Men in Black (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]

I still like this movie just like I did when it was first out, but now with it being in Blu-ray it's even better. The picture is so clear and the sound is amazing. It's crazy what they can do with movies now days.

Very original movie with great special effects. Looks much better in blue ray. I love the pug dog. A lot of people own pugs due to this movie.

Having watched this movie numerous times in the theater and on DVD, I am proud to own the BluRay copy now. I must say they did a BRILLANT job on the transfer. The color is vivid and the sound is truly top notch. Some transfers of older movies aren't that good, but they took their time with this one. The special effects are great but on some scenes you can tell that it is CGI. Minus that the transfer is great.

This is another movie I purchased on VCR form years ago. I loved it and wanted to keep it so I upgraded it to DVD and got it at a great price too.

Men In Black is a spoof/sci-fi/action flick about a super-secret cross between the Immigration and Naturalization Service, FBI X-Files division, and a disinformation office. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are, respectively, a seasoned agent and a new recruit who work to find, legalize, track and police aliens from other worlds, and to hide the fact that such aliens exist. Aliens are given disguises and allowed to live among us as long as they don't cause too much trouble. There is apparently a lot of latitude in enforcing that requirement, since it turns out that Newt Gingrich, Sylvester Stallone and Dennis Rodman are actually aliens.

Beyond that set-up, the plot exists mainly as a vehicle on which to hang a bunch of gags, some very odd characters, and action sequences. And that's enough. The heroes fight aggressor aliens and save the Earth and a very small galaxy while remaining (mostly) cool and making wisecracks. What more could you ask for?

This is a fun movie with lots of elaborate special effects and sets that ought to really benefit from the hi-def treatment. The new Blu-ray release will have a bunch of special features, but only a few not taken from previous releases. Here are the new features:

-- Intergalactic Pursuit: Men in Black multi-player trivia game
-- Ask Frank the Pug interactive game
-- Alien subtitle track

Probably not much there, for most of us, but the old features are still plenty:

-- telestrator commentary with director Barry Sonnefeld and star Tommy Lee Jones (the telestrator lets them draw on the screen, as it were, like John Madden, but don't expect much extra excitement)
-- technical commentary with Barry Sonnenfeld, alien make-up effects guru Rick Baker, and three folks from Industrial Light & Magic
-- extended and alternate scenes (five scenes)
-- "Metamorphosis of Men In Black" (on how the project developed, 23 minutes)
-- Visual Effects Scene Deconstructions, with optional technical commentary (two scenes analyzed)
-- Character Animation Studies (animation of three characters analyzed)
-- Scene Editing Workshop (you get to edit some scenes)
-- Storyboard Comparisons
-- Conceptual Art Gallery
-- Production Photo Gallery
-- Men in Black music video with Will Smith and Mikey
-- 2 trailers

Specs: 1.85:1 Widescreen Transfer (1080p), English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Portuguese Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, Thai Dolby Digital 5.1, subtitles in Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin Simplified), Chinese (Mandarin Traditional), Dutch, English (UK), English (US), French (Parisian), Indonesian / Bahasa, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin Am), Thai.

Update (11 June): in a comment to this review (number 19), Kerry says he (or she?) has seen this Blu-ray DVD already and that it wasn't so much better than a regular DVD. This moved me to check several professional reviews to see what others who have already seen it thought. They all said that the Blu-ray is significantly better than even the older Superbit edition, with better detail and depth of color, and also really great true high-def sound. None of the reviews I saw had any significant complaints about the video or audio; all were very positive about it being worth it to upgrade.