I’ve enjoyed Ricky Gervais ever since I first saw him in the UK version of The Office. His performance in his next series, Extras, was even better. Now comes The Invention of Lying, the first movie he (co)directed, and it is very entertaining!
Basically what we have here is a movie set in a world where lying never evolved. As a result, lots of things are different (like a Pepsi ad that says, “Pepsi: for when you can’t find Coke”). Enter Mark Bellison (Gervais). He’s a short little fat man with a stubby nose (as everyone keeps reminding him), and basically a loser. He writes screenplays for Lecture Films, a company that makes movie featuring a man sitting in a chair talking about history. Fiction never evolved, you see.
Mark gets fired from his job and is at a real low point in his life. Stuck having to come up with $800 to pay his rent, he tells a teller in a bank that that’s how much he has in his account. She believes him, why not, and gives him the $800 rather than the $300 actually there. Having discovered this new ability, for which he doesn’t even have a work, Mark embarks on a series of life-changing events.
Now this could’ve just been a one-dimensional situation played for easy laughs, and there’s a bit of that at first, but then he’s at his mother’s deathbed, in tears and she tells him she’s afraid of dying, of experiencing nothing for eternity (for the record, I’m not. How can one “experience” nothing, after all?). Thinking quickly, Mark tells her all about how there’s a big man in the sky who will give her a mansion to live in and a chance to be reunited with all her loved ones. She dies happy, and the hospital staff are amazed at this sudden revelation of an afterlife.
Mark has basically just invented religion.
Gervais is an outspoken atheist, and I think that’s clear in this movie, where the theory is that religion can’t exist without lying. It’s a fascinating concept and one well-explored within the film.
There’s parts of the movie that lag a little, and some concepts I would’ve liked to have seen explored a little more, but overall, this is a great film and one I recommend.
Yes, friends, I’ve finally seen the latest summer offering in this year’s “ho-hum” set of summer movies. For the record, the only big summer movie that’s been at all worth seeing was Star Trek, and even that wasn’t great. In fact, I’d say the best summer move was Watchmen, which came out in March.
But moving on.
I was never a big fan of the animated G.I. Joe series when I was a kid. I watched it some, but I knew even at a young age that people didn’t always parachute to safety when their airplanes were shot down. I could accept the Autobots and Decepticons not dying; they were robots, after all. But none of the Joes and no one from COBRA ever seemed to buy the farm, and that just got annoying after a bit, especially as a kid raised on the glory of Star Blazers (宇宙戦艦ヤマト to Tokyo5 ).
So at least I didn’t bring in any fanboy expectations, but I did bring in an expectation that the movie should be good. In that I was sorely disappointed.
The movie tells the story of two American soldiers, Duke (Channing Tatum, who should just stop attempting to act and become a stripper. Oh, wait, he already was), and Ripcord (played by Marlon Wayans who is still under the impression he can act. He can’t), who end up joining a multi-national force imaginatively called GI Joe, which is so clearly an American military reference one wonders why other countries would bother.
The Joes are currently trying to track down a new nanotech weapon invented by James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston, whose recent resume proves he really should’ve given us another season or two as the Doctor). He got NATO funding to build the weapon and then steals it. I don’t know why he bothered with NATO funding, since he clearly has pots of money as illustrated by his undersea base, the construction of which probably cost more than the budgets of several countries combined.
During the mission our heroes resolve personal issues, try to save the world and watch the Eifel Tower fall over. Also, I check my watch several times.
This wasn’t a truly bad movie like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (which I keep wanting to type as Rise of the Fallen, a joke which is funnier than most of the alleged humor in the film). It’s much more entertaining than that pile of dogstuff, and does have some reasonably well-done action sequences. Mostly, though, it’s pretty boring, an assessment which is damning against an action film. When it isn’t boring, it’s annoying, since there’s plot holes you could navigate, say, oh… I dunno. The sun? Yes, you can navigate the sun through them.
This movie is about as good as the first Transformers movie. If you want to see it at all, see it on the big screen, because what little coolness it has will fade once it’s on the small screen. Also, please note I said, “if” right there.
THINGS I LEARNED BY WATCHING GI JOE: RISE OF COBRA:
The mission must always take second place to personal issues.
If you’re really smart, you don’t have emotions, cause they aren’t “quantifiable” or “explainable”.
Underwater, high-speed subs move exactly like X-Wings attacking the Death Star.
Marlon Wayans thinks he can act.
Ice sinks.
It’s possible to build a city-sized secret base under the Arctic ice cap without anyone noticing.
Said ice cap has rocky mountains in the middle of it.
The best weapon to use against guns is a katana, which can, by the way, cut guns in half (see Mythbusters for the truth about how well metal swords can cut metal swords in half, much less something made out of gun metal).
We aren’t allowed to have a President who is Kenyan, but apparently it’s ok to have one that’s British.
Destro apparently really liked the Firefox, so much so that he built one and it’s controlled through a language called “Celtic“, which is what the movie thinks Gaelic is called.
I have, somewhat late, finally seen the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and it is good. Very good. Easily the best of the franchise so far.
The movie opens with scenes of magic wreaking havoc in the Muggle world, including knocking down a footbridge over the Thames in London. Harry has been wandering around the London underground and, just after he meets a rather attractive young lady who wants to see his wand, gets accosted by Dumbledore who says he needs Harry’s help. When he asks if Harry has any questions, Harry says, “After all these years I just sort of go with it,” which is certainly a logical approach.
It turns out that Voldemort is up to his usual naughtiness and it’s up to Harry to help Dumbledore locate a McGuffin that will help put an end to Voldemort’s reign of terror. In the meantime we have the usual excitement at Hogwarts, including a love triangle between Ron, Hermione and a girl named Lavender, Harry trying to cozy up to the new potions master (one Slughorn, played amazingly well by Jim Broadbent, yet another great British actor getting good publicity through the Harry Potter franchise), Snape oozing about the place, Ron playing quidditch, Draco (played by Tom Fenton, in a role far more meaty and interesting than his previous appearances), having a nervous breakdown, a couple instances of what boils down to drug use and what I’m 99% sure is Ron losing his virginity. So, yes, an eventful movie that clocks in at two-and-a-half hours and leaves you wanting more.
