2025 - ETERNITY, another afterlife comedy/romance/fantasy

Apparently in these Hollywood movies about the afterlife you just don't get to go to heaven and enjoy yourself you still are faced with all sorts of decisions about what kind of eternity you are going to enjoy and who you are going to enjoy it with.  This is the dilemma for The Scarlett Witch herself Elizabeth Olsen who has passed on and has to pick who she will spend eternity with her last husband who she was married to for 65 years or her first husband who was the passionate love of her life before he died early.

There's a whole bunch of these afterlife films.  The weird Robin Williams film What Dreams May Come which has a love story/suicide plot line.  Albert Brook's very funny Defending Your Life with Brooks as an advertising executive who ends up in Judgement City.  At time of his death he was screwing around with the CD player in his car instead of paying attention to the road.  

Made in Heaven has Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis as a couple of unborn souls who fall in love and have to find each other when they are on Earth or else they will get yanked back to Heaven.  Made in Heaven was directed by Alan Rudolph so you can be sure it's going to be on the strange side.  

A quick shout out to Powell and Pressburger's Stairway to Heaven a very impressive World War II film made at the peak of their skills.  That should go near the top of the list. 

For my money the best afterlife film is Heaven Can Wait the Ernest Lubitsch film. This is not strictly an afterlife film although it starts in the afterlife.  Don Ameche is a philandering husband who has to relate the story of his life to the Devil before he goes to hell.  This is a terrific film filmed in beautiful 1940's technicolor. 

 Let's get back to Eternity.  Yeah it's okay, the actors are decent the world building of the afterlife is some sort of train station.  That's kind of interesting.  It drags in the middle as we have to wait for Elizabeth Olsen to make her husband decision although it's fairly apparent who she will pick.

Eternity was written by Pat Cunnane and David Freyne, the running time is 114 minutes. 

2025 - NOW YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON'T, the 3rd in the magicians turned crime fighters series

Amazingly another in this magicians turned do-gooders film series. The gang known as the 4 Horsemen specializes in elaborate and improbable large scale magic tricks.  In the first film Now You See Me (2013) they showed up where I believe they were sort of bad guys who eventually saw the light.  That film made a lot of money.  The Horsemen returned in a sequel called naturally Now You See Me 2 in 2016.  This time they had to stop evil Michael Caine and that guy from those Harry Potter films from doing something bad.  That film also made a lot of money.

Well it's been 9 years since the last film and the original gang is looking a little long in the tooth so some hip, younger and more importantly sexier magicians are now recruited to this magical gang.  This time they are going to steal a diamond from evil Rosamund Pike.  Rosamund Pike has carved out a career in the entertainment business playing criminals.  It seems like she is in a lot of streaming shows where she is naughty and eventually gets what's coming to here. 

 

For the most part these movies are all okay if very repetitive.  They all follow the same formula, lots of chases, some elaborate if very improbable magic tricks and finally many and I mean many plot twists kind of like in The Sting.  By now these films are what they are entertaining and very undemanding time killers.   

 

Why do these films keep getting made?  Well because they still make money, what else.

This film was written by Michael Lesslie, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Seth Grahame-Smith.  These writers specialize in this kind of light weight story telling.  The running time is 112 minutes. 

2025 - SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE aka SI2U

From Finland comes the second in the Sisu series a film about one really pissed off citizen from Finland. He's about to raise holy hell on some of the Russian military after (what else) his family is murdered by them.  Apparently in the first film he took on the Nazi's but I guess he's an equal opportunity killer.

 

The film's rather sketchy plot has our hero transporting what is left of his family homestead by semi-truck.  In hot pursuit are the Russians led by the man who killed his family naturally.  The first half of the film is a road chase that is very reminiscent of The Road Warrior except this film wants to really top that film by being a lot more brutal.

 

In the second half of this film, the Russians finally catch this guy, put him on a train to transport him back to Russia.  Bad mistake, this Sisu guy after being tortured escapes from his railway car prison cell and wreaks even more havoc if that's possible.

 

What can you say?  The film is extremely well made.  The mayhem inflected on the cast is considerable.  If you are looking for a lot of graphic bloody violence but well staged graphic bloody violence this film should satisfy you.  The ending seemed a little over the top but in reality the whole film was over the top.

