Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
2009, directed by Michael Bay
Compared to this film, the first Transformers was a masterpiece. It had a discernible plot, characters that actually made sense, and action scenes that progressed somewhat logically. Fallen has none of these. I think Michael Bay’s biggest problem here is the way he films. I get the sense that he was working with a script that originally made sense, but I also get the sense that he just set up a bunch of cameras and had his actors run around screaming random lines, thinking he’d fix the story in post. Characters get knocked out and moments later are back on their feet, they travel from a Washington, DC museum to a California valley plain by walking through a door, and the major characters must run through an endless gauntlet of killer robots while the minor characters simply drive around it. The story is paper thin and could have been told in a ten minute saturday morning cartoon, but Bay manages to drag it into two hours of meaningless chaos. Many robots pummel one another and many soldiers and tanks fire pointless volleys at them for at least a third of the running time. Something that hasn’t changed from part one is the utterly tasteless sexuality. Megan Fox’s character carries herself like a prostitute, but we are supposed to believe she is a sweet and kind girl. The “college” that our hero attends looks more like a creepy nightclub, and a relentless running gag involves animals and robots humping various things, which I believe Bay expects us to find uproariously funny. The man has no taste and no film here, just flashy, disconnected visuals.
The Secret of Kells
2009, directed by Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey
A slim story with a stereotypical youth vs. cold authoritarian guardian plot, The Secret of Kells is so beautifully animated that these shortcomings don’t matter. In dark ages Ireland a young boy named Brendan lives in an abbey deep in a vast forest. He is learning to be am illuminator from an ancient master, but his uncle the Abbot, who is desperately trying to finish building the abbey walls before the dreaded Northmen arrive, disapproves. A magic wolf girl lives outside the walls and aides Brendan in his quest for an ancient pagan crystal that will help him become a master illuminator. The animation is extremely two dimensional, giving even the forest a strange architectural look, and the colors are simple and vibrant, often merging on water color. The style and pacing reminded me of the original Clone Wars mini-series by famed animator Genndy Tartakovsky, and the composition was consistently unique and captivating.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1991, directed by James Cameron
I finally got around to watching what some have heralded as the “greatest action movie of all time,” and I must admit, I was a little bored. Maybe it was because I was watching the “special edition” version, with 16 minutes of film added to the original theatrical cut. I think I know which scenes were added, because they really dragged the movie’s pacing down to a standstill. But I think the real reason I was a bored was because I had seen this whole story before in the original Terminator film. I guess James Cameron has a knack for making blockbuster sequels. Like his sequel to Alien, Aliens, Cameron took his previous big film and pretty much just made the same film, only bigger. In Aliens, he made one alien into hundreds, in Terminator 2 he gives us two terminators for the price of one. There are so many plot parallels between the two Terminator films. Both open with a view of the hellish, robot-ruled future, followed by two time travelers beaming down to the present and savaging innocent bystanders. We have parallel manhunts culminating in desperate vehicle chases, parallel facility invasions, a police department in Terminator and a psychiatric ward in T2, and two final highway truck battles leading to explosive crashes and mechanical facilities full of robot-crushing machinery. The main difference I saw in T2 was its humanity. The first film had an extremely ruthless and cold soul, whereas this film has a warm humor to it, with a Terminator turned good and learning about humanity, sworn to never kill humans. The scenes in which the new target, Sarah Connor’s son, interacts with Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, are often funny and sweet, and a welcome reprieve from the otherwise relentless action sequences.
A Town Called Panic
2009. directed by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar
My brothers and I watched this together, and we laughed pretty much the entire time. It’s an incredibly hilarious and random stop motion film about a cowboy, an Indian and a horse that live together and have bizarre adventures. Underwater monsters keep stealing their house, and at one point they become enslaved by super-powered scientists who live in a giant robotic penguin. It’s all animated with actual toy models and It reminded me of the games I used to play with my toys. The fact that it’s in French with subtitles makes it that much funnier. A great family film, it’s so inventive that you can watch it over and over and enjoy it every time.
A Serious Man
2009, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen
It’s hard to describe what this movie is. It’s a dark comedy about a Jewish man living in the 60s who suffers almost constant misfortune, but it’s something more. This man, whose name is Larry Gopnik, seeks help from three rabbis, who bring him no comfort, only telling him pointless stories or ignoring his pleas altogether. He tries to be morally upright, but as his suffering increases, he begins to slip into vice. The Coen’s end the film very suddenly, with no resolution or answers. What are the Coen’s saying? Is this film a statement of outrage at a culture that focuses only on externals and never even tries to understand the meaning of life and its suffering? Or is it merely an existential romp, reveling in a world of darkly humorous chaos? Larry is a math teacher, and he demonstrates the uncertainty principle to his classroom in a dream, explaining that it proves “we can’t really ever know what’s going on.” He is interrupted by the specter of a dead man, who informs him that math is only “the art of the possible.” Perhaps the Coen’s are just as disgusted with the world’s wisdom, wanting the answers that our culture and its scientific dogma and wishy-washy moralism cannot give us just as much as Larry does.