After Earth

Last summer, the film After Earth was labelled as rubbish by the vast majority of critics. They were all wrong, it’s much worse than that. After Earth came from a story idea by Will Smith which was fleshed out into a feature length screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan and Gary Whitta. The movie was directed by Shyamalan and was produced by and starred Will Smith and his son Jaden. The film gives its audience so little to enjoy that it’s almost offensive and provides none of the action or comedy that we have come to expect from a Will Smith fronted movie.

Set in the distant future, humanity now resides on the planet Nova Prime with the Earth abandoned. A thousand years after their arrival on their new home, the planet is invaded by aliens (irony alert) who wish to destroy our species and conquer the planet. Their primary weapon is the Ursa; a large, blind predator that is able to smell human fear. One man, General Cypher Raige (Will Smith) has the ability to ‘ghost’ – be free of fear and as such invisible to the Ursa. His son Kitai (Jaden Smith) is a Ranger Cadet who has hopes of replicating his father’s talents. The two are somewhat estranged but Cypher takes his son on a training mission which inadvertently crash lands on Earth, home to numerous deadly creatures as well as an Ursa on the loose.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy was one of those rarest of comedies, a film that gets funnier the more you watch it and one that has so many quotable lines that you’d laugh yourself silly before running out while reciting them with friends. Like Airplane! and This is Spinal Tap! it was a film that you could introduce to friends and watch them fall in love with and watch on a loop without getting bored. As a nineteen year old in 2004, that’s how my friends and I saw it anyway. In the years since, the film’s star Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) has made occasional appearances in adverts and the like as well as a, let’s be honest, poor and straight to DVD Wake Up Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie which was compiled using left over footage from the first movie. Now though, nearly a decade later the famous New Team has finally assembled for a much anticipated two hour sequel.

I have an odd love/hate relationship with Will Ferrell. Sometimes he seems like the funniest guy in the world and his comic creations slay me. More than half the time though, he really annoys me. In Anchorman his Ron Burgundy character was always the former of these two Ferrells’ but unfortunately for long periods in Anchorman 2 I found his greatest creation not just annoying but also dull. Annoying and dull are two words that I’d also use to describe the film as a whole. That being said, it is not without its moments and most of these come flying from the gaping mouth of Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), the man who saves the movie.

Enemy of the State

Tony Scott’s 1998 thriller Enemy of the State was the first film I ever bought on DVD. Though that disc has since gone walkabout, I remember going into my local Woolworths to buy a different film (an 18 Certificate whose title I can’t remember) but was told by the lady on the checkout that I didn’t look 18 and had to choose another one. Being around 14 I panicked and grabbed Enemy of the State, attracted by the picture of that guy from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air on the cover. I remember enjoying the film all those years ago and marvelling at how modern it was. Unfortunately it hasn’t aged particularly well.

Will Smith plays D.C. Lawyer Robert Dean who becomes embroiled in a conspiracy and high profile assassination following a chance meeting with an old acquaintance from college. Without knowing it, Dean takes into his possession a video tape containing footage of the murder and is tracked by rogue NSA official Thomas Roberts (Jon Voight). With nowhere else to turn, Dean tracks down a shady communications expert called Brill (Gene Hackman) with the hope that he can clear up the mess he finds himself in.

Men in Black 3

"Just 'cos you see a black man in a nice car, don't mean it's stolen. I mean this one is..."

Ten years after the disappointing Men in Black 2 and fifteen (really!) years since Men in Black, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are donning the black suits and Ray-bans once again. Agent J (Smith) and Agent K (Jones) learn that the alien murdering Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement) has escaped his maximum security LunarMax prison cell on the Moon, 43 years after K arrested him in Florida. Boris gets hold of a time machine and goes back to 1969 where he murders K. J has trouble understanding what has happened and goes back to 1969 himself where he meets a younger K (Josh Brolin) and the two of them attempt to apprehend Boris before he kills K and sends an army to attack and destroy the Earth.

I’m a big fan of the first Men in Black film and will watch pretty much anything Will Smith is in so I was excited at the prospect of a third instalment of the franchise. Unfortunately I left disappointed. Quality wise this is much closer to Men in Black 2 than Men in Black. My two main problems were that it wasn’t funny enough and that it was really boring. Will Smith is a naturally funny man and has bags of charisma but here his jokes fall flat and he doesn’t seem cool enough. Jermaine Clement, who I travelled over 400 miles round trip to see perform as part of Flight of the Concords was also a little bit disappointing although his accent was very good he was neither funny or scary enough. I only laughed twice and these were both at jokes regarding the differing racial attitudes of the 60s and now. As for the story, yes there are alien bad guys and the threat of the Earth’s destruction and the time travelling stuff was good but I wasn’t gripped.