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Tag Archives: Will Smith
Men in Black III (2012)
I Promised the Secrets of the Universe, Nothing More.
When I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman, I decided that I had the time and the energy to make the day into a double feature. There were about four movies available at the time that I had any kind of interest in seeing. Having one taken down at the request of my readers, I decided that I would choose the next one and that I’d just take the one that had gotten the best reviews. It was fortunate for me that it was also the one that I wanted to see the most. Being the third part in a series of movies that I have liked so far, as well as being the movie that seemed the most fun, it was an easy decision. The movie I chose was Men in Black 3, written by Lowell Cunningham, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve, Mike Colter, Bill Hader, Will Arnett, David Rasche, Keone Young, and Nicole Scherzinger.
An intergalactic criminal named Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) is busted out of a prison on the moon by his girlfriend (Nicole Scherzinger). He sets his intentions on killing an agent of the Men in Black, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), for shooting his arm off in 1969. And, because he got that arm shot off in 1969 while trying to stop K from preventing his race of Boglodites from taking over the Earth, he decides he needs to go back in time and kill K. The strange part is that he succeeds. K’s partner, Agent J (Will Smith), wakes up to find that the space-time continuum has changed and K has been dead since 1969. With a little help from the new Chief of the Men in Black, Agent O (Emma Thompson), he figures out what he must do to stop it from happening, so he too goes back to 1969 to stop him. Of course, a time-travelling black man in 1969 gathers some attention, most notably from Agent K (Josh Brolin). He must try to convince K that he’s telling the truth so that they can stop Boris and save the Earth.
Much as with the other movies in this series, I’m still charmed by Men in Black 3. The story follows the same pattern that I remember from the other two movies, but adds interest and emotion to it with the time travel story. All of the movies have been, at their core, a story of two guys trying to stop the destruction of the world. The first one added the fish out of water part with J being brought into the Men in Black, the second one added the getting the gang back together thing with having to bring back K, and the third one adds time travel. That adds for some decent emotion that they barely went for in the first movie and didn’t try for much in the second. Not only is there the emotion involved in K’s temporary death, but something else that’s pretty sad happens near the end of the movie. The problem with the thing at the end of the movie is that you can kind of see it coming. It’s something that my roommate brought to my attention in the Avengers movie, but if they talk about something they’ve never really talked about before, seemingly out of nowhere, you know something’s up. K defending the person that was being talked about cemented it in my mind, so when it happened, the shock was a little bit lessened. But you don’t really come to a Men in Black movie for the emotional depth. It’s more about the cool look and the humor, and both of those are well realized. Every time J used the neuralizer on someone, the explanations he came up with afterwards were all pretty funny. There was another point where J started drinking a little kid’s chocolate milk and the little kid said, “Mommy, the president is drinking my milk.” That’s a solid joke, but it was so quiet I almost missed it. J makes a joke about agents O and K, and I think you can figure what joke would be made there, but it was still a solid joke. There were also two references for comedy that were a little obvious. If you’d seen the other movies, you know that they often have eccentric celebrities on the screen in the background, implying that they’re aliens. When I started the movie I knew that Lady GaGa would be one of them, and I was right. Also, when they had Andy Warhol in it, I figured he’d be an easy target for an alien too. I wasn’t entirely right, but I wasn’t entirely wrong either.
I liked almost all of the performances in this movie. Will Smith is usually very charming and funny, and he’s also able to bring it with the emotional performance as well. It’s no surprise that he’s able to do that in this movie, but it’s always a pleasure to watch him do it. Tommy Lee Jones is also the perfect counterpoint to Will Smith, always able to be the consummate straight man. He doesn’t bring it too hard with the emotional performances because that wouldn’t be right for the character, but he does have moments where you can see that it’s right under the surface, and it’s really well done. I think the biggest surprise for me was Josh Brolin. Not because I didn’t expect quality from him as I’ve seen him do both drama and touches of comedy before, but he does a fantastic impression of Tommy Lee Jones that deserves to be lauded. I wasn’t really a fan of Michael Stuhlbarg in this movie though. His character was kind of comic relief and never really worked for me. Perhaps it was because he reminded me way too much of Justin Bartha’s character in Gigli. Though their parts were small, I was also happy to see Will Arnett and Bill Hader in this movie, and both were pretty amusing in their small bits.
