Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Welcome to Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a phrase that might not mean much of anything to the mainstream critics, who are starting to sniff at Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Truth be told, this is the 31st film in the MCU, and fatigue may be setting in, especially considering that three of the last seven Marvel flicks were duds. In actuality, Quantumania is proof positive that we’ve been spoiled over the last fifteen years – Marvel spent so much time upping its own game that it can’t keep competing at that level. Quantumania is fine, but that used to be a much lower bar.
 
Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is riding high after helping to save the universe in Avengers: Endgame. While Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) is saving the world with her humanitarian foundation, Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) has begun her own explorations of the Quantum Realm, which will drag Scott, Hope, and her parents (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) into a conflict with one of the Quantum Realm’s most feared inhabitants – Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).
 
As we’re entering Phase Five, firmly entrenched in what the marketing boys are calling “The Multiverse Saga,” Quantumania feels a bit like a cross between table setting and the first course. It’s got to introduce Kang, our new big bad, while following up on at least the appearance of He Who Remains in the first season of Loki. For those who didn’t see it, He Who Remains was also played by Jonathan Majors, who teed up the notion that we’d be seeing lots of versions of him, traversing the multiverse and causing all sorts of Avengers-level havoc. Meanwhile, No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness have been hinting at all the bad things that might happen when parallel universes collide (in short, multiversal incursions, the deaths of whole universes, and plots glued together by fan service).
 
It’s heady stuff, and if you’re not already bought into the MCU project, you’ll probably have checked out long ago. If you’re a tried-and-true Marvel Zombie, you might be bored by all this in light of recent middling fare. And if you’re only in it for Ant-Man (I have to believe there are some of you out there), this movie might not be as zany as its subtitle promises. All of which is to say that Quantumania is a weird movie, and it may not be transcendent or titanically significant, but it is good clean fun, a worthy diversion for two hours. And I liked it well enough to say that if you’ve come this far with Marvel, Quantumania isn’t worth bidding the franchise farewell.
 
For starters, Quantumania is a very good time. Paul Rudd is effortlessly charming as Ant-Man, having lost none of his aw-shucks charm or good-natured wonderment. When something amazing happens, he breathlessly fires off one-liners like, “Boy, a lot’s happened today,” which is more my speed compared to the scatological or postmodern humor that’s pervaded much of the superhero genre lately (looking at you, Gunn and Waititi). The key is that the joke is never on the material or on the audience, but rather on the situation or on the characters – and it helps that Rudd is a genuinely funny individual (and just a genuine mensch all around).
 
Ant-Man’s usual gang (including Michael Peña, David Dastmalchian, and T.I.) are nowhere to be seen, but Douglas and Pfeiffer are stellar as Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne; Douglas is bemusingly charming, while Pfeiffer never buckles under the weight of the expositional retcons her character is used to deploy. It’s only too bad that they don’t have much to do in the film’s climax, because we’ve never gotten to see the original Ant-Man and Wasp in full action. We’re also introduced to Kathryn Newton, plucky and precocious; she’s going to make a fine addition to the Young Avengers, once we get around to them, but for now she plays very well against Rudd as his “peanut.”
 
And then there’s Kang. In much of the critical reviews I’ve read for Quantumania, I’ve seen critics praising Jonathan Majors as the one piece of Quantumania that actually works. I’m not quite sure I’d fall over myself just yet – I thought his performance as He Who Remains did more to convince me of Kang’s fearsomeness than actually seeing The Conqueror himself, which is maybe a greater testament to Majors then it sounds. I do wish the film had shown us a little more of Kang rather than simply tell us how evil he is, but then we have a ways to go before The Kang Dynasty in May 2025. Suffice it to say, though, that Majors is right in the pocket with what the film needs him to be, and he’s in a unique and promising position as far as the future of the MCU is concerned. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more of him.
 
