Movie Review: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (2009) 

Directed by Michael Bay 

Written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman

Starring Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

Release Date June 24th, 2009

Published June 23rd, 2009

As a kid I was a big fan of Transformers. Looking back now as an adult I marvel at the idea: Wow, I was one weird kid. Transformers is one goofball concept. Talking, alien robots come to earth in search of ancient energy and disguise themselves as everyday cars, trucks and electronics.

This concept raises numerous logical questions, not the least of which is: Why would giant alien robots need to pretend to be everyday objects? You're a giant alien robot, why are you disguised as an Ice Cream Truck or a tape player? Identities taken on by a pair of alien robots.

The goofball premise becomes even goofier in the live action movie and sequel Transformers and Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. Adding Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox and a couple of wacky parental figures for comic relief, director Michael Bay takes a bizarre concept and makes it even more bizarre.

When we last saw the Autobots, good guy alien robots lead by Optimus Prime, they had stopped the evil Decepticons, lead by the evilest of evil alien robots Megatron, from obtaining something called the All Spark. Now, the Autobots and their human friends are prepping for war with the Decepticons once again, this time over something called Energon. Riveted yet?

The key to finding or rather creating energon, maybe, I'm not sure, is inside the mind of college bound Sam Witwicky (shia LeBeouf). It was Sam's seemingly random purchase of a rundown yellow camaro that lead to mass warfare when it was revealed that his car was really the alien robot protector bot Bumblebee. Sam making this discovery automatically drafted him and the girl of his dreams Mikaela (Megan Fox) into the war between Alien robot races.

Now, Sam has a map imprinted in his brain that will lead to the discovery of energon, or something. The Decepticons want to open up Sam's brain and remove the information while Sam needs to lead the Autobots to the energon to stop them.

If that plot doesn't grab you then you should probably skip Transformers Revenge of the Fallen because at 2 hours and 45 minutes you will have to want to be invested in this plot. You will have to work very hard not to be bored or put off by this exceptionally over-complicated and lame plot.

Worse yet are the juvenile, amateur hour attempts at humor. Sam's parents played by Kevin Dunn and Judy White are used as comic filler, first doing a variation on the comic strip Bickersons and then a really odd stretch where mom is whacked out on drugs. None of this has anything to do with alien robots and yet it's in there.

Then there is the robot who speaks jive. The robot who speaks through classic songs on it's car radio and the robot with giant robot testicles. Yes, testicles. Are you laughing yet?

As much as I loathe most of Transformers Revenge of the Fallen even I cannot deny the technical mastery on display. Director Michael Bay cannot tell a good story to save his life  but his special effects work is some of the best in the industry. Optimus Prime is a mind blowing special effect that in a better more daring story would be the lead character.

Here is a sidekick to a group of forgettable human caricatures and one exceptionally beautiful woman. This relegation to the background makes him bland as a character but still extraordinarily rendered. When he is onscreen, especially in battle with the Decepticons, Prime is the kind of star you build movies around.

All of the alien robots are remarkably works of CGI effects. As characters they mostly stink. That however, they have in common with their human counterparts. Shia LeBeouf is a nice actor with a good deal of charisma but his only real character development comes in being in better physical shape than in the first film, the likely result of having to literally run from one special effect to the next, from one on set explosion to the next CGI green screen robot.

There is no denying Michael Bay is a master of effects. If that is appealing enough for you, then see the movie, you might be satisfied. If however, you require a well told story with your massive special effects forget Transformers. See Star Trek a special effects movie that actually bothers to tell a story in between CGI explosions.

Movie Review: Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys and Aliens (2011) 

Directed by Jon Favreau

Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Paul Dano

Release Date July 29th, 2011

Published July 28th, 2011

Why isn't Cowboys and Aliens the biggest event in popular culture ever? With the elements that the film has in place there is simply no excuse for this film to not be the biggest moment in pop culture, at least in this short century. Consider that we are talking about the combination of two of the most popular genres ever, western and science fiction. And that the film stars both James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), not to mention Han Solo and Jack Ryan.

How about the fact that Cowboys and Aliens was produced by a Hollywood dream team that includes Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Steven Speilberg. To top it all off, this geek god of a movie was directed by the director of Iron Man 1 & 2--himself a cult figure for his role in Swingers--Jon Favreau. I ask again: Why isn't Cowboys and Aliens the biggest pop culture event ever?

Somewhere in the old west a man who doesn't yet know that his name is Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) awakens in the desert. His memory is gone, he's wounded and he has some sort of device strapped to his wrist. Eventually, Jake makes his way to the town of Absolution where everyone is under the boot of Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford).

