Another big-shot movie for you, straight from the Hollywood Monster’s gaping maw: Men In Black II.

Of sequel movies, there are two categories: those that make sense without seeing their predecessor and those that do not. Men In Black II is of the lattermost category - if you didn’t do your homework, you won’t get most of this movie. I can say this in all certainty because I’ve seen the first one and my girlfriend, whom I saw this with, has not, so I know both sides of the coin.

But let’s take a moment to talk about previews.

Is it just me, or are there getting to be more and more of them? Our movie was supposed to start at 4:30, and it was ten minutes past 5 by my watch before they even started that crappy computer animation that tells you to turn off your phones and stuff. And most of the ads weren’t even for movies! When did this trend start, by whom, and in what way must they be made to suffer for this? One was an ad for gratitude. Gratitude! There’s a really clever and scathing joke I could make about that, but I can’t think of it just now, so I’ll leave you to your imaginations.

I should note that one ad was for the Crocodile Hunter and his new movie, which I might have to review in order to see just how mercilessly hard I can slam a movie. But anyway, Back to MIIB, as it’s been advertised everywhere in sight and I finally had to see it. (And I mean literally everywhere; I was sitting at a bus stop the other day, and the Burger King across the street was waving banners, there was a big poster ad on the stop, two people walked by wearing the t-shirt, and the bus that picked me up had the same slogan on the side. We drove past four billboards, every other bus stop had the poster, and two teenagers behind me were even talking about it. I’m not kidding. So trust me when I say that it’s everywhere.)

I loved the first movie. The first movie was clever, well-written, and funny. I liked the premise and I liked the characters, and I wanted so badly for this movie to be good.

But in spite of all the hype, it sucked. Bad.

Here are some spoilers, just to ensure you don’t see this movie. Agent Kay, whom everybody in the audience has rightly dubbed Tommy Lee Jones, has been neuralized, stripping him of both his memories and his coolness. Agent Jay, aka Will Smith, is now a loner who has a habit of dumping partners like morning-after prom dates. When Tommy Lee gets his memory back - which he does waaaay too late in the movie for anyone’s liking - Will goes from being Dr. Badass Himself, right back to being the upstart rookie he was before. So, what, five years of training are kaput as soon as his buddy shows up?

In the last movie, Tommy Lee was cool. In this movie, he’s a sissy. In the last movie, Will was funny. In this movie, he’s a jerk.

Please, don’t see this movie.

Is it pretty? Yes. CGI just keeps getting more and more advanced, and able to blend with live actors and settings more and more seamlessly. In between the product placement that makes one want to vomit are some very cool aliens indeed, most of which I’d love to hear a little backstory on. But ‘tis all for naught, for only one alien matters in this flick: Lara Flynn Boyle, aka Lara Flynn Boyle. She’s just dandy as the villain - she does vamp quite well. I was crushed to learn that those weren’t her real breasts, but delighted to learn that those weren’t her real tentacles, either.

The main waterloo of the whole mess is that most of it didn’t make any sense: the crux of the plot was that if this one object, the Light Of The Somebodyorothers, wasn’t off the planet by a certain time, it would explode, destroying the planet. But nobody every bothered to explain WHY it needed to be off the planet by that time. Not that I’m tossing and turning at night, it would just be nice to know. Tommy Lee leads us through a series of clues he left himself to find this object, since he neuralized it out of his memory. But if he left all these clues so he could remember, what’s the point, other than to eat up some screen time? He seems to do this a lot, actually. And we are grateful, because at least we’re not having to watch the worms.

Yes, the Coffee Worms get a larger part in this one. Much larger. They’re just as ugly, stupid and all-around bad as you were afraid they would be.

Don’t get me started on the princess chick.

All in all, this really felt more like an episode than a sequel. Oh, the last episode, during Sweeps Week, where they pull out all the stops to get you to watch and explained all the stuff they could, to be sure. Yet it still retained more sequel stereotypes than you’d think possible. I’m not kidding: return from retirement, old girlfriend, long lost daughter who turns out to be royalty, minor characters divulged and explored within an inch of their lives, superpowers. What? No smarmy, precocious kid?

There’s a dog that not only talks, but sings.

It’s probably no surprise that the only other people in the theater, all ten or so of them, were by now mouthing the dialect along with the characters - you know the kind of people I mean. They downloaded the script six months before the movie came out, they’ve seen it three times every afternoons since it opened, and they stay till the very very VERY end of the film to applaud the “Local Ugly Man #1” and the “Dolly Gaffer”, which sounds more like an aging prostitute than a position in the filmmaking industry.

