Review: 'Quantumania' takes Ant-Man and The Wasp to the subatomic level, but the potential for Marvel's new villain is huge

Appropriately for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s tiniest heroes, the charms of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” are small, but still satisfying,

Life is pretty good for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), the ex-con and now hero because of his work helping to save the world as Ant-Man, part of The Avengers group who saved half of humanity and defeated Thanos. Now he’s settled down to a calm life with girlfriend, fellow superhero and philanthropist Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Occasionally Scott has to bail his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) out of jail for acts of civil disobedience, and endure Cassie’s criticism that her dad has quit caring about helping people.

Cassie, aided by Hope and Hope’s inventor father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), has been experimenting with creating a device to survey the subatomic universe called the “quantum realm.” When Hank’s wife, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), realizes Cassie’s device involves sending a signal into the quantum realm, she tells her to turn it off — but not before the device springs to life and starts sucking all the lab equipment, Hank’s ant farm, and eventually the five of them down into the subatomic.

Scott and Cassie get separated from the rest, and end up with a group of rebels trying to avoid the oppressive leader of this realm. Hope, Hank and Janet end up elsewhere, with Janet — who spent 30 years in the quantum realm (this was covered in 2018’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp”) — keeping secrets about why she’s so scared of returning. Janet leads Hope and Hank through the seedier elements of this place, which mostly involves a not-so-pleasant few minutes with a local scoundrel played by Bill Murray.

Ultimately, we find out about who is making Janet so nervous: Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors), a  supervillain whose evil spans the multiverse.

Director Peyton Reed, now on his third movie with “Ant-Man” in the title, knows not to take this bug-themed superhero stuff too seriously. That’s why the rebels include a guy made entirely of goo, and another a telepath (William Jackson Harper, from “The Good Place”) who’s clearly annoyed by what people always think about. And it’s why Kang has a subordinate villain, straight out of Marvel canon, whose reveal is pretty hilarious.

The screenplay, the first produced feature script by “Rick & Morty” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” writer Jeff Loveness, has some funny bits, along with gaps in its credulity that aren’t papered over by saying “it’s the quantum realm — the rules are different here.” Still, the plot gives plenty of chances for Rudd’s easygoing charm to win us over, and to give the supporting players — especially Pfeiffer — room to shine.

The most intriguing thing about “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” is Majors as Kang — who, we already know from his appearance in Marvel’s series “Loki” and in promises from Marvel Uber-producer Kevin Feige, is going to be the big bad guy for several movies to come. Based on the evidence here, he will be someone worth following through this new phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’

★★★

Opening in theaters Friday, February 17. Rated PG-13 for violence/language and action. Running time: 124 minutes.

Review: 'Magic Mike's Last Dance' has a silly plot, but when Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek are dancing steamily, the story won't matter

If I was able to separate what works from what doesn’t in “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” I’d borrow the rating system from “A Chorus Line” — dance: 10; coherence: 3.

The third installment of the franchise has our hero, Mike Lane (Channing Tatum), back on the bottom of the economic staircase — losing his business in the pandemic economy, and back tending bar for catered events. Occasionally one of the super-rich folks at a fundraiser he’s working will recognize him from his old job as a stripper — a job he swears he has given up for good.

However, like another Floridian, Tom Brady, Mike finds he just can’t quit. After one bartending gig, the client — Maxandra Mendoza (Salma Hayek Pinault) — offers him a large sum of money to demonstrate his lap-dancing skills. Mike obliges, but when they end up in bed together, Mike magnanimously declares he wasn’t going to take her money anyway.

Maxandra makes Mike a counter-offer: A trip to London, for a monthlong job. Maxandra, we’re told, is in the middle of a nasty divorce to Roger Rattigan (Alan Cox), a media billionaire who doesn’t want to let her go. One asset Maxandra is keeping in the divorce is an old theater, which has been playing the same stodgy costume drama for years. We’re told that Maxandra was in the cast 20 years earlier, which is where she met Roger, who was sentimental enough to bankroll it in perpetuity. 

