Category: Personal Favorites

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31 – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

I know.  I know a lot of people consider this to be a low point in the MCU franchise.  But I have to say, I really enjoyed this movie.  I liked the visuals.  I liked the cast.  I liked the action sequences.  I liked the plot.  I liked the humor.  I liked the villain.  And I even liked the CGI-heavy visuals.  Paul Rudd proved that not only can he handle the comedy, but he also kicked butt in the final fight between him and Kang.  And speaking on Kang the Conqueror, I’ll quickly address the elephant in the room.  It totally sucks that the actor playing the super-villain, Jonathan Majors, was dropped from the MCU after being convicted of the terrible crime he committed, but I get it.  It sucks because he was so good in the role, but I totally understand why Disney distanced themselves from him. 

But as bad guys go, I still maintain that Majors did a really great job.  He had a calm and menacing attitude most of the time, but when he became angry, man, he really let loose.  He used laser beams out of his hands that destroyed everything they touched, and his fury was intense.  There was a scene in which he was threatening Cassie to get Scott to do his bidding, and he just seemed so dangerous, even in his calmness.

The rest of the cast, did a fantastic job.  I loved Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne, but then again, when has Pfeiffer ever turned in a bad performance?  Cassie, played by Kathryn Newton, was also really good.  She had a fresh face and I liked how she wasn’t a sudden great fighter like her father.  They made the point of showing that she was still learning.  On the flip side, though, she did seem to have sudden genius level intelligence in order to create the device that started the events of the plot in motion.  And I have to give an honorable mention to Bill Murray and his performance that was actually a little more nuanced that what he gives in the characters he creates.  Yes, most of Lord Krylar was Bill performing his shtick, but there was a serious and dangerous undertone when it is revealed that he is actually betraying our heroes, which I liked. 

And as far as I can tell, one of the biggest complaints about this movie was the character of Darren Cross / M.O.D.O.K.  Most people say that the CGI used to create the giant head on the tiny cybernetic body was awful.  Fans didn’t like how he looked, and they didn’t like how the character was written.  He was turned into a joke, when, in the comic books, he was actually a very dangerous villain.  But I liked what they did here.  First, they changed his origin, making him the broken body and mind of the first Ant’Man bad guy, Yellowjacket.  I thought the CGI actually looked pretty good, and as for the character, Cross had clearly lost his sanity while in the Quantum realm, especially considering what had been done to his body by Kang. Oh, and as far as the CGI goes, I loved all the gorgeous fantasy environments of the Quantum Realm!

Now… all that being said, the movie was not perfect, and I think the biggest problem it had was that it couldn’t seem to figure out what kind of movie it was.  The action, while exciting, was punctuated with silly, sometimes juvenile humor, which was amusing, but the two didn’t always seem to jive.  Was the film trying to be a drama about families and their secrets, or an epic about a revolutionary war against a tyrant?  It was both, and the two genres didn’t always mesh well.  But despite those little inconsistencies, I still enjoyed watching the movie.  Sure, it may not have been a ten, but in my book, it was still an eight. 

And the mid-credit scene with all the Kang variants was awesome, though we now know that it will eventually come to nothing.  The threat might get a quick resolve somewhere down the line, but it will not be the next major threat to the MCU that it was supposed to be.  Kang is out.  Doctor Doom is in.  And I’m on board with that.

Top 10 Favorite Parts

1. Scott and Hope, still a couple, bring Cassie home from jail.  The sweet family dynamic between the three was nice.
2. The whole family gets sucked into the Quantum Realm.  There was very little foreplay before the conflict of the movie started.
3. The entire Lord Krylar scene.  Bill Murray was perfect.
4. M.O.D.O.K. attacks the rebels.  Cool battle sequence.  Also, anything with the character of Quaz.  I really liked William Jackson Harper.
5. Janet’s back-flash story on Kang and learning how he was really a dangerous monster.
6. Scotts attempt to recover the multiversal power core.  The duplicate Scotts and Hopes were very cool.
7. Kang begins his launch sequence.  Great CGI, great action, great music, great scene!
8. Giant Ant-Man attacks Kang’s citadel with the rebels.  “I have HOLES!!”
9. The enraged Kang lets loose and devastates the rebels until he is overrun by intelligent ants.
10. Ant-Man stays in the Quantum Realm and defeats Kang, killing him.

