Tag Archives: Science Fiction

Aug 04 2022
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Movies

BQB Reviews Star Trek – Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock

Spock! Where you at, son?

BQB here with a review of the third installment of the 1980s era ST franchise.

RIP Uhura, you foxy mama, you.

In Wrath of Khan, Spock freaking dies. I’m sorry if this comes as a spoiler to you, but holy crap. You had like 40 some odd years to watch the movie, so get over it. Spock doesn’t just die, he dies heroically, running into a radioactive chamber to do some science stuff to keep the Enterprise operational. There was no time to put on an anti-radiation suit, so he croaks. Ah, but this scene also gives rise to his well-known catchphrase – “The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few or the one.”

Freaking pointy eared communist.

As if this movie didn’t add enough to the vernacular, it also gave us the “Kobayashi Maru” i.e. a simulator Starfleet Officers have to go through and the catch is there is literally no way to solve the problem. The test isn’t so much designed to educate as to what or what not to do in a sticky situation but rather to get the officer acquainted with the fact that sometimes, you can make the best decision possible and shit will still hit the fan and go flying everywhere. (Sidenote: Who came up with the phrase “When shit hits the fan” anyway? Because it totally describes something that must be avoided to prevent something really bad from happening, namely shit hits the fan blades then gets propelled so far and wide that no matter how hard you clean and scrub you’ll still be finding little shit clumps hiding around your room years later. I can only assume at some point in history, someone literally must have taken a dump on a fan only for everyone in the room to experience the fallout and realize this is good shorthand for explaining how something catastrophic yet avoidable must be avoided.)

EDIT: I just realized the Kobayashi Maru is in Star Trek 2 and not this film. I confused my Saaviks. Kirstie Alley played the She-Vulcan in 2 while Robin Curtis took the role in 3. Alley was afraid of being typecast which is sad because in her makeup and with her voice she really did make for an impressive Vulcan, though Curtis wasn’t chopped liver.

Wow, what a digression! Moving on.

Anyway, this is a pretty great flick. The plot? The Enterprise officers held a funeral for the late Spock and shot his body at the Genesis planet in a torpedo coffin, which frankly, sounds kind of disrespectful but maybe space folk are into that sort of thing. This happened at the end of the Khan film.

In this go-around, Dr. Bones McCoy, literally the crankiest old man in space who, if he had a lawn, would constantly be yelling at kids to get off it, always despised Spock’s incessant logic at the expense of emotion. Thus, it’s torture for Bones when he starts feeling Spock’s logic and worse, starts talking like a vulcan.

The diagnosis? The Spockster transferred his consciousness into Dr. McCoy just before he died. As Spock’s father Sarek informs Kirk, Vulcans can do that shit. And how convenient! Spock’s body, now on a planet where everything grows and renews and nothing is ever dead for long, has been reborn, now as a little Vulcan boy who is rapidly aging and must suffer the painful ramifications of pom far or as the layman might call it, Vulcan puberty.

Alas, Starfleet Command has nixed any attempts to reclaim Spock’s bod. Official consensus is the Genesis planet sucks the big one and no one knows what to make of it other than no one should be allowed to visit it. Thus, Kirk and crew pull off a pretty sweet and daring heist of the Enterprise and go rogue.

Veteran character actor Christopher Lloyd, always made up in some way or another on film, plays the rogue Klingon Kruge who wants to snatch the Genesis info for himself so he can recreate the women and rule the galaxy in the name of all Klingons because Klingons firmly believe that humans stink like butts.

That’s pretty much it. The theft of the Enterprise is pretty cool and what happens to it at the end in the name of taking out the Klingons, well, you’ll just have to watch it. Stupid Klingons.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If you have no life, you can binge watch Star Trek just like me on Paramount Plus.

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Aug 28 2021
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BQB's Twisted Shorts

GET A FREE BOOK!

FREE STUFF!

Sing it with me, 3.5 readers. Ohhhhhh…FREE stuff is good. FREE stuff is great! FREE stuff is the best! FREE stuff is better than all the rest!

Why is FREE stuff awesome? Because it’s FREE. Why, 11 out of 7 scientists at the Advanced Institute For Bogus Statistics agree that the reason why FREE stuff is good is because you don’t have to pay for it. That means that you get something while not having to part with your money.

