Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

A lot of people try to put "critical reception" out of their minds when considering movies on which to spend their hard-earned dollars. Normally, I'd agree with this practice, but as a warning I will say that all the negative buzz you've heard about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is true. The problems with this film are as overwhelming and frequent as the ocean is deep, or in this case, as the robots are large and the blame can rest solely on the shoulders of actioneer/Hollywood pariah, Michael Bay.

Admittedly, the first Transformers despite its problems, was a relatively watchable film. Granted the action was a bit muddled due to Bourne-esque cinematography and the ending seemed to... well, not END, but it was far from the worst movie to come out in the summer of 2007. As of now, Transformers 2 stands as the worst theatrical movie I've seen in the summer of 2009.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the cartoon series and toy line from the 80's, Transformers is a story about otherworldly robots that have the ability to turn into various vehicles and mechanical devices on Earth. Both the predecessor and it's sequel are rated PG-13, understandable if the action violence contains more explosions than the cartoon series (or any other movie this summer, considering the helmer is Michael freakin' Bay.) However, overtly harsh language, super-sexual overtones, abstract drug references, abject racism, and hateful stereotypes have no place in the childrens target market, summer blockbuster giant robot movie.
It's surprising the MPAA didn't mark this an R, considering the hoops certain movies have to jump through just to reach any audience. The sexism is blatant as Megan Fox dolls herself up for the boyfriend she has no real interest in (action everyman-boy Shia LaBoeff returns as overactive protag Sam Witwicky) and does little else but act as errant screen-candy. Every female at the university is supermodel hot, yet drool at the feet of their astronomy professor (wasted talent epitomized in The Office's Rainn Wilson) who just degrades them further without their knowing. Sam's mother stupidly ingests some pot-brownies and acts like she's on crystal-meth ("but HEY she's a woman, what does she know? Right?" I assume was Bay's justification.)

By now you've most likely heard of the two Autobots, Skids and Mudflap (charming names, but that's just the tip of the iceberg) who are most commonly referred to as the Sambots or the Minstrel Twins. That's right, they've got googley eyes, giant robot lips, simian-like ears and what the hell, a GOLD TOOTH for good measure. They speak in broken street jive, the kind of which you've only heard in the movie Airplane, and basically beat on each other (you know, since they're "brothers.") But when fate calls on them to help Witwicky decode an ancient prophecy it turns out they CAN'T READ! Yes, it's THAT bad. There's also a miniature remote control truck Decepticon that is essentially a robotic Joe Pesci, slinging all our favorite Soprano-isms before he humps Megan Fox's leg, and I didn't just make that up. It happens. Spoiler alert.

The film creates its own logic rules, then immediately breaks them, such as Megan Fox's midday 30 second flight from LA to NYC and miraculously shows up while it's still light outside. There's a Decepticon that can disguise itself as a human, which begs the question, if they can do THIS then why bother with cars, trucks and other clunky machinery? Michael Bay has presented a level of cinematic self indulgence that transcends even the likes of George Lucas and M. Night Shayamalan. He aims to make things look cool in slow motion with no concern as to HOW or WHY. There's a story worth telling in there somewhere, it rears its head occasionally only to be submerged in a sea of nonsensical college humor and exploding mechanical debris. Whatever story-arc presented in the shooting draft of Star Trek scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci has been warped, misinterpreted and overshadowed in the final product.

The sound effects are grating and trauma-inducing. The score sounds to have been lifted directly from either Armageddon or Bad Boys 2. Admittedly, the forest fight scene between Optimus Prime and something like 4 other Decepticons was pretty cool, which I was able to discern what was going on. Though this still makes the film 2 hours and 15 minutes too long for its own good. Perhaps what was missing this time around was the guiding hand of first installment producer Steven Spielberg to rein in the superfluous elements. With its opening weekend draw, a sequel is imminent, but as a final warning, this is what you get when you give a child with no supervision $2oo million to play with his toys on camera.

The Hangover

The Hangover is possibly the best comedy to hit theaters in about two years. There I said it. To draw a comparison to this statement, the last movie to keep me as thoroughly engrossed and laughing consistently was Knocked Up. Skepticism was my first thought. When a movie is so widely acclaimed as this, especially a comedy about being blackout drunk, someone is wrong(examples of this phenomenon are Austin Powers and There's Something About Mary, both funny, but highly overrated.) Fortunately, the rule doesn't come close to applying to The Hangover.

Previously acclaimed for both Road Trip and Old School (we can ignore the missteps that were Starsky and Hutch and School for Scoundrels,) director Todd Philips has a knack for "it list" casting. Previously utilizing Seann William "Steve Stiffler" Scott, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn, Philips now ushers in the next generation of comedic talent in Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper.