We need to send a message to Hollywood that it is not okay to make movies this bad and expect us to see them because Tommy Lee and Will and Lara are all in it. Do not see this movie, and do not let anyone you know see this movie. The Crannakians - small, hamster-like aliens from Crannakia - who have to clean up your popcorn at the end of the movie for minimum wage thank you.

Alright, I’m caving and reviewing Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. But I’m doing it in the style of the ratings of the Brunching Shuttlecocks, which is a site you have to go see this instant. I’ll wait.

So, Star Wars.

Natalie Portman as Padme Mommyzord: A
There are some actresses in the world that can do no wrong. Andie Macdowell, Minnie Driver and of course Kirsten Dunst are good examples. Couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag, but it doesn’t matter. Natalie is in this category, and that makes her immune. This is an inherent truth of the cosmos, and the sooner you learn it the better. Sure, her acting is probably as stiff as the men watching her, but who cares? It’s Natalie friggin’ Portman. Put her in some ripped up whitie-tighties, roll her around in the dirt a little, and you’re looking at a happy camper.

Natalie Portman’s hair: C-
“You got Styrofoam pool noodles in my hair!” “You got hair in my Styrofoam pool noodles!”

Hayden Christenson as Little Orphan Ane: D
Dear Mr. Christenson, esq.;
You suck.
Sincerely,
Everyone On The Whole Damn Planet Except For Your Mother And George Lucas

Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan: B+
This is one of those guys that just gets hotter as he gets older, like Sean Connery. This is one of those guys. Don’t ask me why. Oh, and he’s just fine as Obi Wan.

Pillbug droids: A-
Scary. They roll up to you in this alarmingly insect-like fashion, then shoot you. Quickly. And painfully. But they ROLL, which means that of all the robots SWII:AOTCFYVPICWDOE or whatever is teeming with, these are the scariest, because now whenever I garden I expect the little pillbugs to pull out itty bitty lasers and attack my knees.

The Rain Planet: B+
So graded only because my brother wants to live there now.

The Fetts: Overall C
What a gig, huh? He gets an army and a MiniMe, he‘s basically the center of a whole planet‘s economy, life is pretty damn good indeed. And aside from his Very Very Instant Weight Loss program, you gotta give the man credit for the cushiness he's lined up for himself. And while I wanted to smack the kid so hard he’d have my handprint on his face well into male menopause, his dad makes up for that. Raise your hand if you think he’s not dead. Thought so.

Jar Jar Binks: C
He only gets that much because he has such a relievingly short part this time, and because he actually seems to serve some purpose. He has, like, four lines, one of which is actually crucial to the plot. But he still talks that damn pigeon English. Which sucks.

R2D2: A+
R2 is never not cool. Never. Of all the characters being mutilated and mangled in these prequels, R2 alone remains the collected, plucky little ‘bot he’s always been. And acted, as always, with a kind of silent aplomb and dignity that practically everyone else in the whole friggin’ movie was lacking. You hear me, Hayden? You were upstaged by a hunk of metal! Put that in your braid and pout at it. HA.

C3PO: F
This guy, on the other hand, could be melted down for scrap with my blessing. I’ve never really liked him all that much, this sad attempt at a comic relief, but the puns in this movie would be grounds for execution coming from ANY mouth, let alone one that doesn’t move. There is an upside, though. The actor who played him may be going to hell for this, but at least in the meantime he must have sore ligaments from walking all stinted like that.

Kung Fu Yoda: D
“Your ass, I will kick. Can of booty-smack, I will open.” Please. The guy’s a Muppet. A Muppet! Muppets don’t use lightsabers, Muppets throw boomerang fish or something. And when he tossed back his beat up old robe and did his best Clint Eastwood stare, myself and everyone else in the audience burst out laughing, which is never a good sign for Mr. Lucas. Minus points for losing the battle because he had to stop the pillar about to fall on his friends - when he could have yanked his friends aside with much less effort, and won - but bonus points for being able to jump three times his body height.

Senator Dooku: D
I have no respect for anyone who either A: can be whupped by a Muppet, or B: is named after poop.

So, all told. Star Wars - see it if you own more than one action figure, don’t see it if you laughed at the previews. There you go. Time for Kahlua now.

Today's review: The New Guy.

