Men in Black: International

First Hit: Certainly not as good as the original, but at least we’ve got “women” involved.

I never thought of the “Men in Black” as a domestic only group, but I guess I was wrong. I mean, how could aliens be on earth and only lived in the United States? So for me, the premise in the title was weak.

We begin with young Molly (Mandeiya Flory) looking out her window witnessing her parents being neuralysed by Men in Black (MiB) agents because of a commotion in the house. The uproar came from a young alien the agents were tracking, and Molly thinks it’s cute, so she helps the alien escape, but not before learning a word from the alien. You know that this will mean something later in the film.

We jump some twenty years into the future and Molly (Tessa Thompson) is still focused on becoming a MiB agent to work with aliens because she likes the alien she met and saw what happened to her parents after they were neuralysed. We are meant to believe that the single early childhood event has become her singular whole life focus.

Attempting to find where MiB headquarters is located in NYC, Molly sets up computers to track incoming aliens. Finding a MiB encounter, she follows the agents back to their offices. Slipping into the building, she gets caught and quickly tells them, she wants to become an agent carrying a neuralyser. After extensive interviews, she’s given a chance to prove herself as a probationary Agent M.

Her assignment takes her to London (hence the International in the title), where she meets High T (Liam Neeson) who assigns her to work with Agent H (Chris Hemsworth).

Agent H is shown in several scenes to be a play-boyish rogue of sorts, loving to gamble, and drink taboo elixirs. Agents H and M are assigned to meet Vungus, the Ugly of royal alien family heritage. But during this meeting, Vungus is killed by evil twins who can manifest themselves as pure energy.

Because Vungus gives M a secret weapon before he dies, she and H are being tracked by the twins who want this weapon to destroy Earth. Will M and H save the world?

This is the short version of the plot. There are other aliens in the mix as well as a storyline that High T has been protecting H since their encounter with the Hive who tried to destroy Earth many years earlier.

What didn’t work for me was that the plot felt too manufactured to be engaging. It lacked a flow to it, and therefore, it pulled me out of engaging with the story. I’m not sure why the writers needed the character of Riza as the recipient of the weapon. Yes, she was an arms agent, but it seemed like it was created as yet another plot device and character. Additionally, some of the acting (Neeson in particular) felt stiff and done for the money and not for the story. Many of the visuals were fun, like when M and H test the weapon Vungus gave M. The twins when they changed to pure energy was fun to watch.

Tessa Thompson was engaging and fun to watch. Her character made the story work. Hemsworth was a bit too silly and laissez-faire for the critical role as protector of the Earth from aliens. The part was built this way, and I thought he could have toned down some of the silliness. Neeson appeared too disengaged from the story and role. The heavy makeup and powder, as seen in the closeups, didn’t help. Rafe Spall as Agent C was very good as the one who wanted to be seen as having more power and engagement in the London MiB office. Emma Thompson as Agent O was good as the authoritarian in-charge person. Rebecca Ferguson (as Riza) was attractive in a role I didn’t think was needed. Matt Holloway and Art Marcum wrote the screenplay that seemed too manufactured as a way to use the MiB name. F. Gary Gray directed this film.

Overall: Not sure this film added any greatness or enhancement to the MiB franchise.

Bad Times at the El Royale

First Hit: An oddly strange, yet engaging, film.

The El Royale is a hotel that is split down the middle between the Nevada and California borders. There is a red line that runs through the parking lot and through the middle of the lobby with some rooms in Nevada and the remaining rooms in California. The rooms in California are more expensive because they’re in California.

Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) arrives just as Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) is parking her car. He introduces himself and assists her carrying two very large blanket covered foam rolls into the lobby.

In the lobby we have Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm) waiting for someone to come to the front desk so that he can check in. The three of them make some light chatter until Darlene bangs on a door and out comes Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) who is the desk clerk and appearing to be the only hotel employee.

They each select a room. In the rooms each person does something that tells you why they’re at the El Royale. Sullivan is removing bugs previously planted there by the FBI. Flynn is really a bank robber from years ago and his partner brother stashed a bag full of money under the floor of a room. Sweet is there with foam to cover the walls so she can practice singing before heading to Reno for a gig. And Miller? He's a junkie.

The El Royale has a single access hallway behind all the rooms. Miller can view and listen in to each room from this hallway. For sound there is a switch under a one-way mirror that is in each room. There is a camera and we learn that Miller used this camera to film people for blackmail purposes.

