Men In Black: International

Score:  C

Directed by F. Gary Gray
Starring Tessa Thompson, Chris Hemsworth, Kumail Nanjiani, Liam Neeson
Running time: 115 minutes
Rated PG-13

Long Story Short:  Men In Black: International, the fourth film in the franchise that started in 1997, has new leads Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth trying on the suits.  Unfortunately, the series' special spark has been lost along the way, and this is really more of a standard sci-fi action comedy that happens to have familiar gizmos and terminology.  Perfectly fine for a family with different expectations looking for fun, avoid this if you are drawn to it by the franchise.


Thanks to a childhood encounter, Molly (Thompson) knows that alien life is among us on Earth.  As a young adult, she struggles in vain to join the CIA and other agencies she thinks can help her find them again - until she stumbles back upon agents of the Men In Black.  Using her iron will, and lack of Earthly attachments such as a family, Molly joins the mysterious group and is renamed Agent M.  Sent to the London HQ, Agent M finds two legends of the MIB, Agents H and High-T (Hemsworth and Neeson).  The appearance of an extremely dangerous alien species known as the Hive - which the London agents once fought - throws M into the thick of the action.  And her presence, a new one in the MIB, soon becomes essential as the threat seeks to take advantage of the status quo.

Men In Black: International, at least in terms of its cast, is a reboot, with all-new performers including its two leads.  Hemsworth and Thompson have already starred together, in fact, in 2017's Thor Ragnarok.  This time it's Tessa Thompson who takes the role of 1A; she's both the newcomer to MIB, and also the one who gets the most background.  Unfortunately, Molly (or Agent M) doesn't amount to much, particularly when compared to Will Smith's original, fellow-outsider Agent J.  It's nice to have a woman lead, and a determinedly independent one at that, but she ends up feeling more like a collection of modern memes than a unique character - the thing MIB is best known for.  Hemsworth himself essentially plays to type, the overconfident hero type whose pratfalls provide much of the film's humor.  These characters match well in temperament, but due to the script and even at times their own acting, there's too much going through the motions.  Rafe Spall plays a Neville-like MIB rules nag, while Kumail Nanjiani adds a bit to the comedy voicing a tiny alien.  Liam Neeson seems born to play an MIB leader, but I would actually have preferred to see more of Thompson.

Men In Black: International is a decent enough entertainment - particularly for those new to the franchise - but also a reminder of how even unique brands like this one can become stale.  On the surface, MIB: International has a rock-solid premise in both its plot and its new characters.  The series gets a change of scenery, from London to Marrakesh to Paris, and as mentioned the leads are among today's most appealing talents.  But for one reason or another, this turns out to be a fairly generic sci-fi action comedy with few if any memorable scenes or other elements.  Other than your typical, lazy blockbuster writing (and even a bit of pedestrian acting), I blame this on three main issues: focusing on plot over style and atmosphere; focusing on action over comedy; and allowing the leads to play themselves rather than stretch into weird new characters.  Yes, the original MIB had its share of action, but most of it was pretty silly.  With the sheer amount of action and CGI in sci-fi movies that have come along since then, we really needed more of the original's bizarre feel and more dirty, gritty visuals that actually felt more real precisely because they didn't rely so much on CGI.  The plot also becomes overly complicated, and yet a key twist is so obvious that the attempts to disguise it worsen the situation.  After all that, it's really not as terrible as I've just made it sound.  The dialogue, while not great, at least isn't cringe-worthy; some of the action is fun, there are clever new aliens, and there's some good humor, too.  But this is certainly not a film for fans of the original; it is much better suited to a family audience, one more familiar with Will Smith as a Genie than a Man In Black.

***

Men In Black: International is a generically disappointing sequel in its content, but also represents some interesting trends in the summer's movie landscape.  The box office has simply imploded - with Avengers being the one, massive exception - as sequels like this, Dark Phoenix and Godzilla have found poor critical reception and an audience that is perhaps even more jaded and uninterested.  It's also part of the debate over whether it's better to create a continuing narrative line through a franchise - represented by Marvel's Avengers, of course - or start with fresh stories and new actors within an otherwise familiar world.  International is a bit of a hybrid, though with its new cast - and perhaps even more importantly, different tone and style - it's more like the latter.  Above all, though, Hollywood studios will hopefully get the message that a handful of franchises are creatively worthy of continuing - e.g. Avengers, Toy Story - while most of the rest should just lie dormant for a while in favor of *gasp!* new ideas.