There’s lots of wonderful moments in this movie, and lots of scenes of great beauty, which even Harry sits back to enjoy at one point near the end. These include a quidditch match that’s a lot more interesting than what we’ve seen before, largely due to it being played in snow (complete with snow-spray on the “lens”), as well as casual moments of Hogwarts looking impressive.
It’s a very good movie, and really I haven’t too much to say about it, so I’ll simply list some of my favorite things.
1. Ron e-tarding. He accidentally eats some love-potion laced food and starts snuggling up to Harry, Slughorn and bits of furniture.
2. Ron sticking it in crazy. He hooks up with Lavender, I’m pretty sure they shag, and he starts later wishing he didn’t know who she was, since she starts stalking him.
3. Harry fighting what appears to be the Gollum Family Reunion Tour
4. Draco showing human emotion
5. Snape being menacing yet sympathetic
6. Jim Broadbent
7. Ron astride a broom in what has to be the most phallic method possible
Brüno, the latest thought-experiement/movie from Borat and Ali-G creator, Sacha Baron Cohen, has been released and I have watched it. It is… pretty good, actually. Not great. Not even close to great. But still quite good.
The movie tells the story of Brüno, host of Funkyziet mit Brüno, a fashion show on Austrian gay TV, played by Baron Cohen. He’s “schwarzlisted” after appearing at the Milan fashion show in a Velcro outfit and so, like Borat, comes to America and engages on an insane quest for fame.
We see Brüno as he meets various famous people (ok, two famous people: Paula Abdul and Ron Paul, who Brüno calls “Ru Paul”), adopts a black child from Africa, tries to make peace in the Middle East (he confuses Hamas with hummus), and tries to make an internet sex tape (with the previously mentioned Ron Paul, who I mostly felt sorry for).
When all these efforts at gaining fame fail, he decides he needs to stop being gay and be straight, like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kevin Spacey. He meets with a “gay to straight” conselor, attends a swingers party (they still have those?), and goes hunting (with a group of men I also felt sorry for). Finally he appears in a cage-match as “Straight Dave,” in one of the most hilariously accurate costumes I’ve ever seen.
The movie doesn’t work as well as Borat did, and for several reasons. First the material isn’t as fresh as it was. We’re used to seeing Baron Cohen do all sorts of strange things now. Second, the humor seemed a lot more forced this time around, with several parts that were almost certainly staged.
The third problem, though, and the biggest, is the character of Brüno, who is nowhere near as sympathetic or interesting as Borat. With Borat you had someone who was more of a wide-eyed innocent; someone in love with “US and A”. Brüno is more of self-obsessed celebrity (not a million miles from real celebs), and frankly a lot more one-dimensional and less interesting.
There’s also some odd problems with some of the choices made in the production of the movie. A scene where Baron Cohen and another man are in bondage gear, chained together, and walking through a Fred Phelps group protest should’ve yeilded a lot more material. That’s something they should’ve really played up.
Instead we get the scene with Ron Paul and the scene with the hunters who, again, I mostly just felt sorry for. Both Paul and the hunters were clearly being patient and tolerant despite being around someone who wasn’t inside their comfort zone, and were pushed way too far just for laughs. It doesn’t really work and simply comes off as mean.
All that said, this was still a good movie, and one that I enjoyed seeing and will probably buy on DVD when it comes out. It’s no Borat, but it’s still pretty good. Oh, and memo to Baron Cohen: next time you make up character, let’s try to move him down the alphabet a bit, ok?
The critics rave about Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen!
…Michael Bay’s latest bid to bludgeon audiences into dulled submission, is the reductio ad absurdum of a summer blockbuster. It is loud (boom!), long (two and a half hours!), incoherent (poorly explained intergalactic warfare!), leering (Megan Fox in short shorts!), racist (jive-talkin’ robot twins!), and rife with product tie-ins (Chevy! Hasbro!)… John Yoo would not be able to draft a memo excusing the torment this movie inflicts on its audience… – Dana Stevens, Slate.com
The film is padded by an hour of completely unnecessary, worthless, offensive and repugnant sequences that do nothing but tread water. – Harry Knowles, Ain’t It Cool News
Often bypassing any logic or reason let alone character or depth, this utter mess of an action opus is only sporadically entertaining thanks to all the visual flair that $200 million worth of computer-generated fighting robots can buy, but holds no real value beyond that. – Garth Franklin, Darkhorizons.com
Bay stages battle sequences the way a three-year old plays with Lego’s. He dumps everything out at once in one loud crash, and just starts snapping pieces together and tossing them into each other… And much like a child at play, things get loud, there’s a lot of screaming, and shit gets destroyed. – Capone, Ain’t It Cool News
It’s tempting to dismiss Michael Bay’s long, loud and ludicrous sequel to 2007’s Transformers with one word — hunkajunk. On every level this movie is as bankrupt as GM. But there is more to be said about a movie this gargantuan ($200 million spent on robot hardbodies) and galactically stupid. Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness. And, please, you don’t have to remind me that the original was a colossal hit ($700 million worldwide) and the sequel will probably do just as well. I know it’s popular. So is junk food, and they both poison your insides and rot your brain. – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Though there are more special effects and new ways for machines to turn into ‘bots, the story seems as if it’s about to end at least three times.
If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination. – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times
It just doesn’t seem like summer anymore until Michael Bay gets the chance to visit upon us his latest cinematic abortion, and in the case of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, the newest bit of diaper gravy to spew forth from his directorial anus, he does so in a way that truly sets a new standard for craptacular films.
Now I was, and remain, rather sick when I saw this movie. I also saw it at a late showing, which didn’t get out until about 1:15am. So I knew that if I was going to write a review of it today, I’d need to take notes. Eight pages of notes, as it turned out. Thus this review, which is more of a recap than anything else, will be longer and more detailed than most. So brace yourselves.
The film opens in the year 17,000 BC. We know this because of a nice caption that tells us this. Quite nice of them to so accurate. Imagine if it had been, say, 17,014 BC! The confusion that might cause! It’s rather like the film 10,000 B.C.. The confusion it caused! True, mostly it was people confused about how the movie got made in the first place, but still.
