Cloud Atlas

The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer go hard. They also treat the audience like intelligent adults, which didn’t get them much money back but that happens. Cloud Atlas is remarkable in that they got it made at all and with this cast. Hugh Grant as a face painted murderous cannibal? Hugo Weaving as Nurse Rachet? That alone is worth the price of admission.

Cloud Atlas isn’t afraid to hit the audience in the head with it’s messages and that is fine, just fine. The filmmakers also wanted to do everything in this movie and lord do they. Probably the only movie ever made with a daring escape from an old folks home cross cut with a high speed aerial race through holographic roadways of a futuristic Asia. It’s like no one ever said no to any idea but most of the ideas were good anyway so it worked out. When I was in college I used to find movies all the time from Japan, Korea and France that would push the envelope of content and form and I would lament that American filmmakers never came close to that level of audacity and creativity. Based on the grosses of films like Cloud Atlas and Scott Pilgrim vs The World, American audiences don’t want daring. It is still nice to see someone try every couple years. Darren Aronofsky went buck wild with The Fountain, which flopped, but was able to recover and become an Oscar guy while still going hard(Black Swan is hot fire)(y’know what The Fountain is hot fire too) so I can only hope that the Wachowskis don’t lose their nerve and make something boring. I have gone on record as not enjoying Speed Racer but they clearly weren’t taking notes from anybody on that one either.

But Cloud Atlas is a winner because it has ideas and characters and momentum. All six of the intertwined stories are interesting and compelling in different ways while still contributing to the thematic whole of the film. And the really crazy thing is that everyone is relatable and sketched out, whether they’re a worker clone, a gay prostitute/composer, or a post apocalyptic tribesman. All human experience is relatable, and the basic human need for freedom and the search for ideas is always a great framework for a story. Or six stories at that.

Y’know who is great in this movie? Halle Berry. No shit. I know she has an Oscar but man have I sat through some Halle Berry shit shows in my time. Some how, Big T and The Ws managed to pull some fine work from Ms. Berry, be it as an intrepid reporter or as a white Jewish woman. Tom Hanks is kinda hit and miss, but he is very, very good as Zachry, the post apocalyptic tribe guy who is constantly haunted by a top hatted Hugo Weaving hallucination. Classic Hanks. Classic Weaving.

The makeup in Cloud Atlas is frankly bananas. The movies have not yet figured out old age makeup so that means that we have to endure a couple scenes where Hugh Grant is playing a melted candle. Hugo Weaving goes through the most transformations, playing a large breasted female nurse, an asian guy,  a sideburned assassin, the aforementioned top hatted, green skinned ghoul, and a rotted nose slave owner. The yellow face that Weaving wears along with several other non-asian actors is inevitably distracting and yeah, kinda racist and ignorant. I think the Wachowskis and Tykwer were trying to be post racial and work out their ideas about universal people and that we are all one in a continuous loop of life but ehhh, that shit is still kinda racist. I mean, Tom Hanks didn’t play a black guy at any point, yknowwhatImean?

But better we reach for the stars then never try at all, right? Right. Cloud Atlas is literally about trying when it seems like a bad idea/wrong idea/worst idea and just living(or dying) with the consequences.

Hard Boiled

I cannot believe it took me ten years to rewatch Hard Boiled. I have certainly spent the last ten years enthusiastically telling people how great it is and they need to watch it but what I really should have been doing is forcing those people to watch Hard Boiled right at the moment I thought to recommend it. C’mon, like what they were doing was better than this movie? Fat chance. Of course it may not have been physically possible to watch Hard Boiled at that exact moment (wedding, in a bar, at a house party, between acts at a music festival) but sometimes sacrifices have to be made and if you are going to do any sacrificing do it at the altar of John Woo’s Hard Boiled.

Watching Hard Boiled ten years ago, I recall screaming a lot, a hallmark of many a great action film. Not screams of fear but that of joyous “That happened and I thought something like that could never happen and now I’m a better person” kind of scream. HB is chockablock with screamy moments, like when Chow Yun Fat slides down a railing firing two guns at the same time. Or when Tony Leung pops out a boat and smokes a guy like an armed jack in a box.

I couldn’t recall the plot of Hard Boiled and was surprised to see it used the old undercover-cop-wants-to-get-out-before-he-is-in-too-deep bit. That it also incorporates the cop-on-the-edge-turn-in-your-badge bit as well means that there is little room for anything but badass badassness. Chow Yun Fat’s cop on the edge is named Tequila and he likes to rappel into chop shop warehouses and have insane gun battles. He also likes to play clarinet and he can chew a toothpick and smoke a cigerette at the same time. Tony Leung’s undercover cop is named Alan(!) and he tends to look more concerned about the crazy things Tequila drags him into. Tequila thinks Alan needs to relax and realize that “Life should be fun”. Right after he says this they slide out of some mortuary freezers and mow down a whole room of bad guys. Fun!