Unknown to Jake, he and Dolarhyde have a history; Jake robbed a stagecoach full of Dolarhyde's gold before his memory loss and subsequent desert awakening. Before Dolarhyde and Jake can have it out however, an alien spaceship attacks and begins kidnapping townsfolk. Suddenly, Jake's new jewelry comes to life and he's able to destroy one of the alien ships.

Now, Jake and Dolarhyde must team up with a posse that includes a little kid, a dog and a woman, Ella (Olivia Wilde) along with a preacher (Clancy Brown), a saloon owner (Sam Rockwell) and several random posse members who act as cannon fodder for subsequent alien attacks. Together this disparate band must traverse the desert, find the alien HQ and get their people back.

Cowboys and Aliens was adapted from a graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg though how much of his original story remains is anyone's guess. At least six different writers have credits on the screenplay of Cowboys and Aliens including Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, the Star Trek reboot team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, The Simpsons staff writer Bill Oedenkirk and the Iron Man team of Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby.

Wrestling these different visions into one mostly cohesive whole is director Jon Favreau who does pull off the Herculean task of making Cowboys and Aliens a believable combination of old school western and high end sci-fi while wrangling this wild horse of script into one well told story. Unfortunately, what is lost in the mix is a sense of humor as well of a sense of the film's place in popular culture.

For some reason, Jon Favreau wants us to take Cowboys and Aliens seriously. Both stars, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, deliver taciturn, old west tough guy performances that feel authentic but lack the awe, wonderment and humor that this goofy sci-fi story calls for. The film needed a Will Smith injection; a character who we can believe will hold up in a fight and yet has the aplomb to be impressed by the situation he finds himself in.

Cowboys and Aliens also suffers from a lack of cultural awareness; director Favreau wants to pretend that he is making an old school western that happens to have aliens. Favreau also wants to pretend that his stars are not weighted by pop culture history; why else has the film's marketing failed to mention that one of the stars is James Bond and the other is Indiana Jones?

You simply cannot cast Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford and not find some way to pay homage to their place in the culture. This head in the sand approach blunts the impact of everything they do in the film. We in the audience crave the release of having someone reference how huge all of this is and no one does. This is where the lack of a sense of humor comes into play; a sense of humor would find some way to make a joke about spies or the territory of Indiana, or an offhand reference to something about a Star War.

That however, would not have played into Jon Favreau's misguided choice to play the material of Cowboys and Aliens as a straight western that happens to have aliens attacking. On its own merits Cowboys and Aliens is well crafted, a little fat in the run time at over two hours, but solidly built aside from its lack of humor. Matthew Libatique's cinematography is terrific, the special effects are eye catching and believable, the film simply lacks the proper amount of awe.

In the end, if Jon Favreau did not want the weight of pop culture on his old school, John Ford Western that happens to have Aliens, he shouldn't have cast James Bond and Indiana Jones. Favreau set the pop culture table and then refused to serve it and that leaves Cowboys and Aliens a well made but slightly bland feast.

Movie Review Star Trek

Star Trek (2009) 

Directed by JJ Abrams

Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Eric Bana, Winona Ryder

Release Date May 8th, 2009 

Published May 7th, 2009 

On the great sci-fi divide between trekkies and followers of the force I am squarely in the Skywalker camp. I have nothing against Trek. In the 90's in fact I had a brief love affair with Star Trek The Next Generation. That lasted until Deep Space Nine came along and bored the crap out of me. That was followed by three exceptionally mediocre Next Generation movies that did little to bring me around to the Starfleet way, even as George Lucas was damaging my memories of his holy trilogy with his unholy prequels.

Now, I cannot be sure where I stand. After seeing J.J Abrams revamp the Star Trek legend with energy, wit and edge of your seat summer movie adrenaline, I am tempted to turn my loyalties over to Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Blasphemy? Maybe to Star Wars fanatics, but even those who've fought this battle for years must first see this exceptional new Star Trek before excoriating me for allowing Trek into places in my movie loving heart where only the Force had been before.

Star Trek the reboot begins with the birth of James T. Kirk aboard a starship Captained by his father George. It wasn't initially captained by George Kirk but after being attacked by a Romulan ship captained by the empirious Nero (Eric Bana) it was left to First Officer Kirk to go down with the ship as he evacuated the crew, including his in labor wife (House star Jennifer Morrison in a terrific cameo). George Kirk's heroism will no doubt be the model for his son.

