Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

I have enjoyed the Ant-Man movies, despite them always feeling like lesser Marvel movies. While everything was building towards grand Avengers-based adventures, being taken on tangents with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and co. felt refreshingly small-scale (no pun intended) and more simplistically fun. And I own them on 3D Blu-ray, which is the best way to get maximum enjoyment from them, as far as I’m concerned.

Try as I might, however, I could not work up any enthusiasm for this third instalment in the series. Marvel have been wildly inconsistent after achieving an astonishing modern cinematic success with the finale of the Infinity War saga, and I wasn’t thrilled to think of an entire movie set on the quantum realm. We have been there before, very briefly, and it’s visualized as an alien landscape in which people can very easily lose their minds.

But here we are. Things start very quickly. Cassie (Scott’s daughter, now played by Kathryn Newton) has been working on a device to map the quantum realm. It works by beaming a signal down there, which causes a problem when something locks on to that signal and drags Cassie, her dad, Hope Van Dyne AKA The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer). The quantum realm is even more dangerous than ever, thanks to the looming presence of Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).

Peyton Reed may be an experienced pair of hands back in the director’s chair, and he may have his cast happy to work with the usual large amount of invisible environments to be added in later, but writer Jeff Loveness is the one trying to fit everything into the film in a way that mixes humour and tension as it sets up the new main villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sadly, he isn’t up to the task, leaving the cast floundering and the screen full of garishly overdone CGI that wouldn’t look out of place in some of the Star Wars prequels.

The only thing this gets absolutely right is the build-up for Kang, and that is as much down to the performance of Majors as it is to the script. Jokes are very hit and miss, with way more of the latter than the former, and it’s strange to even think of a whole movie set in the quantum realm when previous movies had delivered such dire warnings about accidentally going there. Then you have the issue of scale, changing scale often being a vital fun factor for these movies. It isn’t as enjoyable to watch someone shrink and supersize, depending on the situation, while they are in a world with less substantial reference points to help underline the rapid changes.

It isn’t necessarily ALL the fault of Loveness, who I am sure will have been given plenty of notes and plot points to hit, but the script here, in every way, keeps this bogged down near the very bottom of the Marvel movie pile.

Rudd is still a great choice for our hero, arguably even better at portraying an reluctant everyman hero than Tom Holland in the Peter/Spider-Man role. Newton is a great addition, playing her socially-conscious teen with an energy and naïveté that stops her from ever becoming too annoying. Douglas, Pfeiffer, and Lilly are all as good as you would hope, and all get involved in some of the action set-pieces, and there is a surprising reappearance in the series for Corey Stoll, although I am still making up my mind on whether I liked or disliked his character. Majors is the other highlight though, as I have already said, and the third act at least does well to give viewers an idea of how this character should so effectively threaten, and could even change, heroes, timelines, and realities.

There are some fun cameos, and one that feels a bit too smug and irritating (for some reason), and an intriguing moment at the end, as expected, and I will admit that some of the third act came close to making up for some of the lacklustre scenes that preceded it. Close, but not quite close enough. Visually, tonally, and even conceptually, this is a mess. It’s a shame that it couldn’t at least manage to be a consistently entertaining mess.

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: Traffic (2000)

Based on a TV series that I sadly never saw (yet), Traffic is another excellent ensemble film from Steven Soderbergh that allows him to play to his strengths aka his ability to marry the right cast to an intelligent script and present everything in a way that is both grounded and also cine-literate and full of memorable moments.

In case you couldn't guess from the title, Traffic is all about the drug trade, showing how it affects a number of key figures in both America and Mexico. Danger and death are never too far from people on the front line (played by the likes of Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle, and Luis Guzmán), getting a proper handle on the situation may prove too difficult for someone making moves politically (Michael Douglas), and those high up the "food chain" (such as characters played by Thomas Milian and Steven Bauer) might prove impossible to bring back down to within reaching distance of the not-so-long arms of the law.

Everyone I have just mentioned does a great job here, but the highlights are undoubtedly, for me, Del Toro, Douglas, and Catherine Zeta-Jones (playing the wife of a businessman arrested for drug dealing). Cheadle and Guzmán work brilliantly together, and they have a number of scenes with the brilliant Miguel Ferrer, who surprises nobody by turning up onscreen to spend some time being . . . brilliant. Erika Christensen has the job of showing how drugs can easily take hold of the kids, helped along by her unfortunate association with a young sleazebag played by Topher Grace. Some characters may figure more prominently than others, but everyone plays their part in showing the risks and rewards, and the outward ripple effect, of the drug supply chain.

Soderbergh has a savvy script by Stephen Gaghan to work with, and he treats it well. It may seem like an obvious gimmick to give the differing story strands a basic kind of colour coding, but it certainly helps to keep viewers orientated as we jump from one scenario to another, looking out for important developments and points of interconnection (not necessarily in the standard narratives or character moments, but more often in the methodology and the shaping of spiderwebbing plans).