In the distant past, we see standard Stone Age tribesman (looking like a bunch of Australian Aborigines), hunting a tiger (a tiger? In Africa?). As they do, they stumble across a large Decepticon outpost on Earth. They get stepped on and the movie goes into modern times with a nice seen showing modern Shanghai illuminated by bright sunlight. I know it’s Shanghai because of the caption, which also says that it’s about 10:14 at night. Very good.
A lovely battle ensues, during which time it’s revealed that a cover story about some chemical leak has been created to keep the public in the dark, because apparently even after seeing Los Angeles get leveled, likely with lots of video footage both amateur and professional, everyone has “forgotten” the Transformers exist.
Let me divert here for a moment. There’s a common theme in a lot of science fiction television and film that you can have some major, Earth-shattering event (like Los Angeles being trashed in the first movie, London being menaced countless times in Doctor Who and Torchwood, and supernatural nonsense in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), that happens, gets witnessed, gets filmed/video taped, and then everyone conveniently forgets about it and/or there’s a government cover-up.
This is particularly egregious in the TV series War of the Worlds, an otherwise forgettable show that takes place a few decades after the events shown in the 1953 film of the same name. In that film, we see millions killed, cities devastated and nuclear bombs set off. Yet by the time the TV series rolls around, there’s been a cover-up and everyone has “forgotten” it happened.
This sort of nonsense is the laziest form of writing there is. It’s implausible, insulting to the audience and just plain stupid. It’s like saying that ten years from now all the video footage of the 9/11 attacks and all the news coverage will just disappear and that people are likely to, as a large majority, sit around saying, “September 11, 2001? No, nothing happened that day. Why do you ask?”
Writers like to do this because it means they don’t have to work too hard to try and figure out what the consequences would really be to the events they set up initially. If giant robots had beat the crap out of each other in downtown Los Angeles, that would have massive repercussions worldwide, especially once we found they were aliens. But the writers don’t want to deal with that, so they just say “cover-up!” and that’s all there is to it.
Lazy fuckers.
Anyhow, where was I? Oh, yes, Shanghai. So the Autobots go chasing down one (1) Decepticon, who manages to destroy millions of dollars worth of property and kill hundreds of military and civilian personnel, in what is presented as a fairly routine mission. And their presence here on Earth is a secret. Right.
At the end of the battle, Optimus is standing over the defeated Decepticon, who taunts him a little, and then Prime shoots him in the face. Executes him. Murders him. Now, I ask you, does this sound like what Optimus Prime would actually do? No, because Prime is presented as a noble sort of figure, and not the sort who goes in for the cold-blooded killing of a prisoner.
Leaving this happy scene, we move on to Sam (Shia LeBeouff), as he gets ready to head to Princeton for college. He has some moments with his insufferable parents (you know, the idiots who in the last movie thought a robot falling down was an earthquake), and his two dogs. His two male dogs. Obviously male dogs. I mention this because we get not one, but two, scenes of them having sex. Thanks for that, Michael Bay. You’ve wrecked sex forever.
Sam calls his girlfriend, whose name I cannot number, so I’ll just call her Porn Slut 1 (PS1 for short). PS1 is shown on screen for the first time in a shot you’ve no doubt seen in the trailer. She’s sitting on a motorbike in pose that might make most Playboy Playmates feel embarrassed. She had some role in the previous movie, but no role here, other than to engage in “witty” banter with Sam as to who is going to say “I love you” first.
I mention that fact only because that discussion, the whole “I love you thing” is the entirety of the central emotional core to this movie. No, seriously. That’s the entire scope of their relationship conflict point. Now admittedly, I’ve been single most of my life, and don’t expect this to change anytime soon, but when I have been in a relationship, I haven’t had any problem with saying, “I love you,” to whomever I was involved with. It’s just not that big of a deal. Well, unless you’re in a major Hollywood blockbuster where the lazy writers have to come up with some sort of emotional conflict.
While yammering on the phone to PS1, Sam is fiddling with the outfit he wore in the first movie and a shard from the Allspark cube falls out. Because Sam’s mother apparently never does laundry. Sam touches the shard, it zaps his brain and falls through the floor, burning its way down into the kitchen where it turns all the appliances into robots that promptly attack everyone.
This brings up a flaw from the first movie that is carried over into this one, which is: why does the Allspark apparently only make Decepticons? Every time it creates some sort of robot entity, the first thing that bot does is attack everyone. Ah, well. If there’s one thing I learned quickly from this movie, it’s not to ever ask “Why?” cause the movie won’t explain it.
Anyhow, a small battle starts up inside the house, which catches on fire. Bumblebee comes out from the garage and tries to fight off the little bots, and eventually does so. He then hides as the fire department and police show up and, interestingly, none of the neighbors notice any of this. All sorts of comments are made about security (cause of the robots being Super Sekrit!) and there’s more annoying interplay between Sam’s parents before we have a touching moment between Sam and Bumblebee.
In this moment, Sam tells Bumblebee that at Princeton, freshmen aren’t allowed to have cars (I doubt this, but it’s possible, I suppose). Bumblebee responds with… music and clips from movies. He does this because, like in the first movie, he can’t talk. Now that was fixed at the end of the first film, but clearly someone said, “Hey, the kids like him talking in music! So let’s keep doing that! Yeah!”
Now we catch up with the military guys (apparently part of a team called NEST), who are busy doing their thing and talking with people back home when some suit shows up to yank the rug out from under him. This suit, who again has name that I cannot remember, is presented as a one-dimensional jackass and this brings us to our next lengthy digression.
There is, in a lot of fiction, what I call “The Rule of Incompetent Omnipotence”. It’s the rule that says government agencies are all-powerful and all-knowing. They can track you everywhere you go, they can send agents after you that will find you in under two minutes, they can cover up anything, anywhere, and rule the whole world, but they do all this in a very incompetent way, which means that some slimy internet weirdo can uncover what they are doing. They bumble around like idiots, breaking things and failing miserably so that the hero can come along and save the day. So they’re omnipotent, but incompetent. Please add “The Rule of Incompetent Omnipotence” to your dictionary. Thank you.
We also are introduced to one of the long running standbys in action films, which is that the military is always right and the politicians are always wrong. This combined with Bay’s overreliance on “rah-rah, go America!” patriotism must be the only reason the US military helps him so much in making his films. Given how many military personnel he kills in each one, there can’t be any other reason.