Written by the director Jalmari Helander, the running time is a brisk 89 minutes.

202 - NORMAL, another shoot em up with more of a sense of humor than usual

Normal is sort of the third part of a Bob Odenkirk action trilogy.  Odenkirk is an unlikely action hero for this stuff.  In a previous incarnation he was a comedian the first part of his career.  He hit his stride as sleazy attorney Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and it's spinoff  Better Call Saul.  Odenkirk pivoted into the action film franchisee with the Nobody series about a retired government hit man.

Normal finds Odenkirk as a a temporary sheriff in a small Minnesota town called Normal.  As it turns out the town of Normal is actually a holding area for gold and money that the Yakuza have been using to launder their ill gotten gains.  To make matters worse the entire town is in on the money laundering scheme and is armed to the teeth to keep their secret safe.  Let the shooting begin and there is a lot of shooting to be sure.

 

Odenkirk takes a producer credit on the film along with a story credit.  The director is Ben Wheatey a Brit who is an expert at staging shoot outs which he twists around with lots of bizarre violent humor.  He's found his perfect partner in Odenkirk who contributes his own brand of unconventional humor.  It's a match made in action movie heaven. 

The film is entertaining it does have a really warped sense of humor between all the gun play and body counts.  Odenkirk's wry sense of humor is definitely and asset.

The screenplay is by Derek Kolstad, the running time is 91 minutes.

2025 - DUST BUNNY, a fantasy horror film for the kids.

It must be the weekend for strange films.  Dust Bunny has been described by it's writer/director as a "horror film for the family" and that's probably not far from the truth.  The plot has a little girl convinced that a monster is hiding under her bed.  Unsurprisingly there is a monster under her bed and it proceeds to eat her parents.  To stop the monster, she robs from a collection plate during a Catholic Mass and uses it to hire a hit man who just happens to live in the apartment across the hall from her to kill the monster.

The film mixes the fantasy elements, action scenes and the budding relationship between the hit man and the little girl quite well.  The director Bryan Fuller is an experienced hand at this kind of storytelling.  He's written for the television shows Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine.  I think it's safe to say he knows his way around macabre stuff like this.

 

Dust Bunny has a great cast.  Mads Mikkelsen is the hit man and when I think of him he's usually an unrepentant bad guy.  Sigourney Weaver is Mikkelsen's contact for hit man jobs.  She first played an action hero in Alien and 40 years later she's still kicking butt.  The young girl Sophie Sloan was about 10 years old when she acted in this film and she gives a very droll performance.  Mikkelson and Sloan work very well together in this film.

 

Dust Bunny is another off the wall film that really should find an audience it's a lot of weird fun especially for fans of the fantasy genre.

The running time is 106 minutes. 

2025 - GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE, amusing science fiction comedy

A time traveler from the future (where else) arrives at a diner in Los Angeles to save the planet earth.  He believes that some of the customers at the diner can help even though this is his 117 attempt at averting disaster.  What is exactly menacing earth?  Well Apple cell phones and AI of course.

This is an entertaining film coming from a very quirky filmmaker Gore Verbinski.  Verbinski had some big hits with his horror film The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films aka "the good ones."  The writer Matthew Robinson is an equally quirky guy.  He's written The Invention of Lying and Love and Monsters.  Unsurprisingly this is one odd ball of a film.

 

The cast is odd as well particularly Sam Rockwell as the man from the feature and Haley Lu Richadson whose job is to dress up as a sort of Disney princess to entertain little girls at birthday parties.  In a key plot point she has an allergy to cell phones.

 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is an eccentric film that the studio dumped with a release in February.  Nobody at the studio clearly knew how to market it.  What a disappointment, this film really deserved to be seen by an audience. Hopefully it will be rediscovered in the streaming world.

 The running time is 134 minutes. 

2025 - WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY, probably the last in the series or maybe not.

