Up Next: Live Free or Die Hard

Catching up a bit with newer releases, I managed to watch Live Free or Die Hard yesterday. I had high hopes for this movie, but was concerned about Bruce Willis’ age. I’ll post my review sometime in the next couple of days.

Review: Transformers

transformers_cov.jpgYear: 2007
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel
Kaboom Review Action Movie Rating: 77

Plot
Humans and good Transformers fight bad Transformers for the fate of the world.

Quick Review
Transformers sits at both ends of the spectrum. The plot, attention to premise, and cohesion of the movie crumble into an unrecognizable mess in the final hour. Here the movie essentially transforms into a visual effects extravaganza devoid of common sense and reason. The visual effects, however, are years ahead of their time, utterly convincing, and visionary. The action is wildly entertaining and forceful. For me, the captivating effects and thrilling action overwhelmed the unfathomable stupidity of the film’s last hour. The effects are simply that good. Transformers ends up being one of those rare movies that I would gladly see again in the theater.

Full Review
Let’s cut to the chase. You here for the answer to one question: Is Transformers any good? Well, yes. And no. In some ways Transformers is an incredible technological and artistic achievement, and a credit to the blockbuster action movie genre. In other ways, it is the stupidest movie I’ve reviewed. Ever.

transfomers_3.jpgLet’s start with the happy. It’s impossible to overstate how incredible the Transformers look. The level of detail in their graphics, their fluid movements and lightning–fast transformations, and the sense of weight and power they exhibit are truly impressive. The visual effects are well ahead of their time. The action scenes are for the most part outstanding and highly entertaining. Editing is crisp. The explosions, stunts, and sound add impact to the scenes. The powerful, noisy, and violent action has an escapist and largely bloodless tone, but Transformers is not for very young children. The final Transformer vs. Transformer battle is a wild ride, and satisfying. Having said that, it got a bit tricky for me to tell one Transformer from the other towards the end, and the editing in this one fight made it somewhat difficult to keep track of the details.

On another happy Transformer note, let’s talk about Megan Fox, who drives the Babe rating of this film sky high. I rarely watch TV, so I didn’t know who she was, but seeing her in Transformers makes me think I should watch TV more often. This is not to say that she can act. She can’t. He transformers_megan_fox.jpgacting compares to such classics in incompetence such as Cindy Crawford in Fair Game, Eva Mendes in Ghost Rider, and Denise Richards in Starship Troopers. In other words, Fox is unemotional, artificial, and lost in her role. However, the aptly named Fox has one critical thing going for her: she is so hot that she’s a threat to global warming. Don’t get old, Megan! The movie does a solid job of taking advantage of her sensuality, and with a woman this gorgeous I don’t think I could remember what she said even if it made sense. She also gets some help in this regard from the beautiful Maggie Madsen, who plays a computer analyst. From the other side, the Hunk rating on this film is moderately high, with Josh Duhamel and Shia LeBeouf picking up most of the points.

Surprisingly, in many other areas, Transformers fares better than expected. The pace of the movie is brisk and effective. The script has its moments, and the acting, outside of Fox, was effective enough to keep the film moving. The first half of the film is plot-dependent, with many slower scenes that advance the story. What surprised me is that I found myself enjoying these transformers_fox_lebouf.jpgscenes. Shia LeBeouf leads this plot as Sam Witwicky, a dorky, quick-witted high school student whose great grandfather’s explorations end up making Sam the target of the evil Decepticon Transformers. As a lead, he’s likeable, convincing, and at times puts just the right touch on his lines to make them genuinely funny. All in all, he adds a lot to the escapist, lighthearted edge to the movie. Elsewhere, John Turturro (as Agent Simmons) was over the top and more annoying to me than he was entertaining. Josh Duhamel (as Captain Lennox) gets the job done, but little more than that in what turns out to be a generic role. As for the villains, the Decepticons are brilliant in terms of effects, but mostly one-dimensional in their roles. The exception would be the Little Robot, whose hyperactive, evil nature made him moderately entertaining in a clumsy JarJaresque comic relief role.

So far so good, you might be thinking. But aha, now I get to drop my bombs! First, while the first half of the movie pays attention to things like plot and premise, the second half of the movie transforms into an sloppy, lazy, mash of visual effects and action that doesn’t bother to make even the slightest sense.

