Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Well, I will first off say that there is no point really discussing plot and character development, because the film takes the bold approach of ignoring such things.  About halfway through the film, at the precise moment where my brain started hurting, I realized that I had to just completely abandon any hopes that the story would be any better than the previous movie, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.  While I had believed that Revenge of The Fallen had a convoluted story, Dark of the Moon ups the ante to astronomical proportions, and, in the interest of self-preservation, it was best that I just left such things alone.

Characters in the film are just set pieces that exist to spew out expository dialogue and dramatically shout out names of the Transformers periodically.  Sam Witwiky (Shia LaBeouf), who is supposed to be the main character who we cheer for from the previous two installments, has now evolved into an entitled jerk who somehow always seems to get super model girlfriends.  There really is next to nothing likeable about him, and for a lot of the film I was hoping he was going to get squashed by a bulking Decepticon.  I won’t spoil his fate for you, but I will say that I did not feel properly satisfied by the end.

With no plot or interesting characters, we really ended up getting what seems to be the typical Michael Bay movie, which is all about focussing on big effects and big noises.  After an excruciating time watching Revenge of The Fallen, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this film had left behind a lot of the infantile humour and tone from its predecessor and seemed to be a step towards progress.  Where my intelligence and self-respect were under attack while enduring Revenge of The Fallen, I felt free of such assaults with Dark of the Moon.

That is not to say that it was lacking obnoxious elements (such as the aforementioned Witwiky) or what seem to be visual favourites of Bay.  It begins to feel impossible that I will ever see a film of his that does not have a slow motion shot of a person getting out of a vehicle, a slow motion shot of someone staring at something with much conviction on their face, and a slow motion shot of a helicopter.  It all does begin to feel so redundant and that we are merely treading over the same ground, time and time again.

I was, however, able to find some level of entertainment in the movie.  Perhaps that was because I was able to view it as a purely visceral experience without having to grind through juvenile humour about farts and robotic testicles.  The effects in the film where brilliant, and the flow of them seemed to be cut and inserted into the movie in a more flowing form that the previous film.  What ended up happening was that I actually enjoyed myself on some level, which I am not ashamed to admit.

This is the type of movie that I could see a number of people liking for its action sequences, but as a whole, it still was just not there for me.  While so many elements were an improvement over the last film, it is still a film that is ultimately lacking in a well-rounded presentation.  It is never a good sign when I am cheering for the protagonist to be offed by any means possible, willing to accept anything from giant explosion to simple food poisoning from cross contamination due an improper kitchen cleaning regiment.  The film succeeded in not feeling like a complete waste of time, but that is never a shining endorsement.

Rating – 2 out of 4 stars

In Fear

Coming out of the United Kingdom, In Fear is a horror film that works to up the level of claustrophobia and anxiety of the audience by placing us in an all too familiar fear of being lost.  Director Jeremy Lovering does well to create an environmental stress by placing a young couple in a labyrinth of wooded, narrow roads in Ireland.  As the couple seeks their destination, they become more and more confused and anxious as they begin to realize that unknown people are tormenting them while they try to keep their calm and find their way back out.

The film stars Iain De Caestecker as Tom, and Alice Englert as Lucy, his girlfriend of only two weeks.  On their way to a weekend festival, Tom surprises Lucy with a night at a secluded hotel that should provide them some romance to kick off the weekend.  However, as they find themselves becoming more and more lost their new courtship faces strains and pressures as Lucy begins feeling quite panicked by the situation.  This element of the film was a very neat addition, as it is easily understandable how it would be hard to try and keep your own sanity while still dealing with the emotional issues that are arising in someone who you do not fully know yet, and all under the pressures of a new relationship.

Another benefit the film had was during the first part of the movie where there was a lot of mystery surrounding what was happening.  There were a few breadcrumbs to follow, but also enough other plot elements that kept me from being able to settle in on a conclusion as to the foundation of the situation they were in.  Adding to that was the wonderful location that they found, which provided winding narrow roads that were completely closed in by the woods around them.

Unfortunately, and as seems to be the case with a lot of films, the movie just did not seem to be able to keep its momentum through the second and third acts.  The slow subtlety that it started out with was then replaced with revelations of the situation that lead to me having a lot of questions about the plot, and not the good type of questions where there is an unsolvable mystery, but more of logic and the realm of reality.  It came down to the sorts of issues that are easily brushed off in supernatural horrors or stock slasher flicks, but this movie does not so much get an exemption from this as it worked to ground itself as a real world scenario.