A little behind the scenes recap.   Rian Johnson the director/writer released the first film in the series Knives Out in 2019 to theaters.  Johnson committed to two more sequels which went out for bid for the release of the sequels.  The winner of this little bidding war Netflix payed an obscene amount of money to Johnson and his producer along with star Daniel Craig.  After these two sequels I can assure you none of these guys will ever have to work again which includes their wives, children, grandchildren and probably great grandchildren.  Frankly if some company waved millions of dollars at me it would be hard to say no.

For all of the financial wheeling and dealing that went on to get this movie made Wake Up Dead Man turned out fairly well.  Rian Johnson wasn't asleep at the wheel for this film, he wrote a clever script which had some not uninteresting things to say about religion and the existence of god, a plot point you don't usually see in a murder mystery.

 

As usual Johnson went for the off beat casting, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner and Kerry Washington to name a few all show up in rather offbeat roles.  Daniel Craig is back with his shaky southern accent, as crime solving detective Benoit Blanc.  He's almost a supporting character in this film.  The focus in on a priest accused of murder played by Josh O'Connor who had previously played Prince Charles in the unending Netflix series The Crown.

 

Since this is a murder mystery there will not be spoilers here, this is an enjoyable film with some amusing dialog and so very clever scenes

The running time is a bit long at 144 minutes.  

2025 - PRIMITIVE WAR, the "B" movie lives on

It's 1968 and we're in Vietnam where an elite group of Green Berets have been sent to a hidden valley to find out what happened to a previous squad of soldiers.  Well surprise surprise the valley is full of hungry dinosaurs who are part of a time travel experiment the evil Russians have been running.  This film isn't called Primitive War for nothing.  Yes this is a cross between Jurassic Park, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and a whole bunch of Vietnam war movies I've missed. 

You can put this in the 12 year old boy category of films.  There's man eating dinosaurs, lots of gun play, evil Russians, people getting graphically eaten by dinosaurs and a goofy science fiction subplot to tie it all together.  The cast seems game and appears to enjoy shooting their guns because there is a lot a shooting of dinosaurs so we don't have to deal with pesky things like character development and dialog.  The film was shot in Australia which is obviously subbing for Vietnam.  The film's budget was 7 million dollars, B movies aren't that cheap anymore.

 

The special effects are of a variable quality.  The CGI dinosaurs look better in the dark than the light.  It costs a lot of money these days to make realistic phony dinosaurs.  The director/writer Luke Sparke must be a real auteur since he has his name on about every other title in the credit scroll.  This is very enjoyable foolishness and yes there is a woman in the film because there always has to be a woman in a film like this.  Primitive War is certainly more enjoyable than those recent Jurassic World films.

 

The film was written by Ethan Pettus and Luke Sparke, the running time is 133 minutes.

2025 - A KELLER CHRISTMAS VACATION - A Hallmark holiday film (what else)?

The typical Hallmark Christmas love story gets a little bit make that a very little bit of a spin with on location filming in Germany.  Usually these films are filmed in Canada on phony sets dressed up to look like it's been snowing when in reality it's just white blankets covering the ground to simulate snow.

In this film Keller Mom and Dad have persuaded their grown children to accompany them on a Christmas river cruise.  Each of the children have some sort of relationship issue.  Brother Cal is a coach of some kind who is dealing with a breakup.  Sister Emory has to deal with a breakup and the loss of her job.  Finally brother number two Dylan is in a relationship with a doctor he has proposed to but has turned him down.  Dylan is bummed out about this and trying to understand what happened to their relationship but he makes time for the river cruise.  In a rare appearance by a couple who aren't heterosexual, Dylan and his partner are gay.

 

Well needless to say there's lots of romance.  Brother Cal meets a woman on the cruise who is celebrating Christmas with her grandfather.  Will there be a romantic Christmas connection?  Sister Emory meets the cute cruise director on this cut rate love boat and sparks fly.  Dylan's significant other shows up with a big family secret he has been keeping which will rock the very foundations of the family.

This film has lots of humor throughout the running time mostly at the expense of unsurprisingly gay Dylan.  Hallmark may have been brave to include a gay couple in this film but they didn't have a problem making him the buffoon of most of their dumb humor.

 

Honestly this is not one of the worst Christmas films I have seen this year,  I'll leave that to the incredibly stupid She's Making A List about a company that spies on children for Santa Claus to see if they have been naughty or nice.  Fortunately I slept through a lot of it.