The key to Quantumania is, I think, that it’s not a terrific Marvel movie. It’s a fairly middle-of-the-road outing in a franchise with some exceptional highs and some dismal lows. It might not even be the best Ant-Man movie, which is as an incredible sentence to type as it is to read, but that fact is still better than things like Morbius or 80 For Brady, God save us. Quantumania is, however, a pretty good Star Wars film that just happens to have Ant-Man in it; it’s chock full of bizarre creatures and garish special effects, and if you surrender yourself to the bonkers frivolity and go along for the ride, Quantumania is not going to disappoint. 
 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is rated PG-13 for “violence/action and language.” Directed by Peyton Reed. Written by Jeff Loveness. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Michael Douglas.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

Perhaps there will come a day when I have to write a bad review of a Marvel movie, when I have to find a way to tell you to stay away, stay far away. It has nothing (okay, maybe a little) to do with my being something of a shill – a Marvel Zombie, if you will; instead, Marvel Studios is rapidly proving that there is little they cannot do. Where Justice League buckled under the weight of changing directors mid-stream, Marvel not only rebounded when Edgar Wright left the first Ant-Man, they established a brand identity for the little guy in the midst of creative differences and have now managed to build onto what ought to have been an unstable foundation.

Waylaid under house arrest after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has a few days left on his sentence when his old friends Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) reach out to him for help on a case. Scott risks his freedom to don the Ant-Man suit once more – alongside Hope in her new life as The Wasp – in order to collect some tech, reenter the subatomic quantum realm, and protect his friends from the phase-shifting Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).

Following Infinity War in the way that Ant-Man followed on the heels of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Ant-Man franchise is garnering a reputation as a palate cleanser for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a breather away from all the high-stakes sturm und drang of saving the cosmos from extinction-level events. In Ant-Man and the Wasp, as in its predecessor, the focus is not on the fate of the universe but on more personal stakes – smaller plots, if the pun can be forgiven. Rather than put Scott Lang at the heart of ensuring the survival of the galaxy, the Ant-Man films have wisely bent toward the heist genre; “break into a place and steal some stuff,” Hank Pym advised in the first film, and while this film ventures into the quantum realm between molecules, it has nothing to do with tearing apart the foundations of reality.

It’s a task for which Scott Lang would be ill-suited, though one suspects that perhaps Hope Van Dyne might be up to it. There’s a sly joke about her absence from the Leipzig airport battle in Civil War, but her deft hand at superheroics will likely lead audiences to wonder why we’ve had to wait ten years to see The Wasp on the big screen. (Diehard devotees know well, for one, that it was The Wasp who gave The Avengers their name back in their 1963 debut comic.) Lilly is more than fantastic as Hope, a proper scene-stealer who’s exceedingly capable as a hero without the need for so much as a training montage. Paul Rudd’s doing his Paul Rudd thing as Scott, dopey and self-deprecating with a spot-on sense of comedic timing, but the film feels more properly a two-hander with Lilly bearing more than her fair share of the weight – both in terms of action sequences and emotional gravity.

Between this and Incredibles 2, I’m seeing a promising pattern of restraint in our big-budget sequels. Like Edna Mode before him, Michael Peña turns up to revisit Luis, a fan favorite from the first film for his relentless cheeriness and proclivity for shaggy-dog anecdotes. In a lesser version of Ant-Man and the Wasp, we’d get five or six Luis stories (up from two in Ant-Man), but instead Peña and the script recognize that Luis is more interesting if he’s not one-note, if his puppy-dog honesty is matched with new challenges, rife with their own unique opportunities for him to insert a foot into a perpetually open mouth. 

The filmmakers have not, however, exercised restraint in all the size-shifting shenanigans made possible by Pym Particles. Tiny things enlarge, large things shrink, and characters change scale to accommodate any number of sudden developments. Moreover, the characters never lose sight of how cool and hilarious these shifts can be, so we too get to enjoy them all the more. There is something equally engaging about the unpredictability of shape-changing and phase-shifting in this film; at any given moment, one or more of the laws of physics can bend in unexpected but visually stunning ways, making Ant-Man and the Wasp a particularly unique spectacle.

