Tag: Josh Brolin

Men In Black III

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsSequels and remakes seem to be all the rage right now. Will Smith’s obviously in need of a new swimming pool given this sequel to a 14 year-old original and a third Bad Boys instalment also on the horizon.

Men In Black III

“Is there anybody here who is not an alien?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bad alien guy escapes and starts changing the timeline. Enter “J” and a ton of gadgets and effects

See it if you like: the original, and silly time travel films which raise more questions than they answer

Ah – sequels, adaptations, remakes and reboots. The seeming life blood of Hollywood these days. MiB3 is yet another in this string, and a good ten years since the disappointing sequel to the original. The good news, though, is that 3 does what 2 didn’t – adds in a new twist.

The original sequel (is that a weird phrase?) was very much the first film all over again, but with bigger aliens. What we have here, though, are new ideas and a very entertaining back-story which actually develops the characters. The humour, however, is lacking at the start and some of the laughs are very forced. Partly this is due to predictability, and partly as some of the lines just aren’t funny.

After the half-way mark, roughly, things pick up. The pace increases, the laughs come more readily and the action is actually quite tense. The effects are, as ever, superb. Tons of different aliens, but some excellent set pieces as well.

Don’t bother paying extra for 3D though. I say this all the time as it’s an expensive, pointless novelty. I’d reckon there’s maybe a minute of footage in the entire movie with enough “depth” to make 3D worthwhile. I guess it’s up to you if you think this is worth paying more for.

I’ll try not to give away any more than is in the trailer (some of the scenes from which, incidentally, aren’t in the final cut). A nasty bad guy alien called Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) escapes from a prison on the Moon. He sets out to get revenge on Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) by wiping him from history. Only Agent J (Smith) remembers history as it was before the change was made and seeks out a time travel device to go back and fix things.

Josh Brolin is excellent as the younger, slightly less miserable Agent K. Just by the voice alone, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a younger Jones. What made K interesting in the first two films was how morose he was. The main focus of this third instalment is why. And the answer is a superb one which really helps wrap the trilogy up.

Any complaints I have are minor and two of them involve a lot of spoilers. The other is the gross under-use of K’s relationship with “O” (Emma Thompson in the modern day, Alice Eve in the past). Things are hinted at, and it’s obvious there’s something there… but so little that it makes virtually no difference to the plot. In other words, it may as well not have been brought up in the first place. It’s hard to tell if it’s just a red herring or a side-story that was left to wither. A shame either way.

The important thing is that both Gillian and I enjoyed it. Not just a third outing for the same story, but a good tale in its own right.

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True Grit / Drive Angry

I just spotted there were going to be eight films in the cinema this weekend that interested me. This called for an emergency trip to the Edinburgh Cineworld to offset this load slightly.

True Grit

“If you would like to sleep in a coffin, it would be all right.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: hard drinkin’, straight shootin’, man huntin’… erm… rootin’ tootin’ cowboy flick.

According to the blurb, this isn’t  remake of the 1969 John Wayne movie, but instead a new adaptation of the original source novel by Charles Portis. I heard an interview with one of the Coen Brothers recently, and he stated that they’d stayed close to the book including around 90% of the dialogue being lifted straight from it. The dialogue certainly is fantastic and one of the highlights of a great movie.

Now, I’m not a Coen disciple. In my opinion they’ve done some pretty good stuff (The Hudsucker Proxy) and some completely over-rated claptrap (I’ll be crucified for this, but I think Fargo is ****). I picked True Grit as it had had good reviews and because it started at a convenient time. I’m glad I did as I really enjoyed it.

As I said, the dialogue is a delight. If the Brothers tell the truth then the credit deserves to go to Portis for writing it so well. Of course, the delivery by the likes of Jeff Bridges (“Rooster” Cogburn), Matt Damon (Texas trooper LaBoeuf) and narrator Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) should also be credited in much the way that Aaron Sorkin‘s genius wouldn’t be as effective without the gifted casts of The West Wing or The Social Network.

I am not a fan of westerns, either, but the setting makes no odds for this as the story is good. A simple tale of revenge as Mattie hires Cogburn to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) for killing her father. The two don’t like each other, or Damon’s LaBoeuf who joins them, and the three play well off each other.

It’s a well-spun tale with a good ending (not the same as the Wayne version, and apparently that of the book) which doesn’t over-stretch itself or become maudlin.

Better than I expected and well worth a watch.

Drive Angry 3D

“Wouldn’t wanna be you when Satan finds out!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Things explode and people get killed and there’s some devil worship in there somewhere… and maybe a plot.

I really can’t be arsed with 3D films. This one claims to be shot in “state of the art”3D. How this is different from the 3D used in other films these days, I have no idea. Yes, I’m aware there are those filmed in 3D and those ruined by mucking about with the print in post-production to fake it, but they’re all just gimmickery.

The first thing you should do upon buying your ticket for Drive Angry is to place your brain into neutral and allow any sense of reality to ooze from your ears before the trailers end (and that ******* Orange advert comes on. Again.). You should now enjoy it immensely. Especially if you’re male and around 18 years of age. It’s that kind of film.

Nicolas Cage is a man on a mission, to rescue his grand-daughter from the clutches of an evil devil worshipper. He’s aided by a ridiculously hot waitress (Piper played by Amber Heard) and a couple of other buddies along the way. To tell you more would only give away as much as is in the trailer but as ever I’ll try to stay as spoiler free as always.

As a bonus for your money, there are two bad guys. The aforementioned evil devil-worshipping cult leader Jonah King (Billy Burke) and The Accountant played by a  magnificent William Fichtner. I’ve seen this man in a few things, including TV’s Prison Break and he is, frankly, the natural replacement for Christopher Walken. Cool, unruffled, slightly unusual-looking and capable of scaring the **** out of you. In fact, he’s so good in this film, that he runs the risk of doing what Alan Rickman did in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and stealing the show.

This is not a sensible film. There are no heart-wrenching performances. It won’t have you rolling in the aisles with laughter. What it will do – if you enjoy films like Death Race – is thoroughly entertain. It does get a little bit repetitive at points, and some of the action scenes drag a little too long. Or maybe that’s me having seen too many daft films.

Either way, it’s worth your cash. Although I still reckon it would have been every bit as stupid and enjoyable without forcing me to wear those bloody glasses for 100 minutes.

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