This scene also introduces us to two cringeworthy characters named Mudflap and Skids. You may have already heard about the controversy surrounding them. If you haven’t allow me to enlighten you by saying that if you think Jar Jar Binks is the height of funny, if you can’t get enough of minstrel shows, and if you enjoyed Amos and Andy, you’ll love the comic stylings of Mudflap and Skids, two characters who prove that racist humor is alive and well and living in America!
God, these two are awful. They are the worst characters I’ve seen on screen in ages. Now I’ll defend Jar Jar Binks for the most part, but these guys? Painful! They talk in Ebonics, they always fight each other, one has a gold tooth (?!), and they can’t read. There is nothing good about these characters at all. They serve no useful purpose to the plot and Spielberg ought to be ashamed to have his name attached to a film where these guys appear.
Now how did two characters like these get created? Let us turn to the words of Mr Bay himself:
Bay said the twins’ parts “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”
You understand what that means, right? The characters weren’t really written. They made up a rough sketch, had the voice actors come in, and built the characters around their performance. Memo to Mr Bay: This is not how movies should be made. The usual flow of action is to write up the characters and then cast them. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but this is not one of them.
More troubling, though, is this quote:
“I purely did it for kids,” the director said. “Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”
So according to Michael Bay, the kids of America are fundamentally racist and will be best entertained by two jive-talkin’ robots presented as caricatures of black people. Well done, Michael, well done. I believe this officially undoes everything good that’s come of race relations since the election of Barack Obama. I am impressed.
Also it’s worth noting that this means that Bay wanted to have this movie be accessible to kids under 13. The movie is rated PG-13 and was likely made with an eye to that rating. Well done, Mr Bay!
Back to the “story”. The political guy is bitching at the military guy (the same military guy who had cannibalistic fantasies about his infant daughter in the first movie), who is bitching at the political guy. This is during a video conference with some four-star general who is not allowed to see Optiumus Prime, since apparently a four-star general can’t be trusted to keep a secret.
Eventually the political guy tells Optimus that this isn’t humanity’s war and that he blames the Autobots for bringing the Decepticons to Earth and then causing more trouble by inviting more. This might actually be an area that could lead into interesting discussion if, say, Christopher Nolan had been at the helm, but not in a Michael Bay film, where plot cannot be allowed to get in the way of the action!
In the end the political flat-out asks Optimus if the Autobots will leave if the US government asks them to. Optimus says yes, and I can’t help but think of the large queue of governments behind them that would be happy to have the Autobots come live in their countries. That plus the fact that the Decepticons would be quite gleeful at this turn of events and would promptly take over.
In the meantime, we have Sam and company arriving at Princeton. Sam meets his annoying roommate, Leo, who runs a conspiracy website all about how the government is covering up these giant robots running around (memo to Leo: why not just contact KTLA, who surely would’ve had miles of video tape from the original battle in Los Angeles and ask to borrow some of their footage?). He mentions, in a rather telegraphed plot-point, that another website often scoops him.
We get more of Sam’s parents running around engaging in Komedy!, including Sam’s mom eating a pot brownie (then running around like she’s on speed), without knowing it, which is something of a surprise given that there’s a marijuana leaf prominently displayed on the bag she’s holding and she’s old enough to have lived through the Sixties and Seventies. You know, I’ve never smoked weed in my life, but even I know what a pot leaf looks like. This is the kind of movie where humor comes from people being morons.
It was at this point I realized something about this film. I’m about ten years too old to enjoy it and about three hundred times too smart. But I soldiered on!
Now we come to one of the few cool parts of the movie as Soundwave (happily voiced by Frank Welker), drops Ravage down to Earth. Ravage goes to a US military base and ejects some ball bearings into a vent shaft. These merge and form a fascinating looking two-dimensional robot (giving it more dimension than the screenplay). This, along with a couple other scenes, show some real flickers of possibility, that prove that there could actually be something of substance to this movie if only people had actually put forth the effort. But no, why bother?
Next up we have Sam in astronomy class going slowly bonkers as he puts up with the introduction of Professor Schrute, who dresses like a Time Lord and has a libido that would make Hugh Heffner go “Damn!” Sam starts hallucinating, reads his entire astronomy text book in only a few seconds, runs up the chalkboard screaming about Einstein equation of E=MC2 being wrong (it’s not), and then runs off to his dorm where he starts scribbling on… on…
I almost cannot bring myself to type this. Michael Bay has truly exceeded himself here, for young Sam starts scribbling alien characters on a framed poster for Bad Boys II, a movie generally regarded as one of the worst made in the last ten years and a low-point in Bay’s career.
Now from any other director, I might think this is a nice bit of irony. If Spielberg had, say, a shot of a poster for 1941 in a movie, that might be kind of fun, and him having a joke with the audience. But he’d just do it as a quick throw-away thing. He wouldn’t do what Bay does, which is to center it in the screen and keep it there for several seconds, showing the main character interacting with it. I seriously doubt Bay is self-aware enough to do irony; I think he’s just being an idiot here.
The next sequence brings us another odd little WTF?! kind of moment. Some backtracking here: in an earlier scene, Sam went to a party and met Porn Slut 2, who was crawling all over him. Now she has him in his room, in private and is, again, crawling all over him. Then she sprouts a tail, some spikes and proceeds to toss him around and it turns out she’s what’s known as a Pretender.
Pretenders, for those unfamiliar with Transformers lore, were a group of transformers that human and/or animal shells. They didn’t turn into vehicles; they just disguised themselves in these shells. It was a weak idea and one that was never popular with the fans.
In this case, PS2 is a Pretender whose only real job appears to be driving a wedge between Sam and PS1 and then chasing after them in an exciting, Terminator 3 kind of way, thus reminding me of another movie I hated, but would rather watch than this. Also, when chasing Sam, PS1 and Leo, she moves at walking speed, cause as we all know, the super-powered bad guy/gal is never allowed to run.