The lead in this ensemble is actually Helms (The Office's rage-oholic Andy Bernard) as Stu, the resident pushover with the uber-controlling girlfriend. Cooper (departing from the role of "evil boyfriend" from Wedding Crashers) plays Phil, the fun loving friend that puts the "buddy" in "buddy-comedy." Then there's Zach Galifianakis as the bride-to-be's black sheep older brother, Alan. He's essentially the creepy guy that has very few friends because he's just so strange, but never really got a handle on how strange he really is because he didn't have any friends to tell him so. Justin Bartha (Riley Poole from both National Treasures) brings up the rear as the MIA groom. Throw in some guest appearances by Heather Graham (who is surprisingly not horrible in this, in the same way she wasn't horrible on Scrubs,) Mike Tyson (proving that he's still the champ, albiet a champ with a really weird facial tattoo,) Rob Riggle (regular Daily Show correspondent/loudmouth,) an small appearance by director Todd Philips himself and The Dan Band (previously seen at the wedding from Old School) and the absurdity abounds for at least 2 hours.

Putting a new twist on the classic "Bachelor Party in Vegas" gig, The Hangover blacks out all the drunken debaucherie from our "heroes" and we are left with the aftermath of a night that went wrong on so many levels. Missing tooth? Check. Tiger in bathroom? Check. Baby in the closet? Check. Zach Galifianakis without pants? Check. From this point out it's almost as if the movie doesn't stop to catch its breath until well after the credits have started rolling (you'll see what I mean) presenting a comedic momentum that's been unmatched in cinema for a long time. Most comedies either start strong and lose steam halfway through or keep the strength up but get caught up in the heavy handed moral tale at the core of the narrative. The Hangover manages to mix in the morality and message while keeping the funny at a constant peak level.

After some thought, this film sort of rounds out Todd Phillips' trilogy of successful comedies. A trilogy I will call, the Man/Boy Trilogy. They all include a similar set of characters enduring comedic circumstances.

Breckin Meyer/Luke Wilson/Ed Helms - Straight man, emotional lead.
Seann William Scott/Vince Vaughn/Bradley Cooper - Irrational shoulder angel to the straight man. Id.
D.J. Qualls/Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis - Oddball, uncomfortable comic relief.

All three films encompass some sort of brotherly bond among close friends. The films progress and mature in an almost Apatowian fashion (from 40 Year Old Virgin to Knocked Up to this year's Funny People.) Road Trip features immature college kids acting like immature college kids. Old School has adult men reliving their glory days as immature college kids and The Hangover follows up with adult men acting like immature adult men. Rumors of a sequel are already milling around the studio with Phillips possibly at the helm. If that's the case, I can only hope that it's as hilarious as its predecessor.

Year One

When you first hear about the bible era comedy from former Ghostbuster turned director Harold Ramis, you'd think it has the makings of a comedy goldmine. Conceived as a sort of Superbad meets History of the World Part I, I was hoping for laughs in the vein of Monty Python's Life of Brian. Unfortunately, Year One slides by as a merely passable parody of Roland Emmerich's prehistoric disasterpiece 10,000 B.C. which was funny enough on its own.

Jack Black and Michael Cera play opposing cavemen versions of their type-cast character models and the two bumbling cro-mags proceed to Mr. Magoo their way through the Genesis portions of the Old Testament. While the "greatest story ever told" is indeed overflowing with opportune parody, Year One takes the low road and equates everything down to genital and poop humor. Unfortunately, the laughs that aren't cheap aren't frequent enough to maintain interest for the duration of this film's 90 minutes. Also, it's painfully obvious that much of the adhesive humor was left on the cutting room floor to garner a PG-13 rating by the MPAA. Perhaps an unrated DVD will work better, but I wouldn't put money on it.

The guest stars shine a dim light on much of the latter half. Paul Rudd is criminally underused as Abel and David Cross's Cain quickly loses his charm after the inevitable fratricide occurs (spoiler alert?) Harold Ramis appears himself as Adam, but doesn't offer much beyond a cursory "Hey, look who it is!" Hank Azaria and Superbad's own McLovin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Yeah, I'm tired of the while McLovin shtik too...) show up as Abraham and Isaac and Oliver Platt arrives toward the beginning of the 3rd act to encompass the world's first gay joke.