As I had mentioned about the ‘bread crumbs,’ which were nice little tidbits of intrigue at the beginning of the film, they soon became so big and blatant that there was absolutely no surprise at all when we were given new facts about the happenings that our couple were plunged into.  And, because these clues were so obvious, they gave a view of the larger picture well ahead of time, which allowed me to start really scrutinizing just how these people ended up where they were.  It became a mess of a convoluted plot that was so abrasive to the wonderful atmospheric and personal feel that the film started out with.

Where other films with similar negatives would end up being a very low rated and forgettable film, In Fear still provides the audience with some great moments throughout before it resorts to typical horror scares and scenarios.  When the pacing is right in this film, it is absolutely amazing and a treat to watch.  It is just too bad that it became overshadowed for me by the types of traps that other films seem so easily to fall into.  For a fan of horror films, this is one that is definitely worth checking out because I am sure you will be able to find a level of appreciation for this close quarters thriller.

Rating – 2.5 out or 4 stars

Credited cast:
	Iain De Caestecker	...	Tom
	Alice Englert	...	Lucy
	Allen Leech	...	Max

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen

Because of an upcoming Transformers movie this summer, as well as being a little down on Michael Bay’s Pain and Gain from last year, I thought that instead of just getting on the gripe train of big loud Bay movies it would be good if I spent some time and watched the second and third movies in the Transformers franchise.  The last thing I want is to start to develop notions of people’s skills and styles without giving the proper amount of chances.  Sure, I had this belief that a Michael Bay film will be filled to the gills with music, an overabundance of loud special effects, and plenty of slow motion shots of things that do not need slow motion, such as people getting out of cars, people looking up, people walking, and a helicopter flying through the skies as the camera looks up at someone’s face.

Going into Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, I made all the best efforts to view the movie as it was and not for what I expected.  I would rather be the person who defends something than the person who attacks it.  It is easy to get on the train of malcontent and ride into the verbal fray with everyone else, but it takes intelligence and backbone to present an argument to the contrary.

I have none.  Nothing.  I have nothing at all to say to come to the defence of this film.  After I was immediately boxed in the ears by sound effects from the arrival of the Paramount logo, and then doused with more audio assault with countless scenes that were drowned in music that felt forced and out of place, as well as sound effects that were just as jarring, I knew that I was in for a very long ride.  Although, I don’t think that ‘jarring’ is the best way to describe this movie.  While elements may be appropriately described as such, the majority of the film just suffers from a complete lack of cohesion as it bumbles through the dark, looking for a sane plot and decent characters that it knows it may have left behind with the original film.

I know that not all movies need to make perfect sense, and that there is something about mindless, big budget, popcorn munchers that can be fun to watch.  I do enjoy a visceral waste of time on the big screen as much as anyone, but I also don’t want to feel like I was treated like an idiot for slapping down money to be there.  A movie can be simple and effective, but it starts to fall apart when we begin to feel like our intelligence is being insulted or that we are just being given something that is a sequel for sequel’s sake.

Transformers was nowhere near a perfect movie, but I was able to find a lot of fun in it.  The visuals were spectacular, but it also had some semi-interesting characters and brought in a bit of humour as well.  The parents of the main character were funny in the first movie, but in a relatable way.  Their personalities were turned up to eleven, but they did not seem like caricatures.  This time around, they are simply just spilling grade two level ‘humour’ in a way that makes it feel like the production team is mechanically extracting it from their souls.

This movie really feels like the Jar Jar Binks of sequels.  It is overly goofy, it is awkward, it attempts some level of seriousness, and someone thought that it was a good idea.  There is absolutely no cohesion to this film.  It is just random elements of a movie that feel thrown together to somehow get the audience from one fight scene to another.  The humour in this film is so dumbed down that it relies on jokes about dogs humping dogs, legs being humped, and farts.

This lack of cohesion that I mention comes from just an unfortunate script that was penned by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, all people who have worked on some quality projects in the past.  I do not know what happened here, but it just turned into a miserable outing of being hauled through the slop.  An example that I like from the film is when our hero, Sam, gets attacked by a bunch of mini-transfomers out of the blue, he yells to his Autobot guardian Bumblebee, who comes to his aid.  After Bumblebee fights them off, Sam then scolds him for coming out in the open and proceeds to tell the transformer that the days of danger are behind him and that he no longer needs a guardian.  I kind of felt like I was losing my mind at this point in the film, and we were just past the introduction.