Twenty films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and mere months after Thanos cut a bloody swath through Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Ant-Man and the Wasp is perhaps not the most obvious choice for an immediate follow-up, but it’s a welcome breather with a tight focus and a fine knack for summer blockbuster fun. It fits into the larger Marvel tapestry, of course, gesturing forwards and back, but it’s telling that I’m equally enthused about the prospect of a third Ant-Man film, or perhaps just a standalone feature for The Wasp. (Flashbacks in the first film introduced Hope’s mother Janet as the original Wasp; might a third introduce Hank’s other daughter Nadia, for Ant-Man and the Wasps?) Regardless, Marvel has proven itself capable like no other studio at harnessing an audience and leading them to queue up for another helping. More like this, please.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is rated PG-13 for “some sci-fi action violence.” Directed by Peyton Reed. Written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Paul Rudd, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby. Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Hannah John-Kamen, Michael Peña, Walton Goggins, Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, and Michael Douglas. 

Ant-Man (2015)

When a movie studio takes on “juggernaut” status in the way that Marvel Studios has, there’s a rubbernecking tendency among the media as they begin to speculate when it will fail, when that first flop will fall. We saw it with Guardians of the Galaxy, which succeeded more than anyone expected (especially for a film with talking trees and raccoons). Now, between the departure of initial director Edgar Wright and the problem of name recognition, Ant-Man had been floated as Marvel’s first failure. The truth is, however, that Ant-Man stumbles through its exposition before ending up as a surprisingly entertaining superhero film.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a reformed cat burglar who wants to support his daughter, but his criminal past and ex-wife won’t let him. Meanwhile, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) discovers that his shrinking technology is being appropriated by his protégé Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). Against the advice of his daughter Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Pym tasks Scott with stealing the technology from Cross, offering him the Ant-Man suit to accomplish the heist.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way for those of us true believers who love these movies – Ant-Man is a little bit clunky, especially in the exposition department. There’s a very funny line in the trailers – slightly different in the finished film – where Hank Pym tells Scott, “I need you to break into a place and steal some stuff.” The thing about Ant-Man is that the first twenty minutes or so is exactly like that, with characters very directly expressing their motivations, desires, and plot arcs. Scott’s relationship with his daughter could have been somewhat poignant, but every scene he’s in involves him telling someone else how much he cares for his daughter before being reminded that he has a criminal record. It’s very on-the-nose screenwriting that distracts from the Marvel emphasis on character; compare, for example, to Iron Man and the way it introduced Tony Stark by showing him in his natural habitat rather than telling us, “Tony, you’re irresponsible.”

Having said that, with a first act that feels very perfunctory, once Ant-Man gets going it’s a much more successful film. It manages to walk that line between acknowledging how absurd the concept is and just running with it, without feeling parodic or naïve. It’s aware of the innate absurdity of a superhero whose power is talking to ants, but at the same time it demonstrates just how much can be done with that power. There are several moments in the film where I said to myself, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” moments that demonstrate the creativity of the writers and the way in which they’ve taken the concept seriously without being too serious about it.

A large part of the film’s attitude comes from Rudd’s naturalism in the role; for me, he’s always been the member of the Judd Apatow “Frat Pack” who can step back from the material and wink at it without compromising the integrity of his performance, and he brings that grounded irony to Scott Lang. At the other end of the spectrum, it is an absolute delight to see Michael Douglas in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve said before that he’s one of those actors who is watchable no matter what he’s doing. In the role of the mentor – Marvel’s first “legacy” character – Douglas shines as someone crippled by loss and haunted by his past. Lilly, for those who haven’t seen her since Lost, is also quite compelling as Hope, the kind of character of which we just can’t wait to see more, and thank heavens we’ll almost certainly see her in a film down the road, because Hope has the potential to be a breakout star of the MCU – spirited, heroic, and unique (there isn’t really a comparison character, fortunately).