If you liked the other Men in Black movies, Men in Black 3 should be right up your alley. It might even overcome those of you that didn’t like the other two. It’s definitely a candidate for the best of the three, though perhaps the original still edges it out. MiB3 is funny, interesting, and even has a few moments of emotion to get us more invested. It still looks great and the greater majority of the performances remain fantastic. I definitely recommend getting to the theater to watch this. It’s worth your money. Men in Black 3 gets “Sort of a surly, older gentleman. Smiles like this…” out of “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
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Men in Black II (2002)
The Last Suit You’ll Ever Wear … Again.
Still leading up to my review of the newest addition to the Men in Black movie, we come to the second movie in the series. After the popularity gained by the first movie, it seemed obvious that they would follow it up. But there’s always a bit of trepidation going into a follow up movie because they are usually rushed and/or forced which has a negative effect on the quality of the product. I really have no predisposition towards the answer on this one because I have barely any memory of the movie. I remember thinking the first movie was very fun, but I have no memory of the second. So let’s find out how it went in my review of Men in Black 2, written by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Lara Flynn Boyle, Rosario Dawson, Johnny Knoxville, Rip Torn, Tim Blaney, Tony Shalhoub, Patrick Warburton, Jack Kehler, David Cross, Colombe Jacobsen, John Alexander, Peter Graves, Biz Markie, Nick Cannon, Jay Johnston, Martha Stewart, and Michael Jackson.
After the events of the first movie, Men in Black agent J (Will Smith) has become the top agent for the secret government organization. A challenge arrives for him in the shape of a shapeshifting Kylothian queen named Serleena, who disguises herself as a lingerie model (Lara Flynn Boyle). She recruits a stupid, two-headed alien duo Scrad and Charlie (Johnny Knoxville) and sets about her task of finding the ”Light of Zartha”. When J finds out about it, the chief of the Men in Black, Zed (Rip Torn), says that the only person that might know about what happened to the Light is J’s former partner, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), who had his memory erased by the neuralyzer at the end of the last movie. J must find K and get his memory back so they can find the Light of Zartha before Serleena does.
I don’t think this movie was nearly as bad as many people did, but the movie does hurt my feelings a little. At the end of the first movie, it was a sad and poignant moment when J had to neuralyze K so that he could go back to his old life. This movie just shits right on that by going exactly backwards from it. It’s preferable to the alternative of leaving K out of the movie because K was a great character, but it does deflate that moment from the first movie significantly. The mystery in this movie is a little better done, as it becomes a treasure search once K has been brought back into the picture. They follow clues to finally reach their destination and it’s an interesting new way to go about the story of their movie. There were some good jokes in this one, but I felt like they really took it easy in some places. Most of the jokes they went through in the middle of the movie were just the reverse of the same jokes they made in the first one. Things like giving the “Noisy Cricket” to K, and even using some of the same exact lines, but his time it was J saying them to K. The look of the movie has not changed drastically for this movie. It’s still really good and really creative. I would say the only thing that I would count as an improvement in this movie is the song that Will Smith made for it. Nod Ya Head is a much better song than Men in Black, and I don’t care who knows that I think this.
The returning performances for this movie were of the same quality, but I would say the new additions do nothing to help the film. Will Smith is mostly just as charming and funny as he was in the first movie, but he came off as a bit of a dick for the first part of the movie when he was too preoccupied being the best MiB agent. I like him better as the fish out of water, but he gets back to that. Tommy Lee Jones is pretty much unchanged in this movie. He’s still a great compliment to Will Smith. Lara Flynn Boyle didn’t work for me though. She was great to look at, especially when she was in her underwear, but she was not at all intimidating as the main bad guy in the movie, and she was barely convincing to boot. Johnny Knoxville played the role as classic comic relief, but was completely hit or miss. Rosario Dawson was great in the movie, however. Not only am I always happy to look at her, but she’s got this great charm to her that makes you instantly like her and seemed like she would be a great compliment to Will Smith.