However, Sullivan learns of this secret hallway and watches, through the one-way mirror, as Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) checks into one of the rooms dragging her sister Rose (Cailee Spaeny). Tying her sister up in a chair, he’s puzzled.

Rose gets away and calls her cult leader boyfriend Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth) who is a Charles Manson like leader that pontificates what he believes to be the truth. He drives up to collect Rose and find out why Emily kidnapped his prize pupil.

With all seven players engage, the story is about how everyone learns about each other’s reason for being at the El Royale.

Bridges is good as Father Flynn. However, the voice he uses is much like the voice he used for Hell or High Water. It’s sort of a gruff slurring voice that isn’t pleasing at all. Hamm is, at times, hilarious playing up the role as traveling salesman. Pullman is wonderful as the only hotel employee who is looking for absolution for the horrible things he’s done in life. Erivo is fantastic as the singer who is also clearly on her path with purpose. She suffers no fools and I enjoyed her singing – a lot. Hemsworth was strong as the cult leader who felt empowered by his good looks and charisma. Johnson was excellent as the protective sister who wanted to steer Rose away from Billy Lee’s clutches. Spaeny was excellent as the younger sister caught up in Billy Lee’s belief system and his good looks. Drew Goddard wrote and directed this film. His story was oddly interesting and engaging and use of 1960’s music was sublime.

Overall: It was interesting how the disparate reasons for each person in this ensemble  to be at the El Royale worked into a single storyline.

Avengers: Infinity War

First Hit: Poorly conceived film because someone thought that putting every conceivable character under the sun into a single film was a good idea for a story.

Action for action’s sake is a waste of time because after a few minutes there’s no story to engage with and all the audience is doing is watching visual tricks on a screen. And, although I enjoyed the quips shared and pointed towards particular characters, in the end, it isn’t enough to make me want to recommend anything about this film.

I couldn't get into the plot of this film because there were so many small subplots and sidebars that I the real story became distractingly meaningless. However, my guess at the plot is: Thanos (Josh Brolin) was seeing his world fall apart because there were too many people, therefore by killing half the population in the universe, things will be peaceful and life would be able to support itself. The Avengers don't want this to happen.

To have the power to make this desire come true, Thanos needs six stones that are being held somewhere in the universe, a few of them are in possession of superheroes. So he goes about finding the stones and doing anything to get them.

To stop his quest, all the Avenger superheroes loosely come together to fight the good fight to defeat Thanos. Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), War Machine/James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Black Panther/T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Nebula (Karen Gillan), and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) just to name some.

You can see from the above listing, along with another ten superheros, having this many characters makes for a confusing mess because each has to have their day in the story. This is exactly what we get - confusion.

Most all of the actors do their superhero thing and do it well enough. However, with everyone one splitting screen time and with minimal roles, it was difficult for anyone except Chris Pratt (As Star-Lord/Peter Quill), Downey, Hemsworth, and Cumberbatch to standout.  Ruffalo was also funny trying to turn into the Hulk. The rest was more like having them do cameos of their characters to show that everyone was onboard to fight Thanos. Brolin as Thanos was strong but it is hard to show the depth of character he was attempting give the audience through the heavy makeup. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeely wrote an over ambitious screenplay that melted under the number of characters they had to bring in. Anthony and Joe Russo co-directed this mess and it showed. The use of effects was good, but effects to no make a film, characters do and shortchanging so many of them was its downfall.

Overall: I only went to this film because of the strong audience attendance and I cannot believe that the millions walked away satisfied.

12 Strong

First Hit:  Interesting story, good action, but I was left wondering how close to true it was.

Army action films can be full of rah rah and full of pro-American sentiment, or they can be about people who are engaged in the war. I don’t particularly like the pro-American films as I find that they are conceived with a miss-informed view of, what is. This film walks a fair line because it, ultimately brings it back to the people.

In this case the people are, Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth), Hal Spencer (Michael Shannon) Sam Diller (Michael Pena) and General Abdul Rashid Dostum (David Negahban). Although these aren’t the only human stories in the film, they are the main ones.

The story is about Captain Nelson, sitting in his new home with his wife and daughter watching TV and seeing the planes fly into the World Trade Center buildings. He goes to his command station where he’s been assigned a desk job. However, he’s a warrior and wants his his commanding officer Lt. Colonel Bowers (Bob Riggle) to let him lead his men for a mission in Afghanistan. His right hand man, Spencer, rescinds his re-assignment papers and convinces Bowers to let Nelson lead him and his team of 12.