The thing that makes Ant-Man a real success, aside from the inevitable tie-in aspects (including cameos from Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and one other name I won’t spoil - though for God's sake, people, stay through the credits!), is its adherence to the formula of the heist film. Marvel’s been pretty good with this lately, giving us a 70s spy film with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and a space opera with Guardians of the Galaxy, so the genre play here keeps the superhero genre from growing stale (really, how many times can one replicate the structure of Superman before wearing it thin?). Think of it like Ocean’s Eleven if Danny Ocean could shrink. And the rousing score by Christophe Beck helps that atmosphere work for the audience.

I went into Ant-Man expecting it to be a passable superhero venture, one of a dozen generic entries, but the film won over the cynic in me fairly rapidly and convinced me it had something to offer – a return to form of sorts, something akin to Iron Man with its emphasis on corporate espionage rather than saving the world. It’s not as strong a film as Iron Man, but it’s no less entertaining than at least half of what Marvel has put out in the last decade.

Ant-Man is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi action violence.” There is a fair amount of running, jumping, and punching, done at an atomic level so we only see full-size people recoiling from being hit by Ant-Man. There’s also the usual amount of peril and menace from the principal antagonist.

Monday at the Movies - December 16, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, no creative witty banter before we jump into our review...

Disclosure (1994) – I first “discovered” Michael Douglas in Don’t Say a Word, a taut thriller which colored the way I see him; Douglas is, I contend, at his best when he’s playing an everyman with his back against the wall (exception: Gordon Gekko in Wall Street).  And in Disclosure, adapted from Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name, Michael Douglas gets to do just that – and boy, does he shine.  Douglas becomes embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal after his new boss and former flame Demi Moore puts the moves on him.  Don’t forget, it’s a Crichton story, so there’s something else going on too, which I won’t spoil; part of the fun of the movie is piecing together the intricate plot being sprung on Douglas’s character.  The film is padded out with solid supporting roles; Donald Sutherland is smarmy as ever as the company owner, and reference comedian Dennis Miller is a witty treat as a snarky techie, while Roma Maffia (you know her as anesthesiologist Liz Cruz from Nip/Tuck) steals the show as the spirited attorney defending Douglas against the charges.  But the real treats come from watching Douglas go from simmer to sizzle as the deck gets stacked against him, as his professional and personal lives are destabilized by the machine forming to take him down.  Moore is a worthy adversary, smug and overconfident in her sexuality, but it’s undeniably Michael Douglas’s show as he proves once more that he’s not the guy to mess with.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We’ll see you here next week!

Last Vegas (2013)

We’ve come to regard The Hangover as a kind of golden standard which at least perfected the “weekend gone wrong” genre (if not kickstarting it).  And Last Vegas, with its all-star cast of Hollywood’s golden-year’d actors, has been marketed as a kind of Hangover for the over-50 crowd (or, unintentionally, 20-somethings like me).  But where Last Vegas sputters in places The Hangover soared, the film ultimately entertains on the sheer ethos of its A-list, A-game stars.

Last Vegas finds Michael Douglas on the eve of his marriage to his early-30s trophy girlfriend.  After convincing the reluctant Robert De Niro to join in spite of his “unresolved issues” with Douglas, Kevin Kline and Morgan Freeman fly to Las Vegas for the big reunion and the bachelor party for their perennially single friend.  Hijinks, of course, ensue.

Where The Hangover was innovative in the unexpected relentlessness of its rolling-in-the-aisles laughs, Last Vegas is the victim of its own marketing campaign, which tragically blew some of the best gags in the film (the rotating bed and Morgan Freeman’s window escape, to allude to a few).  And having seen the trailer more than once (the consequence of being a too-frequent moviegoer), these truly funny moments didn’t elicit much more than a weak chuckle – less than they deserved, but all I could muster.  There are a few genuine laughs (i.e., the conceit that a misogynistic “bro” mistakes the four friends for mobsters), but the best, to rework the old Browning poem, has already been.

