The Reel World

It was the summer of 1997 when audiences were first introduced to the Men in Black.  Will Smith was on the fast track to being a box office star, and Tommy Lee Jones, well, he’s always been awesome to watch on the screen, and he seemed to be having fun in this popcorn blockbuster.  It was no surprise that the film became a hit. As for the sequels that followed, for me they just never could touch the fun energy that the first one had.  I always loved the potential the first film had, as it gave us a world filled with an array of aliens and worlds the Men in Black could venture too, but instead the films that followed played it safe, and really, that’s a shame.  Now over twenty years later and in the fourth installment, we get a soft reboot/sequel that gives us some fresh new faces and new aliens for them to pursue, but is it too little to late, or is this the jolt the franchise needed?

The film opens up and wastes no time introducing us to MIB agents Agent H (Chris Hemsworth) and his superior, Agent High T (Liam Neeson).  Here we see the duo setting up to intercept an alien group known as The Hive.  This opening sequence is a bit lackluster, and then the film oddly does a flashback to 1996, where we meet a young girl named Molly.  We get to see her first interaction with an alien as well as her witnessing the MIB in action (erasing her parents’ memories of their alien experience).  What kind of sucks is this is all the time we spend with Molly as a young girl. Instead the film jumps to present day and shows us Molly (now Tessa Thompson) is now obsessed with finding evidence to prove the existence of aliens as well as becoming a covert agent with the government that specializes in dealing with aliens.  It’s those in-between years where I feel there is a great story that could have been told, but there is no sense in crying over missed opportunities.

So, the announcement of this film was of particular interest of me. Of course, I have familiarity with the character of Shaft from childhood. Not to mention the remake that wasn’t really a remake that premiered in 2000 starring Samuel L Jackson. The most interesting thing about the film is that it brings three generations of the character under the umbrella of one film, with Richard Roundtree and Samuel L Jackson reprising their roles as the titular character and introducing Jesse T Usher into the franchise as the latest addition to pick up the mantle. Another interesting thing is that despite it being a sequel it shares the same name as the 2000 version. Though this does introduce a certain level of confusion, it just proves just how bad a mother- shut-your-mouth Shaft is; he can name his movies whatever he wants.

The film follows John Shaft Jr. (Usher), a data analyst with the FBI. When we meet him, it is clear that he lacks the swagger that we are used to associating with the character. He is afraid to assert himself to his boss, who undervalues him. He hates guns, and most importantly he struggles talking to women. I don’t know about you, but that is not the offspring I would have envisioned for the great John Shaft. Part of that may be the fact that the two haven’t laid eyes on one another for 25 years.

“Something weird is going on.”

If you’re having a bit of zombie fatigue, you’re not alone. From movies to TV shows and video, we’ve had well over a decade of being blasted with the undead. Basically it’s the sub-genre that just won’t die.  I love zombie movies, but I feel audiences could use a bit of a break from them for a little bit and let another monster indulge in the spotlight.  With that being said, when a good one comes along, I’m still going to want to give it a try.  Already this summer we have Black Summer on Netflix that is worth giving a binge, and now hitting the cinemas we have The Dead Don’t Die.  Never in a million years would have guessed that writer and director Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Broken Flowers, Stranger Than Paradise) would ever tackle this kind of horror film, but it is a welcome surprise. What’s more enticing about this film is the unique cast that has been put together: some familiar faces from Jarmusch’s work like Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Waits.

When the first trailer of the Secret Life of Pets film came out I thought that the Illumination and Universal Pictures were onto something.  I think every kid and even adult wonders at some point what their pets’ lives are like when they are not around.  This was what I felt could have been the pet equivalent to the Toy Story franchise.  As it would turn out, the first film started out strong, but for me it quickly fizzled into an absurd storyline.  Kids seemed to like it, and really that’s all that mattered, but personally I felt there was enough strength in the material where we could have gotten something great.  Now we have Secret Life of Pets 2. Does the film manage to pull off something great, or is this a big pile of stale kibble?

The film picks up with Max (Patton Oswalt), a tan and white terrier, and his best canine pal, Duke (Eric Stonestreet) living the life together. It doesn’t take long before things change in a big way.  Their owner gets a boyfriend, and not long after the pair end up having a baby.  We already know Max isn’t keen on sharing affection, so how is he going to adjust to having a new baby coming into his home?  Really, I liked where this could have gone, to get to see a boy and his dog film from the perspective of the dog and just seeing the challenges the puppy has to adjust to this new human in their lives…we get some of that, and then the film takes a twist by the family randomly planning a trip to head out to the farm/woods.

“The mind is a fragile thing. Takes only the slightest tap to tip it in the wrong direction.” 

The simple reality is that this franchise should have ended with Days of Future Past. That would have been a good point to call it quits; it had a good resolution and all, but the chasing of additional box office revenue has forced us to have to endure two more mediocre additions to the franchise. Though Dark Phoenix is better than Apocalypse, and it is a better telling of the Dark Phoenix Marvel Storyline, Fox’s second bite at the apple is still not the film that I hoped it would be. Fortunately, with Marvel recovering the property we are undoubtedly due for another reboot, and perhaps the third time will be the charm.

"All you have to do is learn to connect the dots and get ready."