Altogether, Men in Black 2 makes no drastic steps forward, but does make a few steps backwards, though not enough backwards to make the movie a bad movie. It’s just inferior to the original. It’s still pretty funny, but some of the jokes are easy, it’s still got a good story with a little more mystery to it, and the performances that return to the movie still bring it, though Rosario Dawson is the only new performance that’s any good. But Men in Black 2 still manages to become a fun watch, so I’d still recommend it. I own both, and it probably wouldn’t hurt for you to own it as well. Men in Black 2 gets “I’ve dated worse” out of “Your brain needs to reboot.”
Let’s get these reviews more attention, people. Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense. Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated. You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle). Don’t forget to leave me some comments. Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.
Men in Black (1997)
We’re Not Hosting an Intergalactic Kegger Down Here
After watching Snow White and the Huntsman, I felt I had the time to catch a second movie, but we’ll get to that in a couple of days. This movie was the third part in a trilogy, so it stands to reason that I would review the first two movies first. I remember the other two movies as being very funny, really cool, and really imaginative. But, as with so many movies, you never really know how well they’re going to hold up to the scrutiny of today. We’ll find out in my review of Men in Black, written by Ed Solomon, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio, Linda Fiorentino, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub, David Cross, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Mike Nussbaum, John Gries, Tim Blaney, and Richard Hamilton.
A member of a secret organization called the Men in Black named Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is left without a partner when his previous partner (Richard Hamilton) is proven to be too old to do the job anymore. Meanwhile, James Darrell Edwards III (Will Smith), a NYPD officer chases down a strange man on foot that has two pairs of eyelids and can climb walls. When he catches him, he tells him that the world is coming to an end and jumps off the roof. Needless to say, his peers at the precinct don’t believe him, but K does. After getting the information from him he needs, he uses a device that erases his mind called a neuralyzer, but having seen his potential, also gives him a card to come and potentially become a Men in Black agent. Though one could say he did less than stellar on the tests, K talks the Agency leader, Zed (Rip Torn), into taking him on. James Darrell Edwards III loses his identity and becomes Agent J. Their first case together involves a large, cockroach-like creature wearing the skin of a farmer named Edgar (Vincent D’Onofrio) and looking for something called “The Galaxy”, which is apparently located on Earth. Finding it would mean the destruction of the Earth, so the Men in Black must intervene.
Men in Black is a really fun and imaginative movie. It was one of the most fun movies that I can presently remember from my high school days, and it completely holds up. The writing is pretty basic science fiction fare with a few twists and turns so as to not be predictable and with enough comedy to set itself apart. At its core, it’s just about the regular stuff of saving the world from destruction by an alien race, but it adds the fish out of water thing with J having to deal with all sorts of things that he was previously unaware of their existence. Will Smith’s character adds the bulk of the comedy because of this fish out of water stuff. One of my favorite comedy moments for Will Smith is when he’s in the shooting range to audition for the Men in Black and he shoots only the little girl cutout. His explanation for why he chose to shoot her is fantastic. They don’t do very much drama in this movie, and that’s what keeps it fun. All of the drama stuff is because of K, who we quickly find out is pining over the woman he loved who he can’t keep in touch with because of his job. That gets a satisfying wrap up in the end. The part where they save the world from the aliens is almost secondary, but it’s still interesting. The cockroach creature in the Edgar suit is intimidating in any one of its incarnations. When it’s wearing the Edgar suit, its skin is hanging off its bones making it look pretty gross, but pretty cool as well. There’s a bit of a mystery to this part of the story because they’re told the galaxy they’re looking for is on Orion’s Belt, and they need to figure out what that means, but the mystery doesn’t take that long. The look to this movie holds up very well. I really like their opening of watching a fly travel down a highway until it’s plastered across a windshield. The aliens look very good, both in their animatronic forms and their computer generated forms. It’s all very stylized and cool. In fact, I figured from the look of it that Tim Burton had something to do with it, but I think it was just the Danny Elfman music that gives that feel to it.
