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Wack in black

Men in Black: International, the fourth film in the MIB franchise, is the second-worst MIB film after Men in Black II. The original and Men in Black III were the only good ones. International amounts to a wasted opportunity, an admirable attempt to restart things with a mostly new cast that doesn’t quite hit all its marks.

Replacing Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones— along with Josh Brolin as the young Tommy Lee Jones—are Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, as agents H and M. H is the bold, brash, superhot dude of MIB, having saved the world years ago with Agent High T (Liam Neeson) of the London MIB branch from an evil alien force called the hive.

M is the latest recruit, having found MIB’s secret headquarters after years of searching. As a child, M witnessed an alien encounter—and saw her parents getting their minds erased—starting a curiosity fire that doesn’t get put out until Agent O (Emma Thompson) gives her a chance to basically save the world as a probationary agent.

Tessa Thompson is great in anything she does, and she is great here. She brings a fun energy to the role, with a slight edge of wiseass. Hemsworth is a performer who seems to like himself a little too much, but still manages to be likeable. The two make for a good pair, as they did in Thor: Ragnarok. While it’s fun to see them standing next to each other again onscreen, it’s a little baffling what the screenplay puts them through.

Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, two of the many writers on the original Iron Man, take a shot at bringing the duo on a global adventure. The globetrotting, which includes Italy, Paris and Marrakesh, lacks a true sense of purpose, a surprising thing since they’re trying to save the world.

After a fairly strong start, the action, presented by director F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton), devolves into sloppy boredom. With each passing location it seems as if the movie is directionless, merely picking new locales and switching up the scenery to disguise the fact that it is actually going nowhere.

A “mole in MIB” subplot mystery doesn’t help matters much, with the mystery of who the villain is being ultra-guessable. A finale in Paris—after an opening in Paris—offers few surprises and no thrills. The movie ends with a big old “Huh?”

The effects are pretty good, with a few new aliens, most notably a little one named Pawny (voice of Kumail Nanjiani), adding sporadic fun. I also got a kick out of a mini-alien posing as a beard on some dude’s face.

F. Gary Gray has another sequel on his resume, the lousy Be Cool, a sequel to Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty. Sonnenfeld, of course, directed the other three MIB films. Conclusion: F. Gary Gray needs to cease and desist directing sequels to Barry Sonnenfeld films.

This project was originally supposed to be a crossover with the Jonah Hill 21 Jump Street franchise. I’m guessing Warner Brothers soured on the notion of turning MIB into a joke, figuring they could reboot and regenerate revenue on the franchise while staying within its own established universe. Given Gray’s failed film, they figured wrong. No doubt, a Men in Black comedy with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill would’ve been automatic box office gold. This one is a dud.

In order to milk more money out of this franchise, it looks like they’ll have to reboot again. Let’s go with the 21 Jump Street idea, Warner Brothers. You really have nothing left to lose on the MIB front at this point.

Godzilla semi-sucking, Dark Phoenix bombing, and now this. This summer movie season has been a cruel, unforgiving place for big movie franchises. Ω

“i can’t help but think a magic hammer would get us there faster.”

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2Aladdin Will Smith’s strange, big, blue Genie turns out to be the surprising highlight of the fair-to-middling Aladdin, the live-action remake of the Disney animated classic that was big for Robin Williams. Smith does just fine in the role Williams voiced in 1992, and the character gets fleshed out in a manner that is genuinely moving at times, even if his blueness is perhaps a bit creepy from some angles. (And it looks like he’s pushing a big poop out of the top of his head thanks to that hairstyle.) In fact, if they decided to make a horror spinoff where the blue genie starts biting people’s heads off, that would be kind of awesome. He’s scary already. Director Guy Ritchie goes the full musical route, and while he has a reasonably talented cast on hand, the whole enterprise feels a bit on the unnecessary side. It’s overlong, and one cast member in particular ultimately pulls the picture into the unfortunate zone. Mena Massoud makes for a halfway decent Aladdin, while Naomi Scott provides a luminous Jasmine. Both do good jobs singing the famous songs, and they most certainly look the parts. Their magic carpet ride while belting “A Whole New World” is charming, and they make for a cute couple. It’s a shame that it’s all in the service of something that, no matter how much money is being thrown at the screen, feels hollow.