1944 – Cary Grant

None but the Lonely Heart

So I have to start off by saying that I am a Cary Grant fan.  He was handsome, charming, and always very likeable, even when he is playing a character that is less than likeable.  I always love watching him on the big screen.  But I’m sorry to say that I didn’t fully buy his performance in this movie.  Oh, his acting was fine, but he played his part the same as he plays his part in every movie.  He basically played himself, and while that usually works for him, I don’t think it did here.

The biggest and most obvious problem was that he played the part of a Cockney man, and he tried his best with the difficult accent, but he just didn’t have it.  It was distractingly bad.  Sometimes he wasn’t even trying.  He just spoke in his American accent and that was that.  But even that was inconsistent.  He kept waffling back and forth between that and a slightly British accent.  Aside from that, I don’t really think he looked the part.  He was too handsome.  I think the role would have benefited from a man with a more rugged, worn down look.  Even in the beginning of the movie, when Ernie Mott was a homeless tramp, he looked little more than a shave away from being dashing and debonair. 

But what I liked about his performance was the emotional drama that he nailed.  He was able to do the love scenes and the angry scenes, the gut-punch scenes, and the light-hearted scenes, all with equal skill.  His final scene was where he learns that the woman he has fallen in love with has decided to return to the mobster who tore them apart.  The utter devastation on Grant’s face was heartbreaking to watch because of his focused intensity.

The other thing I liked with his natural chemistry with Ethel Barrymore, the woman who played his mother.  Their difficult relationship was probably one of the more interesting aspects of the film.  Ernie apparently had a history of being a shiftless wanderer who thought little of responsibility, a clear disappointment to his long-suffering mother.  But the dynamics of their relationship changed when he made the effort to turn his life around and work, helping her in her store.  And it was nice to see that change in the way he and Ethel played their parts.

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Character Posters

29 – Thor: Love and Thunder

I’ll start this off by saying that I enjoyed watching this movie, but when compared to the rest of the MCU movies, it is one of my least favorites, and I know exactly why.  In fact, there are two reasons, and both are incredible missed opportunities.  This movie could have been awesome, but instead it was just good.  Not even great, just good.  First they had Christian Bale, a great actor playing the dark, heavy, and dramatic part of Gorr the God Butcher, but they massively underutilized him.  In fact we see him kill only one God in the entire film, so he never really seems like much of a threat.  Second, Director Taika Waititi tried to capitalize on the success of the comedic Thor Ragnarok, and failed.  Instead of a clever comedy, he made a goofy romp that seemed to be geared to an audience under ten years old.  And goofy is exactly the right word.

Chris Hemsworth did his best with the silly script, and I’ll be the first to admit that as completely unnecessary as it was, the naked Thor scene was… gorgeous to watch.  But it was juvenile humor and didn’t serve the story or any of the characters in any way.  The screaming goats were only mildly amusing, and eventually became just annoying.  The entire opening sequence featured the Guardians of the Galaxy as so weak and ineffectual that they couldn’t save the poor alien people from the bad guys without the silly and destructive antics of Thor. 

But there were two other characters/subplots in the film that I actually really liked.  The first was that of Jane Foster becoming a version of Thor.  Her character arch is actually pretty interesting.  She has cancer, and when she wields Thor’s reconstructed Mjolnir, it heals her illness and allows her to fight as a superhero, but at the same time, it destroys her body’s ability to fight the cancer when she is not using the hammer.  It was an interesting dichotomy, and I thought they did a fair job with the subplot.

The other thing I liked was the character of Zeus.  Personally, I though Russell Crowe played it perfectly.  He played it goofy, just like the rest of the cast, but not over-the-top.  And he was given moments, when not in front of the masses, when he showed that he was both aware of the seriousness of the God Butcher situation, and his reasons for his plan of inaction.  I ultimately liked his character, and enjoyed watching Crow on the screen.