I completely forgot about that character of Mad Dog. Portrayed by Philip Kwok, Mad Dog comes from a long line of quiet badass bad guys. He doesn’t say much but he certainly knows how to blow up a trailer with grenade, barrelroll past the explosion and gun down the guys coming to see what the commotion is all about. Slick. Kwok looked familiar to me and I was not at all surprised to see that right before filming Hard Boiled he had worked on Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky. Two classics! He also featured in a movie called The Sword Stained with Royal Blood. I cannot vouch for the quality but that title is A plus. Mad Dog has some cool honor codes, like when he disagrees with the murder of an entire hospital and puts down his gun so that some patients can leave the room that his gunfight has stumbled upon. Mad Dog is a bad guy, not a monster.

Not a monster

Now Johnny Wong, that guy is a fucking animal. So Chow Yun Fat pops him in the eye.

Can I tell you about my favorite part of Hard Boiled? I mean, besides all the other parts I’ve mentioned above. It happens right after the shootout at Alan’s houseboat. Alan is suffering from a shotgun blast to the back and Tequila has just helped him kill a shit load of bad guys. What is that? Oh no, Johnny Wong is en route to the dock and if he sees Alan with Tequila then the jig will be up! Tequila says,”I gotta get out of here. I’ll see you soon,” turns around and dives right into the water, clothes and all. I cannot express how both hilarious and awesome this moment is. Also, practical.

Hard Boiled is still the gold standard for action movies. Vern called it “Die Hard times ten“. I think it might be Die Hard times 20. Maybe even 30. Did I mention that periodically throughout Hard Boiled Tequila will go to a bar and get advice from John Woo? Yes, it is true. And it tends to be pretty good advice too. More directors should do this. I would have liked seeing Tom Cruise get help from Spielberg during Minority Report.

“So the movie is going good.” “Yeah, real good.”

Conan the Barbarian (2011) is terrible.

I think a barbarian, by name alone, should not be cuddly and appealing. They should project menace and fear. When someone is called “barbaric”, it isn’t because they are kinda snide and smirky. In the second decade of the new millenium, Conan the Barbarian is hardly uncivilized and surprisingly philanthropic. Quick with a smile, the 2011 Conan likes to party, kiss pretty girls, and have romance novel sex scenes with them.Your mother might call this film “cute”.

Conan the Barbarian 2011 doesn’t start out so cute and cuddly, no sir. The first half hour gives us a heaping of back story and mythology(someone had a mask, they broke it, now Stephen Lang wants to put it back together and Rock That Shit), baby Conan is introduced in utero, dodging a sword put through his mother’s womb. Conan’s father is Ron Perlman, which is the kind of casting that I imagine was done without an audition.

Exec 1: “Who you like for Conan’s dad?”

Exec 2: “Fucking Hellboy, son.”

Ron Perlman raises Conan to understand how to make a sword and Young Conan proves his worth by murdering a bunch of guys and bringing their heads back to camp like it ain’t no thang.

No thang.

Not soon after, Stephen Lang shows up looking for that damn mask, murders everybody, melts Ron Perlman with molten steel and makes Young Conan watch. Harsh. CONAN SWEARS VENGEANCE!

Well, not really. Conan grows up to be a bro. He hangs out with his friends, they break up slave rings and when the slaves(who are predominately topless women) ask what they should do next, Conan shoots his pal the side eye and we smash cut to a PARTAYYYY!!!! Beers and arm wrestling matches, Conan has the hottest slave girl and his buddy has the 2nd hottest and I’m surprised that Conan has grown up so well adjusted.

Bros

The plot does catch up with Conan and before long he is having a violent meet cute with Rachel Nichols where they make jokes about each other’s names and engage in flirtatious banter. They also take part in a stagecoach chase that was done better in Your Highness. These two goofballs end up having a harlequin novel sex scene, complete with body doubles. The next morning Conan sleeps in(such a guy, right ladies?) while Rachel Nichols goes off to be captured and move this gosh darn plot along. Before you know it, Conan is fighting snake creatures and chopping off Rose McGowan’s hand.

The largest failing is a script that desperately hits all the typical notes combined with players directed to not really give a shit. Even Stephen Lang, an expert in scenery chewing, is rather blase in his performance. Aim for the sky, you guys. Conan is a damn barbarian. It’s in the title! You can’t miss it. What’s he doing high fiving people and making jokes? Conan doesn’t understand jokes. If you play a joke on him, he rips off your arm. Conan 2011 wants to sleep in, hang out at the quad and kick the old sack around.

Things I liked in Conan the Barbarian(2011):

• Squib work is off the charts. Blood spurts out of papercuts, yo!
• Conan hits a horse in the face with giant chain, in slow motion.

Holla.

Haywire

Get it, girl.

Steven Soderbergh has a reputation for good work because he only does things that interest him. He didn’t make Ocean’s Eleven because he wanted to make a bunch of money, he made it because he knew he could make a good movie. All of his projects come from a place of “This could be interesting, this could be good.” Does he always succeed? No. He is only human, like you and I, but I can not discount his intent. When it came time for Soderbergh to make an action movie he sought out an actress who could actually accomplish the feats all action movies require and we are all the better for it.

