WHAT A STITCH

Opening this weekend:

Lisa Frankenstein--Our teenage heroine's misfortunes start with her name: Lisa Swallows. She's survived the murder of her mother by a masked maniac, and the remarriage of her father into a new family, complete with a tirelessly perky stepsister, and her transfer to a new school. The understandably morbid-minded, socially awkward, vaguely Goth Lisa spends her spare time in an abandoned cemetery, tending the grave of a long-departed young fellow on whose romantic-looking memorial statue she has a bit of a crush.

The young man is jolted back to something like life by a lighting bolt, but he's still a moldered corpse until Lisa starts supplying him with new body parts, obtained from irksome people who end up dead around her. This process involves needle and thread, and a terribly strange tanning bed. With each new addition, The Creature becomes a bit, well, hunkier. 

Released just in time for Valentine's Day--and for the February Island of Misfit Movies dump--this off-the-wall teen horror comedy-romance, directed by Zelda Williams from a script by Diablo Cody, is every bit as broad and silly as it sounds, but in a good way. Cody has attempted horror before, with the misfired Jennifer's Body in 2009. This one works better, even though it's uneven and sloppy at times, and the story makes less sense than that of the earlier film. This may even be part of the reason it works better; the wispy, nonsensical plot makes no claim that it's anything but a pretext for Cody's ornately loopy dialogue, and for some good-natured gross-outs.

And, more importantly, it's a pretext for the acting. Cole Sprouse manages to be both bestial and Byronic as the revived Creature, and he may have the best aggrieved monster moans since Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. Carla Gugino hams it up as the self-adoring wicked stepmother, and Liza Soberano, as the stepsister Taffy, is a charming surprise; in a characteristic touch of Cody generosity, she's allowed be genuinely instead of insincerely sweet.

But what really makes Lisa Frankenstein worthwhile is Kathryn Newton. Her performance is a comedic tour de force, at least as good as her riotous turn in 2020's Freaky, layered and mannered and truly funny, with the puckish slyness of the young Susan Sarandon. Newton could be the next big scream queen, not because she does a lot of screaming, but because she's a scream.

Also, this movie is a period piece, circa 1989. It's remarkable how refreshing it is to see a teen flick without a cell phone in sight.

ANTY CLIMAX

Opening this weekend:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania--Paul Rudd, aka Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, is taking a little hiatus from front line superhero duty. On inactive status with The Avengers, he's written a book, so he's giving readings, and hanging out with family, and smugly basking in celebrity. That's the set-up, in a few quick scenes in San Francisco, for this third eponymous Ant-Man feature.

Then, thanks to science experiments by his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) gone wrong, Scott and Hope Van Dyne, aka The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) get swept into the "Quantum Realm," along with Cassie, Hope's Mom Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) and dad Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). The Quantum Realm is a subatomic micro-verse teeming with life in which Janet was stranded for decades.

Thus Janet knows the turf, and she knows that the people there are ruled over by the tyrannical Kang (Jonathan Majors), a dimensional conqueror who she marooned in QR before she escaped. Kang would like very much to be reunited with Janet. Far-out fantasy adventures ensue.

Director Peyton Reed seems to pays heavy homage to the original 1977 Star Wars; the Quantum Realm is full of cousins of Tusken Raiders and Jawas. There are also strong echoes of the Avatar flicks, of Zardoz, and of Dr. Who, and maybe a thematic hint of Horton Hears a Who.

This is yet another Marvel entry featuring alternate universes; it has a somewhat similar look to Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness from last year. As with that film, I went in with the feeling that the This-That-Or-The-Other-verse conceit that the Marvels have leaned on so hard in recent years is of limited sustainability, as it has a tendency to dilute the dramatic stakes.

On the other hand, also as with Multiverse of Madness, taken on its own terms Quantumania is perfectly enjoyable. The visuals, however derivative, are elegant, witty and well-executed, and the glamorous cast is in pleasant form. Rudd's sly, subtle clowning is always good company, and he carries the movie effortlessly.

The best performance, however, is by Jonathan Majors, from The Last Black Man in San Francisco. His Kang is quiet, subdued, even sad, as if haunted by the joyless drive to conquer and rule. As with Christian Bale's Gorr in last year's Thor: Love and Thunder, Majors brings a needed edge of serious, almost tragic menace that helps to ground this silly sci-fi spoof.

SWAP MEAT

Opening today:

Freaky--The full title should be Freaky Friday the 13th, since this is a mashup of the old-school slasher flick with the adult-child "body-swap" genre of Freaky Friday, Vice Versa etc. Vince Vaughn plays the "Blissfield Butcher," a standard-issue masked killer of teens; Kathryn Newton is Millie, a wholesome "final girl" type. Via some mumbo-jumbo involving a mystical "Aztecian" dagger, they swap bodies.

Gruesome farce ensues, with Millie, inhabiting Vaughn's hulking body, trying to elude the police, but also discovering the perks of, say, peeing while standing up. Meanwhile, The Butcher finds himself in the body of a petite blond girl, less physically formidable but far more capable of avoiding suspicion while wreaking bloody mayhem. Millie also has to admit that The Butcher has a better sense of how to dress than she does.

The director and co-writer of this Universal/Blumhouse collaboration is Christopher Landon, who previously helmed 2017's redoubtable Happy Death Day, a similarly avowed horror spin on Groundhog Day. Freaky isn't quite the home run that Happy Death Day was; it's much gorier but not as scary, and it feels a bit more heavy-handed in its contrivance.

But it's pretty entertaining just the same. If you can resist the prospect of seeing the beefy, slovenly Vaughn get in touch with his inner teenage girl, and share a tender love scene with the boy she has a crush on, you're more respectable than I am.