Men in Black 3

Are you looking for a fun film experience? I usually am, especially considering how rare they are. Men in Black 3 is one of those fun movies. The last decade of film has grown increasingly dark. Movie studios think that audiences want this, that we like "gritty" films (gritty being a code word for realistic but usually ends up being gloomy). Looking at the box office returns during the last decade, they may be on to something. But every once in a while, a fun, grit-less flick comes along to give us all a little break.

MiB3 is not perfect, however (it is nowhere near as good as the original but worlds beyond the sequel). The jokes are inconsistent. I only laughed or chuckled audibly 3 times. But MiB3 makes up for this in its cheerful tone. This is a huge credit to director Barry Sonnenfeld. He not only salvages this script, he elevates it. MiB3 was written by Etan Cohen who wrote Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy (go rent/buy them right now if you haven't seen them) so I came in with some high hopes. I was let down. Now anyone who has seen the films of Barry Sonnenfeld will recognize his hand all over MiB3. He makes brightly colored movies (another rarity these days) with fun characters (villians included) and a fast pace and light tone. While this is not one of his best, it has the same feel as his best (Get Shorty, Big Trouble, The Addams Family).

Will Smith brings his charm after a 4 year absence from theaters (I'd disappear after Seven Pounds too). I like that he plays Agent J as a little jaded. He's been in the agency long enough to not be overly surprised anymore. Much of the fun of the movie is his extreme casualness in dealing with the situations. Shooting aliens is now just a job.

Tommy Lee Jones (one of my favorite actors) is sadly not in MiB3 very much. This is necessary to the plot since Agent J is traveling back in time to save him, but I did miss his presence.

But lucky us, we get to watch the awesome Josh Brolin channel Tommy Lee Jones. The reason Brolin works as the young Agent K is not because he does a flawless impersonation of Jones (it does help though). It's because he's not the same man a the Agent K of the future. Brolin infuses Jones' gruffness with real feeling and it's a sort of relief from the deadpan Jones of the previous films to see Agent K joke and laugh and smile.

At the end of the day, this is a good movie. I would recommend MiB3 to anyone who enjoyed the first film in the series. And let's all just try to forget that Men in Black 2 ever happened.

7.5 out of 10

Wrath of the Titans

It's better than "Clash of the Titans." While not hard to do (most movies are better than "Clash"), this is the probably the highest praise I can give to this unnecessary sequel. "Wrath of the Titans" follows the newest adventures of Perseus (played dully, as usual, by Sam Worthington) as he attempts to collect three godly weapons in order to save his father Zeus from Hades and Ares. Should he fail, the uber-god Kronos will be unleashed to destroy the world.

"Wrath" has many issues. One of my biggest problems was that the gods' power is prayer-based. People are praying to the gods less and less and as such, they are becoming more mortal. Hades and Ares seek to release Kronos, because he'll grant them immortality (presumably without prayer). Yet, they existed before mankind without a problem. They imprisoned Kronos before mankind. So even if Kronos can keep a god alive, he was not there to do so between his imprisonment and the advent of humans. Also Kronos needs the last of Zeus dwindling power to free himself, so how could he be powerful enough to grant immortality to prayer-based gods after he kills everyone on earth?

Now some people might say, "Doug, you're over-thinking this. It's just a mindless action movie." Whenever someone says that a movie is mindless (regardless of genre), they're really saying it's a bad movie. Movies can be uncomplicated and require little thought. But movies rife with plot holes and contradictions are poorly written. There is a difference. "Wrath" is the latter.

This is not to say that "Wrath" is without any worth. I'll just rattle off some of my issues with it, so I can clear the air and focus on the good stuff. (1) Everyone speaks with an English accent except for 3 or 4 actors. And those few really sound out of place. Distractingly so. (2) What are Perseus' strengths and weaknesses? In the same scene he blocks himself from a fireblast with a piece of wood (without burning his fingers somehow) but he follows that up with being thrown through a 4 foot thick stone wall unscathed. But wait, less than a minute later he is thrown through another, thinner wall and is injured by that. Sometimes, he is super strong; sometimes, not. Whatever suits the "drama," I guess. (3) Are you interested in mythology? Don't be. This is a movie about people and gods that happen to have the same name as other ancient people and gods. The similarities end there. (4) Every attempt at humor falls flat. Every single one. (5) The cyclops may be the worst CGI I've seen in a large budget movie in years. (6) The minotaur looks like Sloth from Goonies with driftwood glued to his head. (7) At the end, Perseus is told to find the power inside him. In a movie about gods, I should expect a deus ex machina, but this was completely unearned. Perseus should have spent the whole movie finding that power so he could wield it in the climax, not just having Zeus say, "Oh. By the way, Perseus, you've got god powers now." (8) The movie thinks you're dumb. Everything will be explained to you. Every action taken will be announced before it is taken. Feel free to start the movie at any time be it scene 1 or 20, some character will tell you what has happened and what is going to happen. Ugh. (9) When a god dies and turns to dust, it is done using the worst CGI I've seen since the cyclops.

Now that I've got that out of the way, there are some good bits in "Wrath of the Titans." The actors that play the gods are all phenomenal. Liam Neeson is appropriately kingly and powerful as Zeus. Bill Nighy hams it up as Hephaestus. Ralph Fiennes is creepy and still sympathetic as Hades. But the stand out among the gods is Edgar Ramirez as Ares. He always seems on the edge of violence and actually gives weight to his poorly written "daddy issues" subplot. (Ramirez is an actor to watch for. Do whatever you can to buy or rent or whatever a copy of the 3 film series Carlos. He's incredible in it.) And as actors go, Andromeda is back but with a new actress in the role. Alexa Davalos has been replaced (I'd say upgraded) with Rosamund Pike. Pike is an actress who shines in every film she's in and she does not disappoint here. She makes wretched dialogue sound natural. She receives the bulk of the reaction shots in the film, not just because she's wonderful to look at but because she's usually the only one acting. Some of the action is good, some is too shaky to tell what even happened (minotaur fight). But when the camera stops moving, we are treated to some very nice shots. The best shots are the epic scale establishing shots usually showing some temple or landscape from great distance.

I don't recommend "Wrath of the Titans," but I also don't discourage it like it's predecessor. It's large-scale Hollywood mediocrity. It's the kind of thing you watch when there's nothing else to watch.

5 out of 10