Haywire has been described as a Steven Seagal movie with a female lead. I don’t think everyone has used this comparison in a positive manner. Anyone who has taken time to watch the early theatrical Seagal films knows that those films rule and that Seagal, for a time, was unmatched. Is Steven Seagal a good actor? No, because he has no interest playing anyone but Steven Seagal. If Gina Carano spends the rest of her career playing variations on Gina Carano, a woman who kills people with her thighs, we as society should be so lucky.

The plot of Haywire is classic and simple. Carano has been betrayed by those she trusted and she has to beat and bludgeon her way to the truth. Written by Lem Dobbs, who also wrote The Limey, Haywire‘s story is told in a non-linear fashion which allows the film to start off with a bang and then double back to explain just how Carano found herself beating up Channing Tatum in a diner.

I love the way Soderbergh shoots his action so that it is clear and easy to follow. That last sentence is insane but the last ten years of action movies have made it so. Gina Carano can do all this running and kicking and punching so why hide it? Show your skills to world, make them jealous. Maybe that’s why audiences have come to accept the cut/cut/cut editing style; it let’s them know that what they are seeing isn’t real, Matt Damon can’t really kill a guy with a rolled up Time magazine and neither can they and that is Ok. Well America, Gina Carano can actually chase a man down, run up a wall and crush him with her leg muscles. Deal With It. Since Haywire has acquired a Cinemascore of D+ I can only imagine that audiences left the film feeling lazy and insignificant. If a film makes you reassess your life I think it has done something right.

Is Haywire Steven Soderbergh’s best film? No, but it isn’t a trifle either. Soderbergh’s career is a testament to stretching yourself, trying new things, and being daring. Dude made a 4 hour Che Guevera biopic AND an experimental art film with a porn star. And he still hasn’t made a fucking 3-D movie. BOW DOWN.

Moneyball

With all the new free time I have acquired I am catching up on comics unread and movies unwatched. I have watched some duds, a masterpiece, and a one “Yeah that’s fine but Best Picture? C’mon”. That title belongs to mulitple Oscar nominee Moneyball.

I approach Moneyball as a devout hater of baseball since it is obviously the most boring sport in the world. I have no affection for sports in general but baseball is seriously the most boring shit to watch and play. Most sports have a one or the other thing going on. Soccer is a sweat storm. Football cripples people. Tennis is a full body workout with the added threat of mental breakdown. Have you read David Foster Wallace’s piece on tennis? It’s great, and that is coming from a guy who does not give a shit about tennis. I have friends that love baseball and have dragged me to baseball games and attempted to explain the game, the history and legacy of the players and I can’t bring myself to care. I can appreciate that they care and when I took a tour of the Seattle Mariner’s stadium while on vacation I was moved by the tour guide’s emotional recounting of a historic moment that took place at the field. I did not care about the event but I cared that he cared. With all of this baggage I still decided to watch Moneyball.

The gist of Moneyball is that teams with piles of money can buy the good players and teams with less money are stuck with the dregs of society. Brad Pitt’s Billy Beale teams up with Jonah Hill to fight against this terrible system. Jonah Hill has a couple scenes where he sorta kinda explains what his system is but the film isn’t really that interested in how the system works so I had to just go with the flow. The script is by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin but it never buzzes to life. Brad Pitt is fine but unremarkable and Jonah Hill is even less remarkable which got him an Oscar nomination because the Academy will only recognize comedic actors when they learn to stop making fools of themselves and learn that life isn’t just about having a good time. They have to stop making movies full of dick jokes and star in a respectable movie about men and baseball.

There is a really strange scene early on where Brad Pitt goes to pick up his plot contrivance-I mean daughter from ex-wife Robin Wright. Like all movie ex-wives she has taken up with a man who is nothing at all like the hero; in this case a weenie guy who knows nothing about baseball, portrayed by Spike Jonze. I assume the scene is there to let us know that Billy Beane was too much of a man for this woman who requires a nebbish who probably just reads and exercises by going for walks. HE CAN’T EVEN PRONOUNCE THE PLAYER’S NAMES! GOSH!

There are a couple scenes where Beane calls up other team managers and trades players. These scenes have a playful tone but since I never really understood why anyone was doing anything for any reason beyond the fact that the movie has let me know that Billy Beane is a good guy and all the old people are bad guys it all just plays as bouncy rhythms. That was an Up scene. Oh, this a Down scene. And so on and so forth. Would I be wrong in thinking that Zaillian’s austure epic style watered down Sorkin’s punch-punch-punch style? I’m just saying, Aaron Sorkin wrote a very entertaining tv show based entirely at an ESPN knockoff and a very entertaining movie about Facebook. Is baseball that hard to dramatize? Probably. There are a couple moments where Beane explains to Hill’s Peter Brand that he has to learn how to tell players they have been cut from the roster or traded. Hill is apprehensive but he eventually does tell a player they have been traded and everything goes fine and what was the point of that? “In this scene everyone acts like an adult.” Thrills!