It's not that Year One isn't kind of funny. Though, that's the problem. It's only KIND OF funny. Like so many Saturday Night Live skits, it begins strong and peters out somewhere in the middle of the second act. The cinematography is relatively stale, mostly consisting of close up shots making up the dialog, presumed to splice out R-rated quips or off color improvs. This is particularly upsetting considering Ramis has put out quality material, and fairly recently to boot. Not only was he responsible for the Bill Murray vehicle Groundhog Day, but 2005's overshadowed and under appreciated dark comedy The Ice Harvest with John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Platt and Randy Quaid. With those projects in mind, Year One just comes across as a lazy attempt at comedy.

At the end of the day, Year One is worth a rental. There are laughs to be had, but the pause button will come in very handy on this one. Though, in this economy ten bucks a ticket is just too much to see Jack Black eat poop and Michael Cera pee on himself.

Up!

The Pixar team has made a habit out consistency. I've pretty much loved every Pixar film I've seen (and I only missed out on one of them voluntarily) and UP is no exception. From Monster's Inc. director Pete Doctor and regular all around staffer Bob Peterson, Up is possibly their most emotionally charged, labor of love project to date.

Featuring the voice talents of Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer, Up chronicles the latter day adventure of Carl Fredricksen, a crotchety septuagenarian determined to fulfill his lifelong ambitions after the passing of his wife. It sounds sad, indeed, but Up refuses to wallow in it's own self pity in the face of its own tragedy and the lighthearted humor surfaces almost immediately following each tearjerking vignette (of which there are at least two.) When faced with the threat of assisted living, Carl hoists his home into the air on thousands of helium balloons, inadvertently taking with him the well intentioned, over achieving Wilderness Explorer, Russell, who is determined to achieve his "Assisting the Elderly" badge. What follows is a heartwarming adventure of self realization the likes of which only Pixar could communicate with the world.

The look and feel of the film is very throwback to adventure pictures from the 30's, which stylistically makes sense as these are the big screen adventures that fed the imagination of young Carl in the first frames of the film. The setting resonates with echoes of Skull Island from the 1933 version of King Kong and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (not the Jurassic Park sequel...) while the house traveling sequences feel reminiscent of the first scenes of 1939's The Wizard of Oz. The perils that ensue are truly edge of your seat adventures, so much so that the mere popping of a balloon is cringe worthy.

The character work in this film is amazing. Normally when there's a young sidekick in a children's movie they tend to almost demand the most attention through forced comedy. The "funny character" goes a bit over the top, begging for laughs. Russell never crosses this line. His naivety is genuine to his age and while he's a glaring contrast to Carl, their bonding becomes one of the most heartfelt character passages in recent filmic history. Dug the talking dog is handled similarly as well, to equal or better comedic effect. Asner's voice talent for Carl could not be more perfectly matched to the boxy cartoon visage inspired by a cross between Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau. His counterpart, Charles Muntz, voiced by Christopher Plummer is a kind of menacing cross between Vincent Price and Jack Palance.

While some of the themes may be heavy handed for young children, Up delivers in ways that only Pixar has been capable of for the past 14 years. The 3D aspect, while not as "in your face" as other recent releases (Monsters Vs. Aliens, Beowulf) assists in creating a more immersive experience. Mainly because it doesn't NEED to be 3D, but the fact that it is makes it that much more real. And while Pixar is still on top of its game, get ready for Toy Story 3 next summer.

S. Darko - A Donnie Darko Tale

A shiver went down my spine when I first heard the news. Donnie Darko, the long standing cult classic from (at the time) first time director Richard Kelly was getting a sequel. Without Kelly's say so, blessing or even remote involvement. They say lightning doesn't strike twice, but the executives over at FOX don't believe that, so they took it upon themselves to MAKE lightning strike twice. The result is a Frankenstein monster of tragically banal proportions. The idea in itself to try to capitalize on the initially ill received cult classic is insulting enough, but to attempt such a feat with only one member of the original production (and a markedly minor character at that) is a recipe for disaster. As you would imagine, S. Darko is a complete and utter failure as both a film and a follow up.

Yielding lackluster reviews at Sundance and an even less impressive limited theatrical run, Donnie Darko, the brainchild of directorial newcomer Richard Kelly, found its audience quickly on DVD. A hardcore fanbase was built in the years following its release in 2001 and Kelly went on to other projects (namely the script for the flashy actioneer Domino and the critically reviled Southland Tales.)

Since the rights to Darko belonged solely to FOX, the sequel was greenlit from right under Kelly and he adamantly proclaimed to have no involvement in any aspect of it's production. Chris Fisher wound up directing the script by Nathan Atkins, both of whom have a relatively small and unimpressive catalog of previous work. The only returning character is Samantha Darko (hence the title, played unimpressively by original actress Daveigh Chase) whose role in the original was so slight you have to wonder what kind of premise could've been fashioned from following up with her character six years later. Samantha and her friend Corey are on a road trip from Virginia to California for a reason that is never really explained. Their car breaks down and they are taxied to a small unassuming town in the middle of the desert to get it fixed. What follows is a barrage of shamelessly heisted images and scenes from the first film, redistributed into the new setting to make what barely passes for watchable. None of what happens ever remotely makes any sense. Each character is a haphazard clone of an archetype from the previous installment and carries neither weight or significance.

