#i love this movie. critic reviews say it is full of cliches and tired story tropes.

[thebirdandhersong]

"the earth trembles at the passing of the humble fruit fly" is objectively one of the funniest lines I've heard in a movie because it's delivered with such solemnity. my brother quotes this at least twice a year and has done so since 2013. yes, this is my pitch for you to watch epic (2013)

[minaminokyoko]

Men in Black: International--A Spoilertastic Review

Disclaimer: I AM FUCKING BIASED AS HELL.

Ahem.

That's important to announce.

If you at all follow me, you know I am one of the harshest critics of fiction simply because I do this shit for a living professionally, so not only do I know what to look for, I know when I'm being duped.

I knew going in that MIBI was going to be bad.

But.

I fucking love Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson.

So here's the thing: this is a bad, lazy sequel. It's no worse than just your average bad, lazy sequel to a beloved franchise. You've seen these kinds of movies a dozen times and you'll see them a dozen more.

And I think the people making the movie knew that, and that's why they hired Hems and Tessa.

Damn near every moment of these two darlings together is fun as hell.

And everything else is basically trash.

Therefore, it's a battle between my critic brain and my goblin brain.

My critic brain hates the movie. My goblin brain thinks it was harmless fun. So please take that into account for my overall opinion on the flick.

So here we go. Naturally, spoiler alert.

Overall Grade: C-

Pros:

-Let my shallow ass get this out of the way first: DEAR FUCKING GOD CHRIS HEMSWORTH IS A MOTHERFUCKING WALKING, TALKING BUFFET GOOD LORD AND ALL HIS ANGELS HE IS JUST BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, AND FUCKING DESSERT AND I WANT HIM TO JUST SLAM ME AGAINST EVERY WALL IN THIS HOUSE AND TEAR ME APART HE IS WALKING AROUND IN A FUCKING SUIT THE ENTIRE MOVIE AND HE JUST. LOOKS. SO. FUCKING. DELICIOUS. IT'S. NOT. FAIR. THAT SMILE AND THOSE EYES AND HIS CHIN AND HIS PECS AND HIS ABS AND HIS LEGS AND HIS ARMS AND JUST FUCKING BURY ME IN THE DESERT FOREVER BECAUSE I WANT HIM SO BAD KILL ME DO IT. THE THIRST IS REAL AND IT SHALL NEVER BE QUENCHED.

-Ahem. There. Now then, literally the biggest and only selling point in this movie is the insanely good chemistry between Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth. It's damn near as good as them in Thor: Ragnarok. As I said above, I really think the filmmakers took one look at this "script" and they knew goddamn well they had nothing at all. It's dripping with cliches and tired ass ideas and lack of imagination, so they knew the only way to get it made was to have two utterly charming actors who play extremely well off each other, and that is Tessa and Hems. These two are having such a good time that you actually can't help but have a good time despite the fact that you are watching a completely LAZY fucking movie. Agent M and Agent H aren't fully formed characters at all, but their interactions are a sheer delight. They play off each other beautifully and even when the movie is vomiting yet another cliche at your feet, you can't help but still enjoy the two of these doofs. It's the movie's only saving grace. I shit you not, if it were any other pair of actors, I would give this movie an F. No lie. Tessa and Hems saved the film, hands down, no contest, because they're charming and cute and you want them to be together. It's like the movie is a shit-covered diamond--the shit is everything around them, and Tessa and Hems are the diamond in the shit. You gotta stick your hand in something gross to get the valuable thing out of it, and it is for this reason I would tell people to just rent this movie. It's so not worth box office pricing, but it is worth a look-see because the two of them are a blast to watch, honestly. And do yourself a favor and look up some of their interviews too. They are cute as a button together.

-The only creativity that I saw was the faux villains and the final Hive monster, basically, but said creativity was eye-catching. It was a unique concept to see these sort of celestial beings and they were captivating each time they were on screen. Their powers were very, very cool. The final Hive monster is nothing new if, like me, you watch or play a lot of video games, but it did still have a great presence and felt extremely alien and threatening and scary.

Cons:

-Literally everything else about this movie blows. Fucking. Everything.

-The dialogue for the most part is tired. It's so tired. It's loaded with dull one-liners. Sometimes I think scripts mistake quips with actual jokes. These characters have almost nothing of interest to say in the whole film, and mind you, I do know that sounds like it makes no sense, but it's true. Almost every interesting thing about these characters is off-screen. Seriously. The backstories sound way more interesting than what's presented, and do you know why? Because this fucking movie TELLS YOU EVERYTHING. There is almost NO showing. It doesn't hit any emotional bits. It just loudly announces them like my favorite bit from Futurama: "You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!" That's the biggest problem here. There are Captain Obvious statements fucking everywhere, and what's worse is any emotional beats of connection are also loudly announced in cliche fashions and there's almost no weight given to M or H as characters as a result. It's just noise. Most of the dialogue in the movie is white noise you don't at all need to hear.