A Keller Christmas Vacation was written by Tracy Andreen , the running time is 84 minutes. 

2025 - ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, on the big screen

One Battle After Another is an excellent film, it is also a very quirky and at times odd film as is to be expected from it's writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson.  This film was kind of a crap shoot for Warner Brother's Studios.  Give a talented filmmaker a large budget and let him follow his own muse.  The end result is film that says a lot about the current social and political situation in the United States but also adds some oddball humor to it's story.

This film has an amazing cast, Leonardo DiCaprio is a burned out revolutionary.  Sean Penn is a very right wing military officer.  Benicio Del Toro is a karate instructor who is also moving illegal migrant workers around to keep them from being detained by the government.  Penn in particular hasn't had a good part like this in a long time.

 

Anderson has also taken a different approach to the action scenes instead of the usual over the top hyper and frankly unrealistic approach most of these action movies have. The chase scenes have been carefully staged and edited.

 

 One Battle After Another will unfortunately not be a financial success.   The film just did not catch on with the public. This admittedly unconventional but very entertaining film will apparently lose a lot of money.  The studio spent a lot marketing this film but something clearly didn't click with getting the word out to the movie going audience.  Frankly what the public now wants in film entertainment is apparently a mystery to Hollywood especially when a film like this fails

Still a great film anyway you cut it.  One Battle After Another deserves to be seen in a movie theater to appreciate it's widescreen compositions.  In fact all of the technical credits in this film are at an extremely high level along with the performances of the cast.

The running time is 162 minutes. 

2025 - FANTASTIC FOUR FIRST STEPS, try try again

Marvel still trying to reclaim their box office glory comes up with another underachiever.  Fantastic Four First Steps isn't the film that is going to bring them back from the precipice.  As the critics and box office analysts have been saying for a while the superhero genre has just plain exhausted the viewer.

Still holding on to that meta universe verse stuff, we're on Earth 828 mostly because Marvel still insists on dragging all of their films together under one umbrella.  We are introduced to the Fantastic Four the prime members of the Marvel comic books.  Right away we are plunged into a confusing mess of storytelling with mentions of mole men and super apes which the team has apparently defeated. We are also dragged into a bewildering recap of their origin story.  After what seems like an eternity the Silver Surfer (who apparently had a sex change) shows up to announce the that the big and I mean literally big supervillain Galactus is coming to eat up Earth 828.  Will the Fantastic Four be able to defeat Galactus?  

 

For a film that was supposed to reinvent or restart the Marvel Universe Fantastic Four First Steps seems mighty derivative.  There are call outs to scenes from Star Wars ( a cute little robot, space ships flying around), that huggy feely stuff that we had to put up with in Marvel's Thunderbolts and oddly a North Korean monster movie called Pulgasari which featured another stiff stone faced giant stomping around.  Frankly the film seemed a little slow moving until the big battle at the end with the inevitable ending triumph.

 

What's good about this movie?  Well it looks cool with its blend of a mid 1960's look combined with some futuristic buildings.  The cast seems kind of game although in the back of my mind I couldn't help thinking that all of these rather mature adults dressed up as superheroes looked kind of silly.  I believe this film broke even financially but it's not the blockbuster success Disney and Marvel were apparently looking for. 

The film has four writers, Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer, a lot of writers is always a very bad sign.  The running time is 114 minutes

2025 - THE LOST BUS - based on a true story apparently

Showing up on streaming this month The Lost Bus is one of those based on a true story deals.  The plot concerns the heroic efforts of a school bus driver trying to rescue 22 children trapped in an out of control fire called the "2018 Camp Fire." This was one of the most devastating fires in the history of California.  The driver Kevin McKay is played by a very scruffy looking Matthew McConaughey and the school teacher Mary Ludwig is played by America Ferrera.  Ferrera of course got to deliver that famous feminist speech in the Barbie film.  

 

The film was directed by Paul Greengrass who brings his usual documentary technique film style to tell the story.  Greengrass likes to use handheld cameras which gives the film a sort of immediacy to the storytelling.  The handheld camera has a lot of shaky photography and at times can probably induce motion sickness in a viewer watching all that photographic bouncing around.