* By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59441109

Late Night

Score:  B-

Directed by Nisha Ganatra
Starring Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, Reid Scott
Running time: 102 minutes
Rated R

Long Story Short:  Late Night teams up two stars of different generations - Thompson and Kaling - in an intriguing premise about a faltering late night host and her new writer, respectively.  Kaling is still struggling to adapt to the feature film format, both as an actor and a writer, but Thompson is brilliant and carries it easily.  Not as funny as it should be, but still fun.  Recommended if you're in the mood (once it's on Amazon Prime).


Katherine Newbury (Thompson) has become a victim of her own success.  The only woman host of a network nighttime talk show, Newbury has been showered with awards and commands respect from her peers.  But while she sticks to her guns, modern tastes have evolved and her ratings, trickling downward for years, reach a new low.  After a confrontation with a network executive, Newbury half-heartedly tries to change things up on her show, particularly behind the scenes - including the rare hiring of a female writer, Molly (Kaling).  With competition and ratings pressures breathing down her neck, Newbury struggles between a desire to return to the top of the industry and a need to remain true to herself.  Both new (Molly) and old (her husband) do their best to convince her those need not be mutually exclusive dreams.

Late Night has significant roles for only its two main players, with a handful of supporting characters sprinkled in.  Emma Thompson plays the late night show host Katherine Newbury, and her performance is the best part of the film.  She effectively conveys a sense of power and control, crucial for a part that is the center of a little universe.  By definition, she is an almost larger than life persona, but still conveys both Newbury's strengths and weaknesses - with real subtlety.  When personal drama rears its head, things could easily have soured if not for her steady and authentic path from pain and regret to release.  Perhaps because Thompson is so good, Kaling comes off as not quite ready for Hollywood prime time.  She is likable, but unable to assemble a coherent character from her individual scenes.  Partly this is because of the script (which, well, she wrote), but it felt to me like she was perhaps trying to disappear into her previous, TV roles rather than to treat this one as a distinct entity.  Most of the supporting characters are Molly's fellow writers, the best of whom is played by Reid Scott, even though it again plays a bit too much like Kaling's male companions on her TV shows.  John Lithgow also appears as Newbury's husband and does very well, particularly in developing a deep, genuine personal background for her.

Late Night is a fine dramedy, but one that coasts on its premise and lead performance while failing to realize its comic potential.  This really is Mindy Kaling's film; not only did she write and star in it, but the premise is semi-autobiographical (she, too, started her career as a "diversity" hire).  It's ironic, then, that the strongest aspects of the film are Emma Thompson's late night host and the twists and turns it takes as she attempts to make her show relevant again.  As mentioned, Thompson's acting is just magnetic, and without it the film would have floundered, perhaps fatally (she also happens to be by far the funniest person in the cast).  There are plenty of social media cliches thrown around, but also some interesting maneuvering, such as Thompson's cat-and-mouse game with her lunkhead potential replacement (played by Kaling-collaborator Ike Barinholtz) and an impromptu stand up performance to blow off steam.  Kaling, in terms of her on-screen character, fails to hold up her end of the bargain, though.  The film tries hard to establish the writers' room as the other main element, but Kaling just fails to shine through and there are no saviors to be found in the supporting cast.  She writes her own scenes as if they were for her TV characters, and that simply doesn't work in a feature film, on the big screen.  The Thompson parts, which are new to her, are not affected by that frame of mind (for the most part).  In spite of its unique premise, the film follows a familiar formula, with Thompson and Kaling's characters parting ways before reuniting at the end.  But even if it's forgettable, it's at least pleasantly done.

***

Late Night, considering its intriguing premise and talented creators, is disappointing yet still a fine watch.  Not only is it Mindy Kaling's first major foray into the movies, it's also distributed by Amazon Studios.  While some of Amazon's first tries have been big successes - Manchester By the Sea, The Big Sick - Late Night seems clearly better suited to Amazon's Prime streaming service rather than as a feature on the big screen.  Mindy Kaling is very talented and I like when studios give people like her chances on neat ideas like this.  But Late Night probably would have benefited from some assistance from a few more seasoned film veterans, too.  I'd recommend this one, but only once it comes to Prime and you're looking for something a little different from the comfort of home.




* By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60628920

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Score:  B-

Directed by Simon Kinberg
Starring Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain, et. al.
Running time: 114 minutes
Rated PG-13

Long Story Short:  Dark Phoenix brings the longest (semi-)continuously running superhero franchise, the X-Men, to a close.  While the same characters and actors are here, Sophie Turner's Jean Grey gets a promotion to lead, resulting in some interesting psychological drama that nonetheless struggles to connect to the others.  Despite some bland characters (esp. Chastain's villain) and some awkward writing, stalwarts McAvoy and Fassbender keep it interesting, with some fun action to boot.