-All the cool shit about M and H is withheld. We understand M's motivations just fine, but H's are not dealt with, and that's frustrating because he seems to be fascinating offscreen. For example, being the dude that saved the world might be big shoes to fill and he seems as if he was having trouble coping, or he got a big head from the experience and got sloppy because he was the golden boy. In the hands of an actual competent writer, this could have really, really worked well. But they skip over it. Over and over again, this lazy ass movie skips shit we should have seen, like M growing up trying to tell everyone what she saw and being ridiculed. I wanted to see her long search for MIB. I wanted to see her learning to hack and investigate like Harriet the Spy or something. It could have been a great, compelling way to feel like I understood her, because I would have been the same way. I love that H was just a big old goober, playboy with a heart of gold, and I wanted to see the two of them get closer than they did. H's "big old heart" speech was hella charming. So charming. I like that soft smile he gives her when he talks about the universe being one big chemical reaction. That was a real moment, and sadly, it's one of the few we get with the two of them because the movie is in such a rush to get to the next action sequence. But, hey, if I'm being honest, I only saw this movie so I had full permission to write a zillion fanfic chapters shipping them, so I will just bloody fill the gaps in myself.

-This movie is so goddamn fucking predictable it gave me a headache. Hey, remember the trailer? Well, there. You saw the movie if you saw the trailer. You're sitting there going, "They can't possibly be this boring and transparent about Liam Neeson being the bad guy, can they?" Yep. They fucking can. It is so obvious that I would argue this might be an MIB movie for kids. The whole thing spoonfeeds you every bit of info. There is no mystery and no surprises period. It makes you want to bang your head on a wall with how obvious every single story beat is.

-The ending is nonsensical bullshit. There, I said it. Fuck you, movie. You don't get to try for the emotional wham of separating the partners because you didn't properly make them fucking partners. J and K's bittersweet ending made sense because the two of them went through HELL together, and while they bickered, they liked each other. The other thing is that their skillsets matched their actions at the end. K was exasperated and tired, but he was a good teacher and he knew J loved the job. J was the job, and that fit his character. K had been through years and years of battles, and he needed to rest, and that fit his character. Slapping H with the role of director does not fit his character. We see him as a rough and tumble cowboy type of agent. He parties and he smiles and he kicks ass. What the fuck about that makes you think he should be in charge when Agent C is like right there? I actually sat there waiting to see if they had a post credit scene that undid it because it made NO SENSE. The only reason they busted up the partners was an attempt to echo the original movie. That's fucking it. There is no reason that Agent M can't stay in London, and there is no reason Agent H would accept the leadership position when he's all about fun times and explosions. It's a load of crock and I do not accept it at all, so you'll see me rewrite that shit in fanfics as well.

-All of the above adds up to the final point that this is definitely an unworthy sequel to the original. Not MIB 2 or 3, mind you. I hated MIB 2 so much it made me not watch MIB 3, and from what I hear, MIB 3 was marginally better but still not good. The movie is doing new things, and yet it feels a lot like a small child trying on his dad's shoes, for God's sake. It literally stops entire scenes to fellate the original movie with cameos and borrowed plotpoints or references, and it takes you out of the experience. There's nothing unique about this movie except for who is starring in it. That's the tragic part. I had a good time, but in the end, it just reminds you how far we've fallen and why Sonnenfeld should have been the one to handle this sequel. He had a very, very sharp creative mind and that's why MIB is in its own category as an action-comedy. It was clever and interesting and it actually made you care about your leads, and it didn't rely on nothing but a cliche storm. So I am sad that it's not going to do well at the box office and I'm sad it wasted two extremely talented actors on a sad, boring project that isn't worthy of the name it's using, but at the same time, I signed up for this, so oh well.

In the end, this is a movie that would be intolerable but it's got two strong leads that keep you smiling anyway. I cannot recommend it at all unless you are a die-hard Hems and Tessa fan the way that I am. If you are, hey, you'll still be annoyed at how lazy it is, but you'll get a giggle out of them being cute as hell. There are raw materials in this movie that are in fact good, but it's all carried out sloppily as possible, and that's truly a shame.

Here's to all the fanfiction my stupid ass is about to write.

Kyo out.

[jasonfry]

I’m seeing movies I should have seen before -- and writing down my impressions as part of my overdue education.

Edge of the City (1957)

What a fascinating, complicated movie -- now as well as in its time. It was groundbreaking then for its warm portrayal of an interracial friendship between Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier) and the troubled Axel North (John Cassavetes), as well as for showing Poitier in a position of authority among New York City stevedores. The movie was a commercial failure despite getting rave reviews -- in part because it wasn’t screened in the south.

But later criticism of the film wasn’t quite so full of plaudits, pointing out that Poitier’s character is undone by the “Magical Negro” trope, with Tommy dying so that Axel can find himself. It’s a criticism that was heard in the 1960s about Poitier as an actor: he made a string of black-white buddy movies that mainstream audiences applauded but critics in the black power movement saw as feeble and safe when the time for restraint was past.

