Men in Black II

“Men in Black II” (2002) assumes you saw the original, so it doesn’t spend a lot of time justifying all the aliens and strange plot twists. Actually, it doesn’t spend a lot of time doing anything. It’s barely over 90 minutes long. I will say this: As far as being a hybrid of sci-fi, action and buddy cop flicks, it does about as good a job as the original. Even the surprising undercurrent of poignancy remains, though barely. They just don’t seem to be trying very hard. Or maybe Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones just make it look easy.

Shock and Awe

Every good journalist knows when something is old news. “Shock and Awe,” the story of the good journalists who were skeptical about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, should get the Pulitzer Prize for irony. Not because the lonely crew of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau was ultimately vindicated, but because it’s 2018, and every sane person has known for at least 10 years that the WMD excuse for invading Iraq was bullshit. Old news. And it’s not even that good a movie. There are a lot of speechifying moments that smell of made-for-TV fakeyness. Surprise! Rob Reiner directed and co-stars.

No Country for Old Men

Whenever I hear about Hollywood executives forcing a movie to re-shoot its ending, I roll my eyes. Can’t they just let the filmmakers’ vision unfold and not worry about whether a focus group thinks an ending is sufficiently upbeat? But then I saw “No Country for Old Men” (2007), which could have been re-titled “No Payoff For Patient Moviegoers.” I mean, you spend two hours immersed in mesmerizing acting and brilliant dialogue as drug money leaves a bloody trail across West Texas. And then Tommy Lee Jones tells a story about a dream he had. The end. Seriously? Seriously? WTF?