I knew we were in trouble once we came to what is clearly a candidate for All-Time Stupidest transformers_7.jpgScene in an action movie. In this scene, Sam has just learned from the good Transformers (Autobots) that the fate of the world hinges on recovering his grandfather’s eyeglasses—which are at his home—before the evil Decepticons can get them. Don’t ask why. Anyway, off they all go to Sam’s house. But it’s night, and late, and Sam doesn’t want to get in trouble with his parents, so he tells the Transformers to stay away. They’re too impatient to stay away. We’re then treated to a long scene where Sam bumbles around trying to shoo the Transformers away from his house, the Transformers stumble around and make a mess of his Dad’s yard as they try to stay out of sight, and the clueless parents wander around and just miss catching sight of the Transformers. Yes, there were a couple of moments that brought a faint chuckle, but the scene is absurd! The fate of the world is at stake and you’re worried about getting in trouble with your parents? I think they would believe you if you pointed to a 60-foot robot standing in your backyard. Sigh.

From there, it goes downhill fast. The plot and premise in the last half of the film are a total disaster. For no reason other than to give half the cast something to do, the evil Mini-robot

attacks them in a communications room. In the final battle, civilians huddle by cars right in the midst of the fight instead of reacting to the flight instinct ingrained in us from the dawn of time. After the final battle has gone on for a while, additional Transformers in the city join the battle. What were they waiting for? More over, it’s never clear what happens to them in the end. Did they just disappear?. Don’t even get me started on the general silliness that is brought to the computers/communications concepts with the film. It’s worth noting that the good guys at one point send Morse code by hooking up an old computer to a shortwave radio system and immediately are able to launch an air attack with this. Oh, those crafty good guys!

The crowning moment, though, is when our heroes get the All Spark, which is the source of ultimate power that the good and bad Transformers are all hunting for. I’m not exactly sure why, but they immediately decide to take it on a perilous journey from the Hoover dam to the city. To be honest, I think they mentioned that there was a military base near the city where they could get help protecting the All Spark, but there was probably a close up shot of Megan Fox on screen while they explained this. On the way to the city, the expected Decepticon attack takes place, but the good guys forge relentlessly downtown. Downtown? The military base is the middle of the crowded downtown area? Nope, apparently not, because once there, the battle is so intense that the good guys decide they need to get the All Spark out of the city because there are too many transformers_2.jpgpeople around. Um, guys, why did you just bring it downtown in the first place? Simply put, the back half of the film is a skeleton of plot wrapped around action. This sloppiness takes away any chance the film had for greatness.

All in all, Transformers sits at both ends of the spectrum. The plot, attention to premise, and cohesion of the movie crumble into an unrecognizable mess in the final hour. Here the movie essentially transforms into a visual effects extravaganza devoid of common sense and reason. The visual effects, however, are years ahead of their time, utterly convincing, and visionary. Despite some choppiness with scene editing and coherence in the final confrontation, the resultant action is wildly entertaining and thrilling. Where does the film end up overall? For me, the captivating effects and thrilling action overwhelmed the unfathomable stupidity of the film. The effects and action are simply that good. Transformers ends up being one of those rare movies that I would gladly see again in the theater.

Interesting Fact
Megan Fox gained ten pounds of muscle during filming due to the physicality of her role. What physicality, and how skinny was she before the film started?

Score
Pace: 79
Plot: 16
Action: 87
Consistent Premise: 5
Script/Quotes: 42
Characters: 68
Acting: 53
Villain: 81
Body Count: 72
Time to First Dead Body: 5 minutes, 58 seconds
Babes: 89
Hunks: 68
Explosions: 90
Special Effects: 96
Stunts: 76
Ending: 88

Overall: 77 (Visionary effects and strong action overcome stupid plot)

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A Netflix Adventure and Review

Today I signed up for Netflix. Originally, I was thinking to go with either Blockbuster or Intelliflx. However, both Blockbuster Online and Intelliflix seemed to get awful reviews on review boards I checked, so in the end I went with Netflix at first. I thought this site would be as good a place as any to review Netflix’s service and offer some observations on my experience.

The sign-up was painless and easy to understand. Simply type in your email information, your address, and add a payment method. Within a couple of minutes I was signed up and selecting movies.

