Brief film reviews – MIB 3, Prometheus and Moonrise Island

An afternoon at the cinema following Saturday mornings surgery.

First up was the newly released this weekend, men in black 3, which as the title suggests is the third in the series, done after a ten year gap following the second.

The premise for if you never seen any of it’s predecessors is that aliens are not only here, but happily (for the most part) living amongst us and a secret agency both administers and protects the world from them.

The story for the third one involves time travel and whilst well played by Will Smith (as agent J) seemed a little run of the mill for the other main character Tommy Lee Jones (as agent K), but his younger version however played by Josh Brolin seemed much better and akin to the fun of the film.

Although the film get the balance of comedy and action right – the story seemed a bit lacking and could have been better put together with various elements getting a better explanation.

That said its an action comedy so will probably never be up for winning any oscars anyway and although lacking in various bits that could have better explained / added to the story is entertaining enough for the time it’s on and if you’re a fan of either the first or second you’ll like this one, which in my view was not as good as one but better than two.

Second up was the prequel to the Alien franchise and also released this weekend is Prometheus which stars amongst others Noomi Rapace, (of the proper version of the girl with the dragon tattoo fame), Michael Fassbender playing a robot who I’m sure after seeing the film would give HAL a run for its money and Idris Elba (of Ultra Violet and Luther Fame).

The story was fairly well thought out, although the beginning / background could have been expanded a little more, with the setting moving fairly quickly to deepest outer space and possibly along the getting rid of some of the back story used in the aliens v predator movie and whilst visually impressive lacked in my mind some of the shock / surprise value that the previous films have always had with no single scene meeting or beating the alien bursting out of John Hurt in the first film.

Finally and most definitely the case yesterday in terms of saving the best till last was Moonrise Kingdom. A film by Wes Anderson with an ensemble cast featuring amongst others Bill Murry, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton along with the interesting choice for the character of a scout master Harvey Kitel.

The film which like most of Wes Anderson’s films is slightly mad, slightly eccentric, but very funny and almost touching, is set in 1965 and tells the story of two kids, who fall in love, make a secret pact and then run away from home / scout camp and the efforts by the authorities on the island just off the coast of New England to hunt them down.

Bruce Willis plays the role of the local sheriff down to a tee, and along with Edward Norton as the scout master a slightly bumbling effort to track the kids down leads through a great story that has plenty of laughs along with some great visual touches like a tree house built by the scouts on the top of pole with no trees in sight, to the shoe chucking by Bill Murry’s character.

The film is well worth seeing if you get the chance, it’s very funny, well acted and a great story which gets across the tail without becoming anywhere near the mush, that the films story could have become.