Men in Black III

Sunday was International Moon Day (yes, that's a "thing") commemorating the date that human beings first put boot-treads on the Moon. That historic mission figured fictionally in this movie.

Written at the time of the film's release. 

Time Wounds All Heels
or
"Don't Ask Questions You Don't Want to Know the Answer To..."

The third "Men in Black" film had to go somewhere else but up. The first two films were variations on the "illegal alien" theme about a government organization that monitored the activities of extraterrestrials in the world and specifically New York City, and revolved around alien invasions and the containment of said aliens. And when you've seen one alien invasion directed by Barry Sonenfeld, you've seen them all, and hyper-kinetically at that. And once it's been established that "aliens can be anywhere" the joke runs a bit dry pretty quickly, especially when the sub-species can contain pug-dogs and large cockroaches. The second film tried to expand on those concepts and felt a bit thin in the process, concentrating a bit too much on the secondary characters rather than the basic plot and the character interactions.

So, where does Men in Black III go from there?

One of the nice aspects of the series has been its ability to still think outside the box, while expanding the horizons of just what that box might contain, be it variations of scale and dimension, even if only in afterthought. With the infinite reaches of space seemingly exhausted, the group (based, supposedly on an idea by Will Smith) has the series going back in time. Naturally. It ostensibly revolves around an Earth-takeover plot by another alien (one must ask at some point "why always us?"), "Boris the Animal" (who seems based on the DC Comics "Hell's Angel in Space" Lobo and is played with growly gutteral responses by Jemaine Clement from "Flight of the Conchords") who escapes from his maximum (and we mean maximum) security prison to find the man who sent him there 40 years ago—Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). When he's unable to kill him here, the Boglodite finds another means to do so, and Agent J (Smith) wakes up the next morning, the only one with any memories of K past July, 1969. Agent K has been killed by Boris in the past, and J must journey back to try and save him.*

Once back there, J negotiates his way through a 1960's era way of doing things. Everything's a little less high-tech (a little less), but the MIB Agency is still there, as is the much younger Agent K (Josh Brolin, doing a bang-on interpretation of Jones) and J must solve the puzzle of saving the Earth (of course), while keeping K safe. The past sequences are great—Men in Black has exploited the "fish-out-of-water" angle perpetually—and new corners are being thrown out the whole time (My favorite being a brief glimpse of a "Barbarella"-type being escorted around MIB, and although Smith is a bit too "Red Bull" throughout the entire movie, check out his understated reaction to some Black Panthers). 

Great cast, too. Rip Torn is gone, but David Rasche plays him in the past, Emma Thompson is on hand as the new MIB head, Will Arnett makes a brief appearance as does Bill Hader. Toss in the chameleon-like Michael Stuhlbarg as an alien able to read multiple time-lines and there's always someone to deflect the eye, or hand things off from Smith.

But, the best thing about this "Men-in-Black" installment is resonance. The other two were fine, the first better than the second just for its novelty, but had a shelf-life of three minutes. Part of it is Sonenfeld's way of comically undercutting any meaning to the thing, by changing perspective—"you think you got a handle on it yet? Well, let me throw THIS at you!" The whole "the Universe is so big and cosmic that there's no way you can understand it because there's so many mysteries, so nothing is real" concept, which is the backbone of the series (and the source for most of its humor) leaves one with a feeling of "meh"—nothing matters in a vast uncaring, unfathomable Universe. 

Not here. The cold of Space has nothing to do with the leavening of Time, and, in this case, the franchise plays it straight, without a wink, a nod, a reveal, or a goo-spraying splat. For once, something really means something in the "Men in Black" Universe, and that venturing into uncharted territory makes the third time the charm.

  * I'm not saying anything here that isn't revealed in the trailer.

Best Defense

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. Best Defense is one of the very few films I have actually walked out on.

Best Defense (Willard Huyck, 1984) Time to pull the pin of this grenade, light the fuse on this bomb, pull the switch, and send it down the ol' chute. Actually it doesn't need my help at all. Best Defense, a comedy about incompetence in military contractors, * does its own job for it by self-destructing. 

 

Spear-headed by the husband-wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (they wrote American Graffiti, but are also responsible for the nasty screenplays for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Lucky Lady and, disastrously, writing-directing Howard the Duck.), this clunking, clanking film tells the story of Wylie Cooper (Dudley Moore), an engineer for a defense contractor going out of business. By complications of circumstance, he acquires the plans for a missile system, which his company then proceeds to nickle and dime into inoperability—yes, this is a movie supporting inflating defense contracts and profits to the expense of the soldiers who use the armaments. Hilarious. So funny, it kills. Sadly, it doesn't stray too far from the truth. The best comedic aspect to the sorry show is that Paramount Pictures evidently operates under the same philosophy.

Not sure what the story is, but, according to legend, audience previews for this cluster-bomb were so bad that Paramount—which must be blamed for shelling out the 18 mil' it cost to produce this—brought in then-as-hot-as-could-be Eddie Murphy as "Strategic Guest Star" to film comedic sequences (that was the intent, anyway) of him coping with the system in a conflict in Kuwait,** in an effort to salvage their investment.

Didn't work. It cost 18 million to produce, and got back 19 million in revenue, not counting publicity and promotion costs. One wishes one could say it was funny, but I didn't laugh once during the amount of time I watched it.

Confession time: This is the only time I have ever walked out of a movie (It was a free preview, so I had nothing to lose but time) before it was over. I couldn't endure one more second of it, and losing any more of my life...or my love of movies...to it.***

Best Defense was the worst offence.