Meantime, the Decepticreeps (which they were often called in the animated series… ah, speaking of things I’d rather be watching…), have managed to revive Megatron somehow and he captures Sam and the gang (now available on LP and 8 Track, Sam and the Gang’s Greatest Hits!), and is about to kill Sam and remove his brain when the Autobots arrive to save the day. This leads into a great big fight which leads into…
Well, amazingly enough, it leads into another really well-done scene! Rather like the 2-D robot, this is one of the scenes that shows what this movie could’ve been if it had tried. It’s a nicely done, creative, well-visualized, fight scene in a forest, where Prime fights Megatron, Starscream and some other Decepticon. It’s everything exciting that the rest of this movie is not. It also contains one of the other few emotional scenes as Prime gets killed off. Those of us, like me, who are Transformers fans, know this must be temporary since neither Ultra Magnus nor Hot Rod are around, but it’s still nicely done.
Now we go to a scene where Megatron and Starscream are hanging out on the top of the MetLife building in New York City. I know this, because the shot that shows things like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building helpfully says, “New York City”. The two of them talk about how it’s time to basically out themselves and go on a rampage which they do by going to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge and… er… knocking over an American flag. Then they leave. Yeah… ok. That’s… impressive? I guess? I mean, sure, they could’ve gone on a rampage, murdering people and destroying buildings, but why bother with that when you can… uhm… knock a flag down.
Then the Fallen comes along. He appears on video screens world wide and basically says humanity will be destroyed unless Sam is given over to the Decepticons.
In a panic, the military minds meet up at the Pentagon which, according to the caption, is in Washington, DC. This is no doubt a great surprise to the residents of Virginia, but amazingly it’s not even the worst geographical error in the film.
After the brief, useless scene there, we see Sam and the Gang, now wanted fugitives, try to decide what to do. Eventually Leo says they should go to talk to the man who runs the website that competes with his. There’s brief discussion, and then they head out to New York City. To be fair, since they are on the run, Sam disguises himself with a baseball cap and a hoodie. Yes, that’ll help.
When they get to New York, they go to a deli and behind the counter is, argh, John Tutututurrro, who played the leader of Section Seven in the first movie. His character was annoying then, and is annoying here, though amazingly slightly less so, since he alone of the cast seems to understand that he’s in a very, very stupid movie and plays accordingly.
Through the ensuing conversation its revealed that in archaeological sites all around the world are these same strange letters that Sam keeps seeing. They’re in Mexico, Egypt and lots of other places the movie doesn’t bother to mention (since archaeology happens only in Egypt and Mexico). Somehow, in the roughly 150 years that professional archaeology has been going on, no one bothered to take notice of this, which I find somewhat odd, since that’s the sort of thing that would make archaeologists wet their knickers.
Anyhow, Sam and the Gang break into the Smithsonian, where Wheelie (a really, really obnoxious Decepticon who turns into an RC truck. He was also in the animated series, and was annoying there, but even more so here), tells them they can find one of the really old Transformers, and we get a hint of some possibilities. We see pictures of things like WWII bomber planes and an old-time car, which, along with a toy I picked up (transformers from robot to WWI biplane), gives me hope that we might see something really cool.
Instead we get Jetfire.
Jetfire, the toy, was originally a Veritech fighter from the anime Robotech. Hasbro liked the design and so turned it into a Transformer, who had a backstory where he’d been a Decepticon, and friends with Starscream, before setting aside his evil ways and becoming an Autobot. He was one of the few multi-dimensional characters on the TV series (called Jetstorm on there), and when I heard he was in this movie, I got pretty interested!
Then I saw the character.
First, his vehicle form is an SR71 Blackbird. It seems an odd choice, but doesn’t really matter, since one he turns into robot mode, he stays that way. Second, though, and most irritating, is that he’s played as an old man robot, complete with a “get off my lawn!” attitude, a cane and at least one incontinence joke. Yes, this is how Jetfire should appear.
He transports Sam and the Gang to the middle of an empty desert wasteland which not one, but two, characters, apparently tipped off by all the hookers, bright lights, fountains, money and cars that are failing to appear on screen, guess is Las Vegas. It was at this point in my notes that I wrote the plot is officially missing, presumed dead.
Our heroes are still trying to remain hidden from the authorities, so Sector Seven Guy (hereafter called SSG), calls the military guy and speaks in clever code to tell him where they are headed, so they can have reinforcements. He speaks in this wonderful code, and then at the end gives latitude and longitude coordinates.
*sigh* I think I just lost three IQ points from that.
The characters are currently in Egypt, which we know by all the camels and shots of the Pyramids. But they need to go to Jordan. So they hop into Bumblebee and, along with Skids and Mudflap, drive to the land-based border crossing between Jordan and Egypt. Yes, apparently Google Earth is wrong, as is every map in the known world. It turns out Egypt and Jordan share a land border which is, I am sure, news to Israel.
The team crosses the border through the cunning tactic of saying “We’re Americans”. The border guard commander (played by Deep Roy, known to the world from such works of art as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang), apparently thinks that’s good enough, so he lets them cross into Jordan, where they set up camp for the night at the Pyramids.
Like I said, the Pentagon in DC is the least of the geographical fuck-ups in this movie.
They wander about the Pyramids (in Jordan), for a bit, making me really wish Jaws would pop up and take a bite out of someone. Then Sam spots Orion’s belt (in daylight), and deduces that under the belt is where the McGuffin they are looking for is located (oh, haven’t I mentioned what they’re doing out here? Trying to find the Matrix which will revive Optimus). The stars, I cannot help but notice, are much larger and spaced much farther apart then they are in real life, but what the hell. This is a world where the Egyptian pyramids are located in Jordan, so why not fuck with the stars, too?
Now we have shots of one of the great archaeological sites in the world; Petra. It is an incredibly beautiful site and served great purpose in Spielberg’s film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Here, it’s only job is to be the burial chamber some tomb that was hidden thousands and thousands of years go, which is quite impressive, given that the site is only about 2100 years old.
The tomb itself, where the Matrix is located, is stuck behind a wall that appears to be about an inch thick. I have to believe that at some point some archaeologist would’ve done radar or sonar searches that would’ve shown this, but apparently not. Anyhow, the Matrix crumbles into dust as soon as Sam touches it.
Meantime, we see the US military arriving in what I will now call Jor-gypt. They bring all sorts of tanks and planes and hovercraft and make a sea landing near the Pyramids, which is also near the Sphinx and the Valley of the Kings and within walking distance of Petra. Also, there’s no mention of them asking the Jor-gyptian government’s permission. I believe the word for today is “invasion”.
