Bumblebee

A girl and her bug.

(2018) Science Fiction (Paramount) Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Landeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, Pamela Adlon, Jason Drucker, Megyn Price, Rachel Crowther, Grey Griffin, Gracie Dzienny, Peter Cullen (voice), Len Cariou, Marcella Bragio, Steve Blum, Vanessa Ross, Glynn Turman, Kirk Bailey, Jon Bailey, Kevin Kent, Michael Masini, Fred Dryer, Mika Kubo. Directed by Travis Knight

 

After a decade of Michael Bay’s sturm und drang Transformers movies comes a different take in the franchise’s first spin-off…or is it prequel? I guess either appellation works.

With the Decepticons having overrun the Autobots in their ongoing war (if you don’t know what that sentence signifies, you should probably go no further and look for something else to rent), Bumblebee is sent by Optimus Prime (Cullen) to Earth to protect the human race. Unfortunately, he’s tailed by a couple of Decepticon warriors who basically kick the gears out of him, disabling his vocal functions and leaving him nearly dead. He makes like a VW Bug to hide from the evil robots, who are looking hard for him so they can find out where the Autobots are hiding and destroy them once and for all.

But teen Charlie (Steinfeld), mourning her late father, takes a liking to the Bug when she spies him in a scrapyard and decides to rebuild him. You can imagine her surprise when he rebuilds himself. The trouble is that those evil Decepticons have managed to convince the American government that Bumblebee is a threat and the gov’mint sends out iron-jawed Agent Burns (Cena) to locate the wayward Autobot and take him down. All that stands between the human race and total annihilation is a badly damaged robot and a plucky teenage girl. How much more 1987 could you get?

Quite a bit, judging from the wonderful soundtrack here. Still, this is a refreshing tonal change for the series which had fallen into self-parody with the last movie, Transformers: The Last Knight. While the movie starts out with a Bay-esque scene of mayhem and massive robot carnage, the movie abruptly shifts gears and becomes something of a buddy movie. Steinfeld is a very talented actress and not many could pull off doing a buddy movie with a car, but she does it pretty well, playing the 80s tomboy despite not having been born until the following decade.

But it’s the mayhem that most people buy tickets to these movies for, and there’s plenty of that. Knight, who has mostly worked with stop-motion animation with Laika, has a good sense of how to stage an action set piece but also has a good sense of balance with character development and plot. He even manages to inject a little pathos and humor into the mix, something Bay wasn’t known for.

REASONS TO SEE: Excellent action sequences. Steinfeld gives an affecting performance.
REASONS TO AVOID: A fair number of clichés are present.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of sci-fi action and violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Steinfeld was born nine years after the movie was set, so she had to be taught how to use some of the props such as the Walkman.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Epix, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hulu, Microsoft, Redbox, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/18/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 91% positive reviews; Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Big Hero 6
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Union Bridge

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13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

(2016) True Life Drama (Paramount) John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Pablo Schreiber, David Denman, Dominic Fumusa, Max Martini, Alexia Barlier, David Constabile, Peyman Moaadi, Matt Letscher, Toby Stephens, Demetrius Grosse, David Giuntoli, Mike Moriarty, David Furr, Kevin Kent, Freddie Stroma, Andrew Arrabito, Kenny Sheard, Christopher Dingli, Manuel Cauchi, Frida Cauchi. Directed by Michael Bay

One of the watershed moments of the last five years is the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. temporary embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Three people were killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Since then, it has been used as a rallying point for the right to display the incompetence of the current administration and to place themselves in the role as advocates for the victims. The left has come to see the attack as something of a conservative media Judas goat in which facts are obscured or downright fabricated for the sake of scoring political points, particularly against presidential candidate Hilary Clinton who was Secretary of State at the time.

The movie is based on the accounts of three members of the Global Response Staff, the private contractors employed by the CIA to protect agency installations worldwide. The GRS is mainly made up of ex-military members. Jack Silva (Krasinski), a veteran of GRS tours of duty, arrives in Benghazi to find a city in chaos. Their longtime military dictator, Moammar Qaddafi had fallen and the government was struggling to keep order. The city of Benghazi was essentially ruled by competing militias of which the 17-Feb was most closely allied with American interests.

Included in the six man team protecting the Annex, the CIA installation a mile from the embassy, was Tyrone “Rone” Woods (Dale), his good friend and commanding officer; Mark “Oz” Geist (Martini), Dave “Boon” Benton (Denman) – the team sniper, John “Tig” Tiegen (Fumusa) and Kris “Tonto” Paronto (Schreiber). The station manager, known only as “The Chief” (Constabile), seems annoyed by the presence of the security professionals and warns them against engaging with the locals. Even though tensions are high, the men have a lot of down time to think about their families and their choices to serve their country so far from home.

