Thrills and Twists: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Sharper, Cocaine Bear

Do you want more Marvel, a twisty con man tale, or a story of a drugged out animal rampaging in the woods? Hollywood's got it all. 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: What do you want me to tell you? It's another Marvel movie, it's the third in the Ant-Man series (which is astonishing as I barely recollect watching the previous two Ant-Men), and it continues the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. These are popcorn movies that I find thoroughly entertaining, and with Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly at the helm as Scott and Hope, aka Ant-Man and the Wasp, I can't complain. They are charming, the stunt choreography is insane, the visuals are great, and the dialogue has the right amount of witty banter to make you chuckle. 

There are jim-jams galore that I won't get into, but essentially the plot is that Scott, his daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), Hope, and her parents, Hank and Janet (the excellent duo of Michael Douglas and preternaturally gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer), accidentally fall into the Quantum Realm. The Realm is being ruled over by a man named Kang (Jonathan Majors, star of everything these days), who is all set to be the MCU's new big supervillain. OVer the course of the two hours, you will be treated to some gorgeous visuals and truly weird creatures that inhabit this Realm. It's all a bit bizarre but beautiful, and it sets us up for the next slate of films. If you're exhausted by Marvel, this is emphatically not a movie for you, but if you're all in for some light entertainment with great special effects, then step right up and indulge. 

Sharper: This is a proper twisty thrill of a movie about...well, I almost don't want to tell you what it's about because that would ruin all the many surprises that are in store for you. Directed by Benjamin Caron and elegantly scripted by Alessandro Tanaka and Brian Gatewood, this movie starts out as a love story that quickly turns into the story of con artists, and we then get multiple nested stories that flash backwards and forwards in time. After a while, you'll maybe predict some twists, but oh boy you'll definitely never see every single thing coming. This is a movie that delights in constantly pulling the rug out from under you, but it never does so in a condescending way - it's always done with this fabulous cinematic flourish that makes you want to gasp and laugh and wonder what on earth will happen next.

Starring Justice Smith, Briana Middleton, Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, and John Lithgow, this cast is a tour de force and they all do absolutely wonderful work to capture the complexities of these characters who all have a little bit to love and little bit to hate about them. There are no abject heroes and villains until you get to the very end and then you're in for a rather satisfying conclusion with a neat little bow that ties everything up. Never fear, you won't be left with some ambiguous conclusion. But you might find yourself wishing you had more movies to watch just like this one.

Cocaine Bear: I mean, the title kinda says it all, right? Based on a real incident in 1985 when a smuggler dumped a bunch of cocaine in Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, this is the story of a bear who found all that cocaine and then went on a rampage. Let me clarify right away that the "based on a true story" part of this movie is just that a dead bear was found who had consumed a bunch of cocaine. It is not known to have killed anyone during that time and we have no idea what happened between it eating all that cocaine and subsequently dying. But this movie takes that premise and decides to run with a narrative about what would have happened if that bear had encountered a bunch of humans. Which means that the audience is in for a deliriously high body count.

If you are squeamish, you'll need to sit this one out, because this is a viscerally gory movie (I mean that literally - the bear will be eating some human viscera at one point). But if you need a laugh-out-loud horror comedy to while away the winter blues, this is absolutely the movie you've been seeking. Directed by Elizabeth Banks and written by Jimmy Warden, this movie is a supremely silly 90-minute extravaganza that knows it has one great premise and will not overstay its welcome. Trust me, you'll have a beary good time. 

February Round-up: Missing, Magic Mike's Last Dance, Knock at the Cabin

Hold on to your seats, we've got an eclectic set of movie reviews coming up!

Missing: Written and directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, this is a follow-up to the excellent Searching that I raved about a few years ago. It's not a follow-up in terms of the characters, but in terms of the narrative structure. Yet again, we have a story of a missing person, and a family member who is searching for this person using all the ubiquitous technology available at their fingertips. And the entire film is told from the perspective of the technology, so we only see the characters on FaceTime or their laptop camera, and we watch our protagonist type her searches and scroll through maps trying to figure out what could have happened to her mother. Is it gimmicky? Of course. But is it a wonderfully effective gimmick that helps to heighten the thrills and action? Of course. 

Here we get the wonderful Storm Reid playing June, a teenage girl whose mother, Grace (Nia Long), went off to Colombia for a week with her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), but then never returned. What follows is a twisty tale where June is trying to dive into Grace's whereabouts, figure out if Kevin was a con artist, uncovers some startling information about her own mother, and falls deep into a mystery that has a very satisfying conclusion. If you think too long and hard about it, there are aspects of this film that certainly seem too far-fetched. But for the two hours you're in the theater, you'll be along for the ride. And at the end of it all, you might decide to talk to Siri a bit more often.

Magic Mike's Last Dance: Listen, you've either already seen this movie or know that you never will. All I can do is tell you that I saw it, it was a bit weird, but the dancing was incredible and I will watch Channing Tatum make about twenty more of these movies if he is so inclined.

