Contrived Giant Fighting Robot Movie 3

Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011
4.0

Does this movie even deserve a review? Well, we all know the answer to that one, but frankly, if every movie that didn’t deserve a review didn’t get one, movie critics would be irrelevant. Oh that’s right, they already are. Anyways. Like the last Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, the third installment really suffers from a lack of cohesion. As a result, so does my review. You see, Dark of the Moon (which is awkwardly missing the word Side in the title) isn’t a movie, so much as it is a collection of bizarre, contrived, and convoluted plot points and “characters.” Notice the quotation marks. For example, the movie starts off with a revisionist explanation of how Americans landed on the moon. No, it had nothing to do with good ol’ fashioned American ingenuity. A bunch of robots sent a secret spaceship to the moon! And the Americans really wanted to find out what it was! Of course, that really has nothing to do with anything else in the movie. Considering the robots end up on planet Earth regardless back in the first movie. So couldn’t the spaceship just crash land in between the second and third movie? NO! Then Buzz Aldrin, who now appears to be senile, couldn’t grovel to a giant CGI robot about how important Optimus Prime was to human history. I find that insulting. Shouldn’t we be honoring Buzz Aldrin? And if not, why have him in the movie at all?

Speaking of things that are insulting, how about Rosie Huntington-Whitely. Megan Fox did not return thanks to apparently insensitive Hitler comments she made about hack director Michael Bay offending everyone including her producer, who happened to have made a really good film about the Holocaust (you did it again, Steven!). Unfortunately, this paved the way for Victoria Secret model and Brit RH-W, who isn’t an actress so much as a collection of female body parts that remind men that they’re heterosexual. (Us men couldn’t have done it without you, Michael Bay!) I have been comparing Bay’s style of photographing women to, lets say, Richard Marquand’s photography of Princess Leia in her slave outfit in Return of the Jedi. One contains context; the other does not. We get to see RH-W’s perfect legs squatting on Shia LaBeouf not because it’s necessary to the film but because Mr. Bay wants men, ages from 8 to 88, to drool. Wouldn’t it just be more suiting for Bay to quit Hollywood and start making skin flicks for Cinemax? He could still add his trademark explosions, which aren’t even that awe striking as they are in Transformers.

Let’s see, anything else? Patrick Dempsey plays an evil robot accountant. Ken Jeong appears as Mr. Chow (and you thought you’d have to wait for Hangover 3). John Malkovich, John Turturro, and Frances McDormand also all appear, proving the Coen Brothers should give them work.

Am I being unfair? Perhaps. I may be biased since I prefer things that are real. Real characters, real entities. I may never like a movie that depends so much on things that are fake. Is there an actual animatronic robot in the entire movie? I don’t think so. Though I will say the final battle is occasionally interesting (though it’s quite long after a long setup), and the evil robot, Shockwave, is pretty cool. Word on the street is that this is Bay’s last Transformers film. Here’s to hoping we don’t have to sit through this again.

Alpha and Omega, Ambition and Triumph

The Tree of Life, 2011
10.0

Dripping with ambition and marvelous to behold, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a rapturous meditation on life and on death, on creation, destruction, and on humanity’s most achingly existential questions. “There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of grace,” muses Mrs. O’Brien (in an ethereal performance from Jessica Chastain) to her eldest son, Jack (portrayed impressively by first timer Hunter McCracken), shedding a modicum of insight into an altogether unprecedented film.

It is this reality with which the latter character, an older, sleek-suited Jack in the form of Sean Penn, is conflicted at the onset of, but also throughout, the film upon learning of his younger brother’s death. What follows over the next two hours of a definitively lyric, non-linear film is Jack’s reflections on this, on the course of his 1950s childhood under the reign of a demanding, perceivably unyielding father (Brad Pitt, in, yes, the thespian achievement of his career) and the care of an overtly loving, expectantly merciful mother (Chastain).

Were Malick to contain his poetry in this tale, a moving narrative of an idyllic midcentury America depicted magnificently in every splendid detail by production designer Jack Fisk, he would have succeeded in achieving conventional greatness. Alas, he does not, aspiring instead to utilize these scenes as a means to contemplate all of existence, from the eruptive birth of the universe and the dawning of life on this planet to closing scenes of the afterlife, and, perhaps, the afterworld.

In this vision, amid sweeping renderings of the infinity of deep space and scenes of a primordial Earth replete with dinosaurs and prehistoric landscapes, Malick makes those inquiries of life and existence whose answers serve to explain, and often justify, creation itself. He does so literally, with whispered narrations from several of the O’Briens, though mainly from the young Jack, that define the film foremost as a prayer. It is these prayers, which play out as an absorbingly abstract dialogue with a Creator (one that Malick actually, audaciously, depicts in several instances throughout the film), that operatically probe the piece’s central theme, the eternal struggle between grace and nature, mercy and harsh reality. Pitt and Chastain, in their opposing roles as the extremes of parenting, archetypally portray this—the demanding father, the forgiving mother.