You earned that money, possibly by doing one of the following:

#1 – Winning the lottery

#2 – Fighting a duel with river pirates for it using your ninja skills

#3 – You were walking through the forest one day and came across a dead man holding a stack of bills. You looked around, saw no one watching, then just took it because hey, it’s not like he needed it anymore. Then again, maybe he had a family with bills to pay, you insensitive son of a…

#4 – You inherited from your long estranged, Great Great Great Great Great Uncle Tiberius, who left a provision in his last will and testament that you will get a lot of moolah if you survive one night in a haunted house. You laugh, but many a 1960s horror film started in exactly this manner. For some reason, many of the 1960s elderly wanted their younger kin to spend nights in haunted houses. Toughened them up, I suppose. I mean, the old people of that time were born in the late 1800s, a time before toilets, TV, and basic civil rights so they probably didn’t think asking their descendants to spend a night in a haunted house was that big a deal.

#5 – My advisors advise me this is the most likely scenario – you worked for it. You performed a series of tasks in a job in which you are gainfully employed and received fair market value compensation for your time. BRAVO! (Though you really should have fought pirates for it. Lazy.)

Anyway you got your dough, you should keep it. Don’t spend it on my book because my book is free. Instead, spend your money on:

#1 – Candy. 78 out of 5 Bogus Stat Scientists say it is good for the lumbago.

#2 – Robot friends. Don’t bother with human friends. They are very fussy and more often than not, they disappoint. Instead, buy your very own robot friend and program it to like you.

#3 – Puppies.

#4 – Bribes to the King of Norway to meet Thor. You know he can hook that up.

#5 – A robust and healthy combination of goods/services/shelter you need to survive, along with a good habit of saving, a strategy that includes cash reserves in the bank as well as a modest stock, bond and mutual fund portfolio to ensure that you won’t have to peddle your wares under a bridge well into advanced age just to make ends meet. My advisors advise me this is totes what you should be doing with the money you saved by not buying my book.

WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT?

Finally, like ten minutes into this post, you ask. CONSPIRACY THEORIES RUN AMUCK! There is a homeless man. He shouts conspiracy theories at everyone all day. Most think he is a kook, but apparently he has stumbled on something that puts a bee in the bonnet of a certain government agency that may or may not exist.

GET YOUR FREE COPY TODAY!

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Jul 31 2021
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BQB's Twisted Shorts

GET A FREE BOOK – FOR FREE

3.5 readers, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times:

Making money is for suckers.

Sure, any old author can make millions of bucks off the fruit of their scribbling labors but me? I’m like a monk. I’ve taken a vow of poverty and that’s how I can afford to just give my books away for FREE, YES TOTALLY FREE which means, YOU PAY NOTHING!

So, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Head on over to Amazon and pick up a FREE copy of my book, “The End is Nigh” which is about a wacky conspiracy theorist who might just be babbling about something that a certain government agency (that may or may not exist) doesn’t want the public to know about.

If you want to buy a book while you’re there and in so doing, make a contribution to Jeff Bezos’ next space flight, be my guest, but you certainly don’t have to. You’re more than welcome to just grab A FREE BOOK FOR FREE!

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Jul 04 2021
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Movies

Movie Review – The Tomorrow War (2021)

Aliens! Time travel! Chris Pratt’s Aw Shucks Everyman Demeanor!

BQB here with a review of Amazon’s latest (first?) sci-fi blockbuster.

In its early days, streaming media brought us a new age of golden television, with a lot of hits coming to the forefront that would have otherwise been lost. Lately, in the past few years, IMO, streaming service generated movies and/or TV have been rather stale, stagnant – devised by committee tripe designed to appeal to the widest possible audience without really achieving anything.

In my further opinion, Amazon has been the worst at creating its own content. At least Netflix gave us House of Cards and Stranger Things. Hulu gave us The Handmaid’s Tale, though it looks like they’re going to milk that for all its worth and never come up with something new.

Amazon has had a couple of interesting flicks here and there. While I would never watch it again for fear of being swept into a depression coma, Manchester-by-the-Sea was a sad, poignant study of how sometimes a man can screw up his life so badly that a happy ending is simply not possible. I also enjoyed 2019’s The Aeronauts, about a death defying flight in a hot air balloon in the 1800s.