The film is good at capturing the terror of the massive fire. The story is apparently true for the most part, so what's the problem?  Well it seems that Greengrass and his screenwriter had decided to add lots of stuff about the personal lives of the bus driver and the teacher.  The bus driver is having problems in his relationship with his son and ex wife.  The school teacher has led a sheltered life and has not really lived an adventurous fulfilling life, blah blah blah.  Why the makers of this film needed to add all of this junk is beyond my understanding.  The circumstance of the school children stuck in a bus which might get consumed by a fire should really have been enough drama.  All this personal lives stuff of the teacher and bus driver just dilutes and drags out the film.

 

The film is well made, Greengrass knows how to stage intense dramatic scenes in this case a forest fire chasing a school bus full of frightened elementary school children.  The Lost Bus is sort of a real life version of The Towering Inferno.

The film was written by Paul Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby, the running time is an overlong 130 minutes.   

2025 - MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING, overlong supposed wrap up to the series

Supposedly the final film in the series, well maybe.  The plan was to tie together all the previous films in the series and do call outs to characters who had appeared in those films.The result was this overlong mess of a film that drags on for almost 3 hours.  Apparently no one could tell producer Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie that audiences have very short attention spans.

 

The major problem and simple fact is that the audience knows nothing will happen to Tom Cruise. In spite of any danger he gets into, you just know he is going to triumph.  A ridiculous biplane chase scene at the end although well staged and photographed is just unending because Cruise has to survive.  

 

The fact that for almost 3 hours the audience sits though this weird plot about an evil AI about to destroy the world with all it's high tech hardware and only Tom Cruise flying around in a bi-plane can stop it is almost a call back to Charles Schultz's cartoon dog Snoopy pretending to be a World War  flying ace fighting the Red Baron while sitting on his doghouse. 

  

The film has a large cast but really it's all about unsurprisingly Tom Cruise.  Bringing back some of the characters from the first film and killing off one of the original members of the team really means next to nothing.

 

Expensive and slickly made for a film that was to be the final hurrah in the series it's just a big letdown.  Also this really isn't the end of the series since the open ended epilogue with the characters certainly leaves the film wide open for another improbable mission.  However this was a box office disappointment so it's hard to know if Tom Cruise as Ethan Hawk will show up again.

The film was written by Christopher McQuarrie qnd Erik Jendresen,  the running time is 170 minutes.

2025 - NOBODY 2, a sequel, (what else).

A sequel to Nobody obviously.  In the first film the fun was watching comedian Bob Odenkirk play a dorky office worker who in a past life was actually an assassin for the United States Government.  In this film Odenkirk basically goes back to his former profession. Odenkirk is still killing people while trying to hold his marriage together to Connie Nielsen.  The fact that a guy like Odenkirk could be married to someone like Nielsen actually strains credibility more than his status as a a former hit man.

 

Well in this film Odenkirk and family decide to spend some bonding time while vacationing at amusement park.  Since this is that kind of movie, the amusement park is a front for a drug trafficking organization run by the evil Sharon Stone and since this is that kind of movie a lot of fighting and killing is involved as Odenkirk and the family take on Stone and her minions while slowly destroying the amusement park.

 

The film is entertaining for a sequel because sequels usually have diminishing entertainment value for the viewer.  Bob Odenkirk is a funny guy with a wry sense of humor particularly when he is beating the crap out of someone. The film also cast 86 year old Christopher Lloyd as Odenkirk's retired FBI agent father who for his age is still good at handling large scale weapons and still mighty dangerous.

Nobody 2 is entertaining but the producers should probably get a clue and not continue this series.  However if there is money to be made you can be sure they will continue to wring it out of these characters and this situation.

The film was written by Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin, the running time is 89 minutes.

2025 - THE MATERIALISTS - attempt at a realistic rom-com

The Materialists should get brownie points for attempting a new spin on the romantic comedy.  The film has three very good looking and charismatic leads, the New York locations have been carefully chosen and the performances are very good.  However as realistic as the situations are this is kind of a depressing film.

