Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — Diminishing returns

Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for mild profanity and relentless action violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.17.23 

Yeesh. What a mess.

 

This newest Marvel Cinematic Universe entry is a classic “kitchen sink” movie: Scripter Jeff Loveness has thrown everything on the wall, in the feverish, desperate hope that something will stick.

 

Kang (Jonathan Majors, right) makes it clear that if Scott (Paul Rudd) refuses to cooperate,
something very bad will happen to his daughter ... which he then will be forced to
re-live for eternity.

Paul Rudd’s Ant Man always has been a bad joke in his own series: a smug, defensive, self-deprecating bumbler cast adrift in adventures that suffer from a clumsy blend of smash-’em-up special effects and forced humor. They’re silly children’s films, completely at odds with the more traditionally heroic stance he displayed as a supporting character in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: End Game.

(I still wince at the memory of the ill-advised tabletop toy train battle that climaxed 2015’s Ant Man. Ouch.)

 

Director Peyton Reed, determined to maintain the style of Ant Man’s two previous starring outings, has made this third adventure another silly children’s film.

 

Events begin with this family unit happily reunited, in the wake of Avengers End Game: Scott Lang (Rudd), his sweetie-pie Hope (Evangeline Lilly), their now-teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), Hope’s mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) and father Hank (Michael Douglas).

 

Cassie has matured into an 18-year-old social activist: a timely nod to current events in this San Francisco setting. She also possesses her grandfather’s passion for science and technology, and — unbeknownst to Scott, Hope and particularly Janet — has been working with Hank to establish a connection to the molecular level of the microscopic Quantum Realm.

 

When Janet does find out, she’s horrified … because, well, y’see, she never explained what happened during the 30 years she was stuck in the Quantum Realm, or why it’s so dangerous.

 

(Yes, this is one of those contrived calamities that wouldn’t exist if characters actually talked to each other.)

 

Ah, but too late! Just as Janet frantically demands that Hank and Cassie cease their efforts, all five — along with the contents of Hank’s lab — are sucked into the weird landscapes and even weirder creatures of the Quantum Realm.

 

Which, sad to say, looks an awful lot like last November’s Strange World. Given that both films emerged under the Disney banner, one suspects a serious case of Looking Over Each Other’s Shoulders.

 

French Exit: Comme ci comme ça

French Exit (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor

By Derrick Bang 

Few films follow their source as closely as this one: not really a surprise, since scripter Patrick DeWitt has adapted his own 2018 novel.

 

Newly arrived in Paris, having fled Manhattan ahead of creditors, Frances (Michelle
Pfeiffer) and her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) wonder what they're going to make
of this new life.

Add a director — Azazel Jacobs — who clearly studied at the altar of Wes Anderson, and French Exit becomes a slice of absurdist eccentricity: a character study filled with people who (mostly) seem to exist slightly out of phase with the real world.

 

The degree to which they’re likable or sympathetic — as opposed to annoying and contemptuous — will depend on your ability to laugh at their foibles. In fairness, moments in this unhurried narrative are laugh-out-loud funny … but they’re few and far between.

 

To cases:

 

Despite years’ worth of warnings from her accountant, Manhattan socialite Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) has exhausted the inheritance left when husband Franklin died 12 years earlier.

 

“My plan,” she insists rather vaguely, “was to die before the money ran out.”

 

Which means that she gave no consideration to leaving anything for her directionless adult son, Malcolm (Lucas Hedges), who has put his own life on hold, in order to be her faithful companion for the same 12 years. (Nice mother, eh?)

 

Given the way Pfeiffer swans condescendingly through every scene, we immediately realize that this is typical of Frances, who rarely (never?) considers anything — or anybody — beyond herself. She’s all appearance and no substance, given to grand gestures of generosity — such as inappropriately huge tips — solely because they call attention to herself.

 

Acting on her accountant’s advice, she quietly (and quite illegally) sells everything in her lavish home, converts the proceeds to Euros, and accepts a suggestion to move into a Parisian apartment owned by best friend Joan (Susan Coyne, as one of this saga’s “normal” characters).

 

Where Frances supposedly will “figure things out.”