In 1992, a space shuttle launch goes awry, and the world looks to the X-Men for help.  After a long, difficult struggle, Professor Xavier, or "X" (McAvoy) has turned public opinion of his fellow mutants to the positive, and so he sends out his team to make good on this perception.  The team finds a strange cosmic "cloud" near the shuttle; while they manage to save the crew, Jean Grey (Turner) ends up absorbing this cloud and somehow survives.  Returning to their home, Grey finds that the force inside her has heightened her psychic powers - but also overwhelms her at random moments, at the same time resurfacing dark, dormant memories.  Fearful of her own new strength and unpredictability, Grey flees the mutant school.  With her mutant peers unable to help her and regular humans hunting her, hidden visitors from another world seek the force that haunts Grey - to use for their own nefarious ends.

Dark Phoenix returns the main cast of X-Men heroes from the most recent films - though it juggles their roles a bit - and adds a few well-known faces to the mix.  Sophie Turner, just introduced as a young Jean Grey in the previous film, Apocalypse, is the lead.  Although relatively new to this franchise, Turner has plenty of blockbuster experience through her role as Sansa in Game of Thrones. With little to work with in established character, the film focuses on her distress at the emergence of long-suppressed, tragic memories.  Turner communicates this pain effectively, but unfortunately isn't able to make up for lost time in developing chemistry with her cast mates.  This works in her favor ultimately, though, as she is truly an outlier, and thus a stranger, even among her fellow mutants.  McAvoy and Fassbender continue to be great in their roles as Professor X and Magneto, respectively. Fortunately, we get little of their traditional conflict.  Instead, McAvoy is adept in showing first defiance, then growing acceptance of a grave past mistake; Fassbender's role is much more restrained this time, and more interesting for it.  The other mutants are less impressive.  Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique has a brief part (you can almost feel her back pedaling out of the franchise), and Nicholaus Holt's Beast is still pretty generic.  Jessica Chastain, similar to Apocalypse's Oscar Isaac, is an astounding waste of tremendous talent on an incredibly flat villain role.

Dark Phoenix is indeed one of the more somber blockbusters in recent memory, one that falls short of the franchise's standards yet still has a variety of strengths to boast.  Taking place a decade after Apocalypse (there's little effort to age the characters, including actors who've played them now for 30 "movie" years, but it didn't bother me), there is a feeling of foreboding from the very start.  Partly this is from an intro of a car crash involving a little girl (who survives); partly this is from the soundtrack (by the famed Hans Zimmer), which is good but not very subtle.  Even the X-Men themselves are curiously anxious before going on the space rescue mission - one that seemed fairly tame compared to the incredible violence they experienced in Apocalypse.  Still, the film is based on a solid idea: while the stakes are predictably high, it largely hangs on personal drama - how one mutant deals with her traumatic memories, and the way her mutant family responds, always well-intentioned but often backfiring.  The villain is as bland and uninteresting as in the previous film, but Dark Phoenix wisely puts much more focus on the X-Men themselves.  While it is largely missing the franchise's usually good, wry sense of humor - due to its absence rather than failed attempts, fortunately - the action is also improved, and it's (mostly) more restrained.  The space shuttle rescue is exciting, and several sequences in the middle of the film - of the X-Men trying to rescue/capture Jean Grey - are more effective because of their brevity.  The final battle goes longer, but its theme of fighting for each other - more than against an enemy - also makes it more engaging.  It's difficult to ask a character/actor who was previously a mere supporting player to carry her own film - much less a franchise's finale - and while Dark Phoenix struggles with this, at under two hours long, it doesn't push it, either.

***

Dark Phoenix is not among the top X-Men films, but as I have written this review, I've realized it's also not half bad, either.  Critics are scornful of it, with a 23% Rotten Tomatoes score, but I think it is far, far better than Apocalypse, which managed a 47%.  Frankly, it's even better than the MCU's Captain Marvel (78% on RT) from earlier this year.  And when you consider that this went through significant production development hell, the results are even more impressive.  As a finale to the X-Men franchise, starting way back in 2000 and comprising ten films (not including Deadpool, which to me is its own thing), is it satisfying?  Not entirely; the franchise has seen far higher quality, and the dark mood dampens any triumph.  Still, its modest, fairly quiet ending is also appropriate and even positive in many ways, particularly the last scene between McAvoy and Fassbender bringing back memories of Stewart and McKellen.  Certainly give this a try in theaters if you've been following the franchise; even if you're just in the mood for some good action, you could do far worse.



