Ant-Man goes to the Quantum Realm

 

  As everyone now knows, Marvel has created a  universe of interrelated characters who often find themselves fighting to save the world — or perhaps many worlds in the case of Marvel's multiverse extravaganzas. 

  I'm far from a Marvel zealot, so I don't always find it easy to remember all the ways in which Marvel has woven its intricate tapestry of superheroes and supervillains, Avengers and those who must be vanquished.

 Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, the third free-standing Ant-Man movie, can be seen as one more stop on Marvel's never-ending highway. It's not without some pleasures but doesn't climb to the top of the Marvel mountain either.

  In what probably counts as a miscalculation, director Peyton Reed inflates the Ant-Man universe, downplaying the low-stakes quality of the previous movies by setting most of the story in the Quantum Realm.

    What’s that? If you’re looking for a scientific explanation, you’ll have to search elsewhere. The Quantum Realm is one more big-screen arena for the display of bizarre creatures, weird landscapes, and other digital creations that, at least in this case, amount to a mixed bag of goodies.

    At one point, multiple versions of Ant-Man appear, forcing the “real” Ant-Man into a pseudo- identity crisis or some such. 

   And late in the movie, an impressive army of ants launches a pivotal attack. These ants, we’ve been told, have techno capabilities but the story is less interested in ant genius than in stuffing the Quantum Realm with as much bric-a-brac as possible.

    What’s notable about the humans who carry the Ant-Man banner?

     Paul Rudd returns as Ant-Man and continues his comic take on the character who, in his human form, is known as Scott Lang. 

    Ant-Man’s teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) plays an important role, setting off the plot when she sends signals into the Quantum Realm, thus transporting the major characters to a dimension beyond space and time -- also possibly belief.

     Michael Douglas returns as Dr. Hank Pym, Ant-Man’s inventive, ant-obsessed father, and Michele Pfeiffer gets more screen time as Janet Van Dyne, mother of Hope Van Dyne, a.k.a. The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly). 

      The WASP, who shares the movie’s title with Ant-Man, appears when needed but sometimes seems like a bit of an afterthought.

     Inside the Quantum Realm, the screenplay divides the characters into groups, one centering on Janet Van Dyne; Janet’s importance stems from having spent nightmarish decades in the Quantum Realm. She knows its dangers.

      Ant-Man leads another group. Both groups are committed to a shopworn aspiration: They want to return home. 

     Of course, a villain must emerge.

     Meet Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a soft-spoken fiend who has been banished to the Quantum Realm and is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole.     

      Well, not really. Kang, too, wants out. If only he had the power core that’s necessary to launch the ship that would allow him to travel to any realm. So many realms. So many opportunities to terrorize. 

    Say this for Powers, he imbues the story with a gravitas it barely can support.

     The movie's best creation might be MODAK, a golden sphere that houses the face of what's left of a man. MODAK bills itself as the Ultimate Weapon. It’s more like a sight gag, what might have happened had Salvador Dali decided to paint Humpty Dumpty.

    Early on, Bill Murray shows up as Lord Krylar. Seems he and Janet Van Dyne had a fling during her long stay in the Quantum Realm. Reed gives Murray an entrance befitting a significant character and then allows him to vanish. 

       A word on the name Krylar: How did the drug companies miss this one, as in “ Ask your doctor about Krylar?” 

       I can’t get too worked up about Quantumania’s stumbles. I also can’t say found this edition as amusing as the original Ant-Man, which was notable for its humor and, by Marvel standards, modesty.

       I left a preview screening with a shrug. I returned from the journey to the Quantum Realm feeling less like a satisfied moviegoer than a traveler who had acquired another stamp on my Marvel passport. 

He’s Ted Lasso. No wait, he’s an ex-con

 

   In South of Heaven, Jason Sudeikis sounds an awful lot like he does as Ted Lasso, but he’s playing an entirely different character, a man who’s worlds away from the amiable American football coach who finds himself coaching soccer in England. 

     This time out, Sudeikis portrays Jimmy Ray, a former convict who’s paroled from prison after serving 10 years for a bank robbery. Jimmy wants nothing more than to marry Ann (Evangeline Lilly), the woman he loves and who is dying of lung cancer. She has waited 10 years for him.

    Director Aharon Keshales (Big Bad Wolves) takes Jimmy’s story through too many mood swings to be effective. The movie alternates hard-boiled drama, tender exchanges, and, finally, a grotesquely out-of-place shootout that pits Jimmy against a small army of foes. 

     The story’s complications begin when Jimmy is tempted into more criminal behavior by a corrupt parole officer (Shea Whigham). 

   In the course of picking up some money, Jimmy has a car accident in which a motorcyclist dies. Turns out the cyclist was a courier for Whit Price (Mike Colter), a smooth-talking but brutal gangster who was waiting for the delivery of $500,000. Price wants his money and believes Jimmy stole it.

      Eventually, Price kidnaps Ann, forcing Jimmy to kidnap Price’s son (Thaddeus J. Mixson). The movie softens as the respective kidnappers get to know and, of course, like their victims.

      The relationship between Jimmy and Ann is well-drawn, but too much of the rest of the movie can’t accommodate the screenplay's wild variations. 