Steven Soderbergh had been developing the film with a greater focus on the statistical elements of the source material, but had the film cancelled out from under him which allowed him to making the awesome Haywire so all is well that ends well, right? I don’t know if a all statistics take on this subject would make for a better movie but it certainly would have been less muddled. Since Moneyball isn’t that interested in the stats or the game itself both get a short shrift over Brad Pitt’s angsty sojourns. How much of Moneyball is just Brad Pitt sitting around, mulling shit over? We even get a long take of him pulling off the expressway to turn his car around. It’s a long take. I am not exaggerating. The film takes time early on to introduce various players, coaches and managers played by Chris Pratt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. These characters do nothing except have short terse conversations that have no payoff. Hoffman’s story arc is essentially sad, pissed, smiling. In other words, a waste of time for one of our greatest actors. Pratt is introduced as catcher who can’t catch who is made into a first baseman but then hits a winning home run so ok? Quite an arc you’ve created there.

Moneyball ends with sigh as we learn that other teams have utilized Beane’s statistical strategy to great success, except for Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s. So does Moneyball really work? Maybe, sorta, a little, not really, yes and no. Ultimately, it’s sports so it doesn’t matter anyway.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Nerd alert

(Warning: spoilers)

Basically the hipster DaVinci Code, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is David Fincher covering himself, delivering limp rehashes of Zodiac, Seven, and The Social Network, without any of the energy, flair or originality of those films. The plot is boring, the thrills nonexistent. The one chase scene is two vehicles on an empty road that lasts about a minute. Then the car flips over and explodes and everyone goes home. Daniel Craig is insanely miscast as a mega-nerd who bumbles around and says things like “Yeah, I’m a bit out of shape” while displaying a washboard stomach and looking like Daniel Craig. He also has multiple sex partners in the film who are all, “C’mon and fuck me, Daniel Craig!” which of course. The character of Lisbeth Salander is more interesting but the film doesn’t trust the viewer to believe that she would have any interest in solving a mystery even though she is introduced as someone who sleuths for a living so she has a lurid rape scene that is supposed to function as the tie between Salander’s interest in Daniel Craig’s research into a missing girl. Salander’s natural intuitive sense and foresight displayed at the very beginning  of the film when dealing with other plot points that occur at the end are ignored because you gots to have that rape scene apparently. Salander and Daniel Craig spend a lot of time staring at their computers and, unlike The Social Network, this bored me. A killer is eventually revealed and he talks forever before being dispatched because he couldn’t just kill somebody, could he? No, he has to explain himself. Then Lisbeth buys Daniel Craig a jacket and the clerk is all, “Nice jacket” and Lisbeth says, “It’s for a friend.” Sadly, Daniel Craig is back with his girlfriend who is actually married to someone else so Lisbeth throws the jacket in the trash and rides off on her bike AND THAT IS THE END OF THE MOVIE. Does anyone know if he finds the jacket in the trash at the beginning of part 2 and realizes what a jerk he’s been?

I’ve seen some reviews that praise the rape scene which is fucked up, right? If you must have a rape scene in your movie(must you? I doubt it) then don’t mess around with how terrible rape is. Irreversible is pretty much the last word on movie rape scenes because it just sits the camera down for between five to ninety minutes(give or take) and just watches a horrible event unfold. The style is the lack of style but it never takes away from the awful power of the event. Irreversible forces the viewer to reconcile with this terrible act. After sitting through that, the rape no longer functions as just another plot point but a damaging, awful life event that scars the characters forever. In Dragon Tattoo it’s just the impetus to get to the cool revenge scene. Salander before and after is unchanged. The scene is pointless. I rest my case.

Four Brothers: Full Screen version

I watched Four Brothers because I’m a nice guy. For a movie I had completely forgotten about the moment after it’s release it had gained quite the following among my coworkers. “You haven’t seen Four Brothers?”, they would shout, eyes wild and bright, “That movie is awesome!” I was still haunted by the terrible trailer that ran before every movie during the summer of ’05. Mark Wahlberg interrupting a basketball game, the dumb idea of a grandma mixed up in organized crime. Shit looked like a farce. Also, Garrett Hedlund. A coworker lent me his copy, which was sadly in Full Screen but of course it was. I sat down the other evening to watch Mark Wahlberg and company literally fill my screen with their vengeance. (Massive spoilers ahead for a six year old movie where a group of foster children brutally intimidate and murder people to avenge the assassination of their saintly mother)

Four Brothers isn’t actually all that bad. It can be extremely hokey at times but it is sincere. It exists in a world of little police presence where Mark Wahlberg can brandish a gun at an entire high school gymnasium and not face a single moment of jail time. It’s a movie where the heroes murder the villains execution style. It’s the kind of movie where Mark Wahlberg will repeatedly tease and harass Tyrese about Tyrese’s penchant for having a lot of sex with an attractive woman. I interpreted Wahlberg’s character as either shy around women or more than likely a closeted homosexual. His character is quick with a lie and a punch. Perhaps this will be addressed in the actually might happen sequel, Five Brothers. Hopefully the new brother will be Wahlberg’s lover.(Fingers crossed!)