 

Malcolm somehow has accumulated a fiancée along the way: Susan (Imogen Poots), a nice young woman who quite reasonably cannot understand why he’s abandoning her in order to follow his mother. Their parting does not go well; Malcolm pauses outside the restaurant, looking back inside at her, clearly having no clue how to do the right thing … or even what that might be.

 

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil — Maladroit

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG, despite considerable violence and heartbreaking content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.18.19

Wow. Genocide, in a (supposedly) family-friendly Disney fantasy?

What’s next? Gang rape? Child mutilation?

Uncle Walt must be spinning in his grave.

En route to a lavish dinner designed to acquaint Maleficent (Angelina Jolie, center) with
her future in-laws, Aurora (Elle Fanning) and Diaval (Sam Riley) can't help thinking that
this might be a very, very bad idea.

What were these people thinking?

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a tasteless, mean-spirited, Frankenstein’s monster of a movie: a textbook example of what happens when art is sacrificed on the altar of crass corporate commercialism. It follows 2014’s Maleficent, Disney’s response to Wicked, the stage play with its then-novel origin story of Dorothy Gale’s Wicked Witch of the West. Maleficent, in turn, was the origin story of the evil sorceress who bedeviled Aurora (aka Briar Rose) in Sleeping Beauty.

Which was a reasonable concept, the first time. But scripters Linda Woolverton, Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster have broken faith with the original fairy tale here — indeed, the entire genre — by blending cutesy-poo creatures with horrific violence, in service of a thoroughly unsubtle refrain of “We’ve got to overlook our differences, in order to get along.”

Real-world resonance notwithstanding, that lecture is getting very tiresome.

On top of which, the writers have blatantly borrowed (read: stolen) concepts from all manner of other, far superior fantasy sagas. The result is kitchen-sink overkill, as if dazzling us with a cornucopia of cheerful, colorful beasties will compensate for a story that becomes increasingly grim, depressing and sadistic.

And this is supposed to be for children? The PG rating is reprehensible, and a total lie. Disney should be ashamed.

Perhaps recognizing the folly of the entire production, most of the featured performers don’t bother acting. Angelina Jolie’s line readings are atrocious. Her Maleficent, intended to be intimidating, never rises above the smirking insolence of a star who recognizes that she’s wasting her time (and ours). Elle Fanning goes too far in the other direction; her Aurora is breathlessly melodramatic, her eyes forever wide with overwrought angst.

Harris Dickinson’s Prince Philip is no more than a stalwart hunk; his wooden insincerity is laughably inept. And the three actresses playing the colorful good fairies — transformed here into pixies dubbed Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville) and Thistlewit (Juno Temple) — are just plain annoying.

Given that most of these actors have done superior work elsewhere, director Joachim Rønning deserves the blame for their poor performances here. He has no feeling for this material, having previously helmed only grim historical sagas — Max Manus: Man of War and Kon-Tiki — and 2017’s ill-advised Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a similar big-budget franchise flop.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Diminutive delight

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sci-fi action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.6.18

OK, this character is growing on me.

If only a bit.

With FBI agents and criminal mercenaries determined to snatch her father's technology,
Hope (Evangeline Lilly) prepares for battle as the Wasp, while Scott (Paul Rudd)
reluctantly suits up as Ant-Man.

2015’s Ant-Man was a train wreck, due to its insufferably smug tone and an over-reliance on Three Stooges-style farce: a rare miscalculation in the carefully plotted Marvel Universe franchise.

This sequel, having nowhere to go but up, wisely executed a course correction. Star Paul Rudd is less haughty, and therefore more sympathetic; co-star Evangeline Lilly’s considerably expanded role is a welcome change; the characters’ size-shifting abilities are put to much better use; returning director Peyton Reed toned down the gratuitous slapstick; and — definitely a relief — the core plot is grounded in a manner wholly removed from the universe-shattering consequences of recent Marvel entries.

The villains here have sensible real-world motives: greed and self-preservation.

Best of all, the script — fine-tuned by no fewer than five credited writers, along with (no doubt) more behind the scenes — blends the obligatory action with plenty of larkish banter, all well delivered at a slow-burn tempo.

Points, as well, to whoever thought to reference 1954’s Them!