Now comes a fight. The penultimate fight in the movie. I don’t really have a lot to say about it. It’s pretty big. Much of it takes place in a small village where the US military sets up camp (not bothering to ask the locals for permission, and placing civilians in danger by doing so). There’s also a few scenes in a construction area (with people wandering through with goats), near the Pyramids (though at this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie showed the Space Needle being near the Pyramids), which leads to the introduction of Devastator.
Devastator, for those who do not know, is what’s called a Combiner. He’s a set of Transformers called Constructicons who, in addition to being robots in their own right, can merge into one larger robot, in this case called Devastator. In the original version of the character, he was just a really big-ass robot, but in this movie he turns into something really, really big that looks like a gorilla and has a large suction device that pulls in people, vehicles and in one shining moment, either Skids or Mudflap (I can’t tell the difference). Sadly, he survives and, at least at one point, looks as though he destroys Devastator.
As the big desert fight continues, we get treated to about three seconds of screen time by fan-favorite, Arcee, the first-ever female Autobot. Now we can go all around about the impossibility to gendered robots, but who cares? She was a cool, interesting, and to some people, sexy character and that’s what matters.
Lots of people, myself included, had been really looking forward to her appearing in this film, hoping that she might do something interesting and cool. So what does she do, actually?
She gets most of one line and then gets blown up.
That’s it. It’s an even more pointless death than the one Jazz had in the first film (you might remember him as the other horribly stereotypical black character, and the only Autobot to die). What a fucking waste of an opportunity.
So Sam gets knocked ass-over-teakettle at one point and winds up apparently dying. While dead he sees three Primes talking to him, and one of them is voices by Michael York. Oh, Michael. Are the jobs really this few and far between? You disappoint me, sir, you disappoint me. Anyhow, they tell Sam, “Well done! Here’s the Matrix, just stab it into Optimus and all will be well with the world.”
Sam comes back to life, says “I love you,” to PS1, who says the same to him, thus tying that up, and then stabs Primey, bringing him back to life for a bit. But then Prime is newly injured and it’s up to the mortally wounded Jetfire to allow some of his parts to be used to Optiumus more optimal. Now fully functional, Prime goes off to fight Devastator, the Fallen, Megatron and coherent movie making in an FX extravaganza that left me feeling completely detached and uninterested.
In the end, Prime defeats Devastator as the latter is busy demolishing one of the Pyramids (he’d already removed most of the top by the time Prime gets there), and, ugh, I can’t help but notice (cause the movie forces you to notice), that Devastator has two large wrecking balls dangling between his legs. Yes, I’m sure the crew who rendered that had a grand old time.
Then Prime fights the Fallen, and in the process destroys quite a bit more ruins, thus continuing this jolly rape of Egyptian culture. Finally at the end he destroys the Fallen, Megatron gets away, Devastator is destroyed, thousands of people worldwide are dead and I… just… don’t… fucking… care.
There’s so many things wrong with this movie and so many points at which it could’ve been turned around. For starters, when the next film is written, people writing it need to remember the franchise is called Transformers, not Humans. We don’t need to see the humans running around doing stuff for most of the screen time. We can see that in any movie. Giant transforming robots, however, are somewhat more rare.
I never thought it would be possible to describe a movie as being “aggressively dull”, but that’s exactly what Michael Bay has accomplished with this film. He has made a movie that left me completely bored and uninterested in what was happening on the screen. The parts where I sat up and paid attention consisted of about five minutes of screen time, but otherwise I was starting to feel like Jedidiah Leland watching opera.
There’s still good material that can be had here for a third movie. It’d be nice to see the Dinobots and to introduce characters like Ultra Magnus, Springer, Hot Rod and Galvatron (ideally with Leonard Nimoy doing the voice), and let’s perhaps move the story into space. Bring on Shockwave, Skywarp and Thundercracker. Move the story to Cybertron. Bring out Unicron. Any of these things could help make the next movie better.
But ultimately what will need to happen for the next film to be better is for the powers that be to tell Michael Bay to take a hike. He’s already made some noise about thinking that two years is not enough time for him to do the next movie, so with any luck they’ll toss him and hire someone who knows what they’re doing. While at it, they can keep the original writers of the first movie and Star Trek and ditch Ehren Kruger, who Harry Knowles blames for most of the problems with this film.
I want the next movie to blow me away and not leave me disgusted and annoyed. Until that happens, I’ll just have to stick with my toys.
What an incredibly delightful, beautiful, wonderful and, dare I say, uplifting movie this is! A true piece of art from the animators at Pixar, bringing together a great story line, some wondrous visuals and some very memorable characters.
Up is the latest in a string of great Pixar films going back to the likes of Toy Story, which I still haven’t seen. It’s the best of their movies I’ve seen so far, and certainly the most beautiful to look at (beating out the previous best looking film, Finding Nemo). It’s sweet without being saccharine, touching and enjoyable.
The film tells the story of an old man who, in his youth, met the girl of his dreams. They married and held out an ambition to visit far off exotic locales in South America. Little things (like real life), keep them from doing this until finally, for the wife, it’s too late. Her husband (wonderfully voice by Ed Asner), despondent, lonely and no longer really belonging anywhere, ties off a bunch of balloons and takes his house into the air in a manner that looks almost plausible.
Joining him is a young “Wilderness” Scout (continuing the trend in popular entertainment whereby the Boy Scouts don’t exist, but all other forms of scouts do), who is trying to earn what is most emphatically not called a Merit Badge for helping the elderly. They wind up meeting a very colorful moa-type bird and a dog who talks by virtue of a collar (and is obsessed with squirrels).
The film is flawless. Seriously, I couldn’t find a single thing to dislike (something I had no problem with during last year’s Wall-E). The visuals are stunning, the plot is great and the acting is wonderful. It’s without a doubt the best film I’ve seen all year (though considering the string of movies I’ve seen recently, this isn’t saying a lot). It’s suitable for children of all ages and their parents will likely have a blast as well.
In fact the only problem I had with the film wasn’t with the film itself, but with the Partly Cloudy short that came before it. It was cute and slightly funny, but way too twee.