Noble Lincoln Jones hasn't had any real feature experience in the director's chair. He's notable for some rather well-known country music videos, and now he's made the jump to the feature film world. It shouldn't come as any complete surprise that his first effort would be a rather small-budget independent film like The Tomorrow Man. The movie offers a pretty simple premise with a limited cast, so there aren't a lot of moving parts here. It's the kind of playground where a young filmmaker gets to show us what kind of a storyteller he is without the grand distractions of a seasonal anchor film and all of the trimmings that entails. Can he take a small amount of money and show an audience that they're in good hands? Jones passes most of these tests, and for most of the 90-plus minutes he enthralls us with clever characters and superb acting. How many more resources do you need if you have John Lithgow, arguably at the peak of his skills, and Blythe Danner, who has thrived on this kind of independent project? The Tomorrow Man makes the case that these two actors are pretty much all that you need if a director can avoid falling temptation to some silly plot device or curveball that might lesson all of the good faith he might have earned for most of the film. Ooops.

"My name is Elton Hercules John."

When I was a kid he was Captain Fantastic, and I spent a lot of time and money on Elton John records since the early 1970's. I was a 12-year old kid when Goodbye Yellow Brick Road came out, and I've been a pretty huge fan ever since. I'm a veteran of about 50 concerts over the years, and I was looking forward to this movie in the same way I used to anticipate a new Elton record for decades. Most of the time I was rewarded with brand new songs that would quickly become part of my own story growing up. Once in a while I was disappointed. I hated Victim Of Love so badly that I threw the record across the room, and there is still a stain of peach paint on my copy. I wish that I could say that the film Rocketman was more like those wonderful vinyl treasure chests, but it was more like the latter, and no one is more frustrated than I am. I wanted terribly to love this film. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a middle finger to Elton's fans, and I think it's going to be a long, long time before I get over it.

Back in 2014 when Godzilla came out, I had a blast with the film, though one of the major complaints people had seemed to have been that there was not enough fights or not enough of Godzilla.  Personally I didn’t see how this could be a complaint to take too seriously; after all, if you watch some of the older films, we’d only get maybe 15 minutes of screen time, but thankfully this wasn’t always the case. Now with the release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the human story is a bit of an afterthought, and it’s the titans that carry this blockbuster bonanza.  Is this a good thing?  You bet it is, though I’m sure there are plenty of stuffy critics who will complain about there being too many monster fights; for those critics, this movie wasn’t made for them.  This is a movie made for the kid in all of us who wanted to believe in the possibility that giant monsters could exist, and seeing these hulking giants duke it out while destroying cities in the process just made us smile.

Right from the get-go we get to see Godzilla in action, though it’s back in 2014, and Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) is trying to find his son during the chaos of the final fight from the previous film. Then we get a 5-year time jump where we meet up with Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) and her mom, Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), who are living in a Monarch facility in China.  Emma and Mark are clearly having difficulty handling the loss of their son, and Madison is simply doing what she can to maintain a happy balance between the two.  But the film doesn’t waste much time with this, as we are immediately introduced to the ORCA device, an invention Emma and Mark created that was originally meant to communicate with whales, but Emma has figured out a way to use it to communicate with the MUTO’s of the world (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms).  And it’s early on where we get to meet one of these new organisms, and it’s none other than Mothra.  But just as we’re enjoying getting to see this new incarnation of Mothra, a group of environmental terrorists led by Jonah Allen (Charles Dance) come into the Monarch facility and kidnap Madison and Emma along with the ORCA device. Yeah, basically this film is not messing around when it comes to story as it keeps things at a nice fast pace so we can get to the monster action.

If you think the movie Get Out was shocking, wait until you see the diabolical Ma. You won’t have a clue to what this party woman has cooked up until just the right moment.  Then, as it unravels, even some of the hints are misleading.  When you do know the truth, then it’s just one sick scene after another. Being transferred from LA to a new school in her mom Erica’s (Juliette Lewis), small hometown in Ohio, Maggie gets noticed by a clique.  The in-group members, Haley (McKaley Miller), Andy (Corey Fogelmanis), Darrell (Dante Brown), and Chaz (Gianni Paolo) are the wild bunch of the school crowd who like to get drunk and smoke pot.  But, Maggie likes that they were the first to greet her and makes friends with them. She also has an instant connection to Andy.

Maggie gets invited to a gathering at the rock pile, but first the group needs to get some booze.  When Chaz fails to convince someone to purchase it for them, Haley tells Maggie to try.  Approaching Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer), the woman just pushes her off, but as luck would have it she recognizes some of the other group and decides to purchase liquor for them. But the second time it happens she tells the kids that they have to drink it at her house so she knows that the driver will not drive drunk when they leave.

"I think it's time I told you about Aladdin, the princess, and the lamp."

There is very little new coming out of the Walt Disney Studios in recent years. For the last few years and into the near conceivable future, there has been a concerted effort by The Mouse House to remake as live-action films the vast library of animation classics. It pretty much started with the huge success of The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau in 2016. The film did a wonderful job of bringing these jungle creatures to life through the modern-age miracle that is CGI. Somehow the film captured the very heart of the original animated feature and immersed us more fully into that world. No, it wasn't the first time Disney recreated an animated feature with live-action releases. But it was so dominant at the box office that it appeared to set the mold for these conversions going forward. This summer Disney set an ambitious schedule, delivering no less than three of these remade films to the summer schedule. In March it was the tepidly received Dumbo. In July it will be The Lion King, where Disney is playing with the most successful classic animation film in box office history, and eyes will be keenly on how that unfolds. With Elton John's recent resurgence with a new Farewell Tour and the upcoming bio-film Rocketman, The Lion King might deliver Sir Elton a hat trick, or at least a large hat filled with money. Set between these two films is another Disney animated classic: Aladdin. Will that deliver the same three-point bounty to Disney this summer?