Last Vegas never really surpasses the brilliant idea of “let’s get all our talented old people in one movie” (see also Red, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).  And not every movie needs to surpass convention, so if I dial back my standards of grandeur Last Vegas ends up being a pretty successful film.  The “Flatbush Four” are all reliably gifted performers and play to their strengths – Douglas the charismatic bachelor, De Niro the crochety East Coaster, Freeman the polysyllabic golden-throat, and Kline the goofy sidekick.  We know their work well enough to know what to expect, though a nice surprise comes from De Niro’s more heartfelt moments; from an actor who sometimes seems to phone it in, it’s nice to see a performance that (while not Oscar-worthy) still plucks a heartstring or two.  In fact, any one of these actors is worth the price of admission, and the combination of four can’t help but succeed, even in a bad movie (which, fortunately, Last Vegas isn’t).

The other nice surprise about the film – which, decently, the trailers didn’t spoil – is Mary Steenburgen’s lounge singer Diana, a keen counterpart to the testosterone-heavy cast.  (Sidebar:  I just realized she’s for this film what Heather Graham was for The Hangover.)  She won’t be passing any Bechdel tests any time soon, and I can’t say I was a fan of the predictable “older woman course-corrects girl-crazy bachelor” plotline, but at least the film keeps us guessing on which bachelor she’ll land.  Diana is a different brand of character than the competitive machismo fleshing out the rest of the cast, often calling out characters on their self-deceptions; it’s a clever storytelling technique which allows the film to be smarter than a less rigorous draft of the screenplay would have been.

Ultimately, Last Vegas didn’t knock me out like I wanted it to, but 90 minutes in the company of four of Hollywood’s finest is, to quote one of my professors from my first semester of graduate school, “as good a choice as any.”

Last Vegas is rated PG-13 “for sexual content and language.”  There’s a seduction scene in which nudity is implied, though we see nothing more than bare shoulders; there are a few unenthusiastic and brief innuendos, as well as (according to IMDb) one F-bomb and a few weaker profanities.  Quite tame, particularly compared to The Hangover.

Monday at the Movies - June 24, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies” – this week, we massage the title of this feature by profiling two HBO biopics from the past year.

Behind the Candelabra (2013) – “Too much of a good thing is wonderful,” the late Liberace was fond of saying, but the trouble with Behind the Candelabra is that there’s not enough of a good thing to be wonderful in the first place.  Ostensibly Steven Soderbergh’s last film, this biopic stars Michael Douglas as the flamboyant pianist who woos Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) in a complicated and torrid relationship not unlike the stuff of Lifetime movies.  Therein lies the problem; the story as we have it isn’t substantive enough to sustain a full two hours without feeling thin or repetitive.  As is often the case in biopics like this, Michael Douglas is note-perfect as Liberace, capturing the extravagance of the performer while layering in just enough of the creepy menace the film suggests was key to understanding Liberace (then again, when is Douglas not exceptional?).  Doing less exceptional work by virtue of being in the shadow of a great performance, Damon’s Scott Thorson is also less compelling, largely due to Damon’s failure to transcend his own ethos in the way Douglas does; moreover, Damon as Scott is petulant and largely static, equal parts the fault of the slim script and the muscled actor.  Kudos, though, to the makeup department for creating a lifelike Liberace and an uncanny doppelganger after Scott undergoes plastic surgery to look more like his lover.  Keep your eyes peeled for a gaggle of cameos – Dan Aykroyd, Rob Lowe, Paul Reiser, and an unforgettable Debbie Reynolds as Liberace’s mum – though ultimately the film is a great deal like Liberace himself:  talented, but more style than substance.