But by and large, Amazon really stunk it up. I finally ponied up the dough for their streaming service in March to watching Coming to America 2 and while it had its fun moments, it was sad, watching the great comedian Eddie Murphy, who no doubt still has plenty of funny left in him, be proverbially chained up like a captured tiger in a cage, unable to roar and make us roar with laughter because, OMG, he might offend someone somewhere and Amazon can’t have that. Someone might get so offended they might go to another service that will allow them to buy a toothbrush and a tin drum of popcorn and a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers and have them delivered the next day by a minimum wage worker who has to pee in a jar because they aren’t allowed pee breaks.

Where was I? Oh, right. A movie review. Anyway, I’d been thinking about getting around to cancelling Amazon Prime because the movies weren’t worth the monthly cost, and sure Prime allowed my fuzzy bunny slippers to be delivered earlier, but I’d rather wait and save the dough. But I’ll admit this movie was pretty good and thus I’ll wait a bit longer to cancel the service.

Chris Pratt stars as an Iraq War veteran turned high school science teacher who dreams of doing something big with his life, but can’t catch a break. He’s married to hottie Betty Gilpin and has a daughter but he dreams of doing great things with science. One wonders, if he dreams so much of being a great science, why he doesn’t go study more science, but it is a movie.

Time travelers from the future arrive to inform us that in 30 years, the world will be overrun by freaking scary ass aliens. A debate ensues as to whether or not present folk should venture forth into the future to assist future people in the fight. Some say yes because these people are our collective kids. Some say no because, you know, the aliens aren’t attacking us now so eff the future people, it’s their problem.

The debate becomes moot when a worldwide draft is handed down, and literally everyone and I mean everyone is drafted. Dark humor ensues at the start of the film when Pratt is drafted and with his soldier training, most lead a rag tag group of civilians against an alien horde. You’ve got people showing up to fight in regular clothes, grandmas struggling just to put their boots on, people who have never handled a gun before, it’s a mess. But that’s how bad the problem is – doesn’t matter if you’re old or incompetent at fighting, if you have a pulse, the govt will stick a gun in your hand and demand you travel to the future to fight aliens.

Amidst this chaos, Pratt meets his daughter, all grown up (Yvonne Strahovski.) They could have played up the father/daughter working together while they are the same age angle more, maybe even for laughs, but they did it very straight here, Pratt’s character mostly following her orders out of respect for her position though occasionally breaking rank at times where, hey, he’s not going to let anything happen to his kid, rules be damned.

Rounding out the cast is JK Simmons as Pratt’s estranged father, who is given a chance to redeem himself in the fight.

Overall, it’s a good movie that somehow survived Amazon’s design a film by committee so as to appeal to everyone and not offend anyone strategy and if theaters were open to full strength, it would have been enjoyable to watch this on the big screen with surround sound. As with many action sci-fi films, a lot of suspension of disbelief is required and there are dumb moments, but hey, it’s got guns and aliens, so it’s worth a watch.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but I still haven’t forgiven Amazon for muzzling Eddie.

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Apr 11 2021
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Movies

Classic Movie Review – Stargate (1994)

It’s the movie that dared to cast French Stewart as a badass.

BQB here with a review of Stargate.

Long before the Internet took off (this was made in those early days where you didn’t dare to log on for more than 5 minutes lest your mom start harping on you about the phone bill), conspiracy theories still existed, though they weren’t as rampant as they are today.

One was the premise that the Ancient Egyptian gods were, in fact, space aliens who ruled over Egypt, subjugating the masses with their advanced technology. After all, how else could they have made all those pyramids without modern machinery? Spoiler alert – they did it through enslavement of the tribes of Israel which this film conveniently leaves out (enslaved subjects of another planet that resembles Ancient Egyptian are featured but the plight of the Jewish people is not mentioned specifically) but it did cast actors of Arabic and Middle Eastern descent rather than just put white dudes in brown face so honestly by 1994 standards, this flick was hella woke for its time.

James Spader, who made his bones playing the snobby rich kid in every 1980s teen movie, shows a softer side as Dr. Daniel Jackson. Honestly, as Spader got older, he traded in his snobby rich kid demeanor for an arrogant, full of himself and his genius villain persona, so unless I’m forgetting something, this is the one role I can think of where he actually plays a decent person, and in fact, a nerd. And he does it quite well.

Spader is a linguist recruited to decode the symbols on an artifact. The government has been trying to crack it since 1928 and Spadey Spades figures it out within minutes. Thus, the movie’s trend to dump on him for being smart begins as it is a running joke throughout the film that everyone despises a poindexter. (Sigh, as I have discovered in real life as well.)