Malick, and his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, present these ideas with a stark, moving beauty that is quite likely unmatched in cinema; to say anything less of such imagery is remiss. Scored brilliantly with enduring compositions from, among others, Brahms, Smetana and Berlioz, along with an original theme from Alexandre Desplat that stands on its own against these classical heavyweights (and shall we not forget Cassidy's haunting "Funeral March"), The Tree of Life succeeds as much as visual and sonic poetry as it does as a meditation on the ideas that these sweeping, moving pictures serve to represent.

Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey will be inevitable, and are mostly apt, but while Kubrick’s great work stands as equally visionary and ambitious in probing the great mysteries of existence and beyond, it lacks the humanity and vigorous emotion of the present film. Visually, one might find the film, or at least parts of it, most closely resembles particular scenes from Fantasia. In spite of any comparison though, the film stands apart, unique in its interpretation of the bounds of film.

Beautiful, captivating, eccentric, The Tree of Life is a transcendent masterpiece, a seminal work deserving of nothing less than placement among our greatest contributions to lyrical craft. With it, Terrence Malick has forged a breathtaking piece that is not simply an immaculate addition to cinema, but one that may well be a watershed moment for the medium and a veritable monument in America’s artistic consciousness.

Excuse Me While I Whip This Out

Blazing Saddles, 1974

7.4

The wonderful (read: unnecessary) thing about reviewing a classic film, a classic comedy no less, is that it is already accepted as great and significant, regardless of what a viewer’s two cents might say otherwise. I’m late to the party, as it were. If I were to praise the film, I would just be adding superfluous fuel to the “blazing” fire. If I were to bash the film, it is quite obvious something is wrong with me. And if I only like the film, and don't grovel at its suggested genius, I would be deemed a Nazi. Luckily there are Nazis in said film, so I don’t feel too bad about that.

The greatest enduring feature of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles is its gleefully satirical impoliteness. It’s a traditional-looking Western about a corrupt state official, Hedy- I’m sorry- Hedley Lamarr, who appoints a black sheriff to scare away the racist townspeople of Rock Ridge so he can buy the land. Innuendo, and other ways of being offensive without being raunchy, is a lost art in cinema. The best comedies of the last few years, including Superbad, Knocked Up, and The Hangover, all heavily rely on subversive humor that includes penises, drugs, and a whole lot of F-bombs. However, by my count, none of these three films feature a white character calling a black character the N-word (I won’t even type it!). In fact, I don’t even think any major studio has the cojones to do that in a movie these days (except for maybe a period piece in a dramatic context). Brooks’ brash brandishing of the term is not only offensive, but sometimes outright hilarious. Especially when an old lady says it.

Apart from the political incorrectness of the whole thing, Brooks’ style of humor is really something to behold. Satire and innuendo have essentially been eliminated from current mainstream comedies. Brooks also has a way of throwing every type of humor at the screen, including slapstick, breaking the fourth wall, anachronisms, fart jokes, musical numbers, and metaphysics. Once again, not particular of current Hollywood. Speaking of Hollywood, the all too frequent pat-yourself-on-the-back institution gets some satirical justice, which is very welcome and refreshing. Its treatment of the Western genre is equally honoring and critical.

One of the benefits of reviewing a classic is you get to write about the ending, because chances are if you’re reading reviews of a 40 year old movie, you’ve probably seen it by now. The most classic thing about Blazing Saddles is its absurd ending (yes, I know the hangman is classic too). When Lamarr’s gang of bikers, Nazis, Klansmen, Arabs and rapists fight the people of Rock Ridge in a climactic battle, they break out of the film lot where the movie is being shot and wreak havoc on the set of a musical and, eventually, all of Warner Brothers Studios. It’s a perfect ending to a pretty funny movie, a movie that will endure as one of Mel Brooks’ defining classics. And that places Blazing Saddles in some pretty good company.

"Biutiful", But Not Quite

Biutiful, 2010

7.9

With Biutiful, director Alejandro González Iñárritu makes a steep narrative departure from his previous films; dissimilar to his well-received directorial (and production) efforts in both 21 Grams and Babel, Iñárritu withholds his typically sprawling, occasionally chaotic storytelling structure and focuses his lens solely on Uxbal (a brilliant Javier Bardem): single father to two young children, separated husband to a parentally negligent wife, career criminal, psychic communicator to the afterlife, late-stage cancer patient, and wonderfully-caricatured tragic hero.

