Men in Black
It's hard to believe that the original Men in Black is twenty-years-old this summer. Part of the reason for that might be that the footprint it left in pop-culture is still firmly cemented, but there are also so many aspects of this that feel timeless. Between the retro-futuristic production design, the seamless blend of practical effects & CGI, and an irreverent sense of humor that never gets old, this could go toe-to-toe with a lot of more current releases.
As kids, all of us enjoyed this more than we expected to going in - which is not to say we weren't looking forward to it. It's just that the film was even better than we imagined. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover that almost all of this still works two decades later.
Topics include: the fairly dramatic liberties the filmmakers took with the comic book source material, original choices for the roles of J and K, the understated brilliance of Tommy Lee Jones' performance, the fact that no one really passed the MiB tryouts, how you'd deploy a neuralizer in your everyday life if those actually existed, where second film went wrong, how the third out sorta made up for it, and much much more!