Written by Reid Carolin and directed by Steven Soderbergh, in this installment, Mike (Tatum) ends up in London with a wealthy woman, Max (the glorious Salma Hayek), and agrees to help her put on a one-night-only extravaganza of a male stripper show. There's a lot of plot about Max and Mike and their will-they-won't-they status. There are class dynamics at play given that Max has a ton of money and a butler and all manner of privilege while Mike is a working-class man from Miami who is still economically reeling from the pandemic. But at the end of the day, there are men dancing to "Pony," Tatum takes his clothes off, and a dull woman named Edna gets treated to a lap dance and is so deliriously happy. 

All the women are pleased and the men are eager to please them. That's all I want from these movies, and it delivers. The dialogue is odd and Hayek's character is all over the place. But I love the way that Tatum has almost no lines but conveys so much information simply with a small smile and the oodles of charisma radiating off his body. Frankly, if we made a silent movie with this man, we wouldn't even need dialogue cards. Just play some music and watch him dance his heart out on the screen. It's truly magic.

Knock at the Cabin: Well, M. Night Shyamalan is back, writing and directing an adaptation of the novel, The Cabin at the End of the Woods, by Paul G. Tremblay. As always, there's a supernatural element to the proceedings, and a twist ending. And as always, your mileage may vary as to whether or not the twist was worth it. I was decidedly on the side of No, it wasn't.

The film tells the story of a family of three who are vacationing in a remote cabin in the woods (people really need to stop doing that, they're just asking for trouble). There's seven-year-old Wen (played by the exceedingly adorable Kristen Cui) and her fathers Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) and they're all having a wonderful time until four visitors arrive at their house with weapons. Led by Leonard (the marvelous Dave Bautista, who really gets to showcase his dramatic chops), these four strangers have come to deliver an ultimatum to this family. The world is on the brink of an apocalypse, and for some reason, this family is the key to saving the world. 

I won't tell you anything more - it's a perfectly well-told story, but it starts to get a bit repetitive and loses steam by the end. However, it does feature some fine actors and if all you want is a diverting horror-thriller to while away an afternoon, this isn't terribly objectionable. It's not Shyamalan's best work, but it's certainly not his worst, and that's a relief. 

Fun Dumb Action: Plane and Shotgun Wedding

Recently I have watched two different movies that involve foreigners on an island in the Philippines having to defend themselves from kidnappers and pirates. These movies are dumb but endlessly entertaining (well one more so than the other) and they both understand that they need to be an hour and a half and then call it a night. No bloated blockbusters here - just lean, ridiculous, action films that provide some thrills and laughs.

Plane: I have been gushing about this movie to every single person I've met since watching it. I first saw the trailer at the movie theater, and the audience collectively laughed when the title of the movie was finally revealed. Just PLANE. Considering that the trailer depicted Gerard Butler as a pilot who crash lands a commercial plane in the middle of a Filipino island and then has to protect his passengers as armed separatists try to kidnap them, I made a lot of jokes. Why is this movie called Plane if the plane crashes right at the beginning of the film? What a ridiculous title. Well, readers. I am here to eat crow. This movie fully deserves to be called Plane and I bow down before its genius.

Directed by Jean-Francois Richet from a screenplay by Charles Cumming and J. P. Davis, here's a very cursory plot summary. Butler is playing his Scottish self (no fake American accents to contend with) although his character does have the insanely non-Scottish name of Brody Torrance. Yoson An and Danielle Pineda play the co-pilot and head flight attendant who have to help out a fair amount as things go haywire on this flight. You'll spend some time with the passengers, but the main passenger you need to know about is Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter, who you may recognize as Luke Cage from the Marvel Cinematic Universe). He is a handcuffed prisoner who is being extradited on charges of homicide. He's a former French Foreign Legion soldier, so you can imagine that once they crash on the island and are dealing with a bunch of rebels, Brody is going to decide that maybe it's time to take Gaspare's handcuffs off and use his unique set of skills.

The movie also goes back and forth to New York where the airline has set up a crisis center. The man they have hired to help manage this crisis has the wonderful name of David Scarsdale, and he is played with relish by Tony Goldwyn. He's everything you want him to be, as is Gerard Butler, and together, this is the most stereotypical and entertaining action flick I've seen in a while. Turn your brain off and settle in for a non-stop action-packed adrenalin rush. It's a little violent and bloody for sure. But it's all worth it. PLANE.

Shotgun Wedding: Do you want to watch Jennifer Lopez get increasingly dirty and disheveled for an hour and a half and yet somehow still be the most gorgeous woman you've ever seen? Then this is the movie for you. Here, we're back in the Philippines, but this time it's because Darcy (Lopez) is getting married to Tom (Josh Duhamel). Tom is being a Groomzilla who has decided this destination wedding is the perfect way to celebrate their love, and Darcy is going along with it to make him happy. She has also been forced to wear his mother's terribly extravagant wedding dress - this dress is a marvel of costume design and will get progressively degraded over the course of this film; though only in a way designed to increasingly flaunt Lopez's assets.

