Ah, the drive-in experience! Something I never got to do as a kid, something I never choose to do as an adult. We drive a 2016 Mazda CX-5 that has to be the biggest piece of shit on four wheels and completely unsuited to sitting idle for more then 20-minutes without whining that it hasn’t got enough attention (that and the brakes, and the transmission, and the suspension, and the mileage, and the warranty, etcetera etcetera). But when we do go, we only have one within 100 km or so of our house, since you know it’s old-fashioned enough to drive an hour to get there but not enough to not trend like crazy when something like Avengers comes out. Oh my god have you been to the drive-in lately? There’s still a drive-in? What’s a drive-in? Tonight there was no Avengers. There was, however, Men in Black 4 and Annabelle 3. Oh joy! All I could think about when sitting in the lot was how long it had left before the property became condos.

MiB 4 is terrible. When people say Hollywood only makes movies to launder money then this is what they are talking about. It is a bland, trashy, dime-a-dozen shot-like-a-TV-pilot sequel/reboot where at any given second I simultaneously had no idea what was going on, nor did I care. I sat in a dazed stupor thinking: are there only ever 26 agents working at one time? What was that portal that Tessa Thompson walked through? Was it entry into an alternate dimension where aliens co-exist with humans or just safety cones for when the agents are investigating? Why did Emma Thompson get top billing when she’s only in the movie for ten minutes? Why make Liam Neeson your new MiB head when he is obviously the mole, both as the inscrutable head of the organization AND Liam Neeson? Where is my Will Smith cameo? (Tommy Lee Jones would never go for that) Why does Kumail Nanjiani ruin his cute-supporting-alien character by saying his lines in that irritating improvised, sarcastic way that EVERY major film now – Netflix or otherwise – has their comedy relief do? Who was originally responsible for this trend of aimless, directionless, movie-ruining comedy? Was it YOU, Judd Apatow? And probably the most disappointing of all, where is the F Gary Gray of Law Abiding Citizen? First Fast & Furious 8 and now this? I am very disappointed in you, Gary Gray. Very disappointed in ALL of you. Not really, I knew it would be shit. Happy wife, happy life.

All Men in Black 4 proved to me is that Chris Hemsworth needs to stop blowing so much of whatever Australians spend their paychecks on and then maybe he wouldn’t need to work for twenty bucks on the weekend… oh wait, he’s still in a Marvel contract isn’t he? Then he doesn’t even NEED the money! Are there lizard people in Hollywood too? After such a roller-coaster ride in my own head I couldn’t sit through the masterpiece that was sure to be Annabelle 3, which is OK, because I have only seen the first Insidious, and not two-through-four, or Conjuring, or the sequel, or Annabelle, or Annabelle 2… and etcetera etcetera and blah blah blah and you get it and on it goes forever and ever until we are dead.