Turns out, the artifact is a Stargate. Ancient Egypt really was ruled by aliens. Those aliens have since moved on to another planet. The gubmint calls on Colonel Jack O’Neill (Kurt Russell) to lead an expedition through the stargate and into the alien world, begrudgingly bringing Jackson as a tag-a-long as he’s the only one who will know how to decode the symbols on the stargate in the alien world. Oh, and they also bring a team of stereotypically rough commandos, including French Stewart, typically known for being a goofy comedian but he dumps on Dr. Jackson for being smart and again, I feel the doctor’s pain as everyone has been doing this to me my whole life.

Human vs. alien fights ensue. O’Neil and Jackson help the enslaved people of this alien world escape the tyranny of the evil aliens. If only O’Neil and Jackson had been around on earth many years ago. Exodus would have been a much different story.

Overall, it’s a pretty cool sci-fi flick and ahead of its time. I dare say it was original because most space films usually focus on space flight whereas the idea of a gate might, in theory, be more likely as a method for space travel as beings can’t otherwise fly for millions of miles without growing old and dying.

Bonus points for Russell, who also looks young here. He plays the grieving father of a son who accidentally shot himself while fooling around with an unsecured gun, presumably blaming himself for not locking it up. He cares for the young slaves who join his rebellion against the alien Ra but clearly looks after them as if they are his own kids, worrying about their safety.

This inspired a long-running syndicated TV show, which I never watched though I always heard was cool.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. And I watched it on Pluto TV!

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Feb 19 2021
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BQB's Twisted Shorts

GET A FREE BOOK!

I’m Crazy BQB and my book prices are insane! My latest book is priced to move and all virtual copies must go!

3.5 readers, today through Tuesday, you can get a FREE copy of my short story, The End is Nigh, about a wacky conspiracy theorist who stumbles upon something real when a certain government agency that may or may not exist starts chasing him.

Should you get a FREE copy? Yes, because it is a FREE copy and FREE stuff is awesome.

Do you need to read it if you get it for FREE? Yes, you should because it’s funny and witty and awesome like all my books and I say that with great humility but if you don’t want to, that’s fine. It’s a FREE country which coincidentally, my book is also FREE.

Go on. GET YOUR FREE BOOK!

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Aug 23 2020
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BQB's Twisted Shorts, Uncategorized

YOU CAN STILL GET MY FREE BOOK!

Hey 3.5 readers.

Your old pal BQB here.

Do you want a FREE BOOK?

No, you don’t. OK. Don’t worry then.

Oh, wait. You do? Cool. Because this FREE BOOK is FREE so go get it.

Are you intrigued by conspiracy theories? So is Harry Blanding. This wacky, crazy old vagrant shows up at a subway stop every day, shouting out absurd claims about aliens, UFOs, Bigfoot, Russian spies and more.

Most write him off as a performance artist with a twisted sense of humor…but one particular government agency that may or may not exist is not laughing.

In conclusion, this book is FREE and really, noble reader, how often do you get something for FREE? You should get this FREE book for FREE right now.

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Jun 09 2020
6 Comments
TV

TV Review – Space Force (2020)

Be a spaceman, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of Netflix’s new comedy series.

I avoided this series for awhile because I assumed it was going to be a dump on Trump fest. Now, don’t get me wrong, politicians have long been easy fodder for comedy, and our current president provides more than enough material, but at some point I feel comedians moved away from finding original jokes and just got lazy, creating a non-stop meme machine, i.e. “Trump is a bad orange man who is bad and orange!”

That’s not the case here. It’s a goofy comedy about all the antics you might imagine would happen in the creation of a brand new wing of the military.  Think F Troop, but in space.

Steve Carell plays General Mark Naird, a decorated war veteran who has long dreamed of leading a branch of the military. When he is promoted to 4-Star, he mistakenly believes that he is being groomed to replace his longtime nemesis General Kick Grabaston (Noah Emmerich) as leader of the Air Force, only to find that he’s actually going to become the founder of the Space Force.

The assignment, at first, seems like a bad joke, with the name Space Force conjuring images of science fiction flicks in which intrepid space explorers engage in tense laser battles with little green men.

But Naird takes the job seriously, seeing it as his opportunity to be remembered in history alongside great generals like Patton, Eisenhower and so on.

