Review of Men In Black III

Men in Black III adds emotional resonance to an already fun and groundbreaking franchise

I was still in college when the original Men in Black came out. Just in case you couldn’t count the wrinkles on Tommy Lee Jones’ face.

Josh Brolin is not going to get the credit he deserves for what he did. He didn’t just play a character, he played an actor playing a character. The problem is that after about 5 minutes of doing a spot on Tommy Lee Jones, it becomes normal. Kinda like in Lord of the Rings how I just started to accept trees were walking around and talking. His Oscar snub will make up for his Oscar nomination for True Grit after only appearing in the movie for about 7 minutes.

There are always plot glitches when dealing with time travel, but at the heart of it is that Will Smith needs to go back in time to save Tommy Lee Jones so he can save the world. In fact, it appeared as though the writers didn't even really care to make the time travel element believable. I guess once you accept that aliens are living amongst us disguised as postal workers, you set the bar of believablity kinda low. And for those of you up in that little four-dimensional ivory tower of yours, yes, there is “believable” time travel. Suck it. But as I was saying before, the believability of said time travel was low on the priority list for the writers, though I did appreciate the shout out to quantum physics and the multiple worlds theory. Instead, entertainment seemed to be their main focus and they most certainly delivered, possibly more so than in the original. I don't know. I can't remember that long ago. It was even moving in a rather unexpected way, however unbelievable.

Also of note was the rather impressive mockery of modern art culture through the portraying of Andy Warhol as an undercover Men in Black agent. Any mockery of modern art culture is worthy of some decent sized buggage.

8/10

Dustin Fisher

Review of What to Expect When You're Expecting

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is exactly what you'd expect

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is exactly what you’d expect. Unless of course, you expected it to be anything like the book. But I wouldn’t expect you would.

As an any-day-now to-be father, I thought what the rest of us fathers thought when we heard this movie was coming out. “Oh good! Now I don’t have to read the book.” This is incorrect. It is like seeing Oh Brother Where Art Thou and thinking “Oh good! Now I don’t have to read The Odyssey.” Or seeing Chronicle and thinking “Oh good! Now I don’t have to read the Bible.” There are pregnant women in this movie. After that, the director took some liberties.

I didn’t want to go see this movie because I knew exactly what was going to happen and I didn’t want Jenn to think it was OK to throw a book at my head because she was in labor. Sure enough, book thrown at head. Guy shakes it off. People in the crowd laugh. Jenn looks at me and smiles. Not OK.

The ensemble cast was also as good as expected. I still really like Anna Kendrick. I don’t think there’s anything special about Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Lopez. Elizabeth Banks is starting to vault herself over some other actresses to be among my favorites. And I had no idea Ben Falcone was this funny. Or what his name was or that he existed for that matter.

This is the latest movie trying to spin off of the success of the Love, Actually formula and a much better attempt than New Year’s Eve. At least I assume it is. I will never see that movie. The great thing about having 5 or 6 storylines in a movie is that you don’t really have to spend the time developing any of them. Each was amusing, some were attempts at touching, some were silly, but it was all as expected. Which is probably why that word is in the title twice.

5.5/10

Dustin Fisher