• Following Us

  • Categories

  • Check out the Archives









  • Awards & Nominations

12 Movie Moments of 2012: “… it has its moments…” (Men in Black 3)

As well as counting down the top twelve films, I’m also going to count down my top twelve movie related “moments” of 2012. The term “moment” is elastic, so expect some crazy nonsense here. And, as usual, I accept that my taste is completely absurd, so I fully expect you to disagree. With that in mind, this is #4

Wait, this game doesn’t happen until October.

Oh, it’s always October and November and March. So many futures and they’re all real, just don’t know which one will coalesce. Until then, they’re all happening, like this one. It’s my favorite moment in human history. All the things that had to converge for the Mets to win The World Series. They were in last place every single season until they won it all.

You said you had a gift for us…

That baseball for instance, thrown for the last hour of the game, manufactured in 1962 by the Spalding Factory at Chicopee Massachusetts, was aerodynamically flawed. Due to the horsehide being improperly tanned because Sheila, the tanners wife, left him for a Puerto Rican Golf pro that Sunday…

– J, Griffin and K discuss the Mets

Sometimes great scenes pop up in the most unlikely of places. I enjoyed each of three Men in Black films, even if I’d be reluctant to rank them as among the finest films of their given years, or to consider all three among great cinematic trilogies. I’d be lying if I said that I had been eagerly anticipating the release of Men in Black 3 this year, which turned out to be a solid and reliable popcorn film in a year featuring films that so often went to one extreme or the other. It won’t be a surprise entry on my top films of the year, but it does what it sets out to do, and is often charming doing so.

However, it’s always incredibly satisfying to find one striking or memorable scene in a film that is fairly easy to dismiss as “merely” entertaining. Men in Black 3 has one such scene, featuring the superb Michael Stuhlbarg as the alien Griffin, who has the unique ability to see throw time, weighing and considering probabilities and possibilities. With the capacity to see any moment in history, Griffin uses his gift… to watch the Mets. Somehow, that makes all the wondrous “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey” stuff seem even more magical.

Men-in-Black-3-Griffin

Continue reading

Non-Review Review: Men in Black 2

I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of any of the Men in Black films. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike, it’s just that they tend to be enjoyable and entertaining… and yet completely forgettable. Of the bunch, Men in Black II (or MIIB) is probably the most forgettable. Again, it’s not that it’s terrible – although some elements flat-out don’t work – just that there’s not really anything exceptional about it either. It’s a reasonably competent comedy adventure, even if it’s never an especially good one.

Black up there a minute…

Continue reading

Non-Review Review: Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3 is a fine film. Like Men in Black and Men in Black 2, it’s a perfectly entertaining piece of popcorn entertainment if you’re willing to just go along with it. It’s not superb, it’s not exceptional, but it’s not bad either. It’s a decent movie. It manages to probably offer some better moments than the earlier two films, but these are averaged out by some painful deficiencies. You lose Tommy Lee Jones for most of the runtime, but you gain Josh Brolin. That’s a fairly reasonable trade, even if Brolin and Smith don’t share the same chemistry. You get the same wonderful production design, this time heightened by a sixties setting, but a plot that threatens to evaporate if you think about it too hard and any number of developments that are far too easy to predict. Nothing is truly fantastic, but nothing is exceptionally terrible. It just sort of is.

Putting the star in 69…

Continue reading