Four Brothers has a few action sequences that are ok. One involves a shootout at a house where the villains realize that bullets CAN break through brick, but these villains are no good at finding cover and anyone can basically shoot them in the open. This sequence features the hilarious death of Garrett Hedlund’s character, who can be seen actually crunching the blood capsule in his mouth.  The remaining three brothers don’t spend any time mourning this character’s death and move on with the plot. A car chase earlier in the film is mainly cars sliding around on the road until one of them flips allowing Tyrese and Wahlberg the opportunity to casually murder the (evil) drivers. Hedlund’s reaction to these murders is to be shocked and horrified but he’s fine in the very next scene which is a bit of jokey misdirection as Wahlberg wears a woman’s robe to hide his wounds from investigating officer Terrence Howard. Man, remember when Terrence Howard was in everything? Why was that? Little known fact: Hustle and Flow is terrible.

"Don't you die on me, brother!"

Howard’s cop character is either pretty lazy or slow on the pickup. How do you miss the fact that your longtime partner is a dirty cop? He plays pool at the bar owned by the bad guy! He answers your questions with the tone of a petulant child who’s been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Do something before he shoots you in the chest and face six times and blames it on a group of black youths. Oh, too late. RIP Terrence Howard’s character.

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance as Victor Sweet is the gem of the film and the only obvious indicator that director John Singleton was trying to make a homage to 70′s crime and exploitation films. Victor Sweet is a villain in the Nino Brown class forcing a underling and the underling’s wife to eat pasta off the floor. In another scene he makes a dirty politician wait for him at the children’s table at a party. I kinda liked Victor Sweet.

Andre 3000 is one of the four titular brothers and he’s fine you guys. But it is hilarious(Hilarious!) that Three Stacks plays a character named Jerry. I only know of one other Jerry and he looks like this.

Jerry

The finale of Four Brothers takes place on a frozen lake bed where Victor Sweet and Mark Wahlberg have a fist fight and after getting punched a couple times Sweet just gives up and lets his now former underlings pitch him into a hole in the ice. No muss, no fuss, just a frozen, watery grave for the formerly great Victor Sweet. I’ve never seen a villain resign himself to death and defeat so easily. “That Wahlberg sure can hit. I guess I should just die now.”

Four Brothers is set in Detroit which is given some establishing shots and is bad mouthed by just about every character, which explains why the film was mainly shot in Ontario. At one point a character references Ben Wallace and then says “Ah yes, Pistons!”

Why do my coworkers love this film so much? A few guesses: the scene where Mark Wahlberg takes a shit and argues with Tyrese; the fact that Mark Wahlberg clearly improvised all his lines; Fionnula Flanagan superfans.

Damn, girl.

More likely, they love a film that is called Four Brothers that spends the first 40 minutes having the characters repeatedly refer to each other brothers and explain to other characters that they are in fact brothers.

This guy gets it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is shitty garbage

What a shitty piece of garbage. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is actually worse than you’ve heard and also fucking boring. It has zero narrative connecting events in the first half of the movie to the latter, and it literally ends because there is no one left to brutally murder. Oh and the action sucks. You might have heard that Dark of the Moon is better than the second Transformers movie that everyone involved agreed was terrible(after the fact). I’m sure they’ll say the same thing about this one too in a couple years.

Believe it or not, the moon landing was spurred on because a Autobot ship crashed there and the U.S. government wanted first crack at it before the Soviets so an animatronic/stock footage JFK sent NASA into action to retrieve the ship first. Michael Bay tries to get creative in presenting a convincing CGI Kennedy but fails miserably and instead gives us something out of Disney’s Hall of Presidents. He also has some shots of CGI Kennedy that have the same film texture as the Zapruder films because why not. There is a very lazy shot of a Fake Nixon on the phone with the Apollo 11 astronauts. Fake Nixon sits slighty out of focus in the background while the foreground has a monitor showing actual footage of the real Nixon on the phone, except real Nixon is moving his lips while the fake Nixon is clearly just sitting there.

All of the 60′s flashback stuff is delivered with the utmost seriousness and I paid attention since I assumed that this information would relate to events later on in the film. NOPE. Like so many things that occur in these movies, this is just a thing that happened to the Transformers and we don’t need to think about it anymore. There is a shot late in the film where a bunch of Decepticons rise out of the surface of the moon, but no indication of how they got there is ever given. I guess they crashed another time but we didn’t go back up to check because Patrick Dempsey’s dad cut NASA’s funding. Everything you know is a lie.

Shia LaBeouf’s character Sam is an asshole in this film. He’s a prick to everyone; his parents, his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s boss, Bumblebee, random government personel, and job interviewers. His sense of entitlement is unbearable and frankly unearned.