As the anniversary of the attack of 9/11 nears, Ambassador Chris Stevens (Letscher) arrives with a small Diplomatic Services security team with the aim of strengthening U.S./Libya relations. Despite security worries on the part of the GRS team, he is determined to stay at the temporary embassy which is a security nightmare defended mostly by members of the 17-Feb militia. When after darkness falls an attack on the embassy is made by militants, the militia runs for their lives and the embassy is left wide open for attack. The GRS team wants to head over there to rescue those who are being overrun but The Chief refuses to allow them to go, unwilling to let the Annex go undefended. However, as it became clear that those at the Embassy were in mortal danger, the GRS team elected to mount a rescue mission, realizing that the militants might well follow them back to the Annex and mount an attack there as well.

Bay is known for his big budget special effects extravaganza and while there are some well-choreographed combat sequences, this is a much smaller scale than we’re used to seeing from him. In some ways you get the sense that he tends to be better suited for the Transformers-style action epics, but he handles the scale here pretty well although there doesn’t seem to be a ton of character development. I had a hard time differentiating the GRS team from each other (there are also other GRS operatives who show up later, including Glen “Bub” Doherty (Stephens) who also perished in the attack. There is a lot of gung-ho testosterone bonding among the men, which is to be expected.

The filmmakers took great pains to recreate the embassy and annex in Malta, and the combat sequences look pretty darn realistic from my uneducated point of view. Those sequences are pretty terrifying as it must have been for those inside both compounds. I would have been the one balled up in a corner weeping for my mommy. I can’t imagine living through something like that.

What was unexpected for me was the emotional impact of the film, and that has more to do with the significance of the event rather than Bay’s skills as a filmmaker. I can imagine that if the characters were a little more drawn up I would have cared a great deal more and the film would have had even more resonance. As it is you leave the movie feeling genuine grief for those who didn’t make it, as well as admiration for those who did.

Earlier I discussed the politicization of the event and it bears discussion here. Much of how you see this film is likely to be colored by your politics. Some critics of a right-wing leaning have overpraised the film (in my opinion) while other critics of a left-wing leaning have been unduly harsh (again in my opinion). I think that Bay went out of his way to make the movie apolitical, but let’s face it; making the film at all was a political statement. As best I can, I tried to leave my political hat out of it and tried to judge the film purely on entertainment value, and found that this is a solid, better than average movie that in a season when most of the offerings out there are pretty awful, can be recommended with little reservation although again, you’ll tend to see this movie viewed through the lens of your political outlook. As long as that’s duly noted, you should be okay.

REASONS TO GO: A very realistic account. A powerful emotional experience.
REASONS TO STAY: Politicization or the events may inform your perspective. Not a lot of character development.
FAMILY VALUES: Plenty of combat-style violence, rough language and some images of bloody carnage.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Krasinski, Denman and Constabile all starred on the hit sitcom The Office.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/6/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 55% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: American Sniper
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: The Finest Hours

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Never mess with Mark Wahlberg’s car.

(2014) Science Fiction (DreamWorks) Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Titus Welliver, Sophia Myles, Bingbing Li, T.J. Miller, James Bachman, Thomas Lennon, Charles Parnell, Erika Fong, Mike Collins, Geng Han, Zou Shiming, Richard Riehle, Peter Cullen (voice), Patrick Bristow, Cleo King, Jessica Gomes, Melanie Specht, Abigail Klein. Directed by Michael Bay

After the Transformers trilogy had come to an end, the thought was that the series would continue with an all-new cast and a new director. Well, only half of that equation turned out to come true – but could Bay sustain the same popcorn momentum he had delivered with the first trilogy?

Five years after the events of Transformers: Dark of the Moon devastated Chicago, the CIA has a special task force led by the overly macho James Savoy (Welliver) hunting down what Decepticons are left. Except there are none left and now he is hunting Autobots, with the full blessing of his CIA liaison Harold Attinger (Grammer). Seems a pretty harsh way to treat the guys who basically saved our bacon in Chicago.

Meanwhile, out in Texas, would-be inventor Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) is basically at the end of his financial rope. Eking out a living repairing electronic devices, most of his inventions are a circuit shy of a load. With his hottie daughter Tessa (Peltz) ready to go to college and in need of pants that aren’t Daisy Dukes (who wears short shorts? Tessa do!) not to mention in a date-free state until she graduates from high school, Cade is fending off real estate agents who are ready to sell his home out from under him and pretty much behind on every bill he can be behind in. Oddly enough for a Texan, he doesn’t seem to be blaming Obama for his situation.