I can’t tell you what the 3-D version of the film is like, as my local theatre doesn’t do 3-D. But the 2-D version is great, and I highly recommend it!
Goodness, Anton Yelchin is easy on the eyes. First in Star Trek and now in Terminator Salvation. Wow, he’s nice to look at. Talented, too. He actually does a very convincing job of sounding like a young Michael Beihn, which is pretty impressive. Much more enjoyable as Kyle Reese in this movie than he was as Chekov in Star Trek. Yeah, I really liked seeing him.
Sadly, there’s quite a bit more to this film than just Anton Yelchin, so I supposed I’d be suck it up and actually review the movie and not merely the eye candy.
*purr*
Terminator Salvation is in the odd place of being both a sequel and a prequel to the earlier films. That’s what you get when you meddle with time travel, I suppose. As such, it’s one of those films where you really do need to have seen at least the first two movies in order to understand what’s going on (we all will try to pretend Terminator 3 didn’t happen).
The plot centers around the human resistance fighting Skynet and it’s machines in the aftermath of a nuclear war and, I gotta say, I’m impressed the world is so intact. One would think with little things like nuclear winter, humanity would be pretty-well dead. After all, it’s unlikely there’d be any farming on any scale, so people would be starving to death in addition to the problems of massive climate change caused by the war.
But whatever. This is not a movie that rewards you for thinking hard about the plot. This is a movie that is there only to entertain you visually and in that it does succeed. The special effects work is quite impressive, and I was actually very pleased with one of the sound effects used often in the film (the sound made by some of the machines, including the one attacking the 7-11. Very creepy).
This isn’t a bad movie, mind you, just not great. It’s better than the third movie, but really pales in comparison to the first two (Linda Hamilton’s VO for the win!). The direction by McG (and how stupid is that name? Come on, man, stop it with the pretention! It doesn’t help your career and makes you look like an ass), is competent but nothing special. The writing is ok. The acting is ok, and as John Connor, Christian Bale is better than Nick Stahl or Edward Furlong, but the role doesn’t really given him enough meat to show off with, so he, too, never really rises above the level of merely being “ok”.
More notable is Sam Worthington, who plays what is basically the real main character of the movie. Yes, his arc was incredibly predictable (especially after another character sustains an injury that should’ve killed him completely but didn’t, cause the script didn’t want him dead), but the actor brings some decent charisma to the role. I just wish they wouldn’t have spoiled the whole point of the character in the freaking trailer, but what are you gonna do.
I will give the movie credit for finding a way to carry on the story after the third film, and for finding little moments where they could tie in bits from the first two movies. But overall it wasn’t anything to write home about. Like Angels and Demons and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it’s a largely forgettable film that doesn’t leave me particularly wanting more.
Here we have the sequel to the rather mediocre film The da Vinci Code. The source material for that film was pretty weak. Angels and Demons, thankfully, has stronger source material and is, also thankfully, a far better film.
The movie tells the story of a group of terrorists who get their hands on some anti-matter and hide it somewhere in the Vatican, promising to blow the place sky-high. They haven’t any demands or anything like that. They just plan to blow it up as revenge for an act the Vatican did back in the late 1600’s. The Vatican, in the midst of trying to elect a new Pope, calls in symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), to find the bomb and save the day.
And that’s pretty much it for the plot. What follows is a series of chases through Rome, searches through archives and a lot of eye-rolling on the part of the audience. Well, at least on the part of anyone who knows anything about the Illuminati (which contrary to the story, was not founded 400 years ago and which Galileo very likely did not belong to, given that it was founded over a century after his death). Also near as I’m aware the LHC does not generate anti-matter. That’s not what it’s built to do, and we already have other ways to make the stuff.
What would Father Guido Sarducci do?
But despite the large amount of eye-rolling and suspension of disbelief that’s required, the film largely works. Tom Hanks does his usual good job, and the supporting cast is acceptable, if nothing to write home about. The movie also changes several of the more preposterous things from the book (we don’t get the reporter subplot, and the film makes it clear that, hey, news stations actually go to places and film stories rather than standing in front of green screens, though ironically, I bet while filming the movie that’s what they did), and in doing so turns it into a better story. It’s still not great (but how can it be?), but it is at least entertaining.
I don’t know. There’s not a lot to say about this movie, really. It was fun, it was interesting, it was entertaining and I’m sure two months down the line I’ll be hard-pressed to really remember anything about it.
I am not a hardcore Trekkie. I used to be, back in the day. I’ve seen every episode of the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager and tolerated most every episode of Enterprise before I lost interest. I own a few of the DVDs, including all the good movies, and I do watch them from time-to-time. But I’m not obessed, like I used to be. I no longer own any of the novels, for example, and can’t remember the last time I attended a Trek-specific convention.
But I do still enjoy the show. Like I said, I have some of the episodes on DVD as well as the good movies, and I have a few episodes downloaded onto my 360. I mention all of this so that you know where I am coming from in my review of this, the 11th film in the series. Sort of.
For all the continuity whores out there, let’s get this out of the way now: this is not the same universe as the regular Trek reality. It’s made very clear about halfway into the film that since the opening credits we’ve been in an alternate reality. If you, like me, start wondering why the Farragut is launching without Kirk on board, don’t worry; it just happened differently in this reality. Same with certain larger events that clearly never happened in the continuity that we’re used to. If you’re a hardcore fan of the series, keep this in mind and you’ll be ok.
For the rest of you, yeah, you’ll have a good time, I think. There’s plenty of action and a feeling quite different from any of the other movies or TV shows in the series. The acting by everyone is top-notch, particlarly Zachary (Spock) Quinto and Karl (McCoy) Urban. The plot is at times a little iffy (centering around this movies Khan wanna-be as he sets out for revenge against Spock), but that’s ok. It accomplishes what it set out to do, and that’s good enough.
This is a far from perfect movie. It features way too much action and not nearly enough of the emotional and scientific core that made Trek such a great program. The villain isn’t much of much, and most of the lower-tier characters don’t really have a lot to do. There’s also a very unnecessary romance between a couple of the characters that I did not care for.
But that said, there’s a lot in this movie to enjoy. Rather like Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica, they’ve kept a lot of what works and, if nothing else it does do a great job of getting all the pieces on the board for the next film in the series, meaning that the franchise shall, once again, live long and… oh, I just can’t bring myself to type that. Just enjoy the movie.