Naird’s foil is John Malkovich’s Dr. Adrian Mallory.  While Naird runs all things military at Space Force’s Colorado base, Mallory runs all things science. They’re basically an odd couple, where Mallory never wants to take a risk and Naird never meets a risk he doesn’t want to take.

Killer satellites designed to destroy other satellites, space chimps, space dogs, spies, moon colonies, and an ongoing rivalry with China’s version of the Space Force become inspiration for hilarity.

Various subplots ensue, including Naird’s wife (Lisa Kudrow as Maggie Naird) who is in prison for (SPOILER ALERT) a reason we are never told, and assumably we’ll have to wait until next season to find out, if we ever do.  We know she’s there for 40 years, so she did something serious, but Naird wasn’t required to step down so it couldn’t have had consequences that were that dire.  She’s free in the first few minutes of the series and clearly despises the idea of leaving Washington, D.C. to move to a remote location in Colorado, so my money is that she probably flipped out and tried to hijack the flight to Colorado or something.  We’ll have to keep watching to find out.

Naird’s daughter, Erin (Diana Silvers) ends up having to raise herself as her mom is in the slammer and dad is constantly dealing with one space catastrophe after another.

To the series’ credit, it isn’t that political at all, but when it is, it harangues both parties equally. In one scene, Naird is chewed out by an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez clone for wasting taxpayer dollars on spaceships with lasers and pulse cannons only for Naird to have to gently explain that these things only exist in Star Wars.  Meanwhile, he has to explain to a stereotypical Southern senator that the earth isn’t flat.  Trump is never official said to be the president, though Naird gets ribbed with texts from “POTUS” calling him a loser whenever Space Force suffers a setback.

The late Fred Willard plays Naird’s doddering father who suffers from a multitude of health problems but refuses to go into assisted living.  Poignant, because this was Willard’s last role.

Ben Schwartz plays Naird’s despised social media consultant F. Tony (nicknamed Fuck Tony), essentially reprising his ultra-trendy pop culture obsessed Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation.

Ironically, and I’m not sure if this was the series’ intention or not, but it actually convinced me that militarization of space isn’t that bad of an idea.  Put aside goofy sci-fi notions of space soldiers fighting with vile aliens and consider today’s issues, namely, we are more dependent on the Internet than ever, and if a foreign power has the ability to knock an Internet providing satellite out of the sky, then perhaps the military does need to be involved.  Meanwhile, if multiple countries have plans to eventually colonize the moon or Mars, then those colonies will need protection.

And in a funny way, it explores many of the issues that are bound to happen as earthlings keep navigating into the stars.  Will countries fight over astro-turf just as they fight over earth turf back home? Will experiments that could help humanity though medical breakthroughs be put to the wayside for finding new ways to carry out war? Who owns what is discovered in space and last, but not least, is the great taxpayer expense worth it? As Malkovich points out, the cost to launch a rocket is the equivalent of what thousands of Americans make in an entire life time. How many thousands of life-time salaries can be wasted without demonstrated benefits before taxpayers put a stop to space exploration altogether?

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  I binge-watched this in a day because it was that funny and I’m looking forward to season 2.

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Apr 14 2020
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Movies, Uncategorized

BQB’S Classic Movie Reviews – They Live (1988)

I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, 3.5 readers.  And I’m all out of bubblegum.

So, the obvious downside of the coronavirus is that it has left the world in utter turmoil.

But hey, the good news, is I’m watching a lot of movies I never would have had time for.

One such flick is “They Live,” the 1988 B-Sci Fi cult movie that really, really deserves more props than it gets.

It stars infamous wrestling heel, the late Rowdy Roddy Piper as Nada, a homeless drifter who wanders into town, looking for work.  He’s been downtrodden his entire life, from a shitty upbringing, to being constantly laid off and out of work, despite trying his best and never turning down work when he’s lucky enough to find it.

When he finds a construction job, it looks like he might make it, thanks to a church that provides food and help to the homeless.  While taking advantage of the church’s help, he meets Frank (the infamous and awesome Keith David), another down on his luck construction worker who had to leave his wife and family behind just to find work.  He lives the homeless life so he can send money back home.

Both men commiserate, lamenting how hard it is to get ahead.  While Nada still believes in the American dream, Frank argues the whole system is a scam.  If you aren’t born into wealth, then you’ll spend your whole life working hard and getting little in return for it, as though the system is a parasite that feeds off you.