The greater majority of the performances work very well in this movie. Will Smith is always a delight to watch. He’s very funny in this movie and even has a few minutes where he gets to be awesome. Take, for instance, when he was facing off with the cockroach near the end of the movie and he tells the giant, sinister cockroach to ease up out of his face. He pulls that stuff off just as well as he pulls off the comedy. Tommy Lee Jones’ most impressive stuff in this movie is the emotional parts. He doesn’t go over the top with it, but it’s clearly there. The bulk of the comedy he’s involved with is as a straight man, and he does that fantastically. Vincent D’Onofrio was a difficult one for me though. He definitely played the Edgar suit version of himself in an intimidating way, but he also kind of hammed it up at times.
Men in Black was one of the most fun movies of my high school years, and it stands up to the memories I had of it. At its core, it’s not the most brilliant or innovative story, but the comedy and the creative look it brings sets it apart from the basic sci-fi fare. And all of the performances in the movie do well to help the movie accomplish the fun it sets its sights on, even though D’Onofrio may go a bit over the top at times. Men in Black is a great movie that should be in any collection. Tomorrow, we’ll find out about the sequel. Men in Black gets “I make this look good” out of “You’ll get used to it … or you’ll have a psychotic episode.”
Let’s get these reviews more attention, people. Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense. Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated. You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle). Don’t forget to leave me some comments. Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.
Independence Day (1996)
Welcome to Earth!
The third part in this contest brings me to my guilty pleasure genre: disaster movies! Disaster movies, if done well, are a combination of various different genres. They’re mostly action based, they always attempt drama (they don’t always get there), and they’re generally science fiction. Usually corny and dumb, but mostly lots of fun. Today’s movie exemplifies the genre, at least in my mind. If the movie doesn’t exemplify the genre, the director certainly does. Almost every movie I can think of that this guy has done has been a disaster movie. And I’ve actually liked the majority of them, dumb and cheesy though they may be. And so, as the biggest and the most fun in the genre, and the movie that best exemplifies the genre for me, I had no choice but to give my favorite disaster movie to Independence Day, written by Dean Devlin, written and directed by Roland Emmerich, and starring Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Vivica A. Fox, Harry Connick Jr., Margaret Colin, Judd Hirsch, Harvey Fierstein, Robert Loggia, Mary McDonnell, Mae Whitman, James Rebhorn, Adam Baldwin, Brent Spiner, James Duval, and Frank Welker.
On July 2nd, a signal appears in outer space, between the Earth and the moon. Spirits are lifted temporarily when the giant curiosity slows down and stops before hitting Earth, but then it gets more curious when it “splits” into smaller pieces and enters the Earth’s atmosphere, first appearing as strange clouds that seem like they’re on fire, but changing to reveal that they are massive alien spaceships that then settle over the Earth’s major cities. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) discovers a transmission in the satellite signal that he first thinks is just going to go away, but soon realizes that it’s a countdown to an attack. He collects his father, Julius (Judd Hirsch), and rushes to Washington to warn his ex-wife, Constance (Margaret Colin), who is the Communications Director at the White House. With the president, Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman), they barely manage to escape. Also going on, a drunken crop duster named Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) escapes with his broken family, Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) takes part in an aerial assault on the aliens that he alone survives, and we go to Area 51 where scientists like Dr. Brackish Okun (Brent Spiner) have been studying these aliens in secret since some of them crashed here in 1947.
