Josh Brolin and Will Smith in Men in Black 3MEN IN BLACK 3

Is it merely deserved absence making my heart grow fonder, or is Men in Black 3, against almost all expectation, awfully damned good?

Jonathan Daniel Brown, Oliver Cooper, and Thomas Mann in Project XPROJECT X

In director Nima Nourizadeh's teen comedy Project X, three nerdy high-school pals in North Pasadena decide to make names for themselves by throwing a wild party, and then throw the party.

Now that we've dispensed with the plot, let me try to explain why, through almost its entire running length, this movie made me want to repeatedly plunge an ice pick through my skull.

Billy Unger, Betty White, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Odette Yustman, and Kristin Bell in You AgainFriday, September 24, 11:30-ish: I attend a morning screening of You Again, and pretty much know what I'm in for as soon as the Touchstone Pictures logo appears: a brightly lit, jauntily scored, aggressively manic entertainment with plenty of "heart" and no laughs whatsoever. (I half-expect a Tim Allen cameo, but instead get a Dwayne Johnson cameo, which probably should've been more expected.)

Kyle Bornheimer(The following is Mike Schulz's interview with Curtainbox Theatre Company co-founder Kyle Bornheimer, written for the area organization's Web site TheCurtainbox.com.)

 

At the end of my recent interview with Kyle Bornheimer - the Curtainbox Theatre Company co-founder who stars on the new ABC sitcom Romantically Challenged - I asked the actor if he was hoping, one day, to trek from California to the Midwest in order to see one of the organization's stage productions.

"Oh, definitely," he said. "I'm so impressed with what Kim [Furness] has done with the company. We would sit in her living room and all dream about taking this thing to the next level, and she's done that, so I definitely want to make it out there."

In the meantime, of course, Bornheimer has kept himself more than busy out there.

Alex O'Loughlin and Jennifer Lopez in The Back-up PlanTHE BACK-UP PLAN

"All right. Let's hear your pitch."

District 9DISTRICT 9

Director Neill Blomkamp's District 9 is a science-fiction/horror/action flick that finds a race of malnourished, understandably irate alien creatures being forcibly detained in a Johannesburg internment camp. It's also, if you can stomach the frequent bursts of bloodshed and gooey splatter, an almost insanely good time, an unapologetic "B" movie elevated to "A" status through wizardly filmmaking, macabre humor, thematic cleverness, and some of the most inventive CGI work in years.

Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in The ProposalTHE PROPOSAL

"All right, you've got five minutes to sell me your pitch. Go."

"Well, it's a romantic comedy - I'm thinking about calling it The Proposal - and it's about this bitchy, selfish book editor in Manhattan who learns deeper values and becomes a better person after falling in love with her assistant."

"That doesn't sound very funny."