Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania

ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA

With this weekend's debut of the latest Marvel Studios opus, I am now 0-for-3 at enjoying an Ant-Man movie. This isn't necessarily surprising. What is a surprise, especially given the film's current, miserable-for-Marvel 48-percent “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is that of the three showcases to date for Paul Rudd's alternately diminutive and behemoth superhero, Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is the one I dislike the least. As I see it, credit for that is due to precisely two elements that I'll also underline through percentages. Compared to Ant-Man & the Wasp, this new adventure has roughly 75-percent more Michelle Pfeiffer; and compared to the 2018 sequel and 2015's original Ant-Man, it has 100-percent more Jonathan Majors.

This is hardly the first time that superb actors giving outstanding performances have helped salvage a mediocre-or-worse comic-book yarn. What Pfeiffer and Majors have been tasked to provide, however, and what they largely pull off, isn't merely an improvement on their material; it's a damned rescue mission. As with the previous Ant-Mans (Ant-Men?), the tone here is predominantly comical and flip, and in line with Rudd's genial, featherweight, Teflon screen presence; even the most dramatic and wrenching circumstances tend to slide right off him. I don't mean this as an insult. I like Rudd in this role, and like that his Scott Lang isn't generally required to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Yet while this series' overt jokiness is intact in everything from its wisecracks to its music selections (cue John Sebastian's Welcome Back, Kotter theme song – twice), you might be amazed by how much you miss those now-absent second bananas Michael Peña and Judy Greer and Randall Park. And even though we still have a Star Wars cantina's worth of weirdos and Bill Murray to look forward to, you may be shocked by how thoroughly Quantumania sacrifices the Ant-Mans' strongest hooks in favor of those generic world-apocalypse scenarios favored by most of the rest of the MCU.

Perhaps fittingly for a superhero outing, delivering a bare-bones plot synopsis for director Peyton Reed's and screenwriter Jeff Loveness' third Ant-Man is super-easy. A wannabe scientist herself, Scott's teenage daughter Cassie accidentally transports her dad, his “Wasp” girlfriend Hope, Hope's parents Hank and Janet, and Cassie herself into the subatomic Quantum Realm. (Kids do invent the darnedest things.) While there, naturally, they discover another malevolent über-villain – the fearsome Kang the Conqueror – anxious to take over the world … or worlds plural, given the whole multiverse thing. And for a while, some of this is kind of fun. Separated from the other three, Scott and Cassie encounter all manner of freaky beings, including some that fly, some gelatinous, and one, to my great delight, a telepath played by William Jackson Harper, who handily outdoes Rudd in the sardonic-quip department. (Harper's Quaz constantly hears the thoughts of others and is constantly aggrieved by how stupid they are.) Elsewhere in this bizarre mini-universe, Janet – whom some (not me) will recall being trapped in the Quantum Realm for 30 years prior to being saved in the 2018 film – explains to her hubby and daughter that she was actually a renowned freedom fighter during her three decades adrift, and was planning an insurrection against Kang before ultimately abandoning her fellow warriors. Bill Murray fits into this section somehow. His role makes only minimal sense, but it was nice to see him.

Paul Rudd, Kathryn Newton, and Evangeline Lilly in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania

Unfortunately, Quantumania is preciously short on niceties. I did greatly appreciate the unexpected return of Corey Stoll's original Ant-Man baddie Darren Cross, whose apparent demise in 2015 has led to him now being an unstoppable killing machine with the acronym M.O.D.O.K. and a face that encompasses half the frame even in a faraway shot. It's a big face. (Thankfully, Stoll boasts an equally big personality.) But because I'd venture that at least four-fifths of the film was accomplished via green-screen effects, the actors tend to look hopelessly lost when staring at the otherworldly Marvels in front of them – vistas and creatures that brought back distracting, depressing memories of last fall's Disney dud Strange World. Their vacantly distressed expressions and readings suggest that nothing is legitimately at stake even when the fate of our entire planet is purportedly dependent on the events we're witnessing. And when our father/daughter team is separated in the third act, the incessantly empty shrieks of “Cassie!” and “Dad!” are enough to make you yearn for the relative Halcyon days of “Jack!”/”Rose!” in 1997's Titanic … which, ironically, you can presently hear on a neighboring screen. (Rudd's many gifts don't remotely include a knack for dramatic intensity, and ever since her portrayal of Frances McDormand's doomed daughter in 2017's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I've been waiting for Cassie's eager, pretty portrayer Kathryn Newton to be a more interesting screen presence than she's yet been allowed to be.)

