The alien-busters are back, baby. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones still rock that Reservoir Dogs look as two secret agents in the extraterrestrial waste-disposal business. But, jeez, we haven't seen these dudes in 10 years. My memory is that the first Men in Black, in 1997, hit all its marks as creature-feature farce. Five years later, though, the sequel was a giant yawn. The good news is that director Barry Sonnenfeld has reassembled the troops to mostly gangbusters effect. Yeah, Men in Black 3 (in 3D, yet) suffered production delays, a budget that ballooned to $215 million, and 215 million script revisions (I'm kidding, barely). It was Smith himself who had the idea to send his character, Agent J, back in time to 1969 to stop Boris the Monster (The Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement) from assassinating Jones' Agent K. Don't panic, I've seen the movie and I still don't get it. What works, like comic hellfire, is the casting of Josh Brolin as the young Agent K. Brolin's take on Jones' deadpan delivery (they co-starred in No Country for Old Men) is spot-on and spectacularly funny. Better yet, Brolin brings in a true actor's grace, adding humor and heart that help explain the origins of Agent K's moody blues. Jones disappears for most of the second half, but not before he and Smith trade barbs and slaughter E.T. scum. The effects are cheese-whizzy fun, but it's the unexpected spark between Smith and Brolin that makes MiB3 primo summer fun. Way cool.

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“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.