3The Dead Don’t Die The zombie genre gets Jarmusched with mild levels of success in The Dead Don’t Die, an often funny, sometimes scary and always amusing horror-comedy effort from director Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch has done horror before, most notably with his atmospheric vampire flick, Only Lovers Left Alive and, some could argue, with the disturbing death meditation Dead Man. His latest effort is as strongly satirical as the director has ever been: The world is falling apart politically, socially and environmentally, and its inhabitants are too slow and dimwitted to really do anything about it. Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny play Sheriff Cliff and his deputies Ronnie and Mindy in a typical American town called Centerville. The pulse of the town is severely laidback and barely beating, with much of one’s day revolving around when to get that good coffee and donuts from their cultural hub, the local diner. Due to polar fracking, the Earth spins off its access, and the dead begin to rise. The days become longer, the electronic gadgets we rely upon go dead, and people start getting unsolicited neck bites from formerly live neighbors. Characters like those played by Murray and Driver react in a way that is so disorganized and disconnected, they practically deserve to die. This, perhaps, is a not-so-veiled statement about our current administration’s strange attitude toward global warming. Actually, there’s no doubt, Jarmusch hates Trump—and this is the first anti-Trump zombie movie.

2Godzilla: King of the Monsters Somehow, Legendary Pictures found a way to totally muck up the greatest Godzilla premise ever with Godzilla: King of the Monsters, a movie that is all things great and terrible at the same time. This movie has some terrific monster battles in it, and the special effects are mind-bogglingly good. Godzilla squares off against such legendary foes as multiheaded Monster Zero and Rodan, while getting some much needed assistance from the great Mothra. All of these monsters, including the title character, are wonders to behold when on screen. As for the internet bitching about the movie’s appearance being dark and murky, I think the darkness was fitting, made things scarier, and didn’t diminish the effects. But, and this is a big but, I cannot endorse this movie overall. The human stuff in between and during the fighting is dreadful. Homo sapiens get too much screen time. The writing and staging for that screen time is so bad that the film derails every time it goes to military types in a war room. The plot has the world in a state of disarray after the 2014 attacks on San Francisco and Las Vegas depicted in the last Godzilla movie. OK, that’s kind of cool. How do we dust ourselves off and find a way to coexist with the likes of Godzilla and big monster moth things after the decimation of the Bay Area? Apparently, according to writer-director Michael Dougherty (Krampus), we deliver inane dialogue real slow-like and inexplicably play with a sonar gadget that supposedly calls out to the monsters in a manner that either chills them out or fires them up. Once the gadget thing sends out a call that basically kicks off the monster apocalypse, the action goes from nicely staged monster battles featuring beautiful close ups and battered landscapes, to a bunch of lost actors sitting around in a situation room observing and commenting. It’s a wasted opportunity for monster fun ruined by stupid humans.

4John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum The gun opera that is the John Wick franchise keeps on rolling and shooting with gory gusto, and some great dogs to boot. When we last saw Keanu Reeves as John Wick, he had himself a little time before getting excommunicated from the assassination club The High Table and all its perks. His killing a fellow assassin within the walls of the Continental Hotel means no more room service or dog sitting. He’s got a multimillion dollar bounty on his head and no place to kick his feet up. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum picks up right where the last one left off, with a battleweary Wick running in the streets, putting distance between himself and the hotel and trying to figure out his next big move. Credit Reeves for playing this part perfectly, on a level where we can believe that this dude who keeps getting stabbed and shot can turn on his power afterburners and keep shooting people in the face. Wick basically runs from one action set piece to another, with returning director and former stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski making each of those set pieces a thing to behold. A gun battle inside a weapons museum counts as a franchise highlight, as does Wick’s gunfight atop a motorcycle. And, yes, dogs play a major role in the shenanigans, which makes this dog person very happy.

3Rocketman Dexter Fletcher, the very same director who helped take a shit on Freddie Mercury’s legacy with the dumpster fire that was last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody— he finished the job after Bryan Singer was fired—fares much better with this celebration of Elton John. The movie tells John’s story through musical numbers and fantasy sequences and, as it turns out, it’s a good approach to the life of Elton John. John is played by Taron Egerton (who starred alongside John in the wonderfully weird Kingsman: The Golden Circle), and there will be no lip-synching here, thank you very much. Egerton confidently sings John’s tunes, including “Tiny Dancer,” the title track and, unfortunately, “I’m Still Standing.” Jamie Bell plays John’s writing partner, Bernie Taupin, and the movie works as a nice testament to their contributions to rock’s legacy. Egerton goes full blown rock star in this movie, which features some nice, artistically exaggerated recreations of key moments in John’s history. The results are a lot of fun, even with some slight miscasting (Bryce Dallas Howard as John’s mom!). It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a bold and interesting approach to a rock biopic that has more in common with Across the Universe than Bohemian Rhapsody.