Later in life, James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is a rebellious Iowa farm boy with little thought of the future despite a knack for leadership and the instincts of a warrior. Thankfully, these traits are recognized by the captain of the Enterprise, Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) who challenges Kirk to join StarFleet. His father became an officer in just 4 years, James says he can do it in 3.

Parallel to Kirk's story is that of Spock (Zachary Quinto, TV's Heroes top villain Sylar). The son of a Vulcan elder and a human woman, Spock is the Vulcan equivalent of an outcast, one who is capable of emotion as much as he is subject to the rigorous logic that Vulcan's thrive on. It is the human side of Spock that leads him to Star Fleet and his Vulcan mastery of knowledge and combat that quickly makes him a leader.

These two men are destined to clash but history tells us that great things will come of those clashes, including a timeless friendship. This leads us to the main question many will have about Star Trek, how does it fit the Star Trek canon? The answer will be different for different audiences.

Those with the most strict fealty to Star Trek lore may poke a few holes. Those with no loyalty will set phasers on the film's use of time travel and call it a cheat. People who think like me however, not strictly tied to lore, willing to put aside the laws of physics in favor of a good time, will find clever the ways in which Director Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have found to use Trek lore and yet chart their own path to a whole new franchise.

It's a spectacularly clever device, one I won't divulge here, only to say that it isn't unfair to call it a cheat. That said, if you call it a cheat, summer movies clearly are not your cup of tea. A summer popcorn adventure is not subject to all of the rigors of typical movies. Movies that strive to mean more to our lives, movies that attempt to communicate deep human truths and reveal the soul of man are a different breed from the Star Trek-Star Wars-Iron Man movies which occasionally stumble across truths but are geared more toward the visceral excitement that is just as valuable.

People tend to trash the thrill as a base emotion. Maybe it is, but would you want a life without thrills? Star Trek delivers thrills on several different levels and I couldn't get enough. The film is first an action packed popcorn movie with spectacular effects. It is second a film that takes characters with rich histories and makes functional use of those histories to thrill us with surprise. And on another level, this is an origin story that introduces a group of charismatic heroes and fosters a newfound attachment to them. On one level trekkies will geek over this glimpse into the lives of their longtime heroes. On another level, the uninitiated will find well grounded new heroes with new stories to tell in unique and exciting fashion.

Star Trek is a visceral summer movie experience that will make you squirm in your seat, catch your breath and laugh all in the space of mere moments. J.J Abrams has a mastery of the action movie form that might be unexpected of a television veteran and while I wish he would keep the camera static during the quieter scenes, he is forgiven for likely being overly excited to get to the loud stuff, the loud stuff being so darn fun.

Fun is the operative word here. Pure Summer Movie, popcorn fun from scene one to the very end. Movies like Star Trek are why we go to the movies in the summer instead of being outside where we belong, you just can't have this much fun anywhere else.

Movie Review Mission Impossible 3

Mission Impossible 3 (2006) 

Directed by J.J Abrams 

Written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci 

Starring Tom Cruise, Michelle Moynihan, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Maggie Q

Release Date May 5th, 2006 

Published May 4th, 2006 

If Mission Impossible 2 was the height of slick and shallow action fantasy, Mission Impossible 3 is the height of the series becoming something more than just slick fantasy. Mission Impossible 3 is completely awesome with more genuine suspense and thrills than either of the two previous Mission Impossible movies. Director J.J Abrams, before he manned the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, grabbed the reins of the Mission Impossible franchise and transformed it from thinly plotted, style over substance action into a full fledged movie that also happens to be a great action movie.

Mission Impossible 3 picks up the story of Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) five years after the action of MI2. Now, Hunt is in semi-retirement, busily training the next generation of IMF Agents. Hunt is also soon to be married to Jules (Michelle Monaghan), who has no idea what Ethan did or currently does for a living. Her appeal to him is that she is completely outside the espionage sphere.

That’s unfortunately about to change as Ethan is drawn back into the field and his new bride is soon to be drawn in as well. Ethan is brought out of retirement by a friend and agent named Musgrave (Billy Crudup) who wants Ethan to go to Germany and rescue one of the agents he trained. Agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) had been tracking an arms dealer named Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) when she was captured.

The rescue sequence, featuring Hunt’s latest Impossible Mission team, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames, in his third Mission appearance), Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Zhen Lei (Maggie Q), is an incredibly tense, fast paced and exceptionally well shot sequence. It’s a nail-biting series of scenes with Keri Russell getting a moment to shine next to Cruise and show the chops that would take her to Emmy leading lady status as another kind of spy on The Americans.