The reason why Donnie Darko worked the way it did is because, for starters, it was an original concept and a relatively new approach to untapped ideas (tangent universes, time-travel, mental instability and ghostly intervention.) Also, each piece of the puzzle that unravels is specifically placed to create the larger narrative, connecting the story together. S. Darko seems to have been laid out on an almost identical structure with each new piece and character plugged in with the hopes that it will cohere into some kind of relatable story, which ultimately never happens. While the characters in DD had an instictive suspicion that something terribly wrong was happening, the characters in SD are given one line of dialog to create a miniscule and uninteresting back story and then are left alone for the remainder of the film. Possibly the worst scene translation from the original is the awakening realization sequence. In DD, each of the characters we've followed in the month-long journey to the course correction of the Darko timeline has some sort of spiritual or moral subconscious reaction. This would lead you to believe that what happens after the credits roll will be significantly different than the events that took place. By the end of SD, none of the characters are any better off or more informed than they were when the whole incident started. Not to mention the doomsday countdown in SD is significantly shorter (4 days, instead of an entire month) leaving very little time for our heroine (?) to come to terms with the sacrifice she may have to make.

S. Darko is utterly forgetable and inherently avoidable. There is literally no reason to watch it if you've seen Donnie Darko and if you haven't, S. Darko is not the place to start. New audience or not, some movies just don't need a sequel.

Transsiberian

It's fun to watch a director grow. One of the most promising filmic evolutions in modern cinema has been that of Brad Anderson. Not familiar with the name? It's not surprising as his three most notable feature films barely scraped by on a limited theatrical release (which is both astonishing and tragic, considering that material.) Even from Session 9 to The Machinist, his craft improved dramatically. After contributing two films to some TV projects (Masters of Horror and Fear Itself) he went on to direct several key episodes of Fringe (including the season 1 finale) and eventually wound up as a producer on the show. In the middle of all this, he somehow found the time to make the brilliantly understated thriller, Transsiberian.

Starring Emily Mortimer, Woody Harrelson and Ben Kingsley, Transsiberian is a testament to suspense. Brad Anderson has achieved levels of the genre that were previously only reachable by Alfred Hitchcock himself. The suspense is paramount in this picture, throughout. It achieves the highest levels of tension without ever resorting to excessive gore like the similarly themed Hostel films. The twists in the narrative are all organic and never feel trite or contrived. The onset of fear in the characters is entirely natural and believable so much so that the audience never doubts the choices made out of necessity of the situation. Anderson has become skillfully proficient in removing the "comfort zone" for an audience, which is integral when tackling the thriller genre. In Session 9, the setting of the dilapidated, dark and crumbling closed down mental institution did the trick, as did Christian Bale's emaciated figure in his follow up, The Machinist. Trannsiberian transcends his previous efforts by removing not one, but multiple comfort zones. Stripping them away from the protagonists, one by one until complete and utter hopelessness is imminent.

Though the true thematic core of Trannsiberian is honesty and truth. It's about the lies we tell our loved ones and the lies we tell ourselves just to get by from day to day. Emily Mortimer sells this idea almost perfectly. As an audience, we understand and sympathize with her need to lie, not out of spite or cruelty, but self preservation as she is the constant victim of circumstance as well as her own past personal demons. Woody Harrelson plays the supportive husband with a hint of a passive aggressive hero complex (manifested in the form of semi-altruistic Christianity,) a departure from most of the roles he's taken recently, but he executes it with style and ease. Ben Kingsley adds yet another nationality to his ever expanding repertoire as the Russian detective that's sniffing about the traveling couple (so far we've seen Kingsley chameleonize to Hindu, Middle Eastern, Brooklyn and Slavic to scratch the surface of his talent.) Also some markedly admirable performances by Eduardo Noriega (last year's lackluster Vantage Point and Abre Los Ojos, the Spanish original upon which the Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky is based) and up-and-comer Kate Mara (most notably seen in 24's fifth season) as the mysteriously friendly yet sketchy couple.

Trannsiberian is possibly the best thriller in the past five years. With Anderson's new and increased duties on Fringe (as he will be returning as producer for the 22 episode second season in the fall,) I hope he still finds the time to put together more theatrical work. Each of his projects to date has been exponentially better than the last and each one markedly different in vision and scope. As long as he remains out of the eye of the major studios, where creative tinkering is at its worst, we can look forward to more top of the line material from Brad Anderson.