While a movie theater owner has him repairing some vintage projectors, he discovers an old beat-up truck – not a pick-up but a semi – he gleefully figures he can scrap the thing for parts and make enough to get his daughter a down payment on her college tuition, but as he and his buddy Lucas (Miller) find out, this is not an ordinary truck. Being that this is a Transformers movie, you know what it is. In fact, it’s not even just any Autobot – it’s Optimus Prime (Cullen) himself.

Once the government figures out that this is Optimus himself, Attinger sends out Savoy with his strike team’s secret weapon – a mechanical creature named Lockdown who is a bounty hunter with a particular yen to capture Optimus Prime and bring him back to the Creators of the Autobots and Decepticons to become slave labor for them once again. And the rest of the Autobots will be broken down and melted, their metal – called Transformium – some of which remains on Earth in small amounts – used to create a new mechanical race that is under human control, specifically under the control of billionaire industrialist Joshua Joyce (Tucci).

This pits the few remaining Autobots – including Bumblebee, Hound, Drift and Ratchet – against the might of the American government, the new automaton named Galvatron who turns out to have the mechanical DNA of a familiar foe, and the might of Lockdown with his advanced weapons and his space ship. However, they will find new allies from the distant past in an ancient place.

The movie rips across Texas, Chicago, Beijing and Hong Kong and levels a lot of real estate in the process which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to this franchise. As the second half of the movie ensues, the human actors are less participants than dodgers of falling masonry and their dialogue is mostly cries of “OPTIMUS!” and “Look out!” or things along those lines. Other than the voices of Optimus and Galvatron, not one actor returns from the previous trilogy. This has been characterized as a reboot but it isn’t really but a continuation along the same road with different actors.

Wahlberg is the movie’s secret weapon; he makes a much better hero than Shia LaBeouf did as the neurotic Sam Witwicky. My complaint is that they make Wahlberg something of a clownish inventor and then once they get out of Texas, there’s almost none of his skills utilized as an inventor. He may as well have been a car mechanic or an X-ray technician or a data entry clerk. We spend a good deal of time in the first third of the movie establishing Cade as a hapless inventor whose inventions generally don’t work and then they do nothing with it the rest of the way. It’s a waste of the filmmakers time as well as the audience. I call it “wasted exposition.”

The action sequences, particularly the robot CGI are the best yet. We see much more detail on the Autobots and their foes, and they look banged up like ‘bots that have been in a good deal of battle. Those, like my son, who are all about robots battling will be very happy because there is a lot of that here. And yes, there are Dinobots as well – which is bound to put old fans of the original series in a happy place.

The movie is nearly three hours long and feels it. Some movies go that long and you barely notice and are sad when the movie finally ends; this one has you checking your watch at the two hour mark. Easily a good 45 minutes of the movie could have been trimmed without hurting the movie overly much. Plus there is a kind of sameness here – if you’ve seen the first three movies, nothing here should be overly surprising to you. Nothing really surpasses the battle of Chicago from Dark of the Moon either.

So while this still remains a summer popcorn movie, it isn’t as good as the last one in the series to my mind. I was pretty numb by the end of the movie rather than exhilarated. This is said to be the first of a new trilogy with Wahlberg in the lead but frankly, I’d be just as happy if the franchise called it a day after this one.

REASONS TO GO: Some pretty nifty action sequences. Wahlberg an improvement over Shia LaBeouf.

REASONS TO STAY: Overly long – like waaaaay overly long. Lacks energy. Story not particularly much of a change from other installments in the series.

FAMILY VALUES:  Plenty of action and violence, occasionally foul language (but not too foul) and some sexual innuendo,

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Bay was originally planning to pass on the franchise to another director and remain on in only a producer’s capacity. After visiting the Transformers attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood however, after seeing the enthusiastic long lines for the attraction he came to the realization that he wasn’t quite done with the series yet and elected to remain on for the fourth film with an entirely new cast.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/13/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 96% positive reviews. Metacritic: 87/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Battleship

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: How to Train Your Dragon 2

Pain and Gain

Mark Wahlberg is surrounded by chaos.

(2013) Action Comedy (Paramount) Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub, Rebel Wilson, Rob Corddry, Bar Paly, Ken Jeong, Michael Rispoli, Keili Lefkovitz, Emily Rutherfurd, Larry Hankin, Tony Plana, Peter Stormare, Vivi Pineda, Ken Clement, Yolanthe Cabau, Persi Caputo. Directed by Michael Bay.