Roland Emmerich has got to be one of the best directors in the big dumb action category. The story is pretty basic alien invasion fare that’s been going down pretty much since movies were invented, but it does it so well and makes it so fun that I can’t help but love the thing. How can you not get behind the heroes of the movie when these fuckin’ aliens come down here and get all rowdy for no reason, laying siege to the biggest cities in the world? It’s the easy way to get the audience invested in the movie, and it works on me. Of course, I don’t know how much the other countries of the world will be invested near the end. I mean, they all get involved in taking down the aliens, but it was all America’s idea. FUCK YEAH! It’s certainly not the brightest of movies, but I doubt it was trying to be. From what I’ve read, they spent 4 weeks working on the script and 13 months on the production. They knew what they were doing. But I’m not like most film critics. A movie doesn’t have to have a message or intelligence or something important about it; it just needs to be entertaining. That’s what entertainment is supposed to do. And how could you say Independence Day wasn’t entertaining?! It’s impossible! It’s at least impossible to finish that sentence before I slap you in the mouth. As corny as it is, how can you not get amped by the “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!” speech? Watching it again almost inspired me to drive to the airport, steal a jet, and fly it up the butthole of an alien spacecraft. And the ending is entirely satisfying. Obviously, there are stupid things that happen in this movie, but none so stupid that they ruin the experience. I would say it was probably in bad taste for the president to joke that he was in bed with a young brunette to his wife. Not because adultery is bad (he is the president, what do you expect?), but because the young brunette was his nine year old daughter. I don’t get behind the idea that the super advanced aliens wearing the biomechanical armor can be knocked unconscious for several hours by one punch from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Probably not as much as I wouldn’t get behind the idea of letting the drunken guy who can’t even formulate the sentence, “I’m a pilot. I can fly,” without stumbling into the driver’s seat of a jet fighter. Also, early on in the movie, it’s a little on the nose to have one of the scientists playing the R.E.M. song “End of the World”.
The performances did exactly what they were supposed to in this movie. You probably couldn’t say that any of them impressed, but they all performed adequately. It’s kind of hard to say who the main character in this movie is though because they have about 4 main characters in separate stories that come together at the end. You have Will Smith’s story, Bill Pullman’s story, Jeff Goldblum’s story, and Randy Quaid’s story. Will Smith was just becoming a superstar around this point, but he show’s what makes him a superstar in this movie. Both charming and funny in his role, he makes for a very likeable character. I had problems with other people in his story though. First, Vivica A. Fox. She’s pretty and dances in a bikini at one point, but I had already gotten fairly mad at her for her reaction to Smith getting called to the base when the aliens showed up. Bitch, you want to marry a guy that’s in the military! What do you think’s going to happen when a threat to America shows up? Also, Harry Connick Jr. was usually really annoying, definitely not funny, and possibly gay. Something about the way he kept calling Will Smith “Big Daddy” – in a post BioShock world – seems gay to me. Pullman was strange to me in this movie. He didn’t do a bad job, but he’s got this smug raspiness to every line delivery, making ever sentence end with a smug sounding “uh”. His wife also made me mad because she was so naïve that, when Vivica A. Fox said that she was “a dancer”, this bitch automatically goes to ballet. Yeah, ‘cause that’s a common occupation in America. Also, his daughter was Mae Whitman, who was in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. That’s all I have to say about her. Goldblum acted just like Goldblum, but he was good at it. His dad was a little weird. I don’t know if this is how Judd Hirsch always acts in movies, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Jackie Mason was unavailable. Quaid plays a good drunk, but I hated pretty much everyone in his family. His younger son was a pussy and his daughter was a whore. Well, she never had sex with anyone in the movie, but she did fall in love with and try to have sex with about three different guys through the course of the movie, and usually within 5 minutes of meeting them. I also assume that James Duval (who played Miguel Casse, the oldest son) never really got famous because the world already has one Keanu Reeves and doesn’t require another.
Independence Day still stands up as the shining example of how to get past the limitations of your story with fantastic special effects, spectacle, and all around fun factor. Even after all these years, it still stands up as the most fun disaster movie that I was able to think of. It’s what Roland Emmerich does best. I probably don’t need to recommend this movie as I have a hard time believing that anyone has managed to not see it by the point in their life where they could be reading this. If you haven’t, do it. Independence Day gets “You Don’t Actually Think They Spend $20,000 on a Hammer, $30,000 on a Toilet Seat, Do You?” out of “Yes yes. Without the ‘oops’.”
Congratulations goes to my sister, Katie, for not only guessing my favorite disaster movie, but also guessing my runner up disaster movie, Armageddon. That just proves that she’s Country Strong.
Let’s get these reviews more attention, people. Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense. Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated. You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle). Don’t forget to leave me some comments. Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.
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