All this said, there’s still a sense that The Powers That Be don’t quite know what to do with this character: that he’s a second-string joke not granted the respect that his abilities should demand. Again, this may be down to Rudd — a credited co-scripter — who rarely looks like he’s taking any of this seriously.

The same could be said of Chris Pratt’s handling of Peter Quill, in the adjacent Guardians of the Galaxy series … but Pratt has a better acting range, and is a helluva lot more charming.

Anyway…

The “busted” Scott Lang (Rudd) remains under house arrest, thanks to his illegal alliance with Captain America, in 2016’s Civil War. Scott is a mere three days away from being freed from the ankle monitor that prevents outer-world quality time with beloved daughter Cassie (cute-as-a-button Abby Ryder Fortson). Happily, relations with ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her new companion Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) have improved; they’re now sympathetic to Scott’s plight.

Murder on the Orient Express: A misdemeanor offense

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief violence and mild dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Many actors long to play Hamlet.

Others look forward to taking a crack at Hercule Poirot.

When an avalanche delays the London-bound Orient Express, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth
Branagh) is in the perfect position to solve a heinous murder ... because the killer still
must be somewhere on the train.

Kenneth Branagh is a marvelous Poirot. He nails Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian private detective: from the meticulous OCD tendencies — stroking his perfectly coifed mustache, sizing up the comparative height of his twin breakfast soft-boiled eggs — to the narrowed gaze and waspish tone that indicate crime scene analysis undertaken by his “little grey cells.”

Branagh definitely deserves placement alongside David Suchet and Albert Finney, as cinema’s greatest Poirots.

Alas, the same cannot be said for the vehicle in which Branagh’s Poirot inhabits. Screenwriter Michael Green’s attempt to turn Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express “relevant” for modern viewers makes a shambles of her ingeniously plotted 1934 novel. His adaptation commits the cardinal sin of telegraphing the twist so early, that he gives away the game before we’re even halfway through the film.

Green was an odd choice for this assignment. He’s into excess and exploitation: a sci-fi/horror guy whose credits include Green Lantern, Logan, Alien: Covenant and television’s Gotham and American Gods. He obviously lacks the subtlety and sly British wit required of a Christie mystery, which demands the touch of somebody like Peter Morgan (The Queen, television’s The Crown) or Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey and his own marvelous Christie pastiche, 2001’s Gosford Park).

Green struggles mightily to transform this story into an action-oriented adventure akin to director Guy Ritchie’s recent re-boots of Sherlock Holmes, and it simply doesn’t work. Murder on the Orient Express is a mostly tranquil drawing-room mystery ... except that it takes place aboard a train.

Branagh also directs, and succumbs overmuch to long tracking shots and other visual flourishes, which further diminish the story at hand. One sequence, inexplicably shot from above the characters’ heads as they enter a train compartment, is incredibly distracting.

Branagh seems to love the camera trickery made possible by contemporary CGI effects, and misses no opportunity for stunning vistas of the eponymous train, as it navigates the mountainous regions from Here to There: undeniably gorgeous, as is Haris Zambarloukos’ cinematography ... but rather beside the point.

The story takes place in 1934. Green opens the film with a droll prologue that hasn’t a thing to do with Christie, but nonetheless deftly establishes everything we need to know about Poirot. A last-minute change of plans interrupts an intended vacation in Istanbul, and prompts him to board the lavish Orient Express en route to London via Italy, Switzerland and France.

Mother! — A nauseating miscarriage

Mother! (2017) • View trailer 
No stars (Turkey). Rated R, for strong and disturbing violent content, sexuality, nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.15.17

I never would have believed that the same calendar year could produce another mainstream film as self-indulgently loathsome as February’s A Cure for Wellness.

Actually, this one’s worse.

As her companion (Javier Bardem) inexplicably tolerates the intrusive presence of ever
more strangers in their huge home, our increasingly helpless heroine (Jennifer
Lawrence) wonders — and worries — where it'll all end.

Darren Aronofsky has pushed the borders of good taste — and any semblance of rational narrative structure — ever since 2000’s Requiem for a Dream. When tethered to somebody else’s (reasonably) coherent script — as with The Wrestler and Black Swan — his worst tendencies remain checked. He also can be a gifted actor’s director, having guided stars to Academy Award nominations and victories.

