to say. Scares seemed to be the ultimate goal and story was put in the backburner, and that led to a long stream of lackluster horror films. In recent years, however, we have seen genre re-defining films such as  The Conjuring , It Follows , A Quiet Place and  Get Out  restore some of the prestige that horror cinema once had.  Hereditary  is the latest film to accomplish this, and it is perhaps the most effective in doing so. Hereditary  is all about family. It’s about a family whose evil history comes back to haunt them and little by little begins to tear them apart. The film stars Toni Collette as Annie Graham, who at the beginning of the film finds herself speaking at her estranged mother’s funeral. Due to their strained relationship, Annie finds it h...