The movie selection process is relatively efficient, but off hand I wonder if there isn’t a better way to browse Netflix’s database. I found it easy to search for movies, and easy to get recommendations by popularity or other critics, but I didn’t find it that efficient to browse through categories. I very well might be missing something, however.

Two features that interest me are the recommendations Netflix makes based on either the movie you just put into your queue, and recommendations based on movies/genres that you have rated. I look forward to seeing how helpful these recommendations become as I zap more movies with rating stars on their site.

I’m curious to see how the service is. I signed up for the two DVDs at a time plan, which is running at $13.99/month at the moment.

Up Next: Transformers

Well, I finally had some time to go see the new Transformers movie! I’ll have my review up sometime over the weekend.

Carnival of Cinema, Episode XXXXI

carnival.gifWelcome to the 41st Edition of the Carnival of Cinema. I’d like to start by thanking Scott Nehring, at Nehring the Edge, for allowing us to host this week’s edition. We’ve got a lot of submissions, so let’s get right to business.

Frankk starts us off with an interesting article on screenwriting, Screenwriting: a Critical - and Common - Mistake posted at Screenwriting Goldmine. Frankk makes some great points about visualizing scenes before you sit down in front of the computer to type them up. This is a worthy insight into the screenwriting process.

Following this is an intriguing piece by Praveen at My Simple Trading System. In his article Branded Interactive Features Coming to DVDs, Praveen discusses some of the interesting features that will likely arise in the new large format DVDs. Interesting stuff, and he provides a humorous example from the DVD of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Gautam Valluri follows this with two excellent pieces. The first, The Rise of Sci-Fi Noir, looks at the advent of Sci-Fi Noir films, and takes a look at three signature films in the genre. He also adds a review of the short film Gratte-Papier. You can find this and more at his site, Broken Projector.

Let’s go next to the prolific Paul McElligott at Celluloid Heroes. He adds reviews for three films this week, The French Connection, Red Dawn, and Panic in the Streets. Paul heaps praise on the French Connection, makes a good case for watching Red Dawn, and does a fine job describing the political and social backdrop to Panic in the Streets. As an aside, I’m always amazed at how Paul can consistently produce so many excellent reviews. His site has recently crossed the 300-review mark, and he’s still going strong.

At the other end of the spectrum in terms of number of reviews posted, I’d like to welcome newcomer Ronald Beasley who has recently started a blog titled Them Fancy Movin’ Pictures. Ronald adds two solid reviews to this week’s carnival, as he takes a look at Babel and The Departed. Scorsese’s direction in the Departed impressed Ronald, but he got frustrated with the flow and effectiveness of Babel. Good luck with your blog, and keep it up!

Ronald Beasley is damn close to Ronald Weasley, which is the best segue I could come up with to lead in to Blue Skelton, at The Literary Junkie. He joins this week’s carnival with a glowing review of the new Harry Potter movie. Skelton considers the film the best of the year, to date.

Next, let’s go to John Lampard at disassociated.com. John presents a review critique and a review of La Vie en Rose. He argues that both he and the audience disagree with the Sydney Morning Herald’s lukewarm review.

On a more serious note, David Mills from Undercover Black Man tackles some tough racial issues in his article, Undercover Black Man: Something shocking from Scatman Crothers. David takes an in-depth look at some of the racial controversy surrounding the film Coonskin.

Also not shying away from films dealing with controversial topics, Zee presents a review of Black Snake Moan on Zee Says=Film Addict + Teen Librarian. Add Zee to the many who have given the film a positive review, but Zee goes a step further to provide some interesting analysis of the film. Good stuff!

Mr. Besilly joins this week’s carnival with a review of Hairspray, posted at Mr. Besilly’s Blog. Mr. Besilly sums this one up: “If campy musicals are your bag then you may not want to wait for the home release. It’s drenched in the kind of cute that’s capable of causing severe cavities, which qualifies it as a direct hit for the targeted teens.”

Sorry to end this carnival on a sinking note, but it’s entertaining to watch Alan torpedo the newer version of Poseidon, over at Big Budget Films and Studio Flops. He makes some great comments on the incredible inefficiency with the huge budget of the movie.

And that’s it for this week’s carnival! Thanks to everyone who contributed! Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Cinema using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found at the Carnival of Cinema index page.

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