Here, Russell was not long from the fluffy television series Felicity but the gun battle here put any questions about her range as an action hero and actress to rest for good. Russell is every bit the badass Cruise is in this scene and J.J Abrams captures the scene brilliantly with remarkable camera work, editing and scene setting. The tension in this scene is almost unbearable as the perfectly timed events play out., I can’t praise this scene enough, and I haven’t even mentioned the gut-punch payoff to this sequence.

From there we move the plot on to Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s big bad, Owen Davian. The Academy Award nominated Hoffman is not playing around with the role of action movie bad guy, he’s deeply invested in this dangerous character. Davian is maniacal but it’s Hoffman’s measured tones and invective that make him scary and not the kind of blustering we get from so many other action movie bad guys.

A sequence in which Cruise and his team invade The Vatican to capture Davian is another stand out series of scenes filled with the kinds of things we’ve come to love about the series, the speculative technology, the expert timing and the thrilling last minute saves. Director Abrams could teach a master class in action movie suspense and just show people this sequence with its expert timing and clever twists and turns.

After the disappointment of the first Mission Impossible and the shallow but exceptionally fun Mission Impossible 2, I was once again surprised by the Mission Impossible franchise with Mission Impossible 3. Instead of adopting the shallow, thrill a minute style of the modern action movie, J.J Abrams set out and made an action movie with a brain, a careful thriller that uses strong cinematic technique to build suspense in a plot that is the perfect mix of action movie thrills and genuine, edge of your seat suspense.

With all of the negativity aimed at Tom Cruise these days I wonder if I am the last Cruise fan left. For me, Tom is one of the golden gods of movie stardom. The man can do no wrong... on the big screen. His charisma, magnetism and that pulsing vein in the middle of his forehead simply hold me at rapt attention.

Call it a heterosexual man crush if you wish, I prefer to think of it in the classic Hollywood star parlance. The classic Hollywood idiom about great stars, Women want to be with him and men, like me, want to be him.

It is that quality that drives his blockbuster flicks to stratospheric heights at the box office and it is that quality that often rescues some questionable films from flopping like a dead fish. His latest film, the third in the mindlessly entertaining Mission Impossible series M.I:3, succeeds solely because of Cruise's star magnetism.

M.I:3 returns Tom Cruise to the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt, newly retired and soon to be married to the lovely Julia (Michelle Monaghan). She knows nothing of his past or of his current job as a part time trainer of new IMF agents, he told her works for the D.O.T on traffic patterns, a job just boring enough that no one asks for details.

Ethan is pulled back into the IMF fold when one of his trainees, his star student Lindsey (Keri Russell), is captured in Berlin while on the trail of an arms dealer named Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman).To get her back Ethan hooks up with his old pal Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and a new crew of IMF'ers including Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q) and a new pair of bosses Brassell (Laurence Fishburne) and Musgrave (Billy Crudup).

Together they infiltrate one of those classic action movie mileu's, the factory that produces sparks and steam, and fight through several hundred nameless henchman.The raid is successful or seemed to be but unfortunately the bad guys inserted a timebomb in Lindsey's brain which detonates killing only her. These scenes sound as cheeseball as they truly are, and yet, through sheer hardcore adrenalin, they work.

Indeed the entire movie, as directed by TV genius J.J Abrams, is a series of over the top action scenes that dangle Cruise precariously from varying heights, fires gazillions of bullets, destroys millions of dollars worth of property and never stops entertaining.

The remaining plot involves Ethan and his team catching Davian, being double crossed in classic Mission Impossible fashion and, of course, along the way poor Julia will be kidnapped and have a near death experience with the big bad Davian.

I will freely admit that M.I:3 is a brainless action flick. Utterly mindless, with a plot that falls apart with too much scrutiny. However if you can forget the plot for awhile and just get into the spectacle and bathe in the star powered charisma you will be entertained thoroughly by M.I:3.

This film is just pure adrenalized joy. J.J Abrams and Tom Cruise revel in upping the ante on the action spectacle with every passing scene. They turn the experience into something akin to the X-Games crossed with James Bond and a little David Blaine magic, awe inspiring at times and cheesy as all get out.

I absolutely loved Mission Impossible 3 and I recommend it completely as a must see for people who love the classic Hollywood blockbuster. If you want your mind expanded I recommend Akeelah and The Bee. If you want your pulse to race and heart to pound then see M:I3 and leave your brain in the car.