Despite all of the positives on display here, Traffic could have easily failed if it had at any point started to feel like some piece of scaremongering or propaganda. Thanks to Gaghan and Soderbergh, it never does. There's one hard truth at the heart of this, and it's not one that everyone will appreciate. The war on drugs was never won, and probably never will be. A profitable drug economy is like a viral video of some majorly embarrassing incident. No matter how much people hope it will disappear, it's only going to spread and worm into the global consciousness of anyone who gets wind of it.

One or two scenes in the third act notwithstanding, bits of melodrama that feel unnecessary and a bit overdone, this is a strong contender for Soderbergh's finest film, and those brief moments aren't enough to stop it from being something I consider pretty perfect. I'd even say that it's a film vying for a very high position in the respective filmographies of every main cast member. Smart, thrilling, equal parts thought-provoking and entertaining, Traffic is a film that everyone should watch at least once. And I'm sure many will make time for repeat viewings.

10/10

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Noir-vember: Basic Instinct (1992)

Everyone remembers Basic Instinct for one main scene, a scene that underlines it as the ultimate blend of polish and sleaze in the realm of the erotic thriller. But there’s a lot that is so often forgotten, including the plotting that helps to make it an impressive neo-noir, and even allows it to come close to being a fully-fledged giallo at times.

The opening scene is one of those forgotten elements. It’s a sex scene that ends with a brutal death, which is memorable enough, but the sheer intensity and unflinching look at the carnage prepares viewers for a very different type of film. That la petite mort, or maybe we should call it le grande mort, is the event that leads to the introduction of two cops, Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and Gus Moran (George Dzundza), and those two cops soon end up questioning a main suspect Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). It turns out that Tramell is a successful author, and a murder depicted in one of her books was carried out in almost exactly the same way as the murder now under investigation. Tramell seems drawn to Curran, who has a fiery and addictive personality, which is why he has been treated by Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who is also his occasional sexual partner. The mind games begin, and don't ever really stop, and the corpses eventually start to pile up as Curran and Tramell enjoy a fiery liaison that shows they could bring out the best and worst in one another.

Written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, there's nothing here that should work as well as it does. It's all a messy blend of clichés and ridiculous, but cine-cool, dialogue, with Verhoeven displaying his usual consideration for levels of taste and subtlety. Despite the big names and the polish, this is pure trash, but in all the right ways. And it's self-aware, playing out very much like some late night TV show about a grizzled detective, but with added bloodshed and sweaty sex scenes.

Douglas has never been afraid to play flawed men/anti-heroes/villains, and he does another great job here, portraying someone who can no longer run fast enough to stay ahead of the problems caused by his addictive personality (be it drugs, sex, or just visceral thrills). He's also happy to take on a role of someone potentially being played like a fiddle, and he's basically a strong supporting player in a film that showcases Stone at her best. She's sexy, smart, strong, and definitely has a hint of danger about her. The film made her reputation, and with good reason. It's hard to imagine anyone else taking on the role and doing it so well, although I can easily imagine some getting it horribly wrong. Tripplehorn has arguably the most thankless of the main roles, but she does well with what she's given, Dzundza plays a character so obviously due to reach a certain major plot point that he may as well be in a parody, and you have a cast further fleshed out by the likes of Denis Arndt, Leilani Sarelle, Chelzie Ross, Daniel von Bargen, Wayne Knight, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mitch Pileggi, and Dorothy Malone. Whether their roles are big or small, everyone works well enough with the material, and they're all guided by a director who is, as is so often the case, confident in his way of approaching the material.

There's more to highlight here, from the Jan de Bont cinematography to that lush Jerry Goldsmith score, and dismissing Basic Instinct as glossy smut does a major disservice to just how nicely it manages to maintain such an unusual intensity throughout, barrelling along from one hedonistic pleasure to the next as things build and build to what may be best described as an expectedly messy climax.

9/10

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Filmstruck Friday: Falling Down (1993)

"I'm the Bad Guy?"
"Yeah."
"How'd that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I helped to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. But instead they give it to the plastic surgeons, you know they lied to me."

Falling Down is a thriller/black comedy about a man who snaps. That's all it is. It shows someone who doesn't have the best temperament to begin with finally snapping on a hot day. That someone seems to be a regular guy (played by Michael Douglas, with a buzz-cut, glasses, and shirt and tie on) but he gets more and more dangerous as the film winds on, and more and more determined to reach his estranged wife (Barbara Hershey) and daughter. Robert Duvall is the desk-centred cop about to have a stressful last day, initially offering advice to his colleague (Rachel Ticotin) until he realises that nobody else will listen to them.