Maxandra, not so sentimental, wants to undo the patriarchal bent of the play, and thinks Mike has the vision to transform it into a treatise on feminine desire. And strippers. Mike agrees to direct the show, but he makes it clear to Maxandra that he won’t be dancing — a disappointment to any woman in the audience who believes it, and doesn’t suss out that Tatum’s going to be putting on his moves at some point.

So, yes, the plot here — screenwriter Reid Carolin, who wrote the first two “Magic Mike” movies, is back for the trilogy — is as tearaway as the costumes the male stripper revue wears. Adding Maxandra’s grumpy valet, Victor (Ayub Khan-Din), for comic relief doesn’t help matters. Nor does the addition of Maxandra’s sullen teen daughter, Zadie (newcomer Jemelia George), who also provides the droning narration that sounds like a poorly researched term paper on dance.

Steven Soderbergh returns to directing for this third installment (he did the first one, then handed off “Magic Mike XXL” to his frequent second-unit director Gregory Jacobs), and he seems so wrapped up in the dance numbers that he doesn’t notice the movie’s flimsy excuse for a plot.

With the dancing here, exuberantly performed and beautifully captured (by Soderbergh as cinematographer, using his Peter Andrews alias), some may not care about the lack of good sense in the story department. The opening duet between Tatum and Hayek Pinault shows both still have the moves and the sex appeal. (Men of a certain age fondly remember Hayek in “From Dusk Till Dawn,” pouring tequila down her leg into Quentin Tarantino’s toe-sucking mouth.)

The seductive, sultry dancing isn’t quite enough to make audiences overlook the storytelling shortcomings in  “Magic Mike’s Last Dance.” At least, not for me. Your mileage, and your willingness to drool over Tatum’s six-pack abs, may vary.

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‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexual material and language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'Consecration' is bathed in its bloody atmosphere, but its plot is purely deviled ham

The Scottish horror thriller “Consecration” is swimming in atmosphere and, eventually, blood — which is as thick as the story behind it is thin.

The movie centers on Grace (Jena Malone), an ophthamologist living and working in London. She lives a rather ordinary life, which doesn’t explain why she has a premonition of an old nun confronting her in the middle of the street, pointing a revolver at her.

The movie puts a pin in that for awhile, as it shows Grace breaking down at the news that her brother, Michael, a priest in a remote Scottish convent, has died from suicide. Grace didn’t share her brother’s devotion to his religion — she declares herself an atheist early on — but she does believe, without proof, that Michael could not have killed himself.

In Scotland, Grace meets Inspector Harris (Thoren Ferguson), who’s investigating the deaths of Michael and another priest — though his jurisdiction is limited, because the convent belongs to The Vatican, which could assume control over the case at any time. That seems unlikely, based on the attitudes of The Vatican’s representative, Father Romero (Danny Huston), who declares his wish to bring the sometimes fanatical nuns closer to mainstream Catholicism. But those nuns — led by their Mother Superior (Janet Suzman) — are a force to be reckoned with.

As Grace digs into Michael’s belongings, including a journal written in code, she has questions about how her brother died — and what other secrets are hidden in the convent, which Father Romero is preparing to re-consecrate.

Director Christopher Smith, co-writing with Laurie Cook, provides ample brooding atmosphere in this faraway Scottish convent, and in the nightmarish visions Grace regularly sees. The movie looks good, which is why it’s even more disappointing that the story is only held together by the flimsiest of movie tropes — the one where the central figure doesn’t know or suspect the truth that everyone around her clearly knows. The unfair withholding of information, from Grace and from us, doesn’t give the movie a fair chance of working.

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‘Consecration’

★★

Opens Friday, February 10, in select theaters, and streaming later this year on Shudder. Rated R for bloody violent content and some language. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: '80 For Brady' casts four talented women and fumbles its comic opportunities with them.