We all have some sort of version of the American dream – success, and the rewards that come with it. Not all of us have the tools to achieve it on our own, however – particular in these rough times when achievement is seemingly less attainable than it’s ever been.

Daniel Lugo (Wahlberg), a body builder in Miami, is a big believer in physical fitness. In fact, the only thing he believes in more than keeping in shape is the aforementioned American dream. He believes that he deserves it. But working at it isn’t always easy. He’s charming and is able to draw lots of new customers – younger customers – to Sun Gym, which pleases owner John Mese (Corddry).

But Lugo isn’t pleased. He’s frankly tired of building up the bodies of wealthy douchebags like Victor Kershaw (Shalhoub), one of the most unlikable people…well, ever (see below). His protégé Adrian Doorbal (Mackie) concurs. Adrian has to work at a taco joint in addition to his full-time job at the gym in order to make ends meet. Adrian also has erectile dysfunction, which requires some expensive treatments. A sympathetic nurse (Wilson) at the clinic hits it off with Adrian.

Lugo wants his share and he thinks Kershaw has too much as it is. In fact, he despises Kershaw. He decides that he is going to take everything Kershaw has. His plan? Kidnap him, torture him and get him to sign his assets over to Lugo and his crew. But they’re going to need a third partner and they find it in Paul Doyle (Johnson), an ex-con who found Jesus and is trying to stay on the straight and narrow but soon finds that he can’t afford the straight and narrow.

So these three knuckleheads, roughly on the same intellectual level as the Three Stooges, go about pulling off their crime of the century. They kidnap Kershaw who’s so unlikable and such a horrible human being that nobody reports him missing even though he’s gone for weeks.

They finally get him to sign but typically they mess things up. Adrian blows all of his share on a house which he pays for in cash (the realtor, when asked about the unusualness of this snaps “He’s black. I figured he was a rapper, an athlete”), leaving him with an operation to get his erectile issues resolved to pay for. Paul falls off the wagon like it was the Brooklyn Bridge and puts almost all of his share up his nose. They decide to go for one more score.

Meanwhile, Kershaw has seen the police who react with absolute disbelief. Nobody believes him – except retired cop and private eye Ed DuBois (Harris). DuBois knows what he’s doing and it won’t be long before these ee-dyots will mess up but he is concerned that others will get hurt before then. He doesn’t realize just how right he is.

This is one of those stories that is so bizarre that it has to be true, and it is – and apparently pretty dang close to the truth. There is one scene so outrageous, so unbelievably dumb near the end of the movie that Bay feels compelled to remind you that this is a true story, even though it is announced early on and often.

Bay is often criticized for his big overblown productions, and with a $20M budget (actually it’s a bit less than that) that won’t be the case here. In fact, I think this might be his best movie to date. It’s snappy, has a real terrific sense of humor. I laughed out loud as much here as I have at some of the better-known and better-received comedies in recent months.

Wahlberg and Johnson are two of the most engaging stars in Hollywood and both are quite willing to poke fun at themselves. They can utilize their huge likable personalities to offset the fact that they’re playing some truly despicable people who do way despicable things.

It doesn’t hurt that they have a particularly engaging cast. Shalhoub, best known for his portrayal of the neurotic Monk gets to play a real jerk and he does so with great relish. Harris, one of the steadiest and strongest actors in the business, plays it pretty straight but every so often you catch an expression that lets you know that DuBois is ready to bang his head against whatever wall might be available that these clowns might actually get away with it (although they didn’t in the end).

The crimes that are depicted here are horrible. I understand that some of the family members of those involved are somewhat upset that the story was essentially a comedy. In all fairness however I think that the tale is well-served by humor and it should be remembered that while the movie is funny, the suffering depicted is not and that the victims aren’t being made fun of. At least, I never got the sense they were – mostly the ineptness of the criminals is what is being held to scrutiny.

And that’s kind of the point here. Criminals by and large aren’t a bright lot – all Hollywood romanticizing to the contrary. For the most part, they’re effin’ dumb. Criminal jobs rarely are pulled off smoothly and more often than not, they wind up imprisoned. Pain & Gain isn’t really a cautionary tale so much as it is a reminder that while any idiot can get lucky, generally speaking their luck runs out pretty darn quickly.

REASONS TO GO: Surprisingly funny. Terrific performances from all the leads.