But when Aronofsky directs and writes ... look out.

Case in point: Mother!

Whether allegory, parable or primal scream, this blast of wretched excess is overwrought, insufferably distasteful and — once we reach the dog-nuts third act — vile beyond words. This abomination is guaranteed to enrage patrons into demanding refunds, after which they’ll stumble home, scarred for life, and in desperate need of a shower. And a means to sterilize their brains.

Alas, some things can’t be unseen.

On top of everything else, Aronofsky is guilty of stretching facile symbolism way past sustainability. Mother! might’ve made a decent 25-minute short subject; as a 121-minute assault on viewer sensibilities, it’s an exercise in mind-numbing overkill.

I carefully avoid spoilers, because even bad movies — well, most of them — deserve a chance to impress or surprise. But there’s simply no way to discuss Mother! without revealing Big Secrets. For which I apologize, in advance.

No characters are named. Our heroine (Jennifer Lawrence) shares an imposing mansion — isolated in a field, surrounded by a forest, far from any semblance of civilization — with her husband/lover/keeper (Javier Bardem). The place is a fixer-upper; she paints, plasters walls, handles plumbing and wood-working chores. She has been working thusly for quite some time, essentially re-building what had been a fire-gutted ruin.

He’s a poet, suffering the damnation of writer’s block. She’s patient, sympathetic, nurturing. She prepares his meals, encourages him to try, try again.

The Family: Dysfunction reigns

The Family (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for violence, considerable profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

Comedy is hard. Dark comedy is much harder.

Giovanni (Robert De Niro) and Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer, back to ccamera) naturally wish
to know how their children fared, during their first day at a new French school. Warren
(John D'Leo) and Belle (Dianna Agron) downplay their activities, unwilling to admit that
their larcenous instincts — a family quality — will allow them to own the school by the
end of the week.

In theory, this film is the droll saga of a Mafia family trying to maintain the low profile demanded of the Witness Protection Program, while too easily sliding into former bad (i.e. violent) habits, much to the ongoing consternation of their FBI handler. That’s a premise with considerable comedic potential, particularly when the handler is played by Tommy Lee Jones at his morose, long-suffering best.

And things would have been fine, had our protagonists confined their lethal behavior to the various goombahs trying to find and whack them, and if said goombahs had limited their nasty tendencies toward each other.

But far too many innocent bystanders get killed along the way, sometimes quite unpleasantly. It’s rather hard to chuckle when another inquisitive neighbor gets shot between the eyes. That simply isn’t funny, and it, ah, kills the mood. Repeatedly.

The trouble is, veteran French action director Luc Besson doesn’t seem to know what kind of movie to make this time; his script — co-written with Michael Caleo, from Tonino Benacquista’s comedic novel Malavita — keeps sliding back and forth between the grim “straight” drama of La Femme Nikita or The Professional, and the far lighter, satiric tone of The Fifth Element. These styles are mutually incompatible, and the result is rather a mess.

Caleo, I note, co-wrote one episode of TV’s The Sopranos with that show’s creator, David Chase. That may have been the serio-comic mood Besson hoped to achieve, since Chase masterfully blended sarcastic humor with heinous violence in his groundbreaking show. And, at times, Besson and Caleo almost get there ... but then they spoil it with another dollop of brutal behavior.

Giovanni Manzoni (Robert De Niro) and his family have spent years on the run, at various locations in the States and now France, due to the persistence of mob bosses infuriated by his having ratted them out. Giovanni’s wife, Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), has grown accustomed to packing and unpacking; teenagers Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D’Leo) have resigned themselves to the constant uprooting faced by military kids.

Now, newly ensconced in a sleepy French village in the Normandy countryside, saddled with the fresh identity of “Fred Blake,” Giovanni attempts, once again, to blend. On impulse, he greets neighbors by claiming to be a writer of history; trouble is, the locals know far more about his fabricated topic — the D-Day invasion — than he does.

FBI handler Robert Stansfield (Jones) isn’t amused; that’s precisely the sort of sloppy thinking that could get “Fred” exposed as ... well, as somebody other than who he claims to be.