Of course, the action sequences were great to watch.  The MCU has never failed on that point.  The CGI was seamless and the cast was perfect.  There was plenty to like in this movie.  But I just can’t get past the goofy humor.  I mean, the final climactic battle, itself, was a silly, battle.  Gorr sends a host of shadow demons to stop Thor and Jane.  In order to get past them, Thor imbues a group of children with his power.  So now we have a bunch of kids, most of whom are around ten years old or so, and have no battle experience at all, one of whom is wielding a magically enhanced stuffed animal as her weapon, defeating horrible shadow monsters.  I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid.

And there were a couple of post-credit scenes that were interesting, but they didn’t really have much impact on the overall MCU tapestry that we’ve all come to love because of the Infinity Saga.  So Jane Foster makes it into Valhalla, and Zeus sends Hercules to kill Thor because Superheroes have replaced the gods in the minds of mortals.  But who knows if we will ever see Hercules again in the MCU.  I hope we do, but the scene felt a little like a throw-away.  So would I call this a low point in the MCU?  Yes.  But as I stated, I do enjoy watching the movie. The visuals and the action sequences alone (except for that final fight) were worth the price of admission.  So this movie wasn’t a ten.  I’d still say it was a seven.  This movie had the potential to be so good, but the ball was just dropped.  If you have Christian Bale, USE HIM!  And it’s ok to be comedic, but leave out the juvenile humor.  It just dumbs down the narrative.

Top 10 Favorite Parts

1. Gorr kills his own god, Rapu, with the Necrosword.
2. Gorr attacks New Asgard and creates the shadow demons.
3. Thor reunites with Jane Foster as the Mighty Thor
4. Thor, Valkyrie, and Jane begin their quest and arrive at Omnipotence City.
5. Gorr terrorizes the children while trying to talk to them.
6. Thor presents his case to Zeus, and… the flick.  “You flicked too hard, damnit!”
7. Thor and Jane reconcile, and Thor learns of her cancer.
8. The battle where Gorr captures Thor, Valkyrie, and Jane, and tries to get Thor to summon the Bifrost.
9. Gorr reaches Eternity and wishes for the life of his daughter, rather than the death of all the gods, but both Gorr and Jane die.
10. Thor becomes a father to Gorr’s daughter, Love, and the two become a fighting pair of heroes.

1944 – Alexander Knox

Wilson

This is actually the third time I have had to watch this movie, and while I can appreciate what it has to offer in terms of storytelling, and subject matter, I just find it to be a bit of a dull movie.  And unfortunately, I think a certain amount of that is due to the performance of Alexander Knox, and the way he played the part.  I’m not exactly sure why he was nominated for Best Actor.  But I have to get over my own opinions, because I suspect I might be missing something.  I’m sure I don’t have all athe facts.  Here’s what I mean.

Knox played a well known and well beloved public figure, Woodrow Wilson, the 28^th President of the United States.  The film follows his political career, starting with his time as Governor of New Jersey, and ending with his departure from office after his second term as Commander in Chief.  During that time, he became widowed and re-married, passed many beneficial laws and legislation, kept the US out of WWI until the time was right, and dealt with the aftermath of the war, including being a key figure in crafting and signing the Treaty of Versailes, among other things.

Obviously, the monumental historical events that took place in the narrative were much closer to the hearts of viewers in the 1940s.  Those audiences may have even been familiar with the real Wilson.  Maybe Knox, to his credit, played the part exactly as he needed to.  But I just found that the character’s supreme emotional stabiliity bordered on emotionless and stiff.  I imagine he had to be realistically accurate to the actual President.  For for my tastes, he was gentle and mild to the point of ridiculousness.  He was just… dull to watch on the screen.

But was his steady, rational, Rock of Gibraltar performance enough to earn him a Best Actor nomination?  I’m not so sure.   Maybe I’d have a different opinion if I had actually lived through the Wilson Administration.  Still, there were two scenes that stood out to me as good, or at least more interesting than the rest.  One was where he told off the German Ambassador and went to war.  The other was where he yelled at the French diplomat for going back on his word about German land rights.  Knox was good, especially in those scenes… but I wouldn’t call him great.