Moore and Murphy, looking sheepish.

 

* Potentially, a good source for black comedy, but might have been funnier if just done as a documentary about "The Bradley."

 

** The only interesting thing about this film is that it shows sequences taking place during a fictional invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, seven years before the Gulf War took place. Defenders of this film—both of them—insist that this makes the movie special in that it "predicted" The Gulf War. In reality, it didn't predict anything. It just made a safe guess where a conflict could occur. It might not occur to those defenders that it is conceivable that Saddam Hussein might have gotten the idea from watching this movie; Patton inspired Nixon to invade Cambodia. Hell, Saddam Hussein might have LIKED this movie.

 

*** There was one other movie I walked out on, truth be told—Hollywoodland, starring Adrien Brody, supposedly about the death of George Reeves, but was so full of falsehoods that I didn't stay for the very end of the film, which would have depicted Reeves' suicide after several sequences that suggested it was murder.

Burn After Reading

Advanced apologies for the about-to-happen "Cloonification" on this blog—actually it won't be so bad, maybe three in the next week—but, I'm trying to post as much Clooney performances as I have for The Large Association of Movie Blog's "Acting School 101" featuring George Clooney. I've been missing a bunch of those postings with various actors and I've just done a podcast—which won't air until November, it's kind of a Big Deal—with MovieRob (who runs those things on the site) and I promised him I'd participate (Really, Rob, I will!)

Incidentally, as I mentioned so many of their films in this post, the Coen Brothers entire movie output can be found on this site, split between Part 1 and Part 2. Check them out.

This was written at the time of the film's release.

"Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, 'What the fuck.' 'What the fuck' gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future."

Miles from "Risky Business" (1983) written by Paul Brickman

Then there's the corollary to those hopeful words, the Coen Brothers' new film Burn After Reading. It's a comedy, so that means folks who swoon when they're making serious films, like Miller's Crossing, or No Country for Old Men will look at it like it's a red-headed step-child, along the lines of Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, or Intolerable Cruelty. Thing is, they're all products of the same sensibility; the perverse sense of the world that informed Blood Simple, and Barton Fink, Fargo, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? informs Burn After Reading, especially in this time of national dependence on the Intelligence Community.

But back to "WTF."** A lot of people say "What the Fuck?" in Burn After Reading. In fact, I'd have to see it again (not an unpleasant thought), but I got the impression that every single major character in the story says it at least once. And not in the good way of the opening quote that supposedly produces opportunity (though it might for those wearying "Up With People" souls who see every problem as an opportunity, and every half-empty glass as half-full).

No, it's usually uttered in shocked disbelief at the events that transpire. It's because Burn After Reading belongs to that sub-category of comedy (and tragedy) "The Incredible Mess." It's where the hopes and dreams of a dedicated few turn into a nightmare that no matter how hard they try, their efforts to extricate themselves only make matters worse. Fighting it is a losing strategy. "Yeah, sure, it looks like quick-sand; what's your hurry?"

CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) has been fired from his job and he's pissed enough to write a tell-all book blowing the doors open on the Agency. One thing he won't put into the book-as he's ignorant of the fact--is that his wife, Dr. Katie (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with friend Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney)--he's in the P.P. business (personal protection), and he's also cruising the Internet as one of Washington D.C.'s serial daters.

So does Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who works at the nearby "Hardbodies" fitness center and who is now turning to plastic surgery because she's taken her body "as far as it will go." She doesn't have the money for it, but hope comes along in the form of a disk of Cox's financial information that falls into the hands of fellow "Hardbodies" employee Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), who thinks he might be getting some sort of federal reward for turning it in, and hey, wouldn't that help pay for those operations? 

The fuse gets lit, as loyalties shift, panic arises, priorities change and worst instincts lead to "worser" consequences. That reward turns to a sense of entitlement and then resentment, then to ransom. The events are somewhat monitored in disbelief by the CIA (in the form of the incomparable David Rasche and J.K. Simmons), as things spin out of control.

Everybody's great, besides Rasche and Simmons. 

Clooney seems to excel with the Coen's—this is his third film with them, playing "idiots" as he calls them, McDormand amps up the energy of her previous Coen-work, Swinton seems less self-contained and goes for the comedy like never before, and Malkovich swings between coiled fury and exploding fury. But the stand-out is Brad Pitt's selfless performance as Chad, the personal trainer who could very well be "the stupidest person on face of the earth."*

His hair piled high and high-lighted, an i-pod constantly filling the empty space in his head, his body moving spasmodically with its energy, he can be counted on to think he's doing the right thing, when he couldn't be more wrong--he is everyman, trapped in a life that resembles a first home improvement project--quite oblivious to the fact that sometimes you only get one chance to get things right without the benefit of "rep's." There's a sub-text running obviously through the thing of "the self," with the main players obsessed with their bodies and their own interests. 

Washington D.C. makes the perfect back-drop for it. "Burn After Reading" is rated "R" for pervasive...you know.

* After Bill Pullman's character, Earl Mott, in Ruthless People (1986)

** Sorry about the "pervasive language," but, really--you see this movie, and you know that was the working title of this movie (a move that, if it was carried through, would have crippled the movie at the box-office by restricting advertising and such). I briefly considered not spelling out "the f-bomb" with the comic-standard "f@<#," but I figured...no, I'm not saying it again...but as the word appeared in a When Harry Met Sally Scene, I figured "if I use it there, I might as well use it here," pervasively.