I try not to fall back on the late Gene Siskel’s litmus test — “Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?” — but with the disappointing “80 For Brady,” I can’t help but think that the interviews stars Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Lily Tomlin have given on the publicity tour are more engaging than the movie they’re promoting.

In this “based on a true story” comedy, the actors play four longtime friends who in 2017 gather every Sunday in the fall to watch their favorite team, the New England Patriots — and, specifically, their favorite player, quarterback Tom Brady. 

Louella, or Lou (Tomlin), is the ringleader, at whose home they gather. Trish (Fonda) is the flirt, still rocking it in her 80s (with the help of several wigs) — and she writes erotic fan fiction based on Patriots star Rob Gronkowski. (This is a real thing, folks.) Maura (Moreno) is a widow, and lives in her husband’s nursing home for the company, not because she needs care. And Betty (Field) is a retired MIT professor who got into football because of the stats.

We’re told that Lou is a cancer survivor, and that Brady was her inspiration during the dark days of chemo — well, Brady and her friends, who have made the weekly game-watching a tradition. Lou decides, on the spur of the moment, that the foursome needs a road trip, and when a Boston sports-talk show is giving away four tickets to Super Bowl LI in Houston, in which the Patriots are playing the Atlanta Falcons, Lou enters with her tale of Brady-inspired recovery. Next thing you know, Lou is calling up the others, with news that they’re going to Houston.

Much of the movie is spent on the women’s wacky adventures in the pre-game revelry, from Betty entering a hot-wing contest (hosted by Guy Fieri) to Trish getting romanced by a retired football star (Harry Hamlin). Then there’s the game itself, which offers even more adventures.

What it doesn’t offer is anything genuinely funny or entertaining. The script — by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins (who worked together on “Booksmart”) — plays out as a “Golden Girls” episode artificially stuffed with celebrity cameos (like Fieri) and advertising for the National Football League, the Patriots, and Brady himself. (Brady is one of the movie’s executive producers, and I hope he has a better career plan than moviemaking now that he’s retired again.) Director Kyle Marvin seems to be floundering, trying to cram it all in and still create something engaging.

The thing is, I love all four of these stars — I don’t care to know anyone who doesn’t — and it’s kind of sad to see them stuck in this by-the-numbers silliness. There are moments in “80 for Brady” where they stop the forced craziness of the plot and just talk to each other like real people. Too bad there aren’t more of those moments, but maybe somebody will take them out for lunch.

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’80 for Brady’

★1/2

Opening Friday, February 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some drug content and some suggestive references. Running time: 98 minutes.

Review: 'Saint Omer' is a dense courtroom drama about mothers and daughters, but the emotional payoff is immense.

Director Alice Diop demands a lot from the audience in her courtroom drama “Saint Omer” — and for those willing to meet the movie head-on, there is an emotional payoff.

Rama (Kayije Kagame) is a literature professor and novelist, and her latest project is hitting close to home. She travels to Saint-Omer, in the far northern corner of France, which is where she grew up. She’s there to witness the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), a Senegalese immigrant on trial for killing her 15-month-old baby by leaving her on the shore and letting the waves drown her.

Rama’s idea is to use Laurence’s trial as the basis for a modern-day take on “Medea,” the ancient Greek tragedy of a woman who killed her children. But as the court testimony goes on, Rama notices the parallels between Laurence’s story and her own. Both are from Senegal, both are in relationships with Caucasian Frenchmen, and Rama is four months’ pregnant and having doubts about what kind of mother she will be.

Diop, writing with frequent collaborator Amrita David (who also edited the film), takes the audience on an uncomfortable trip into the mind of Black immigrants living in a predominantly white country — a life, no matter one’s class status, that involves constantly being questioned about your place. Diop sets up a fascinating contrast between Rama and Laurence, two women who aren’t as far apart as Rama initially believes.