That’s a debate where I’ll learn more by listening than talking, so I’ll confine myself to observing that there’s a lot to admire about this movie regardless of character critiques. First of all it’s frankly gorgeous, with sumptuous blacks and beautifully composed shots. It has real drive from the stylish opening credits, which contribute to the sense of weighty events being set in motion that will prove hard to stop. And pretty much every performance is terrific: Poitier and Cassavetes, of course, but also Ruby Dee, Kathleen Maguire, Jack Warden, Robert F. Simon and Ruth White.

Two scenes in particular stood out to me. First there’s Poitier’s understated acting as Cassavetes finally lets go of the family secret that’s been haunting him -- without saying a word, you watch him go from puzzled to pained to sympathetic while always calculating how to help. And then, even better, there’s Dee’s transformation from baffled grief to cold fury as she realizes how thoroughly Axel has failed Tommy. 

What makes that scene so powerful is that Dee, Cassavetes and Maguire are free to act without having to compete with the movie’s score, which is too often yowling and overwrought. I don’t know enough about movies to trace when and why movie music stopped being intrusive and overly busy, but I’m sure glad it happened.

Edge of the City also made me realize that for all the progress I’ve made as a moviegoer, I still have some big gaps. Edge of the City is generally discussed in the context of Poitier’s other buddy movies, which I haven’t seen, and compared to On the Waterfront. (Ditto.) So! Work to do!

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

My family watches It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas eve, so by now I’ve seen it at least a dozen times -- enough to appreciate its drum-tight, almost perfectly constructed story. Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, from a decade earlier, is  not perfectly constructed. It’s basically two movies welded awkwardly together -- a romantic comedy starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur and a courtroom farce in which Cooper, playing the supposed simpleton Longfellow Deeds, takes on the whole crooked system. 

The movie’s fun and marks the first of Capra’s consciously crafted social statements, but the narrative 180 is jarring and Cooper’s big speech doesn’t make the catatonic silence that precedes it any more believable. Also, Longfellow sure hits a lot of people. I don’t think you’re allowed to do that in a courtroom, no matter how many populist addresses you’ve just delivered.

Still, it’s entertaining enough. Lionel Sanders is a hoot as the cynical flack, one of many fine performances. The scene where Deeds realizes the woman he loves has betrayed him is particularly fine, and makes up for the parts that don’t work. Cooper’s performance in that scene is all reaction, and wonderful work. 

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968)

A limp lifestyle comedy made so mainstream audiences who’d never seen hippies could laugh at them. The sad thing is you can see a better movie trying to fight its way out of the mess. Peter Sellers is good as the repressed lawyer unhappy with his drab life but incapable of changing it -- his slow burn in the first half of the movie is fun to watch. The problem -- actually it’s more than a problem, it’s a fatal case of timid storytelling -- is that slow burn never leads to an ignition. We never see Sellers actually take a deep breath and make a move on his brother’s hippie girlfriend (Leigh Taylor-Young, who’s lovely); instead they’re suddenly just together. Similarly, when Sellers gets tired of having his apartment overrun by stoned, self-absorbed moochers, he doesn’t explode -- he just sulks a bit and things go back to how they were before. There are multiple scenes where we should get a delicious payoff for all Sellers’ good work -- a valve finally blowing, a catharsis, a realization. But the movie never has the guts to go there. It repeatedly settles for safe, easy and lame.

Bullitt (1968)

I thought I’d seen this Steve McQueen cop classic with its legendary car chase through the streets of San Francisco, but I was wrong. The movie’s perfectly suited for McQueen -- his Frank Bullitt navigates an uncertain and dangerous world with an icy stare that’s the only hint of all the emotions he keeps bottled up. (In other words, he’s Steve McQueen.) The story’s spare and businesslike too, with a refreshing lack of cop cliches. Rather than overheated How Dare You Sir-ing with supervisors, the story advances through the sometimes slow, always deliberate work of cops and doctors doing their jobs. It only falters when it drags us back to a DOA romantic subplot with McQueen and the luckless Jacqueline Bisset, who’s saddled with a truly awful What a Wicked World speech. McQueen ignores it; the viewer can only try to do the same.

If the car chase isn’t quite the 11 minutes of perfection it’s made out to be -- even a non-nitpicker will spot the green VW bug that manages to be everywhere at once -- it’s still better than most anything you’ll see from filmmakers who’ve had a half-century to take notes. I think it works so well because, like the rest of the movie, it excises dramatic clutter. One unlucky motorcyclist aside, there’s a minimum of empty garbage cans in weightless flight, acrobatic pedestrians diving miraculously away from bumpers, and dopey close-ups of speedometers. With all that shorn away, you get a visceral sense of being there with the drivers, in danger as they improvise. The sound is similarly spare: the music doesn’t intrude but lets the sounds of tires and engines do the work, and Bullitt and the driver he’s chasing remain silent. Instead of a bunch of yammering about what we already know, we get a single look in a rearview mirror and a hint of a smirk. It’s all we need.