A multi-pronged look at the opioid crisis

     Director Nicholas Jarecki must have realized that opioid addiction is a multi-level problem that invades many corners of society. Perhaps that's why Jarecki's Crisis revolves around three stories, each moored in the culture that created one of the US's most severe drug problems.

     Crisis encompasses DEA undercover work, dubious university connections to drug companies, and a mom's search for the cause of her teenage son's death.

     Taking this kind of multi-pronged approach isn't without risks and Jarecki (Arbitrage) can't overcome them all, notably the way his movie loses momentum as it shifts from one story to another.

    The relationship between universities and those who fund research (in this case a major drug company) might not be the most dynamic of the movie's various plot threads but it's the most intriguing and, by itself, could have made for a provocative movie.

    It's equally true that trying to mount several stories, even if they're interrelated,  reduces the movie to a complex but nonetheless unsatisfying procedural.

     Armie Hammer portrays Jake Kelly, a DEA agent who's trying to infiltrate and expose a Canadian/Armenian Fentanyl-smuggling ring. A recovered addict, Clare (Evangeline Lilly) tries to learn how her squeaky-clean son could have died from an overdose, and Gary Oldman portrays Doctor Tyrone Brower, a scientist whose work has been funded by Big Pharma. 

    Now, one of his major donors wants Brower to corroborate its claim that the company has discovered a pain-killing drug that doesn't have the addictive powers of Oxycontin. This part of the movie revolves around Brower's crisis of conscience. He knows the drug isn't as advertised and agonizes about whether to  become a whistleblower.

    Hammer's portion of the movie seems most familiar, a thriller set in the morally ambiguous world of cops and drugs. Lilly's quest feels underdeveloped as she becomes something a cliche, the untrained civilian who decides to play sleuth.

    Goldman does his best to bring Dr. Brower's torment to life, but Crisis doesn't fuel much by way of outrage about the willingness of universities to corrupt themselves for money.

    I  wouldn't call Crisis a bad movie, but it does feel like a scattered and only intermittently powerful attempt to make a comprehensive statement about the culture that spawned an opioid epidemic. 

 

‘Ant-Man’: An amusing second helping

Paul Rudd returns in one of the least serious Marvel entries.

Ant-Man and the Wasp, the latest movie to spring from the Marvel Universe, falls short in many ways: It has a jangled plot, a trip into a strange Quantum Realm in which characters and creatures float as if immersed in Jello and stretches of talk in which the dialogue isn't likely to evoke comparisons with Shakespeare.

Fortunately, that's not the whole story. This second, big-screen helping of Ant-Man also benefits from what might be deemed a thoroughgoing and entirely welcome lack of cosmic ambition.

Thanks go to Rudd's genial reprise of his role as Scott Land (a.k.a. Ant-Man), enough humor to carry us through the movie's doldrums and a collection of characters who must act as if there's much at stake -- even if there isn't.

Director Peyton Reed, who directed the first installment, also plays fun games with scale as Ant-Man makes the shift from tiny creature to parade-float size. Ant-Man can become as small as ... well ... an ant or as big as a zeppelin, opening the door for Reed and his cohorts to play lots of clever games involving mutable size.

Stretches devoted to exposition may keep the movie from soaring, but it's difficult to resist car chases in which full-sized cars suddenly shrink to Hot Wheels proportions or an action scene in which a PEZ dispenser enlarges to play a significant role.

So what happens? Well, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) believe they can rescue Hope's long-lost mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the Quantum Realm, the zone where she disappeared while executing a selfless act of heroism. 

Hope also is the Wasp, which means that she has been given wings to flutter and the responsibility of broadening the movie's gender appeal.

Additions to the series include the Ghost (Hanna John-Kamen), a woman who's on the verge of decomposing and who (understandably) would rather remain in one piece. Laurence Fishburne turns up as one of Pym's estranged colleagues, another researcher into the Quantum Realm. Walter Goggins plays a greedy businessman who also has his eye on the Quantum Realm.

Randall Park appears as an FBI agent whose interchanges with Scott provide the movie with a comic motif that it's not afraid to repeat, but which proves amusing enough not to wear out its welcome. Scott, by the way, is being monitored by the FBI because he's been under house arrest for two years. His time of confinement is almost up, but you can bet that he'll find a way to weasel out of his ankle bracelet and join the action before he's officially set free.

Michael Pena turns up as the fast-talking operator of a security company. A veteran of the first installment, Pena makes no attempt to do more than add laughs with his character's frenetic speech. Pena's Luis once shared a cell with Lang, a thief before his elevation to superhero status.

Look, there's little point rattling on about a movie such as Ant-Man and the Wasp. If you see it, you'll find enough humor to stave off a case of Marvel overdose -- and some of that humor has a visual kick, something rare in today's comedies and, therefore, something to savor.

(An aside: Gore Verbinski -- director of several Pirates of the Caribbean movies remains the undisputed master of visually inventive comedy.)

But as far as this edition of Ant-Man is concerned: It's nice to see a Marvel movie that seems intended to amuse us more than it's designed to beat us into submission.