The Beastmaster (1982)

One of the better sword and sorcery flicks regards Dar, a babe born unto a cow (!), who gains the ability to telepathically communicate with animals and wages battle against an evil wizard. Visually, Marc Singer looks the part, which is half the battle, while Tanya Roberts accompanies him as the beautiful slave girl. With such an intriguing premise, I don't know how they manage to make a number of these movies so boring. They could have easily shaved a half hour off the runtime to make it more palatable. Anyway, take the good with the bad.

3 eagle screeches out of 5

Defending Your Life (1991)

A man dies and finds himself under litigation in the afterlife (among every other denizen) where he is forced to defend his choices in life to determine whether he has to go back (be reincarnated) or move onto the next plane of existence. What's brilliant about this movie is that it isn't held down by any particular ideology or religious convention and assimilates all these abstract ideas of what happens after we die. At once a humorous, whimsical rumination on life, it's another great unconventional fantasy comedy and unique premise for a movie that has been imitated countless times but never done better.

5 past lives out of 5

Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

Two things strike me about this movie. How much better it holds up than my memory of it, and also how much worse it is compared to the original.

ZAZ exhausted every single airline-related joke the first time around, so they elected not to return for this studio-mandated sequel (as they were busy developing Police Squad! with Leslie Nielsen). Plot-wise, it's exactly the same, except now the plane is a space shuttle and all the passengers are heading to the moon for some reason. Yeah, it's completely stupid. The '80s were wild.

The result is uneven to be sure, but are enough gags crammed in that even when they don't land, it remains partially successful. It just goes to show, not anyone can make these movies funny. It's a case of flying too close to the sun.

2 drinking problems out of 5

MEN IN BLACK II [2002]

Tommy Lee Jones & Will Smith reprise their roles as Agents J & K in this dismal 2002 sequel to the sci-fi comedy Men In Black.  

All the same elements of the first film are here only this time it simply just doesn't work.  What was a perfect blend of silly, bizarre and creative, is all pulverized into an uneven pile of mush in the second film.  Set in New York,  MIB II fell victim to heavy edits because of 9/11 and the Two Towers originally being featured quite heavily in the original cut, so that might have a lot to do with the sloppy mess that it is. 

...and Lara Flynn Boyle just plain sucks.

2 Rick Fuck Yeah Baker is the STAR out of 5

MEN IN BLACK [1997]

Based on the premise of the Malibu comics, Barry Sonnenfeld's Men In Black adaptation is considerably lighter in tone and just right for popcorn munching & shit-eating grins aplenty.

Tommy Lee Jones & Will Smith seem to be having a lot of fun hamming it up and looking good doing it, while Vincent D'Onofrio steals the show as the "bug man".  The humor and sci-fi elements are spread evenly throughout this smoothly paced story which make for good mindless fun.

Rick Baker's hilariously bizarre creature effects are the main star here.

4 galaxy sporting cats out of 5