Warning: this movie is better than you think.

I, like you, thought this movie was gonna suck. I saw the ad for it, with the guy on the rope being lit on fire, and assumed like everyone else that this move was the PG rated version of "American Pie". Then, out of the blue, my girlfriend started giving me the puppy eyes to do something with her and her friends, and her friends picked this. So I figure okay, fine, I've done way worse for her than sit and watch a bad movie.

I was wrong! Hurrah!

Here's the story: Dork is tired of being put in dresses and strapped to chairs with fake boobs around his neck (this, apparantly, has happened to him frequently), so Dork enlists the aid of Convict to become Cool Guy. Cool Guy does cool stuff, then gets Girl. There ya go. Thing is, it's actually funny. Weird. Eerie. Dork uses his new statues to get the bullies and jocks to reconsile with the geeks - the bit with the midget is hilarious - and is the lead singer in a funk band that plays James Brown hits, which there should be more of. All in all, the movie manages to be really, genuinely funny without getting mean or crass about it - a common pitfall of most teen movies - and at times downright clever. (Wait for the bit where he accidentally lights the statue on fire - it's worth it.) It has heart too, without being mushy. Personally, I also love the fact that the dad, played very appropriately by Lyle Lovett, named his kid Dizzy Gillespie. This is very, very cool indeed.

Now, I will warn you, the trailers are misleading. There isn't nearly as much of Eddie Griffin as they let you think - he gets equal time in the trailer, when in fact all the on-screen time he has is... well, if you saw the ad you pretty much saw all of him there is. But that's okay.

Because let's talk about the lead, D.J. Qualls.

I have a new favorite actor, and this is him. Funny. Very. Talented. Very. Funny. I may have mentioned this. He's kinda like a cross between a cartoon character and a Monty Python character, plus I admit he's quite cute. He plays this particular role so effortlessly that this alone makes him fun to watch, but then he gives it this unexpected and cool empathy, plus he throws himself into everything like there ain't no tomorrow. (He does the Gangly Puppy Smile almost disconcertingly well.) The only other famous thing he's been in was "Road Trip", which I refuse to see even for D.Js sake, but he's also in "Chasing Holden", which I have seen, where he plays another misfit (only this one's much more dark and brooding, which oddly enough he aslo does quite well). But Elizabeth, you say, he's so thin! Doesn't he reenforce the steryotype that only skinny people can be happy attractive leads? To you I say two things: One, nobody anywhere ever can look at this guy and call him your traditional hunk. Two, shut up. You know why he's so thin? Do you? Well, I'll tell you: when he was a kid, he was diagnosed with cancer, and he's been doing chemo for years. Cancer! Now don't ever quesiton my judgement again.

Anyway, the movie. I waited a long time to see it, and to borrow its own phrase it was barely a blip to begin with, so by the time you read this you'll either have to really hunt it down or wait for it to come out on videio.

It will be worth it. D.J. would approve.

So, I lied. First movie is gonna be Spider-Man.

Ah, summer. The mosquitoes are sharpening their pincers (or noses or suckers or whatever the hell it is they suck blood with), glaring white limbs are starting to peek out from under wool and flannel, and the last few days of school drag by slowly and painfully like the drum solo of the semester. And summer movies come out.

Now, summer movies are never meant to be intelligent. They do not ponder the quandaries of the Universe. They do not offend Right Wing America. They do not question your upbringing. They make things go BOOM, and we know it. And when a summer movie tries to be at all intelligent, we laugh. Who are you kidding? When your movie is about a comic book character, intelligence is less expected and probably even less welcome. Such is the case with Spider-Man.

There’s a theory going around that I just made up about the order of comic book movies made. We’ll call it the Coolness Spiral. This theory proposes that the coolness of Marvel heroes – coolness here determined by Little Boy Appeal, LBA for short – can be accurately plotted by the timeline of movies made about them. If you go to any four year old boy and ask them who the coolest superhero is, what are they going to say? By and large, the answer is going to be Superman, of course! Superman kicks ASS! Superman has also been done to death. And who’s the next coolest? Why, Batman, duh! He kicks darker, more brooding ASS than Superman, but still. And he’s also been done to death. (Yes, he has. Are you listening, Herr Shumacher? STOP now.) The next one after that is X Men – Wolverine in particular – and there’s been a movie made about them too. The next one down, only barely on the radar but still quite cool indeed, is Spider-Man, so here we go.