Terminator: Salvation

My love affair with Terminator began with the second installment. It hit theaters when I was about 10 or 11 and had not been permitted to see the first one (for obvious reasons, I was 4 when it hit theaters.) Taunted by the coming attractions, magazine covers boasting top of the line special effects and a theater run that outdid everything else that summer, I absolutely had to see it. Luckily, conceding to my pleas, my father took me to see T2 on my birthday that year. And so, Terminator became the summer fling that I always fondly remembered, by constantly forgot about.

Terminator: Salvation comes to us from questionable Hollywood director, Joseph McGinty Nichol (AKA McG.) I have trouble taking anyone seriously whose preferred nomenclature is not only a single name (i.e. Madonna, Cher, Seal,) but an abbreviation at that (see also: DMX.) This is also the person who gave us not one, but two Charlies Angels movies.

That being said, the movie looks good. The effects are top notch. The setting is dim, gritty and dark. Everything needed to create the Terminator experience that follows where the last Terminator experience left off is in the right place. However, the plot doesn't really make much sense.

We've jumped ahead 15 years since we last saw John Connor in Rise of the Machines (then played by the underappreciated Nick Stahl,) who has hence become a Batman-voiced soldier in the human resistance as well as a shadow-messiah to a select few that still believe he will redeem mankind from the clutches of the oppressive cybernetic organisms that bombed us halfway to hell and back in 2003. Problem is, the machines have an ace up their circuits. They're gunning for Connor's future/past father Kyle Reese (now only a teenager, played by Star Trek's Anton Yelchin in what might be the movie's best performance.)

Now, time travel is a tricky plot device and this is where the narrative gets sloppy. Given what we know from the past films, Future John Connor sends back an adult Kyle Reese (from the age difference, I'll say about 15 years after T:Salvation) to protect his mother Sarah in 1984. Reese and Sarah get cozy while hiding out and produce a baby John embryo. Reese dies at the hands of the first Arnold Terminator and Sarah destroys it. Lead in to T2. The only people with the knowledge of John Connor's paradoxical father is John himself (who I believe doesn't know him by name yet,) Sarah and the Good Arnold Terminator(GAT for short.) GAT is melted in the molten steel (as is the T-1000, who probably didn't have this information anyways, but for the sake of loose ends...) Assuming that the original Terminator somehow knew that Kyle and Sarah had shacked up and produced John, the chip that stored said information was also dissolved by Edward Furlong John Connor. Sarah Connor dies of leukemia somewhere between T2 and T3 leaving the John as the sole guardian of his familial secret.

History lesson over. Now, somehow all the machines in this post-apocalyptic world know who birthed John Connor and are gunning to have him erased from history (instead of just killing him like normal human-killing robots.) Added to the mix is unknown fugitive Marcus Wright (played by Sam Worthington who I've seen in absolutely nothing, but will be in James Cameron's crazy-future-scifi-epic Avatar) who, if you've seen any previews for this movie, is all or mostly robot. All this makes for about 2 full hours of chase scenes, shoot-outs, screaming matches and explosions. Everything you need for a summer blockbuster, though, as absurd as the plot to Terminator:Salvation is I can guarantee that it's going to be better than Transformers 2:Revenge of the Fallen.

The thing that worked for me about T4 was that it had echoes of previous installments scattered throughout. Every scene seemed like an updated or more futuristic version of an iconic moment in any one of it's three predecessors (and that's not including the recycled lines like "Come with me if you want to live.") Christian Bale functions as John Connor, but never really sells it. Honestly if he'd pulled more from his character in Reign of Fire it would've been better, though he is rather upstaged by Sam Worthington. As stated before, Anton Yelchin is probably the best actor in the film, easily. If the franchise takes off (despite mostly negative reviews) he'll be the one to make it worth the time. Bryce Dallas Howard is plainly underused, as is Moon Bloodgood, whose scenes border on significance but never really reach it. Common had absolutely no place in this film whatsoever. His lines (mostly delivered in ADR {Additional Dialogue Recording} while he's out of frame) are laughable and cheap.

While Terminator:Salvation didn't turn out to be the reinvigorating installment to the franchise they'd hoped for (in comparison to the staggering success of the Star Trek reboot,) we can only hope that McG and company (with new writers next go-round, let's hope) take a note from the page of George Lucas and make an attempt to fix the mistakes presented in this chapter. If not, we could see another proposed trilogy fall flat on it's face with Matrix-like proportions.