Dark Shadows: Toothless

Dark Shadows (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, and somewhat generously, for comic horror violence, profanity, drug use and considerable sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.11.12

The casting is divine, the one-liners are appropriately snarky, and Johnny Depp's slow takes and sidelong glances are, well, to die for.

Young Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz) and David (Gulliver McGrath) don't know
what to make of their newly introduced "distant relation," Barnabas (Johnny
Depp), except for the blindingly obvious fact that he's a total square, when it
comes to contemporary (1972) pop culture.

But to quote the heroine of the previous collaboration between Depp and director Tim Burton, this new big-screen take on Dark Shadows isn’t such a much. It’s slow, self-indulgent and — worst of all — rather boring.

Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith — working from a story he concocted with John August — may have tried too hard to replicate the creaky, somnambulant tone that characterized Dan Curtis’ legendary daytime soap, during its reign from 1966 to ’71. The plot here drifts haphazardly, with disparate elements either left dangling or brought to hurried resolutions that seem anticlimactic (notably, one primary character’s rather abrupt and unsatisfactory demise).

Centuries-old vampire Barnabas Collins (Depp) also demonstrates a rather inconsistent aversion to daylight. In one scene, the slightest touch of sunlight’s dappled rays on his skin prompts smoke and even fire ... and yet he spends much of this storyline wandering about by day (and let’s not pretend his hat offers sufficient protection).

The local citizens of bucolic Collinsport, Maine, also come and go at whim. When the film finally builds to a frenzied-mob climax, Frankenstein-style, everybody — including a squad of cops in several police cars — storms majestic Collinwood Manor. A few eyeblinks later, during a real estate-wrecking battle royale, all these bystanders are gone.

Granted, we get a token clip of cops telling everybody to go home, because “there’s nothing to see here” ... but the logical response to that idiotic remark, at that particular juncture, would have been a defiant “Are you kidding?” from everybody present. Besides which, there’s no reason the cops also would have vanished.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

New Year's Eve: Classic Hollywood froth

New Year's Eve (2011) • View trailer for New Year's Eve
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for fleeting profanity and some sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.9.11


New Year’s Eve is a lighthearted throwback to classic Hollywood ensemble dramas such as 1932’s Grand Hotel, with star-laden casts that played isolated clusters of characters involved with their own little dramas.

Trying to get a conventional cab on New Year's Eve is impossible, so when
Tess (Jessica Biel) suddenly must get to the hospital right now, lest she deliver
her baby on the sidewalk, husband Griffin (Seth Meyers) does the best he can,
and flags down a pedal-cab.

Additionally, New Year’s Eve is very much like last year’s Valentine’s Day, also directed by Garry Marshall and co-written by Katherine Fugate, who assumes solo scripting chores this time.

And, as was the case with Valentine’s Day, Marshall’s newest effort will be embraced as a fun date flick by folks with romantic souls, and loudly dissed by cinematic snobs who can’t get beyond the calculated pretense and contrived star turns.

A pox on the latter’s houses, and may they be alone on New Year’s Eve.

Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Marshall knows how to craft slick Hollywood product, and Fugate deftly sketches a dozen or so mini-dramas, adding just enough backstory — in most cases — to involve us with each set of characters.

And we can’t help being impressed by a cast that includes three Oscar-winning best actors, a couple more Oscar nominees and several dozen familiar faces from both television and the big screen. A few are notorious scene-stealers, but Marshall maintains a steady hand and somehow grants everybody equal time.

That’s an impressive accomplishment with a cast this large, and a set of stories this diverse. Which only matters in an abstract sense, because our sole obligation with a film such as New Year’s Eve is to sit back and have a good time.

As the title suggests, the events take place during a single day in and around New York’s Times Square, as a massive cluster of humanity jams the streets in order to watch the big ball drop at the stroke of midnight. This year’s annual ceremony is being supervised by Claire (Hilary Swank), the newly promoted vice president of the Times Square Alliance.

She arrives early, with plenty of time to test the ball. Which — horrors! —gets stuck halfway up the massive pole, with only a few of its many lights flashing.