I should note that The Incredible Hulk is the next coolest after Spidey, and he’s slated for next summer. By the time my kids are old enough to go to the movies, all that will be left will be “Aquaman II: Attack of the Oil Slick” And “Thor Goes To Hollywood”. But anyway. Back to Spider-Man.

Spider-Man is very pretty. The movie, I mean, not Toby Maguire. NOT Toby Maguire. Actually, Toby is hidden by a full-face mask for most of his on-screen time, which is probably for the better. It might not actually be him under there, anyway. I’ll continue to dream. Anyway, there are very pretty scenes of Spider-Man flying through the air like a fairy to avoid the whirling flying Blades of Acute Discomfort, and very pretty scenes of Spider-Man slinging between skyscrapers like Tarzan, if Tarzan had cabin fever and half an ounce of crystal meth in his system.

Cool thing: The camera follows him, which is neat. We go up, we go down, we narrowly dodge the oncoming traffic by zooming through openings approximately the width of PeeWee Herman’s ass, we land on a flagpole and release our death grip on the arm rests. This HAS to be a ride. It has to be.

Not-so-cool thing: All that webbing he shoots to swing around… what happens to it? We never see him use any of it twice, but he’s shooting it pretty much everywhere, and yet there are no headlines from the Daily Bugle declaring, “Entire City of Manhattan Covered in Goo: Natives Unfazed, Tourists Flee”. Guess he has his own cleanup crew or something. Besides, it only makes for about six or seven minutes of the whole movie anyway. The rest is all emotional exploration.

Cool thing: That Peter Parker’s first thought is to use his powers to become a masked professional wrestler.

Not-so-cool thing: The final battle scene. Jowl-jiggling, saliva-and-blood-spitting slow motion is not everyone’s cup of chai, and Toby Maguire must be told this.

Cool thing: The villain. As always, this is the really juicy role, played with delightful split-level lunacy by Willem whatsisname. Oh, you know him, famous guy. Anyway, there’s this one part where he’s talking to himself in the mirror, and you can tell the Goblin is just scaring the living shit out of this poor guy, and he swings from one role to the other so seamlessly that you get spooked by it. You really do. And what a welcome little shiver up your spine it is.

Not-so-cool thing: How whiny Spider-Man is about the whole thing. He reluctantly goes on the field trip, reluctantly gets bitten by the spider, reluctantly watches his uncle die, reluctantly saves people, reluctantly receives accolades, etc. SHUT UP. You are a superhero, dammit! You can climb up walls, you have spider-sense, you come as close to flying as you can without looking hokey and stupid. You have Kirsten Dunst and your feet. Kirsten Dunst! And he turns her down, even! Toby Maguire has no right to be kissing Kirsten Dunst and then dumping her. No. Toby should be willing to gleefully wrench off his pinky toes with pliers for the honor of fetching Kirsten an on-stage cruller, let alone the ability to kiss her. Plus, he makes her cry. He sucks. I’m going to go up to the next person I see, kick them in the groin and shriek, “Take THAT, Toby!” which actually sounds like a lot of fun now.

Cool thing: In one of the original trailers, Spider-Man catches bank robbers by trapping their getaway helicopter in a huge web spun between the Twin Towers. They obviously had to cut that, but still, it makes for an interesting little cultural tidbit.

Not-so-cool thing: You know the coolest scene in the whole movie? Yes you do, it was in the trailer. And the second coolest scene? Also in the trailer. Third coolest? You get the idea.

All in all, should you see this movie? I leave that up to you. If you’re willing to wade through the hour and a half of soap opera to get to the cool stuff, or even if you’re looking forward to the soap opera, be my guest. Me, I think I’ll just watch the trailer a few more times. I do NOT need to see Toby make Kirsten cry again.

One more thing I should mention, the final spider-cherry on the pie: as we were leaving the theater, the couple behind us started to sing the Spider-Man theme song from the 70’s show, the one that goes, “Spins a web, any size, catches crooks, just like flies… is he strong, listen bud, he’s got radioactive blood LOOK OUT! Here comes the Spider-Maaaan…” And every other person in the lobby started singing along, even those of us that are supposed to be too young to remember it. Only in America.

First entry, yahoy! This, I think, will be movie reviews - mostly bad ones, cos they're the most fun - and we'll see what happens. My other journal,which is older and larger, like a dinosaur, is here!

And I'll work around in this one whenever I see a movie. First on the docket: Episode II. As they say in the biz, stay tuned.