Evangeline Lilly, returning to Hope/Wasp duties, is so pointlessly sidelined here that the film's very title seems like a mistake. When she's finally allowed to do some significant ass-kicking 10 minutes before the end credits, it's a gesture as hollow as that grossly presented lineup of female warriors in Avengers: Endgame whose collective appearance proved to be nothing more than a poster image. Katy O'Brian's freedom fighter Jentorra makes a strong initial impression but is given nothing to do but act pissed off. At present, Kang's world-destroying prowess – which basically amounts to shooting laser beams out of his hands and yelling a lot – appears to be rather easily upended by beaten-down minions motivated by a holographic message sent by a teenager. And while there's always hope for improvement, can we agree that screenwriter Loveness, for the time being, should improve a lot before he's assigned another one of these things? Beyond being annoyed by the blandly portentous conversation when characters weren't cracking wise, I was really hoping Loveness would refrain from employing the all-time-most-tired climactic cliché in the history of action-flick dialogue: “Let's go home.” When a character here said that, I thought okay, fine, of course. I really, truly wasn't expecting another character, a mere five minutes later, to utter that phrase again.

Michelle Pfeiffer in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania

So yeah: Like its predecessors, Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is mostly a bummer. But every once in a rare while, 10-ish minutes of a movie will come close to redeeming the 110-ish minutes engulfing it. That absolutely happens here. Although Michael Douglas is reliably acerbic and entertaining as physicist Hank Pym, this second sequel completely belongs to Pfeiffer and Majors, and they're both marvelous when acting apart from one another: Pfeiffer with her bottomless vulnerability and heartache; Majors with his mighty Shakespearean bearing and hints of unexplored, potentially sadistic emotional depths. Regarding the latter, I loved the scars that fall down Kang's cheeks from eyes to chin, as though he were in a continual state of weeping without tears.

Yet around the halfway point of Quantumania, Reed's film slows down – it practically stops – for a flashback of Janet's and Kang's time together in the Quantum Realm, with the pair commiserating over their shared entrapment and actively working to find a means of escape. Pfeiffer and Majors, pros that they are, share instant chemistry and feel like newly made besties besides. That rapport, however, turns malignant, terrifying, the moment we see Janet's recognition of Kang's horrific ulterior motives, and subsequently witness Kang's recognition of Janet's recognition. For just a few seconds during this by-the-numbers continuation, even though it's a flashback, it feels like anything can happen when Pfeiffer's determination matches Majors' – and you can feel that excitement, a true performance joy, in the actors portrayals, too. Paul Rudd sarcasm and gelatinous blobs and Bill Murray swallowing a six-legged creature are all well and good. But I'd rather a Pfeiffer-v.-Majors showdown any day of the week.

Liam Neeson n Marlowe

MARLOWE

Director Neil Jordan's mystery drama Marlowe casts Liam Neeson as a detective with a gun. I know! I'm astounded by the novelty of the premise, too! But before you immediately, understandably reply “No thanks!” (or, more dishearteningly, “I can't wait!”), know that this isn't your typical Liam-with-a-gun thriller. For one thing, the guy he's playing – noir legend Raymond Chandler's iconic private investigator Philip Marlowe – was carrying a piece more than a decade before Neeson himself was in diapers. For another, none of the beloved Irish grump's previous genre exercises were lucky enough to be scripted by The Departed's Oscar winner William Monahan, nor to co-star Jessica Lange, whose appearances not only make Neeson smile, but in that teeth-baring, cheek-expanding, unmistakably genuine way that suggests he's actually enjoying himself, and not merely grinning until his latest paycheck clears.

Based not on one of Chandler's classics but rather the 2014 pastiche The Black-Eyed Blonde by Irish novelist John Banville, Marlowe finds our famed gumshoe's business day interrupted by the arrival of vixen Clare Kavendish (Diane Kruger), who wants the brooding P.I. to investigate the disappearance of her former lover, whose corpse was found despite her conviction that he's still alive. The whole thing unfurls amidst the big-studio Hollywood of 1939, and you won't believe what our heroic sleuth uncovers. It turns out that drugs are rampant in Tinseltown! And there's widespread sexual exploitation! And aging women are treated unfairly! And … ! Oh wait. You do believe those things? You must have seen L.A. Confidential, then. Or, y'know, you must have been in any way alive.

Obviously, despite Monahan's frequently witty turns of phrase, the plot's “surprises” are no great shakes, nor are the means of getting to them, and Jordan's action sequences are, at best, a bust. (A couple of violent encounters here appear to have been truncated before we even get to their resolutions.) But as Liam-with-a-gun movies go, this is one of the most enjoyable of recent years. Kruger is a deliciously icy femme fatale, she's perfectly matched with Lange as her aging-legend mom, and enough can't be said about the teasing fun that the latter has with the film's star; Jordan's latest is a minor work, but together, at least, Lange and Neeson appear to be having major fun together. We're also treated to delectable turns by a host of character actors playing juicy, Chandler-adjacent stereotypes: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Colm Meany, the eternally untrustworthy Danny Huston, the eternally (wonderfully) perverse Alan Cumming. And while Neeson's involvement, at this stage in his career, is oftentimes indistinguishable from boredom, he appears frankly relieved to be playing an actual character in Marlowe, and not simply an under-conceived “character” that he has to create from whole cloth. The dude's in his 70s, for Pete's sake. Let's reward Neeson's cinematic longevity and popularity with more well-established, gun-toting private dicks, please, and not simply interchangeable, gun-toting dickheads.

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