Phil Spector (2013) – Pacino, Mirren, Mamet.  Throw these three into a crazy (semi-) true story, and I’m there.  Oddly, the film begins with a disclaimer absolving itself of facticity, a bizarre technique which distances the audience until the true game reveals itself.  What David Mamet’s really after is a character study unfettered by pragmatic (and legal) concerns, profiling defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) as she’s drawn into the entirely strange orbit of famed music producer Phil Spector (Al Pacino) when he’s accused of murder.  The film wisely avoids finger-pointing (indeed, the film leans toward but never fully endorses Spector’s innocence), and it’s to Pacino’s credit that he reins in his stereotypical “big voice” for a more subdued portrait.  The real star – and the vehicle which communicates the degree to which Spector seems wholly unhinged – is Mamet’s dialogue, as snappy as it’s ever been.  In many ways more a stage play than a fully cinematic film, Mamet’s script includes long dialogues, compelling conversation pieces where the restrained delivery allows us to appreciate the subtext; it’s especially worth rewatching the conversations between Spector and Baden, as the former reveals his madness while the latter, astoundingly, becomes convinced of his legal innocence.  Pacino pulls back, as I’ve noted, but Mirren really lets loose the full range of her craft; Baden is suffering from pneumonia during the trial and – like Cosmo Kramer’s gonorrhea – you feel it all the way in the back row.  It may not be the all-out crazy train that the actual trial was, but Mamet’s script is riveting in a slow-burn kind of way.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The Game (1997)

It's a good thing director David Fincher is so articulate, because I can't think of a better way to describe his 1997 thriller The Game other than "a fashionable, good-looking Scrooge, lured into a Mission: Impossible situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting."

Michael Douglas is Nicholas Van Orton, an investment banker reminiscent of Douglas's turn as Gordon Gekko in Stone's Wall Street. A visit from Nicholas's brother Conrad (Sean Penn) sets into motion Nicholas's involvement in a game perpetrated by the shady and mysterious business Consumer Recreation Services. The game begins innocuously enough, but soon Nicholas finds himself fighting for everything - literally, everything - he has in order to win the game.

Kudos to Fincher - director of cult favorites Se7en and Fight Club - for keeping the film moving without ever really giving the audience anything concrete to latch onto. The screenplay is extra-strong here, its postponed questions facilitating the bait-and-switch Fincher deftly pulls on the audience. For two hours, the film careens from plot twist to surprise misdirection, without ever really revealing its hand until literally the last scene of the film. Fincher never gives the audience more than an inch in this one, keepng me on the edge of my seat while asking, "Okay, he's in on it? No, wait, she is? Is he? Whose side is she on?" Like Nicholas, the audience is kept in the dark for most of the film, and so the film is a great deal of fun as far as unpredictability goes.

Where performances are concerned, Douglas is superb as always. Having proved himself adept at thrillers in both Fatal Attraction and Don't Say a Word (perhaps the closest thematically to his performance here), Douglas is, to borrow a line from his co-star Sean Penn, "one of our finest." Penn does a great job in his first scene, which sets up a stark and immediate difference between the Van Orton brothers, but he's nowhere near the presence that Douglas is in the film (if memory serves, Penn only has about three or four scenes total). And Deborah Kara Unger, as a waitress who gets caught up in the game, doesn't do much but serve as a focal point for a few twists - the only ones I can profess to have seen coming.

The Game is not for everyone. It's not for those who like their movies cut and dry, black and white. It's not for those who can't handle top-notch suspense, and it's certainly not for those who get disturbed by movies that ask "How would you handle this?" It is, however, an excellent film for those of us who like a movie that keeps us guessing, that never lets up, and that is as finely crafted as a whittled whistle. The Game is delightfully always one step ahead of its audience.

The Game is rated "R for language, and for some violence and sexuality." Language consists of the occasional F-bomb, and violence begins to escalate only as the game gets closer to the finish line - neither of these are excessive because the real tension is all in your head. Sexuality comes with a few suggestive photographs that are used as part of the game.