Wolverine is one of the more enduring characters from Marvel Comics, and it’s not really that hard to see why. He’s charismatic, intelligent and something of a major bad-ass. He’s also now, after three appearances in the X-Men films, showing his claws in his own movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Hugh Jackman tears up the screen as the title character, proving that he’s more than capable of driving the movie by himself. He brings some real screen presence to the film, and that’s good, cause if he didn’t it would likely have sunk under its own weight and not been even watchable. As it is, the film is actually pretty good, though not great.
The movie starts with young Logan in 1840’s as he comes of age in the Northern Territories of Canada (though as Roger Ebert pointed out, neither such entity existed in the 1840’s). He’s a sickly lad made somewhat better by killing his father. He then embarks on a dramatic opening credits sequence showing him and his brother, Victor, as they fight their way through virtually every major war (on the American side, oddly. I guess Canada doesn’t have enough wars for them to be interested. Also, this may be the only movie I’ve ever seen where large parts took place in Canada but were filmed elsewhere).
After the credits we see Logan and his brother (now played by Liev Schreiber, who is almost as compelling a presence as Hugh Jackman), teaming up with a bunch of other mutants to… I’m not entirely clear what they were supposed to be doing, actually. They seem to end up being a private army for one Major Stryker (played by Danny Houston, who isn’t nearly as interesting as Brian Cox). After some nastiness in Nigeria, Logan decides to part company with his team and goes back to Canada. He settles down there until the movie decides it’s time for him to get back into action and then, as they say, hilarity ensues. Or something.
We do get appearances by various characters from the Marvel universe, including Wolverine and Sabertooth, but also Deadpool, Silverfox, the Blob and Gambit, as well as a young Cyclops and a young… well, that would spoil a surprise.
The plot isn’t really much of much here, though it does do a good job of establishing where Wolverine came from. The action scenes are serviceable (although I have to say two immortals trying to fight each other to the death seems really, really pointless), and get the job done, though the SFX is mediocre at times (and Wolverine’s metal claws look really fake compared to what he had in the X-Men films). The acting is decent by pretty much everyone (though the guy who plays Gambit has a very unconvincing accent. Really hot, though).
The setting of the film is also somewhat confusing, since most of the movie takes place in the late 1970’s, but you wouldn’t know that unless the movie told you. Several of the shots, especially with crowds, look like they take place now rather than then.
This isn’t a great movie, but it is a decent one and a good enough way to pass the time. If you go in with fairly low expectations, you’ll likely have a good time. At the very least, it’s much, much better than X-Men 3.
, and even that wasn’t great. In fact, I’d say the best summer move was 
, which came out in March.
series when I was a kid. I watched it some, but I knew even at a young age that people didn’t always parachute to safety when their airplanes were shot down. I could accept the Autobots and Decepticons not dying; they were robots, after all. But none of the Joes and no one from COBRA ever seemed to buy the farm, and that just got annoying after a bit, especially as a kid raised on the glory of 
(宇宙戦艦ヤマト to Tokyo5 
).
(which I keep wanting to type as Rise of the Fallen, a joke which is funnier than most of the alleged humor in the film). It’s much more entertaining than that pile of dogstuff, and does have some reasonably well-done action sequences. Mostly, though, it’s pretty boring, an assessment which is damning against an action film. When it isn’t boring, it’s annoying, since there’s plot holes you could navigate, say, oh… I dunno. The sun? Yes, you can navigate the sun through them.
movie. If you want to see it at all, see it on the big screen, because what little coolness it has will fade once it’s on the small screen. Also, please note I said, “if” right there.
and Ali-G creator, Sacha Baron Cohen, has been released and I have watched it. It is… pretty good, actually. Not great. Not even close to great. But still quite good.
. The confusion it caused! True, mostly it was people confused about how the movie got made in the first place, but still.
). As they do, they stumble across a large Decepticon outpost on Earth. They get stepped on and the movie goes into modern times with a nice seen showing modern Shanghai illuminated by bright sunlight. I know it’s Shanghai because of the caption, which also says that it’s about 10:14 at night. Very good.
and 
, and supernatural nonsense in 
), that happens, gets witnessed, gets filmed/video taped, and then everyone conveniently forgets about it and/or there’s a government cover-up.
, an otherwise forgettable show that takes place a few decades after the events shown in the 1953 
. In that film, we see millions killed, cities devastated and nuclear bombs set off. Yet by the time the TV series rolls around, there’s been a cover-up and everyone has “forgotten” it happened.
, who 
and has a libido that would make Hugh Heffner go “Damn!” Sam starts hallucinating, reads his entire astronomy text book in only a few seconds, runs up the chalkboard screaming about Einstein equation of E=MC2 being wrong (it’s not), and then runs off to his dorm where he starts scribbling on… on…
, a movie generally regarded as one of the worst made in the last ten years and a low-point in Bay’s career.
in a movie, that might be kind of fun, and him having a joke with the audience. But he’d just do it as a quick throw-away thing. He wouldn’t do what Bay does, which is to center it in the screen and keep it there for several seconds, showing the main character interacting with it. I seriously doubt Bay is self-aware enough to do irony; I think he’s just being an idiot here.
kind of way, thus reminding me of another movie I hated, but would rather watch than this. Also, when chasing Sam, PS1 and Leo, she moves at walking speed, cause as we all know, the super-powered bad guy/gal is never allowed to run.
and Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang), apparently thinks that’s good enough, so he lets them cross into Jordan, where they set up camp for the night at the Pyramids.
would pop up and take a bite out of someone. Then Sam spots Orion’s belt (in daylight), and deduces that under the belt is where the McGuffin they are looking for is located (oh, haven’t I mentioned what they’re doing out here? Trying to find the Matrix which will revive Optimus). The stars, I cannot help but notice, are much larger and spaced much farther apart then they are in real life, but what the hell. This is a world where the Egyptian pyramids are located in Jordan, so why not fuck with the stars, too?
. Here, it’s only job is to be the burial chamber some tomb that was hidden thousands and thousands of years go, which is quite impressive, given that the site is only about 2100 years old.
watching opera.