Sam’s plot at the beginning of the film is some lame horseshit about not being able to find a job out of college even though he went to an Ivy League school. Super sympathetic plot, yo. Before we meet Sam again though we meet his girlfriend’s ass, which Bay lovingly shoots as she ascends the stairs, sans pants. The only attractive shots in the entire film are of women and cars, Michael Bay’s true passions. He also loves boats(The Island).  Megan Fox has been replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who accomplishes the impossible by making me miss Megan Fox. Fox’s character Mikaela was a gearhead and automobile enthusiast. She was a woman with a story(of sorts) and genuinely interested in Sam. Huntington-Whiteley’s Carly is a lazy fill-in, introduced as a White House intern who then goes to work for Patrick Dempsey’s classic car restoration business because they used to race cars together? What? Wikipedia states:

Initially cast to play Mikaela’s boss, Dempsey’s role was reassigned when Mikaela was written out of the film.

Reassigned in the sense that the scriptwriter did word replace with “Mikaela” and put in “Carly” instead.

Miss you, girl.

Sam goes to a series of interviews where he’s a douche and doesn’t get any offers before meeting with John Malkovich. This entire sequence serves no purpose but to pad out the running time because Michael Bay wants you leaving that theater with those pants done pissed, boy. Ken Jeong shows up for ten or so minutes of gay panic and “funny” behavior before a Decepticon pushes him out of a window to his death. Malkovich tells everyone to get back to work because “you all know what happens when someone falls out of building”. Casually brushing off the death of a human being is a Bay trademark. You could say the death of Jeong’s character is Transformers: Dark of the Moon‘s “That is how you shoot” moment.

MEANWHILE, various ancillary characters, ‘Bot, ‘Con, and ‘man discussed the discovery of an autobot engine part found in Chernobyl. Turns out the U.S. government never told ol’ Optimus Prime about the how’s and why’s of the space program and the spaceship that is done lodged itself into the crust of the moon. Optimus Prime is pretty pissed about this but then they introduce him to Buzz Aldrin. Buzz Aldrin says it is “an honor” to meet Optimus Prime and Optimus is all no, no, it’s an honor to meet you, Buzz Aldrin. This scene is kinda funny and sad, you guys. Also, it fucking exists forever.

Optimus Prime and some other Autobots go to the moon and retrieve Sentinel Prime from the crashed space ship. Turns out he was Optimus Prime’s old boss and that when he disappeared Optimus Prime got promoted. Optimus is a standup dude and after he revives Sentinel Prime they go sight seeing in Africa and Sentinel Prime makes some in hindsight ominous statements about how great Earth is.

Well, turns out ol’ Sentinel Prime is a jerky turncoat. When he flew away from  the battle of Cybertron(don’t ask) it wasn’t to get help or whatever, it was to join the Decepticons. I know.

Optimus Prime feels bad about trusting Sentinel Prime and that that trust lead to the death of a fellow autobot and a bunch of people on the freeway. Sentinel Prime teams up with Megatron(voiced by Agent Smith!) and they tell the United Nations to ban all of the Autobots from the Earth. The U.N. folds like fucking oragami and says sure, shoot those fuckers into space, you guys seem like ok people.

Patrick Dempsey is in Dark of the Moon because Michael Bay only works with *stars*.

MEANWHILE again, Sam learns that Patrick Dempsey is actually Evil Patrick Dempsey, in cahoots with the Decepticons due to the fact that his father was also in cahoots with Decepticons and one can only assume that Evil Patrick Dempsey’s children will also be forced into an alliance with the Decepticons as well. Dempsey forces Sam to wear an evil Decepticon watch(sorry, I couldn’t see what brand. A rare product placement miss for T:DOTM) that will allow the Decepticons to eavesdrop on Sam’s conversations with Optimus Prime and also force Sam to act like he is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. I would hate to have the job of listening in on conversations with Optimus Prime because Optimus Prime is boring. Seriously, he gives about five to ten speeches during Transformers: Dark of the Moon and they’re all about trust and legacy and whatever you know all of the other autobots tune that shit out too. If only it’d been Optimus with the vocal cord issues instead of Bumblebee.

Sam asks Optimus Prime what his plan is after they get shot into space and Optimus Prime says, “No plan, Sam. We’re just going to sit around in space. Whatev’s. See you, be brave, the power of greyskull, silverhawks, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” Then the Autobots are launched into space and a Decepticon flys over and blows up the spaceshuttle, visually evoking the horror and sadness of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. Does Michael Bay have a tattoo of the word “classy” on his body because if not he should totally get one. Everyone is sad about the autobots dyin- Wait. No, I’m sorry. No one is really that upset about the autobots. No one reacts in any way that would indicate that the robotic characters who have inhabited the last two films of this series have horrifically perished in a space shuttle explosion. I guess that is what I should expect from a film that also doesn’t acknowledge the fact that in the last film the Decepticons revealed their existence to the planet and then demanded the world turn over Sam and yet every new person Sam meets in this movie has no idea who he is. HIS FACE AND NAME WAS BEAMED AROUND THE WORLD DURING AN ALIEN INVASION! C’mon, somebody must remember that.

