Men in Black

Koochy Koochy Koo.

(1997) Sci-Fi Comedy (Columbia) Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub, Siobhan Fallon, Mike Nussbaum, Jon Gries, Sergio Calderon, Carel Stuycken, Fredric Lane, Richard Hamilton, Kent Faulcon, John Alexander, David Cross, Keith Campbell, Patrick Breen, Becky Ann Baker. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

1998 OSCAR NOMINATIONS
Best Musical Score – Danny Elfman
Best Set Decoration – Bo Welch, Cheryl Carasik
WINS – 1
Best Make-Up – Rick Baker, David LeRoy Anderson

Conspiracy theorists are generally certain that our planet has been visited by extraterrestrial life; some of them go so far as to say that these visitations come with government help and co-operation. There are those who think that there is an entire agency who oversees the extraterrestrial presence on Earth.

James Edwards (Smith) is a cop. He’s a very good cop; dogged, determined and a pretty smart cookie. When he runs down a suspect whose eyes blink the wrong way, he inadvertently is exposed to something that certain agencies don’t want him to see. Agent K (Jones), a man in a terribly fitting black suit, questions Detective Edwards about the affair, taking him to see Jeebs (Shalhoub), an informant of the NYPD who is also, it turns out, an informant of the Men in Black, the agency Agent K works for. When K gets what he needs, he wipes the memory of Edwards but because he’s looking for a new partner, gives him a business card. Edwards’ unorthodox way of thinking grabs the attention of K’s boss, Zed (Torn). Edwards’ identity is completely erased from existence and he becomes Agent J.

When a Bug lands on the planet and takes over the skin of Upstate New York farmer Edgar (D’Onofrio), it sets the stage for an all out catastrophe. See, the Bug kills a member of the Arquillian Royal Family in order to get a hold of an inexhaustible power supply called the Galaxy. With the Bugs at war with the Arquillians, this presents quite a dilemma; the Arquillians don’t want them to have it and are willing to destroy the Earth to make sure they don’t get it.

With the help of a New York City coroner (Fiorentino) who gets caught in the middle, the Men in Black run down the Bug but he is in the course of getting away using spacecraft hiding in plain sight of all New Yorkers. It is up to the Men in Black to save the day and protect the planet.

Based on a comic book originally published by Malibu Comics which was in turn bought by Marvel, the success of this movie would lead Marvel to go ahead and sell the rights of Spider-Man to Columbia and X-Men to Fox, leading to the explosion of comic book films that dominates the box office landscape today. It also made Smith one of the biggest stars in Hollywood where he also remains today.

The movie displayed a kind of ironic sense of humor that melded the 60s and the 90s, bringing the kitsch of that era back in a big way. The New York World’s Fair of 1964 was on display with the New York Pavilion Towers figuring prominently in the climax, but also the overall architecture of the fair which was echoed throughout the MIB headquarters in Battery Park. Well, below it actually. Strangely, it’s largely because of this era dichotomy that the movie doesn’t feel dated as we approach it’s 20th anniversary in 2017.

The chemistry between Jones and Smith was genuine and worked nicely, the laconic and humorless Jones making an able counterpoint to the ‘tude of Smith who was as modern as they get in 1997. Although they would reprise their roles in two more films to date, the first movie was really the magical one in this regard.

In many ways this movie is to science fiction what Ghostbusters is to horror. The genre elements are as good as they get, but the humor makes this movie as much fun as a movie can be. While folks don’t really consider this an Oscar type of picture, it actually won a golden statuette and was nominated for three all told. In this case, all of the honors it got were richly deserved.

WHY RENT THIS: Incredible kitschy fun. Will Smith kicks off his film career with a classic. Quirky sense of humor.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: At times can be a little too far-out for the mainstream.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s some violence and a little bit of foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Originally, Clint Eastwood was offered the part of Agent Kay but he turned it down, preferring to concentrate on his directing career.
NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: All editions include a plethora of special features, including a music video, storyboard to finished product comparisons, mini-featurettes on the special effects and other technical areas of the movie and the Blu-Ray includes an “Ask Frank the Pug” feature which is a great time-waster for about 35 seconds before it gets old.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $589.4M on a $90M production budget.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix (DVD/Blu-Ray rental), Amazon (buy/rent), Vudu (buy/rent),  iTunes (buy/rent), Flixster (purchase only), Target Ticket (purchase only)
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Addams Family
FINAL RATING: 8.5/10
NEXT: Waiting for Oscar continues!

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Alfred Molina is disturbed to discover that Nicolas Cage has blue balls.

(Disney) Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci, Toby Kebbell, Alice Krige, Omar Benson Miller, Jake Cherry, James A. Stephens, Gregory Woo, Peyton Roi List, Nicole Ehringer, Ian McShane (voice). Directed by Jon Turtletaub

 The world is a magical place, even the parts we can see. There exists a whole world, however, that we can’t, one in which the impossible is commonplace, and in that world good battles evil incessantly, barely in the lead although not without cost.

Balthazar Blake (Cage) is one of the three apprentices to Merlin (Stephens) – yes, that one – back in 840 AD, along with Veronica (Bellucci) and Horvath (Molina). All of them are in conflict with Morgana le Fay (Krige), who wants to enslave the world by using a spell called The Rising, which will raise the dead into an army for her. She probably should have put in a call to George A. Romero.