The story plays out mostly in courtroom scenes, and I have to admit my unfamiliarity with the way French court testimony works had me confused for part of my viewing. (One moment, when Laurence’s white attorney, played by Aurélia Petit, gives the summation, reminded me too much of Matthew McConaughey’s character in “A Time to Kill.”)

Watching the two lead performances, by Kagame and Malanda, as two women with common situations but different outcomes, makes for compelling drama — and gives “Saint Omer” the tension Diop is seeking to create. 

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‘Saint Omer’

★★★

Opening Friday, February 3, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and brief strong language. Running time: 124 minutes; in French with subtitles.

Review: 'Baby Ruby' is an unsettling thriller about new motherhood, bolstered by French star Noémie Merlant's passionate performance.

The psychological thriller “Baby Ruby” does some fascinating things with a familiar idea: That one of the most terrifying things a woman can face is new motherhood.

Joséphine, played by French actor Noémie Merlant (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), has built a small business out of her personal brand as a social-media influencer and blogger — sharing her picture-perfect life with the world. She and her husband, Spencer (Kit Harington), an artisanal butcher, have built a beautiful home upstate, and are getting ready to greet their baby daughter, Ruby.

After Ruby’s birth — a rather blood-filled experience — Jo finds caring for her new baby a tougher battle than she thought. Jo is up at all hours, either trying to get Ruby to stop crying or strapping on the breast pumps to express milk for later. Sleep deprivation sets in, and Jo begins to think something’s horribly wrong with her baby.

Seeing the other moms in her town — in particular Shelly (Meredith Hagner) — all smiling and serene with their babies, just sets Jo spiraling even further. She starts to think she can’t trust her pediatrician (Reed Birney), her mother-in-law (Jayne Atkinson) or even Spencer.

Playwright Bess Wohl (whose play “Grand Horizons” was nominated for two Tonys in 2020) makes a sure-footed directing debut, squeezing Jo’s postpartum fears into the shape of a horror thriller. Her smartest move in “Baby Ruby,” though, was casting Merlant, who captures Jo’s journey from confident influencer to terrified new mom with convincing levels of panic and horror. 

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‘Baby Ruby’

★★★

Opening Friday, February 3, in theaters. Not rated, but probably R for bloody violence, some nudity and sexual content, and language. Running time: 92 minutes.

Review: 'The Amazing Maurice,' adapting Terry Pratchett's children's story, is a funny attempt at a fractured fairytale

Loaded with clever animation and droll British wit, the animated “The Amazing Maurice” is a charming sendup of the fairytale genre that revels in the act of storytelling itself.

Adapted from the late Terry Pratchett’s “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents,” part of Pratchett’s expansive “Discworld” series, the story starts with a talking cat, Maurice (voiced by Hugh Laurie). 

Maurice works a clever scam alongside a human, Keith (voiced by Himesh Patel), and a group of talking rats — where the rats “infest” a town, the cat urges the townsfolk to hire a piper, Keith, who lures the rats away while Maurice collects the money. Then they go to the next town and do the whole thing again.

The scam works until they reach the market town of Bad Blintz, which already has its problems: There are no rats visible, but something is stealing all the food. The town rat catchers seem to be doing too good a job, under the command of the mysterious Boss Man (voiced by David Thewlis), who has a dark secret up his sleeves.

It also doesn’t help that Maurice’s cover is blown when he’s found out by Malicia (voiced by Emilia Clarke), the daughter of the mayor (voiced by Hugh Bonneville). Malicia loves telling stories so much that she’s telling this one — she’s the narrator, and explains to the younger viewers such concepts as “framing device” and “backstory.” 

The plot boils down to whether the rats can solve the mystery and thwart Boss Man’s nefarious, and whether Maurice can overcome his cat instincts — to be selfish and run away from danger — to help his rat friends find their sanctuary, described by the wise rat called Dangerous Beans (voiced by David Tennant) as a place where animals and humans co-exist peacefully, without poisons or traps.