Turns out, Frank was right but not how he thought.  Nada learns that the church is a front for a group of underground freedom fighters, people who have discovered that the world is actually run by aliens!  Yes, “They Live” among us, having perfected a means to hide their hideous alien forms by appearing human.

The human freedom fighter group has created a special pair of sunglasses that allows them to see the aliens for what they are, as well as the subliminal messages hidden in advertisements, billboards, and on TV.  When Nada pops these shades on, he realizes that the whole world is a lie, that alien bastards run it all and that elite aliens are sucking up all the world’s resources, turning big profits while lower class humans work their lives away, never getting ahead.

It’s all basically an allegory for the way the world, more or less actually works.  Funny, the movie was basically considered the silly, over the top Sharknado of its day, but for a flick headlined by a wrestler, there’s a lot that rings true, even today.  The movie’s entire premise, if you forget the aliens, is that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the working middle class never fights it because they want their piece of the pie, so they help the upper class do things that hurt the planet for fear of losing their income.

There are scenes that are downright crazy.  Plotholes abound and Nada pretty much goes on an instant murder spree when he puts on the glasses.  He starts gunning down every alien he can find, never even taking a second to think about possible strategies.  He doesn’t even take a second to think about whether it is moral to kill beings just because they are aliens.  It’s just, “Boom!  These guys are ugly!  They have to die!”

Cheesy lines?  “Lady, your face looks like someone shoved it in the cheese dip in 1957 and left it there.”

Ah, good times.  But seriously, whenever you heard anyone say something like “I’m here to pass out candy and ass kickings” or something to that effect, this is where that line came from.

Not to mention the absurdly long fight scene between David and Piper that goes on way too long, that was eventually parodied by South Park.

Anyway, it’s fun and despite overt silliness, has a message about corporate greed and how we all might be complicit in it because we all eventually sell out and take our little sliver of pie and turn a blind eye to the evildoings of our corporate overlords for fear of losing that sliver.

Piper is stiff, almost comically so, but somehow fits the character.  The irony is if this flick had starred a Schwarzenegger or Stallone, it would probably be constantly watched even today.

It’s funny.  I remember when I was a little kid, my local video rental store (Those places once lived) had a poster for this movie hanging up for the longest time.  As a kid, it looked scary to me, so it’s funny it took me like 30 years to finally watch this.

One last compliment – as the film went on, it got towards the end and I felt like, “Hmm, this was a lot of exposition without really going anywhere” but then sure enough, there’s a great ending that is shoehorned in out of left field and I can’t think of a better way this could have been wrapped up.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Jun 17 2019
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Movies

Movie Review: Men in Black: International

Here come the Men in Black…galaxy defenders.

Sorry.  That’s so 1990s.

BQB here with a review of the latest MIB film.

I’m not sure if this counts as reboot.  If anything, it must be a sequel.  I assume the past adventures of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones from the originals are still in MIB’s history logs, but now, new characters are going on new adventures.

In this rendition, Agent M (Tessa Thompson) is a rookie, and a non-traditional one at that.  While most MIB agents are recruited, she finds the agency on her own.  As a child, she had an alien encounter and has ever since dreamed of joining the mysterious, clandestine alien investigation organization.

Long story short, the agency gives her a shot and pairs her with Agent H (Chris Hemsworth) of the London bureau.  Together, they trot the globe, aiming to unravel a complex plot that involves the member of an alien royal family, shape shifting aliens, an arms dealer who literally has a lot of arms (Rebecca Ferguson) and, horror or horros, a mole inside MIB.  Add in a diminutive sidekick voiced by Kumail Nanjiani for good measure. Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson stop by as MIB higher ups.

Naturally, there are social justice updates, which is ironic because MIB was always one of the more woke franchises to come out of the 90s.  Agent J was, after all, played by Will Smith, who rapped the infamous theme song and he and K were eventually joined by a female agent.  In this go around, the title of the organization is questioned.  Why are Men in Black?  Why aren’t they People in Black?  Funny, Dark Phoenix asked the same question about the X-Men.  I suppose we should start looking for People in Black or X-People movies soon.

Anyway, I’d heard some bad reviews but I don’t agree.  It was a good installment and honestly, I did think Men In Black 3 from 2012 kinda sucked, thus showing signs that the franchise was in need of an overhaul if it was to continue.  Also good to see Hemsworth and Thompson working together again, since they first appeared together in Thor: Ragnarok.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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