I could also give other examples that are even more inane, but I won’t waste any of our time doing that.  On the plus side, I did laugh once when John Turturro said a line, and the visuals looked pretty amazing.  Outside of that, it was not a good movie at all.  As I said before, I have no problems with brainless action flicks and believe there is a place for them out there.  Still, to be presented with something that simply throws things at you so randomly for the constant sake of simply getting to the next joke about testicles or the next fight scene gets more than a little annoying.  We want to feel like when we spend our money on a movie we are being treated with respect and our intelligence is not being insulted, and that is what is happening with this movie.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars

The Spectacular Now

I could not tell you why, but lately it has been very hard to sit in front of the keyboard and work on reviews.  This does not mean I have not been watching good movies (or bad ones as well), but more so because of the mental game of writing.  I could not say that it is 'writer's block' as it more seems to come down to confidence and fears.  Awful things, those are.  

One of the great coming of age movies from 2013 turned out to be the little known film The Spectacular Now, a movie which looks at the very adult issues that teenagers face while wrapping it in a teen romance theme.  In this movie, there is sort of a typical theme of the popular person developing a relationship with the academic person who is much lower down on the adolescent social ladder.  However, it does not approach it from the normal means of a quest or a dare set upon the ‘cool kid,’ but more from a common understanding that their lives are not in the order that they would like them to be in.

The movie has Sutter (Miles Teller), who is the life of the party and refuses to ever let the party die by constantly infusing his body with alcohol.  After a night of hitting the bottle, he ends up on the lawn of Aimee (Shailene Woodley) who is heading out to do her newspaper route to support her family.  The movie, caught in a scenario that is usually bound into clichés, uses this as a jumping point for the story of the two, who slowly start to develop a relationship, although it is not the best one at times, and grow to be good friends who push and support each other in taking control of their lives.

The pairing of these two actors is an example of terrific casting, as they both play their parts to the point of making the viewer remember back to high school (assuming that the viewer, such as myself, already has high school behind them) and remembering people who were exactly like that.  It is easy to not care much for Sutter, as he does not seem to care about anything and is quick to make a joke.  Life, for him, has a lack of seriousness about it, and there is no forethought to the consequences of any of his actions.  While this struck a chord with me, reminding me of those types from my past and stirring up some good ole angst towards him, it was incredible to witness just how effective director James Ponsoldt and Teller were at bringing in moments where I felt sympathy for Sutter.  While he is easy to judge right away as a useless kid who will never amount to anything, we are able to see the reality of what lies behind the curtain for him (and perhaps others like him) that makes him that way.

Shailene Woodley shows her acting chops in this film, perhaps giving us an idea of just how far her career can go.  She is about to be put on the main stage as the lead in the upcoming Divergent movie, but it is in this film where we can see a multitude of layers that she is able to incorporate into a character.  She plays the shy girl well, but behind what may be a lack of social confidence we see glimpses of a very strong young woman who has not yet come out.  Hindered by her home situation, much like Teller, she needs a push to discover the amazing individual she truly is.  Her performance is without flaw, and without such delivery, a lot of the story and emotional impact of the film would never be able to come to the surface.

Also in this film is Brie Larson, and if you have read some of my other writings or listened to The Breakdown podcast you may have figured out that I am quite a fan of this talented young actress.  She plays a supporting role as Sutter’s ex-girlfriend, and serves as a symbol of how his dysfunctional life can pull someone down with him.  While he is stuck in his own life, not moving forward, we see that once she is clear of his influence she seems able to assert herself into her life with confidence.  It is a bold warning for Aimee that a similar fate could be around the corner.

Such cycles are part of this movie’s makeup.  When you are a teenager, unsure of who you are and how your circumstances have molded you, circling around familiar ground is a perfect way to deceive ourselves that all is safe and familiar.  Sutter’s behaviours of self-sabotage and destruction were powerfully crafted, a self-propelled cycle that showed off the complexities of human struggles.  While it may sound a bit doom and gloom, this is a coming of age story.  It is one about teens turning into adults, hitting moments of recognition, and being faced with choices of what path they want their lives to take, and The Spectacular Now does this all spectacularly.

Rating – 3.5 out of 4 stars