There isn't much more to say. Pirates attack on the day of the wedding. Tom and Darcy were off having a pre-wedding fight, so now they must try to rescue their families while fighting off armed gunmen. You can imagine that much chaos ensues, especially considering that Darcy has a fear of blood and Tom is a retired baseball player who doesn't have much in the way of combat skills. The supporting cast includes such stalwarts as Jennifer Coolidge (playing Tom's extremely clueless mother) and D'Arcy Carden (playing Darcy's father's new girlfriend). And did I mention Lenny Kravitz shows up as Darcy's ex? It's quite the reunion of music superstars. 

Directed by Jason Moore and written by Mark Hammer, this movie is terribly silly, racks up a surprisingly high body count, and is a perfectly mindless film to stream while you're sprawled on the couch on a wintry afternoon. It's certainly not as good as PLANE (what film could be?) but if you simply want some action, some romance, and some laughs, this film will deliver.

Oscar Catch-Up Part 1: Aftersun, Causeway, Blonde

Every year I think I have watched every conceivable movie and will be all caught up when Oscar nominations are announced. And every year, the Oscars throw me a curve ball and nominate a bunch of movies and performances I missed. So I have been diligently trying to make my way through the nominees in the major categories. Here are my reviews of what I've seen so far: spoiler alert, I've arranged them from best to worst, so pick your poison accordingly.

Aftersun: I knew Paul Mescal was a fantastic actor when I saw his breakout role in Normal People. So it is hardly surprising that he has brought that same emotional vulnerability and acting prowess to this movie and garnered an Oscar nomination. Written and directed by Charlotte Wells, this is the story of 11-year-old Sophie (played by the sublime Frankie Corlo), a Scottish girl who is on holiday with her father, Calum (Mescal) at a resort in Turkey. She is filming their vacation on a small video camera, so the film is interspersed with some of that grainy footage, as we are both following the events of this vacation, but also looking back on the events from the perspective of the adult Sophie, twenty years later. 

This movie is a feat of subtle storytelling and it does demand your attention. I regret not watching it when it was out in theaters, as I fear I may have given it too distracted a viewing. But despite my less-than-diligent home viewership, I was still captivated by its melancholy vibes. You have to let the narrative unfurl around you, so I won't give away any plot. But this is emphatically a tale of the hero worship young girls can have for their fathers, the ways in which parents hide things from their children, the ways in which children can be both perceptive and oblivious to what's going on around them, and the many ways in which individuals simply cannot know what the people around them are going through. It's a beautiful movie, gorgeously shot, empathetically acted, and delightful to behold. 

Causeway: Brian Tyree Henry is a phenomenal actor, so I'm excited he has gotten his first Oscar nomination for his work in this movie. Directed by Lila Neugebauer from a script by Ottessa Moshfegh, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders, this is the story of Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence), an American soldier who has returned home to New Orleans after suffering a traumatic brain injury in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. She gets a job cleaning pools and is living with her somewhat flighty mother (Linda Emond), and seems unwilling to reckon with her depression, desperate to get a clean bill of health from her doctor so she can go back to active duty. However, she then strikes up a friendship with James (Henry), and together, they might be able to help each other.

This is a well-acted film: Lawrence and Henry are unsurprisingly excellent in it, and the evolution of their friendship feels real and true. I'm less convinced that this is a well-written film, and in the hands of any other actors, it might have been a slog. The silences where we just watch these actors emote or reflect on their trauma is where this movie shines, but otherwise it doesn't feel like it has anything particularly revelatory to say. I'm glad Henry bagged an Oscar nomination, but I look forward to the day he wins an award for a much more memorable movie. 

Blonde: Oh what a travesty. It is devastating that Ana de Armas, who is a fantastic actress, should have received her first nomination for this awful film. She fully deserves that nomination, acting her heart out as she effects an astonishing transformation as the iconic Marilyn Monroe. But written and directed by Andrew Dominik, who based the script on Joyce Carol Oates' pseudo-biographical novel about Marilyn Monroe, this movie is an exploitative, deeply weird, and unnecessary piece of cinema. And it clocks in at a runtime of nearly three hours, which is inhumane. This movie truly is an act of cinematic terrorism.

The film proffers a fictionalized look at the life of Marilyn Monroe. It aims to be a biography, but most of what it has to say is a complete fiction. We all know that Monroe was exploited by Hollywood and mainly viewed as a sex symbol, but this movie goes absolutely overboard by turning her life into nothing more than a series of rapes and tragic encounters with greedy men. It doesn't allow her to experience an iota of joy. There are brief flashes of her wonderful intellect, but we never spend too much time exploring this woman's inner life and rich mind. Instead, the director was too busy telling de Armas to take her top off and do another violent sex scene.

This movie also has weird arthouse pretensions - we keep moving from black and white to color and back again. There are scenes with a talking fetus. There are weird transitions and cinematic effects that feel like they are the product of a film student who has just been allowed to direct a movie for the first time and is trying to see what tricks he can get his camera to do. So yeah. Go watch Ana de Armas in literally anything else but do not watch this movie. Unless you want to make Marilyn roll over in her grave.