Horvath betrays his fellows and Veronica takes a bullet for Balthazar, winding up imprisoned along with Morgana in a grimhold, a nesting doll that acts like a prison. As the years roll by, Balthazar adds more of Morgana’s followers to the grimhold as additional layers to the doll until he finally captures Horvath himself.

But Balthazar’s work is far from done. The dying Merlin told Balthazar that only one sorcerer can truly destroy Morgana and it is Balthazar’s job to find him. It only takes about 1200 years, but Balthazar finally locates him. Talk about determination!

Young Dave (Cherry) goes on a school field trip and spends most of it trying to get the attention of a comely young blonde named Becky Barnes (List), whom he asks in a note if she’s interested in him as a friend or a girlfriend. Becky checks the appropriate box, but a coincidental wind blows the note all the way to a curio shop named Arcana Cabana which is run by – you guessed it – Balthazar. Using the test of a dragon ring, Balthazar realizes that Dave is the one he’s looking for; the Prime Merlinian. Note to writers: where do you come up with these names? It sounds like something dreamed up by a panel of math geeks at an MIT calculus conference.

Because he’s nine (or ten, depending on who you ask) years old, Dave manages to release Horvath from the nesting doll…err, grimhold, and all Hades breaks loose. Balthazar and Horvath manage to be sucked into a magical urn that will hold them for ten years to the day. Why? Just because.

Ten years later, the adult Dave (Baruchel) is a physics nerd at NYU when he runs into old flame Becky (Palmer) when he runs a physics primer for English majors, which is an idea which no doubt the administrators at NYU are scratching their heads and wondering “wha…?” about. Although apparently without a job and no visible means of support, Dave has placed several eight-foot Tesla coils together in an unauthorized lab in a subway turnaround. Why? Just because.

Of course, now the two wizards are out of their urn and looking for that grimhold, Balthazar so that he can protect the world and potentially destroy Morgana once and for all, and Horvath because he wants to resurrect Morgana and destroy the world. Why? Just because.

Balthazar knows he needs to teach Dave the basics of magic and quickly because (queue serious music) the fate of the world rests in his hands. Why? Just…oh you know what comes next.

The trio of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Turtletaub and Cage has previously teamed up in the two National Treasure movies, which I found to be a seriously entertaining take on the Indiana Jones movies. This one is less effective although it still remains entertaining. This movie is a bit of a mash-up between genres, an action movie blended with a fantasy movie, sort of like Harry Potter in Die Hard. Expelliarmus mothereffer!

Cage and Molina are effective here, and you get the feeling there is a bit of a nudge and a wink in their work. They spend most of the movie lobbing plasma balls and one-liners at one another. Baruchel is less effective for me. He is the perennial dweeb in movies over the last few years, and I can understand why he was cast – Dave is certainly a science nerd. However, his hunched over posture, perpetual whining coupled with his inability to make intelligent choices, made it very hard for me to root for him. I was kind of hoping that Cage would turn him into a newt and save the day.

There is plenty of eye candy and most of it is pretty decent, although there’s a ton of plasma balls, fire streams and lightning bolts hurtling around. Some real cool sequences include a Chinese dragon (which while it was chasing Dave, made me think inadvertently of the much better movie How to Train a Dragon which featured Baruchel’s voice) and a steel eagle from the Chrysler building. There is also an homage to the sequence in Fantasia that inspired this movie which I enjoyed.

The trouble with movies about magic is that sorcerer’s should be pretty much invincible, particularly ones as powerful as these. For example, there is an extended car chase sequence in the last third of the movie; very well done, but it seemed to be fairly pedestrian. They could have easily done a chase with something more imaginative – invisible horses, beams of light, anything – and you would think that a sorcerer could wave his arms and turn the car into a mule.

Similarly, a crucial plot point involves Becky moving a satellite dish so that a spell can go awry. Wouldn’t the sorcerer casting the spell be able to move the satellite dish back into place? After all, they’ve been moving objects telekinetically throughout the movie.

But I digress. Anyone going to a movie like this and expecting Scorsese is a lunatic. This is Bruckheimer, and he excels at movies that entertain on a visceral level rather than inspire or educate, and that’s fine folks – we all need mindless entertainment once in awhile. However, I would have expected a movie about magic to be more, well, magical. Definitely this is entertaining, but it could have been done so much better with a bit more imagination.

REASONS TO GO: Cage and Molina do some pretty solid work here. The eye candy is effective.

REASONS TO STAY: Baruchel is a bit too whiny and foolish to get behind as a heroic lead. The whole car chase sequence seemed unnecessary and could have been handled more imaginatively.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a bit of fantasy violence and some scenes of brief sexuality, but for the most part should be okay for audiences of all ages, although some of the creatures might be a little scary for the littlest of kids.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The character of Abigail Williams is based on an actual person who was accused of being a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in the 17^th century, ran away and was never heard from again.

HOME OR THEATER: There are enough sequences that have the gee-whiz factor that I give a slight nod towards seeing it in the theater.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: My Life in Ruins