In this role, with Iñárritu’s undying focus upon him, and under the weight of a demanding, often agonizing script, Bardem shines, gracing the viewer with a towering achievement of his craft. In navigating his world—a gritty, urban Barcelona—Bardem displays the same thespian chops that were just as evident as in No Country for Old Men (for which he took home a well-earned Oscar; Bardem was also nominated for 2000’s Before Night Falls, as well as this year for Biutiful). Also worth praising is Maricel Álvarez’s convincing portrayal of Marambra, a pitiful parent, likely narcissist, and Uxbal’s separated wife.

Yet while Biutiful succeeds triumphantly with its lead performances, it falls conceptually flat. Splitting writing credits with Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone, Iñárritu has written a tale appropriately rife with terse, occasionally powerful dialogue. The film and its script otherwise suffers the plight of pretension, expressing too heavily on themes of perseverance and the vain morality inherent of being criminal. Where the filmmaker wishes to dynamically convey suffering through what nearly amounts to a contemporary retelling of the narrative of the Book of Job (which has been done quite recently, and acted quite successfully by Michael Stuhlbarg, of HBO renown), Iñárritu's failure is in creating a setting where story can actually happen. Rather, the viewer is offered a Spanish ghetto (one very well-shot with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's gritty, charged lens) with scene upon scene of variously terrible, irksomely contrived fates affecting the protagonist and the rest of the cast.

The film moves quickly, and probably recklessly, from a bleak tale of a father's enduring will to care for his children against his impending early death, a faltering illicit enterprise and the burden of speaking for the dead (apologies to Orson Scott Card), to a movie in which the viewer realizes that not only will nothing good happen, but seemingly nothing good can happen. If anything, one may find the film comically bleak and unyielding; truly every single effort by the altruistic Uxbal to make life better for himself, for his young children, or for the illegal immigrants he is responsible for harboring, is answered, universally, with a consequence even more depressing than the one preceding it.

And the film goes on, and on...and on. At a trying 148 minutes, the present critic found himself checking his watch several times, as much as from a strong desire to more or less end such narrative masochism as from being the consequence of watching a film that wanes considerably in most of its second and third acts.

Do not, however, mistake the film's shortcomings in mood and plotting for what is an altogether very good artistic effort. Bardem is, as always, to be savored. And while bleak, the setting is absorbing, and for much of the first act, what will eventually become depressingly difficult to stomach is heartrendingly dramatic.

Green There, Done That

Green Lantern, 2011
3.8

I’ll be honest. I did not have high expectations going into Green Lantern, Martin Campbell’s expensive superhero flick about a jet pilot who obtains a ring that can project a green cartoon of anything he can imagine. I’m not a big fan of Ryan Reynolds, though his dramatic and intense turn in 2010’s Buried was surprisingly good. I feared his default cocky mode, which in all honestly, does not bode well for a superhero. Aren’t we supposed to like these guys, not be reminded of that frat guy we all hate?

I also feared the no-named director, Martin Campbell, who I had to look up to find out he helmed two very successful Bond reboots Casino Royale and GoldenEye. My fear was reassured when it was revealed that Reynolds would where a green suit to digitally render him a… shiny green suit. One can only wonder if Charlie Day was approached before Reynolds.

Rest assured, I enter every film with an open mind (yes, even Bratz). I was excited when I found out that an unrecognizable Peter Sarsgaard would play the hideous and disfigured villain, Dr. Hector Hammond. And I always say, a superhero movie is only as good as its villain. Unfortunately, though Sarsgaard tries very very hard, sloppy writing and clunky editing do the film in. The only thing we know about any of the characters’ pasts we have to take from another character referring to it, normally in a very vague manner. Hal Jordan (Reynolds), Carol (Blake Lively), and Hector all share a history? I can’t be too sure about that, but someone says something about it at some time.

Also, Campbell and his editor Stuart Baird seem to like parallel editing. An important scene of Dr. Hammond dissecting an alien is intercut with a scene of Jordan discovering his powers from the mysterious green ring bestowed to him by said alien. It’s awkward and regrettable because each half-scene should get its own due, its own specific attention. It certainly doesn’t work out like the baptism scene in The Godfather. The editing does get worse; at some points, scenes follow unexpectedly, almost randomly, and not in a good way.

My only other serious complaint is where did all the money go? We’re talking a $300 million movie, including marketing. We should be getting some pretty stellar effects. They’re just OK. There are go-to guys for a budget like that, and Campbell is not one of them. I really don’t expect Green Lantern to make its money back, but hey, people have paid for just as bad (ahem, Transformers 2).

Is there anything really worth paying for? The third dimension, perhaps? I watched it in 2D (I didn’t feel like fiddling around with glasses on my face for two hours), and I can’t see it being worth an extra 3.50. But the fear entity Parallax is kind of cool, and if you’re a Sarsgaard fan like me, well he’s OK too. Otherwise, re-watch The Dark Knight.