SPOILERS

Dakota Johnson plays a matchmaker working with high end clients who are looking for a significant other to partner up with.  While attending a wedding of one of her clients, she meets a rich handsome businessman played by the current actor flavor of the month actor Pedro Pascal.  Also at the wedding is Johnson's former boyfriend played by Chris "Captain America" Evans who is  just a poor starving caterer.

Will Dakota chose the rich guy or the former boyfriend who she was once in love with and ended the relationship because he was poor?  Since this is still a rom-com even with a more serious spin than usual for this genre, it's fairly easy to guess where this plot is going to go. 

The problem I have with this film is that the lead character played by Dakota Johnson is such a materialistic cold fish of a human being it's hard to believe anyone would want to be involved with her.  Throughout most of the film she is supposedly attracted to the rich guy because of his money but during the last 15-20 minutes of the film she sees the light and comes down on the side of true love with Captain America.

 

I fully recognize that if Dakota Johnson had picked the rich guy who she isn't in love with over the poor guy who she is in love with the film would not be very appealing for an audience.  However since this is such a cynical film maybe picking the rich guy would have been a more realistic ending.  Instead we have a gooey mess of the "love conquerors all" ending the film finally sinks into. 

The film was written by the director Celine Song, the running time is 117 minutes,

2025 - SUPERMAN, latest version on the big screen

Yes it's entertaining, it has action and humor.  It's a little on the long side but not excessively so.  Superman turns out to be a good summer movie event.

The film was carefully cast.  David Corenswet is very good as Superman, he manages to instill the modesty in the character and is not some saccharine goody two shoes.  Rachel Brosnahan is a feisty Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult is the hiss able villain Lex Luthor.  This version of Superman adds Krypto the Superdog a character I had remembered from the conics.  Fortunately they didn't push their luck on this super pet stuff so we weren't inflicted with Streaky the Supercat.

The writer/director James Gunn is obviously an aficionado of this superhero stuff as he has proved with his Guardians of the Galaxy series for Marvel.  But Gunn is smart enough to know that you can't take this material very seriously he loads the film up with plenty of humor. 

If I had any issue with the film it would be that the plot is a very busy one with civil wars, a kaiju monster, an inter dimensional prison and the addition of lots of other superheros that probably most people have never heard of.  In this film we are expected to know who Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Mister Terrific are.  It sometimes seems like you can't tell the players without a program.

There has been some criticism that this film has some kind of left wing agenda.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  I suppose it's what you read into it based on what your politics are.  But if you want to waste your time worrying about the politics of a film that has a guy flying around in his underwear, be my guest.

Written by James Gunn, the running time is 129 minutes.

2025 - THUNDERBOLTS, Marvel tries yet again

Marvel is still struggling to regain their superhero glory.  This story is the usual  group of super humans who don't particularly like each. They team up to defeat the evil Valentina Allegra de Fontaine who is trying to create a super being by experimenting on a sensitive guy named Bob.

 

There's lots of fighting particularly in the first half of the film.  It looks like Thunderbolts will be at the very least an entertaining action picture.  But with about an hour left in the run time, the film gets all soft and mushy as the team gets a conscience and tries to stop Bob who is now a full fledged powerful evil villain. There's  lots of hugging and talking about feelings in fact there is so much feel good stuff that after a while you wish people would start hitting each other again.

Really the only reason to watch this film is for the sly performance of Florence Plug as Yelena Belova who ends up being the leader of the new superhero group.  Pugh basically blows away nearly everyone in the cast even the blowhard character Red Guardian played by a very hammy David Harbour.  And who made the decision to cast one time Seinfeld cast member Julia Louis Dreyfuss as the evil Valentina?  I'm sure she's a fine performer but those years of playing Elaine Benes have seriously typecast her.  I expected to hear a laugh track whenever she spoke.

 In the early Marvel films they were able to mix action with humor.  Now it just seems like they can't get the mix right anymore.  In fact I would argue they are rehashing story points from early and better Marvel films. Thunderbolts  is mostly another sit in front of the TV with your computer and surf the internet movie.  A step up from the stupid Thor Love and Thunder and the horrible Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania but really not much of a step up I'm afraid. 

The film was written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, the running time is an overlong 127 minutes.  They should have been able to knock this story out in 90 minutes.