Directors Toby Genkel and Florian Westermann keep the pace lively, and mount some clever action set pieces that are exciting without being too violent. The screenplay, by “Shrek” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” co-writer Terry Rossio, captures a lot of Pratchett’s dry humor as the story deconstructs its tropes and rebuilds them in interesting ways — and gives “The Amazing Maurice” more bite than the average kids’ movie.

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‘The Amazing Maurice’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 3, in theaters. Rated PG for action/peril and some rude material. Running time: 92 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 29, 2023, when the movie appeared at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Knock at the Cabin' is a solid thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, but Dave Bautista is the reason to watch

As he has done so often in his career, director M. Night Shyamalan deploys his abundant skills as a film craftsman to uncertain ends in “Knock at the Cabin” — a tough-minded horror thriller that keeps the audience clenched in anticipation all the way to a finale that will have as many interpretations as it has viewers.

(I’ll try to keep the synopsis out of spoiler territory — other than what Universal has already divulged in the movie’s trailer. But If you want to go in cold, read this after you’ve seen it and we can compare experiences.)

The story begins with Wen (Kristen Cui), almost 8 years old, out in the woods catching grasshoppers in a jar and diligently cataloging them in her notebook. Then she notices a man some distance away in the woods — and, before long, the man is walking right up to talk to her.

The man, played by Dave Bautista, is large and, at first, intimidating. He talks in a quiet, reassuring voice. Wen is wary, telling the man that she’s not supposed to talk to strangers — and the man agrees that is a wise policy. He tells Wen that “I’m here to be your friend,” and introduces himself as Leonard. Then he says his heart is broken, “because of what I have to do today.”

This scares Wen, as it should, and she runs back to the rental cabin she’s sharing with her two dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge). They lock the doors and windows, and wait until Leonard pounds on the front door.

Leonard’s not alone. He has three people with them, all carrying makeshift weapons — clubs with large blades attached, mostly. They fight their way into the house, and in the short battle Eric is knocked out and given a concussion. Both dads are tied to chairs, which is when Leonard and the others explain themselves.

Leonard insists that he and the others are ordinary folks — Leonard’s a schoolteacher from Chicago; Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) identifies herself as a post-op nurse from California; Adriana (Abby Quinn) says she works as a line cook in a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C.; and Redmond (Rupert Grint) works for a utility in Boston. 

The four say they all have seen visions of the apocalypse, and are convinced that the only way to prevent the end of the world is for Eric, Andrew and Wen to choose for one of them to be sacrificed, killed by someone in their family. The longer they wait to make that choice, Leonard tells them, more people on Earth will die.

The script — written by Shyamalan and the rookie writing team of Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, adapting Paul Tremblay’s novel “The Cabin at the End of the World” — moves to a fairly familiar rhythm, as the four invaders plead with the two dads, who don’t believe their talk of apocalypse. There also are some well-placed flashbacks that establish the dads’ relationship and how they adopted Wen as a baby from China to become this loving family.

The remarkable moments in the film belong to Bautista, who’s become more of a true actor than one would expect from a 6-foot-4 ex-wrestler. Bautista has previously shown he’s got action and comic chops, in his role as Drax in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies. Here, though, he brings a soulfulness and a quiet intensity to the pre-apocalyptic proceedings.

The question mark, as with most Shyamalan movies, is how he sticks the landing. In his masterpieces, “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable,” the ending is where all the pieces fall perfectly into place, and you see the clockwork precision of his design. More recently, though, in movies like “Split,” “Glass” and “Old,” the ending is where everything goes haywire, and the springs of the clockwork fly out of the mechanism.

With the ending to “Knock at the Cabin,” the ending just  … happens. There’s no brilliant summation, and no disaster. It ends like a solid thriller is supposed to end, as if Shyamalan’s biggest twist is to deliver a movie that is well-constructed and goes pretty much where you expect it to go.

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‘Knock at the Cabin’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 3, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 100 minutes.