The team is a total of twelve men who are willing to follow Nelson anywhere despite his lack of combat duty. Once in Afghanistan, out of five other teams flown in, they get selected by Colonel Mulholland (William Fichtner) to be the first U.S. ground troops to fight Al Qaeda directly. The twelve are to fly deep into the Afghan mountains, meet up with General Dostum and provide air support for his troops who want to defeat Al Qaeda deep in the mountains.

The film denotes the cultural differences between the U.S. troops and the Afghans. It spends way too much time (at 2:10 running time) on waiting scenes and scenes that repeat already made points. I wouldn’t be surprised if a judicious editor could cut 20 – 30 minutes and make the film work better.

The scenes of the bombing and cheering of direct hits seemed very realistic. The interaction with Nelson and Dostum were surprisingly good and developed quite nicely. The terrain was represented well and made the difficulty of the mission realistic. I also liked how the horses were made to be an integral part of this story.

The downsides for me were a lack of backstory about Afghanistan's history of tribes and their in-fighting for territory between their factions. The running time also held back the crispness and clarity of the story.

Hemsworth was OK. The role seemed typical and there was little that made his role, or his performance, uniquely engaging. Pena was great. I enjoyed his counter balance and pointed sarcasm. Shannon’s performance seemed a step down from what he’s done recently but I’m fairly certain that it was the role and script versus him. Negahban was excellent and one of the best parts of the film for me. He carried strength and a slow opening to Nelson during the film. Riggle was good, nothing extraordinary and nothing that stood out. Ben Milo was very good as one of Nelson’s team and I loved how he bonded with his young Afghan protector. Fichtner was strong as the Colonel in charge of the American mission. Ted Tally and Peter Craig wrote a mediocre script. Nicolai Fuglsig didn’t seem to have a great command of what type of story he was telling and it ended up lacking real purpose.

Overall:  Although engaging at times, the length and lack of storyline focus made it seem all and more of its 2:10 running time.

Thor: Ragnarok

First Hit: Found this film and story to be silly and having a mediocre plot.

I know I’m not the target audience for superhero adventures. What I find is that the more films are made about these superheroes the less plausible they become. The fantasy kingdoms have no basis in anything relatable and with the stupidity and/or lack of depth of most of the characters, I check-out while watching them.

Here we have Thor (Chris Hemsworth) who is being imprisoned by a fire demon named Surtur (why, how and so what), learns that his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is no longer in his home world of Asgard (why, how and so what) and that everything is going to be succumbed by the prophecy of Ragnarok. This prophecy tells of the death of the gods including Thor because he’s the God of Thunder. This might be a good thing as these characters are getting long in tooth and stretched far beyond their original purpose. More importantly, they aren't interesting any longer.

Breaking free, he discovers that his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been posing as their father Odin in Asgard. Together they endeavor to find their father Odin. In comes the older sister Hela (Cate Blanchett) who is the goddess of death and tells Loki and Thor that she’s taking over the kingdom of Asgard.

From here it just gets bad, we have flights of fancy to a planet called Sakaar where Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) holds court. He pits Thor against Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) in a fight to the finish. Then they meet a drunk Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) who relinquishes her drunken lost ways and decides to fight the good fight to kill Hela.

Was there anything I liked? The tongue-in-cheek stuff was OK, but this film is all over the map in time, space, and story.

I didn’t care about any of the characters. I thought that many of the sets were fun to look at. Didn’t think the story was compelling or interesting. I wondered by Blanchett and Hopkins would do these parts. The constant battles are the same everywhere and there’s nothing new under the sun here.

I was left thinking; why can’t someone get creative?

Hemsworth did what he was told. There’s no real acting here, just a modern man playing a god and losing his hair along the way. Wondering if he gets his hammer back in the next movie. Ruffalo was OK, nothing interesting in this role for him. Thompson was adequate to the role. Goldblum was his over the top Goldblum – when will he actually act as something other than a smart-alecky buffoon. Blanchett was good, but I couldn’t help but wonder why she took this on. Hopkins, obviously, does things for money in some cases and this is one of them. Hiddleston was OK as the evil brother. Eric Pearson and Craig Kyle wrote a very mediocre, lackluster script. Taika Waititi threw everything at the audience and the outcome was how much shit actually stuck on the wall? Very little.

Overall: I’ve got to quit going to Marvel films because it is too hard to make the story work with what I see on the screen.