Screen shot from a movie made for children.

The Decepticons promptly set up base in the center of the world, Chicago, and begin their plan of blowing it to pieces. Sentinel Prime sets up some bars or some shit to begin the process of remaking Earth like Cybertron, even though Earth’s climate is pretty hospitable to Autobots and Decepticons. Based on the damage they do to our architecture, perhaps they just hate our design sense. Evil Patrick Dempsey explains to Not Megan Fox (as he drags her from room to room in Trump Tower) that the Decepticons are going to need humans as slave labor to recreate Cybertron on Earth and Evil Patrick Dempsey just needs to squeak out forty more years of life, even if it is as a slave of Decepticons. Now, considering that the only skill set displayed by Decepticons(and Autobots) is changing their appearance and destroying anything and everything they encounter, I would have been genuinely interested in the Decepticon’s plans for construction of a New Cybertron. Are there blueprints and specs? Training videos for your new slave labor so that your Decepticon Split Level is built to the correct specifications? I must express some doubt on how much rebuilding the Decepticons planned this human slave labor to do since they spend most of their time murdering people. Some are crushed, others vaporized into bones. This goes on for awhile. No additional demands are ever issued by the Decepticons for the human population to surrender and begin work on the Decepticons Only cyber golf course.

Sam teams up with Tyrese(Hey! Tyrese! Good to see you. Fast Five was great!) and his friends and they decide to storm Chicago and save Sam’s girlfriend? Yes, save Sam’s girlfriend. Not defeat the Decepticons, just save the girlfriend. They get about a mile into city limits and Tyrese admits that it is just too hard and that they should go back home and get ready to work for Cybertron McDonald’s. But then Optimus Prime shows up! Holy shit! I thought that guy was dead! “No,” says Optimus Prime, clearing up that confusion. Turns out the Autobots snuck out of the Space Shuttle right before it exploded. This is not shown and no one asks any other questions.

HOUR LONG ACTION SEQUENCE!

Various Transformers crap happens. A professor autobot gives Sam a weapon and later is murdered, execution style. Have I mentioned that this movie for children is very callous and blasé about murder and death? Anyway, this whole sequence isn’t very good. In fact, it is very bad. Events and encounters occur with no indication given towards geography and locations. Characters fly in and blow up shit at random and disappear and reappear as they are required for the action sequence itself to “work”. Since having any autobots during the 9/11 sequence would diminish the danger, they are all curiously M.I.A. I call it the 9/11 sequence since Sam, Tyrese and gang are inside a toppling building, falling out of windows and screaming. Seriously Michael, think about that tattoo.

Optimus Prime flys around and after destroying a random Decepticon he becomes tangled in some wire. I’m pretty sure he was stuck there for about twenty minutes of screen time before some other Autobots cut him down. I wonder what he thought about when he was strung up there. Do you think he pondered the strange twists and turns his life had taken? Did he perhaps find a dark humor in his situation, hanging upside down under a bridge while others fought for humanity’s future? Y’know what, let’s never ask him because I’m sure the answer is nothing that interesting.

Eventually, Optimus Prime faces off against Sentinel Prime. Sentinel Prime tears off Optimus’s arm, but then Megatron appears and sucker punchs Sentinel Prime because Not Megan Fox called Megatron a pussy. How did that happen, you wonder? Oh, Not Megan Fox found Megatron sitting in an alley and said, “You know, Sentinel Prime thinks you’re a Megapussy, Megatron.”

Optimus Prime thanks Megatron by ripping out his spinal cord(that’s what it looked like) and chopping off Sentinel Prime’s head. Then Optimus Prime started on with another speech and I think but I’m not sure that they cut him off and went to the Directed by Michael Bay card.

As the credits rolled on Transformers: Dark of the Moon a Linkin Park song began playing and a man sitting behind me loudly sang along. This was unexpected to say the least and unbelievable as it continued while his seatmates calmly discussed the film and then departed the theater, singer in tow.

There is an article in GQ this month that offers a oral history of Michael Bay. It’s a fun read but it’s existence is Bay and his defenders doth protesting too much. For all the talk of Bay’s skill at “awesome” it would be self evident. But over and over again this has proven to not be the case. The Transformers movies have crammed in romance, drama, comedy and action and failed at all of them. The best you can say about the rest of Bay’s career is consistent mediocrity. Everyone who has followed in Bay’s footsteps(McG!) have not achieved similar box office clout and thus lack the defenders that Bay has acquired. Michael Bay is the movie industry’s Goldman Sach’s, too big to fail. If Michael Bay wanted to answer his critics he’d make a good movie. Simple as that. That he hasn’t is either a testament to his stubborness or more likely, a lack of ability.

