That’s very quantumish I’m sure.

Anyway, this movie is famous for, like, kinda killing off the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”? That is, the reactions to this were so adverse that Disney decided to scale back the Marvel movie stuff significantly, and sent all the producers to their corners to think about what they’ve done.

I just find that rather hard to grok, because the previous two Ant-Man films (by the same people) were among the better Marvel super-hero films, really — quippy, lighthearted and entertaining.

But we’ll see.

Well, this starts off well, if a bit leaden — it doesn’t have much zip.

Oh, OK, perhaps the problem is this stuff — I almost groaned out loud when I realised that this movie was a Snappening movie. It feels like that happened decades ago, and we still have to watch movies about it?

I’m not even sure I remember what that was about… except for snapping.

Wow, that’s a lot of CGI… I guess the rest of the movie is gonna be CGI with some humans composited over it once in a while?

Looks like it.

Man, this really boring. We’re getting a lot of exposition very slowly, and the main driver of the plot seems to be withholding information (which is the most tedious way to make things happen).

Oh, OK, perhaps this is part of why people didn’t like this movie. I mean, that’s an on-spec MODOK, I guess, but it just looks so stupid. Which is also on-spec — MODOK’s a character that’s been played for laughs a lot…

It’s like this movie just can’t get started. Whenever something starts to happen, we get fifteen minutes more of backstory, flashbacks and explanations.

We’re now one hour in, and they’re still introducing characters.

I guess we know that that’s gonna fail? Because Kang was supposed to be the villain in a bunch of new Marvel movies. But perhaps that’s changed, too, with the performance of this movie, and er the Kang actor’s performance. I mean behaviour.

I don’t know… I think a lot of this movie could have worked if they’d just dropped all the exposition and stuff. Then they’d have a movie that was about an hour long, and then they could have added 15 minutes worth of jokes, and then it would have been pretty OK.

Certainly feels like it.

And the Kang actor never stops giving Blue Steel.

I had a peek at Rottentomatoes, and many of the reviews said that the plot was convoluted or something. But it’s not — it’s more like the plot is barely there. What with all the infodumps, the plot is: Kang wants the macguffin, and the others want to stop him (because that would mean the end of the Multiverse, probably). But that all they had time for. Perhaps the lack of plot makes people feel that it’s convoluted?

(Or perhaps it was that bit where Kang explained that he’s fighting a war against other Kangs?)

But man, that was a bad movie. The CGI was surprisingly good, though — lots of goofy bits. And… that’s it.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Peyton Reed. 2023. ⚁

Hm…

Oh yeah — I bought all of Preston Sturges’ movies (that are available), and this is apparently the last of them I haven’t seen.

Heh heh. It’s the shootingest kid.

Good form.

Oh, it’s a musical?

You know, Betty Grable is one of those actors I never can quite place. I bet I’ve seen dozens of movies with her, but I don’t think I would actually recognise her.

I know! Shocking!

Or … perhaps I’ve just seen a handful of films with her, but just remember the name because it’s er memorable — it’s such an anti-Hollywood-made-up-name: Grable.

Hm… this bluray is pretty odd — the black levels are like #333 instead of #000. Hm. Perhaps I can just lower the brightness?

Well, that looks better.

But… this movie is just kinda odd all over. I mean, I think if I were to read a recap of what I’ve seen so far, I would have assumed that it was a hilarious, madcap movie. But instead it’s just… lethargic. There are gags, but you have to tell yourself that: “Yes, I can see that this is a gag. It is even funny. I should probably laugh?”

That is, the pacing is just way off. Grable is doing her best to get things poppin’, but the rest just seem to be mouthing off lines while looking at the director for direction.

I’m normally all for a good yokel bit, but even that fails here.

Sturges’ good movies are wonderful. This just doesn’t work, despite a pretty good script and some scenes that are really funny. It’s like… imagine this movie directed by one of the old studio system workhorses like Sidney Lanfield or George Marshall, who pumped out several films each yea? Craftsmen who really knew what they were doing and did it in a reliably zippy way? It could have been hilarious.

It does have the silliest shootout ever, though — it’s a great spoof of Westerns.

Right:

The film, Sturges’ first Technicolor production, was not well received at the time it was released, and was generally conceded to be a disaster – even Betty Grable bad-mouthed it

Oh, and this was Sturges’ final movie in the US (but he did do one movie more, six years later, in France).

This is a hard one to throw the die on… it’s really not a good movie, but there’s bits that are really enjoyable. So ⚃? Uhm. No, let’s go with:

The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend. Preston Sturges. 1949. ⚂

I think this is basically a bunch of music videos strung together, but I’m guessing none of these videos were shown separately?

I was supposed to be washing my balcony furniture down, but instead I’m sitting here watching these videos… they’re really rather well made. Filmed on video? Hi-def video? They’re well edited and interesting.

I guess the songs here are basically most of the stuff from the Holy Wars album, but with a couple earlier tracks?

I mean, this is a collection of music videos, but I love Tuxedomoon and I quite like these videos — they’re original and interesting. So:

Tuxedomoon: A Thousand Lives by Picture. Bruce Geduldig. 1985. ⚄