Written by Ebbe Roe Smith and directed by Joel Schumacher, Falling Down allows for yet another fine and unique performance in the eclectic filmography of Douglas (known for his star power, it's often easy to forget just how willing the actor is to take a gamble on roles that weren't in his typical leading man mould). It's a film that also does well to get great people who fit perfectly in their supporting roles - Duvall is the weary pro, Ticotin knows to listen to him, Hershey is worried but unable to get others to believe her, Frederic Forrest is a store owner who thinks he is the same as our main character, when he is just a horribly prejudiced piece of work, and you also get good work from Raymond J. Barry and Tuesday Weld (the former being the Police Captain, the latter being the over-anxious wife of Duvall's character).

I still like Falling Down. A lot. It's full of those great performances, and it's full of some superb set-pieces. The first scene of Douglas flipping out as he is overcharged for a cola when he just wants to get change for a phone call is brilliant, and it all becomes vicariously satisfying as he hits back at gang members, snooty golfers, harassing beggars, and road workers who are ruining the day for everyone.

Things escalate in a way that could be seen as videogame-esque. Douglas gets angry. Then he gets a baseball bat. Then he gets guns. He even gets a small rocket-launcher at one point. It's amusing, helped by the sharp script and pacing, and yet the undercurrent of darkness winds through every scene and grows bigger and bigger as we get to the finale.

My only main problem with the film nowadays is the fast food restaurant scene, a moment I used to love alongside all of the others when I first watched the film. Douglas wants breakfast, that is served up until 1130, and is told that menu is finished because it is a few minutes past that time. When he rages, and when he goes on about the customer always being right, I don't enjoy it as much this time around (although the small role for Dedee Pfeifffer is a plus). But anyone who has worked in the hospitality or service industry will know that he's wrong. The customer isn't always right, especially if they come in late for a window of service and that window has closed.

It's the set-pieces that stand out (especially the scene on the golf course) but Falling Down offers much more in between the big moments. Finding out more about the background of the character adds to the tension, seeing how his viewpoint starts from a place of reason and then turns around enough to become dangerous is fascinating, and you also have a great element of classic cat and mouse as Duvall starts to connect the dots and figure things out ahead of everyone else.

So, as odd a sentence as it may seem, Falling Down holds up well.

8/10

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Americans can get it here.

Noir November: The Game (1997)

It may cause some heated debate among fans of the franchise, but people remember that David Fincher directed the much-maligned Alien³. They also tend to remember the enjoyable camerawork that was used to set up the layout of the main building in Panic Room. The rest all have their loyal fans and are unlikely to be forgotten any time soon. But The Game, this is the one that people always seem to forget about. Which is a great shame, because it's a damn fine thriller with a strong strand of pitch-black humour running through the whole thing.

Michael Douglas is Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy businessman who doesn't seem to have any fun in life any more. It's his birthday, not that he's going to celebrate it in any big way, so he ends up at lunch with his brother (Conrad, played by Sean Penn). His brother has managed to get him a gift for the man who has everything. He has booked Nicholas a game with a company called CRS. What is the game? Well, it's different for each person. A live scenario is played out, and finding out the object of the game is often the object of the game. What starts out as fun and/or mildly irritating soon turns into something darker and much more dangerous, and Nicholas is soon convinced that he's caught up in the middle of something that's no longer just a game.

Put together with typical attention to detail by Fincher, The Game is based on a script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris. Although the tone of the whole thing is quite dark, the emphasis is very much on a sense of fun. The whole film is as much a game for viewers as the central premise is for the main character. Figuring out just who is in on the plot, and who isn't, is part of the fun. Another part of the fun is seeing such a composed, slightly arrogant, character being brought low by a series of unfortunate events. Okay, it's maybe not the nicest thing in the world to laugh at someone having such a bad time of things, but it's hard not to enjoy it ever so slightly. So enjoy it. Think of it as the darker, twisted sibling of After Hours (and THERE'S a great double-bill to line up some time).

Douglas is fantastic as Van Orton, a man who slowly starts to unravel as things around him move from the ridiculous to potentially lethal. He's done this kind of role before, of course, but this really plays to his strengths. Penn has a lot of fun with his small, supporting turn. The other main character who comes to the fore is a waitress played by Deborah Kara Unger. I became a big fan of Unger when she starred in both Crash and this movie in the space of a year or two, and she comes into this film at just the right time, lifting things up another notch as the second act starts to show how expansive the game is.

There ARE problems. Anyone looking for logic and believability should look elsewhere, and the long runtime starts to take a toll as the third act starts to outstay its welcome. For the most part, however, this is a great example of a director having a lot of fun with his audience. Nothing is done in a way that seems too cheeky or arrogant. It's just light fare covered in dark wrapping.

I doubt that this will be the number one choice when you ask people "what's your favourite Fincher movie?" and that's fair enough. But I'd love to think that it's not going to be consistently forgotten every time someone discusses highlights from his filmography. Because, as far as I'm concerned, this is definitely one of them.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Michael-Douglas/dp/B000069HZP/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415889512&sr=1-2&keywords=the+game