13 Assassins

A couple years ago my good friend Justin Muschong lent me the film Samurai Rebellion and insisted I watch it because it was a “great movie”. It sat on my shelf for a long while because I just wasn’t in the mood to watch a great movie and instead I read comic books and watched Demolition Man. My mistake. When I finally did get around to watching Samurai Rebellion I was pleased to find that it was indeed a “great movie” and that I was a better person for watching it. Samurai Rebellion is great for it’s themes of honor and loyalty, but what makes it also enjoyable is the slow buildup of tension that finally explodes when there is a fucking samurai rebellion. 13 Assassins follows this same template but does give you more bits of action before the grand finale because audiences would get impatient if all these guys with swords just kept talking all the time. 13 Assassins also owes a debt to Seven Samurai but of course it does.

For a Takashi Miike film 13 Assassins is subdued and polished. It says something about Miike’s other films that 13 Assassins contains numerous acts of harakiri and decapitation and yet still counts as a more subtle work from him. The plot is that the now retired samurai Shinzaemon is pulled back into active service by the shogun to assemble of secret team of assassins to kill Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira, who is a fucking asshole. This is the only accurate description of this character after we see him rape a woman, murder her husband and use another family for archery practice. Oh, and he cut a woman’s arms and legs off and left her in the rain. Yup, we got it Miike. Naritsugu is a grade-A jerk.

Shinzaemon is thrilled to have the work because it means he gets to die in battle. Whatever floats your boat, Shinzaemon. Shinzaemon gets to work recruiting his team of assassins including a sloppy old dude with a spear, a badass with a dirtstache, and Shinzaemon’s nephew who has taken to gambling because it’s the only thing that makes him feel alive.

Shinzaemon: Wanna feel alive? Lets go kill some people.

Nephew: Aight. (to wife) Light a torch.

Dirtstache has one of best moments in the film when he comes to the aid of another samurai but not before introducing himself as a ronin and then KILLING EVERYBODY.

The best feature of 13 Assassins is the light touch given to what could be weighty, pretentious material. Just because a film takes place in the past and deals with outmoded social strata and rituals does not mean we have to be glum and po-faced all the time. Shinzaemon has an easy smile and the character of Kiga is what the old showbiz fatsos would call a “crowdpleaser”. The final 45 minutes of 13 Assassins is devoted to a fullout samurai war between some two hundred warriors against the titular thirteen. Lives are lost, lessons are learned, and severed heads are kicked like soccer balls.

Thor

A classic comic book maneuver is to place a character on the cover of low selling title to get non-fans and completists to pick it up. “Guest Starring Wolverine”, “Featuring an appearance by Gambit!” moved plenty of units and tended to amount to a mere single page or panel where Wolverine would nod to Ghost Rider or The New Warriors and say, “Not bad. Maybe next time I’ll help you out.” And you’d be stuck with an issue of The New Warriors that you didn’t want to begin with but hey, Wolverine, love that guy. Thor is the film version of one of those comics I never cared enough about to read month to month, padded out with small nods and cheeky asides to assure the audience that Thor plays an important part in the Marvel movie universe and one day we’ll get a movie that proves this point. So in between off hand references to Tony Stark and an appearance from Hawkeye where he doesn’t even shoot a fucking arrow(I know!) you get a Thor movie, which is everything you expect and a little less. Thor is a nice guy but a little cocky on account of being a prince with a magic hammer. Thor is such a nice guy that he ends up a tad boring. Oh sure he is plenty arrogant in the first twenty minutes of the movie but not in any off-putting way. Should I be surprised that the character of Thor has all the tarnish and grit of a new shoe fresh out of the box? No, I shouldn’t.

The script is a mess of cliches we have all sat through a million times before. Yet, these are good performances. Idris Elba just stands there and holds a sword for most of the movie and the dude straight kills it. I believed he’d been guarding a rainbow bridge his whole life. However you start to question his abilities after he makes the point that nobody gets past him and the rest of the movie has anyone and everyone getting past him.

Does it irritate anyone else that when we are shown a world of gods and impossible wonders that it only amounts to waterfalls and people who can fly but otherwise it is the same as anywhere else? Hell, we have waterfalls on earth too! You ain’t so impressive, Asgard.

Other things I had time to think about while watching Thor:

• Hiring practices for women are still draconian in Asgard. Thor appears progressive by having a woman, Sif, on his team of warriors but later holds his decision to hire her over her head in order to get her to go along with his foolish plan. Not cool, T.
• Tom Hiddleston is a good actor but his portrayal of Loki is too good for a movie like this. The character is written as a two dimensional jerk but played by Hiddleston as a three dimensional guy with feelings and doubts. When Loki goes genocidal during the third act it feels sudden and undeveloped, like the movie ran out of time to fully flesh out his plan and persona and needed to get our asses out the door to make room for the 5:45 show(I took in a matinee).
• They sure hid Kat Dennings under a lot of layers.
• S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are instructed to have wrestling matches with all intruders on government property, instead of shooting them.
• What is Asgard’s economy based on? Gold? Space gold?
• Every room in Asgard has a tremendous amount of open space. Good for camera placement.
• Odin’s stroke during his argument with Loki was HILARIOUS.

So it wasn’t very good, you guys.