* By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60081715

John Wick Chapter Three: Parabellum

Score:  B

Directed by Chad Stahelski
Starring Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishbourne, Halle Berry
Running time: 131 minutes
Rated R

Long Story Short:  Chapter Three is the latest entry in the increasingly popular John Wick action franchise starring Keanu Reeves.  Parabellum gives us more of just about everything we've come to expect from these films, for better and worse.  The action is even more wildly creative than before, yet eventually keeps going too long; the crime world mythology gets intriguingly disrupted, yet finds some dead-ends, too.  If you're looking for a good action movie, though, look no further.


Excommunicated from the criminal underground, hitman John Wick (Reeves) begins this chapter on the run, with one hour before a $14 million bounty on his head goes into effect.  Even with his impressive skills and numerous old friends, he realizes that he must flee from his home of New York City.  He believes his one chance for survival is to bargain with the mysterious head of the criminal High Table, known as the Elder.  With the help of an old friend in Casablanca, Sofia (Berry), he hopes to turn the tables on his supposedly rule-bound, but ultimately self-serving overlords.  Those shadowy forces, meanwhile, have come to New York to exact punishment on Wick's friends, setting up a bloody showdown when the Boogeyman - Wick - returns.

John Wick Chapter 3 returns prominent figures from the franchise's first two films, and adds a few interesting new characters to the mix.  Keanu Reeves reprises his role as legendary hitman John Wick, a cool, detached, slightly tongue-in-cheek hero he seems to have been born to play.  If you've seen the first two, you know what to expect: above all else, a great physical performance as the action hero, and he's pushed even further this time.  Apart from a brief but stirring part with members of his Belorussian past (and implied blood ties), we get little further personal development for Wick, but his breathtaking stunt work makes up for it.  Ian McShane gets a larger role this time as the crime hotel/ HQ manager, who finds himself no longer at the top of the bad guy food chain.  Less is really more with this role, even though he does a good job anyway.  Halle Berry, the most prominent new actor, gets a fairly cliched (and quite brief) role as Wick's old friend with a - surprise! - vaguely complicated relationship.  Far better is Asia Kate Dillon's "Adjudicator", an almost robot-like messenger for unseen puppet masters, who nevertheless seems to subtly take things more personally as she upsets the apple cart and things get messier.  Lance Reddick and Laurence Fishbourne, as hotel concierge and spy master, respectively, are welcome returnees in small roles.

John Wick Chapter 3 is an entertaining action film that boasts many of the strengths of its predecessors, but ultimately pushes it all a little too far.  The chief (guilty) pleasures of this franchise are the incredibly violent yet gorgeously, balletically-choreographed action scenes; Wick makes downing bad guys an art form.  As many franchises feel obliged to do, this third installment has more, longer, and increasingly extreme versions of this.  Particularly at the beginning, Reeves and his second unit are at the top of their game, starting with a brutal brawl in a library (!) against an enormous villain, the actor an actual NBA player (!!).  Moments later, there is a wince-inducing (yet amazing) knife battle and then a brilliant NYPD horse scene (no animals are harmed - they do the harming).  Yet later, the action becomes excessive: as ideas, the Halle Berry + attack dogs; armored superbaddies; and final martial arts showdown are also great, but they just keep going and going and going.  This is what deleted/extended scenes on the disc/download were made for!  Along with the action, the Wick franchise benefits from an intriguing crime-world mythology, placing the hero in a distinctive, rule-bound setting.  It's great to have the bosses from previous films (McShane, Fishbourne) suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs, particularly via Dillon's great performance.  But Wick's Casablanca detour doesn't really work well, and the ending's twists are rushed and felt a bit out of place with the franchise's style.  As exhilarating as much of the action in Parabellum is, unlike after the cliffhanger ending of the second film, I'm not starving for more just yet.

***

John Wick Chapter Three is an enjoyable film that, while representing a small dip overall, puts the franchise among the better, enduring action universes.  Clearly, Reeves and the team behind the action have both plenty of creative ideas to express as well as the skill and effort to execute them.  My primary advice would simply be to keep their ambitions in check, both in the sheer length of its incredible action scenes as well as in the continued development of the crime world plot.  Chapter 3 had the potential to be the best one yet, I would argue, if they simply tightened up the action and reworked the resolution a bit, shaving 15 minutes or so off the running time.  Still, this film and the franchise itself offer great lessons for Hollywood's action films in making high-quality, exciting and interesting cinema.  Recommended.




* By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59676695