Tag Archives: Michael Douglas

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Ant-Man (2015)

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Ant-ManA guy becomes ant-sized and communicates with ants to…save the world? Kind of sounds like a bad Raid commercial to me. And yet, Ant-Man, one of Marvel’s most overlooked additions to the MCU, was actually pretty enjoyable — not that this should be too surprising, I suppose, since the most likable man in the world plays the movie’s lead. If you’re thinking of anyone other than Paul Rudd, you’re just wrong.

Ant-Man is the story of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his legendary invention of “Pym particles” — a type of particle that can increase or decrease the distance between atoms in order to shrink or enlarge a person or object. Pym incorporates these particles into a suit that allows the wearer to shrink to the size of an ant, while maintaining the strength of a full-sized person. This invention, however, brings danger and risk, as being able to shrink oneself is a threat to national security — if a person is too small to detect, then they can infiltrate any security system in the world. Pym decides that the risks of his suit are too big and leaves Pym Industries with his secret formula in hand. Little does he know, his young protege, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), is intent on recreating the particles and using them for the exact purpose for which Hank Pym has shut down the program altogether.

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The Gift (2015)

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The Gift (2015)Oftentimes, we yearn for simplicity in movies. There should be good guys, bad guys, and a happy ending. Maybe it was all those fairy tales we heard growing up. Unfortunately, for those looking for the next great American fairy tale, Joel Edgerton’s The Gift is not it.

The first part of the movie plays out like any stalker-thriller movie does. Strange man comes along, takes an unusual interest in a woman or a couple, drops by often for unexpected visits, and is generally creepy (even when trying to help out). In this case, it is Gordo or “Gordo the Weirdo” (Joel Edgerton) an old classmate of Simon (Jason Bateman) who just can’t stay away from him and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) after they move back to California.

It all starts out harmless enough, despite Simon’s constant insisting that Gordo is, in fact, a “weirdo” and they should tell him off. When Simon finally does tell Gordo to leave him and Robyn alone, the situation, not surprisingly, turns from creepy to dangerous.

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Writer Series: Michael Crichton

Coma (1978)

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Michael Douglas famously referred to Coma as the first time he was a part of something with a good story, a good cast, and a good director. The latter of those compliments, while true, was at that point based only on Crichton’s debut feature Westworld and his earlier made-for-TV flick Pursuit. The middle statement, about the cast, seems oddly self-serving considering Douglas is in the cast. The actor’s career was likewise young, and oddly enough Mike Crichton and his brother Douglas once published a story under a pseudonym that combined their first names: Michael Douglas.

Whatever conspiracy the Michaels and the Douglases have cooked up here, it probably isn’t as sinister as the conspiracy afoot in Coma. Based on the highly popular novel of the same name by Robin Cook (a friend and contemporary of Crichton’s), the story of Coma is as well thought-out as Douglas claimed. The pairing of Cook and Crichton is a match made in medical thriller heaven, and Crichton’s script treatment of the novel is accurate and respectful of the source material. Slight changes were made, but the overall sense of paranoia that pervades the book is very much intact in Crichton’s screen treatment.

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Writer Series: Michael Crichton

Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972)

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Michael Crichton had an extremely productive early ’70s. Multiple film adaptations of his works were in the making, including a successful version of his 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain, and Crichton himself began foraying into directing and screenwriting. But he continued with prose as well, publishing five novels in the first three years of the decade. Three of these bore his pseudonym “John Lange” and one of them (The Terminal Man) bore Crichton’s actual name; the fifth, a collaboration with his brother Douglas Crichton, was published under another pseudonym that combined the names of both brothers. Suspiciously, an actor named “Michael Douglas” became pretty damn famous not long after.

But that Crichton Brothers book — a somewhat zany story called Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues — sadly is the least effective of those early tales. It’s obvious, even in the film version of the novel, that the pair of writers either couldn’t agree on a direction for the story or just succeeded in writing a story that goes nowhere. Dealing is an absolute slog, and so maybe Michael Douglas’s uptick in fame should be attributed to something else (“like what?”) and not to his deft scriptwriting ability.

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