REASONS TO STAY: Maybe a bit too gruesome in spots. As things spiral out of control for the main characters towards the end of the movie, the sense of the surreal becomes a bit too much.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s a lot of violence, some of it quite brutal and graphic. There’s also some nudity and sexual content, a fair amount of drug use and pretty much non-stop foul language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Wahlberg bulked up to 213 lbs. for the film, essentially using his own body building supplements to do it. While his sons loved their new muscular dad, his daughters reportedly hated his over-the-top physique.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/7/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 46% positive reviews. Metacritic: 43/100; fairly mixed but trending towards the negative.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Bank Job

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Informant

New Releases for the Week of April 26, 2013

PAIN & GAIN

(Paramount) Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Rob Corddry, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris, Rebel Wilson, Ken Jeong. Directed by Michael Bay

Three somewhat dense bodybuilders engage on a campaign of kidnapping, extortion and murder in Miami in the 1990s. Based on a true story, Michael Bay brings his Bad Boys sensibility to the story which love him or hate him, a movie like this sorely needs.

See the trailer, clips and promos here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: R (for bloody violence, crude sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use)

Arthur Newman

(Cinedigm/Flatiron) Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Anne Heche, Peter Jurasik. A middle-aged divorced man, tired of a life that is going nowhere, decides to disappear. He buys himself a new identity and drives in the general direction of Terra Haute, Indiana where he hopes to reinvent himself as a golf pro at a small country club there. However he picks up a girl who’s got problems of her own and on the road to Indiana the two find something more than they were expecting.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R  (for sexual content, language and brief drug use)

The Big Wedding

(Lionsgate) Robert De Niro, Katherine Heigl, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton. When their adopted son gets married, a divorced couple is forced to pretend to still be together in order to placate his ultraconservative biological mom, who is showing up unexpectedly to the wedding. The family is then forced to confront all the sins of their past – in front of everyone invited to a big wedding.

See the trailer and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: NR  

The Company You Keep

(Sony Classics) Shia LaBeouf, Robert Redford, Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins. A lawyer’s true identity as a former radical wanted for murder is exposed by a reporter, forcing the lawyer to go on the run with his young daughter to find the one person who can clear his name. Redford also directed this.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for language)

Disconnect

(LD Entertainment) Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard. An ensemble piece with a theme of connection (or lack thereof) in the modern digital world. The stories include a lawyer who can’t put down his cell phone nor communicate with his own family, a couple whose darkest secrets are exposed online, a single dad and cop struggling to raise a son who is cyber-bullying classmates, and an ambitious journalist discovers a story about a teen masquerading as an adult on an adult website.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Comedy

Rating: R (for sexual content, some graphic nudity, language, violence and drug use – some involving teens)

Filly Brown

(Pantelion) Gina Rodriguez, Jenn Rivera, Lou Diamond Phillips, Edward James Olmos. A young girl with an incarcerated mom and a dad struggling to provide for his family finds self-expression through hip-hop. When a record producer offers to sign her to a contract, she thinks at first that it’s the answer to all her prayers – but she soon realizes the cost might be more than she could have ever thought it would be.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for disturbing violent and sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some drug use) 

Mud

(Roadside Attractions) Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepard, Michael Shannon. A couple of young boys discover a man living on an island in the Mississippi River. Calling himself Mud, he describes a fairly lurid tale of murder, love, a beautiful woman and bounty hunters. The boys agree to help him, until the tale turns out to be true – and a little more than he told them to begin with. This is another entry from the Florida Film Festival now playing a regular run at the Enzian.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for some violence, sexual references, language, thematic elements and smoking)  

Pearl Harbor

It’s a bomb!!!!

(2001) War Drama (Touchstone) Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Jaime King, William Lee Scott, Greg Zola, Ewen Bremner, Catherine Kellner, Jennifer Garner, Cuba Gooding Jr., Michael Shannon, Tom Sizemore, Mako, John Fujioka, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Colm Feore, Dan Aykroyd, William Fichtner, Beth Grant. Directed by Michael Bay

Nicol Williamson as Merlin in the John Boorman film Excalibur once said “It is the doom (of men) that they forget.” It has only been in the last few years of the 20th century (thanks in no small part to the efforts of men like Messrs. Hanks, Spielberg and Brokaw) that Americans have begun to wake up to the sacrifices of the Americans who comprised what Brokaw eloquently called “The Greatest Generation.”

The attack at Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941, in many ways remains America’s defining moment. It is a moment of ashes and pain, of blood and despair, written in the bullets and bombs of the Japanese and signed by our own arrogance to think it couldn’t happen to us. From that moment of despair was wakened a world power, one which has dominated the politics of this planet for the half-century since.

Given the success of Saving Private Ryan, it was inevitable that someone would make an epic movie about the date that will live in infamy. Tora, Tora, Tora has been the watershed Pearl Harbor movie up till now, but was only a marginal success when it was released. America is ready for a blockbuster.

Enter Michael Bay, the director behind Armageddon. In some ways, he was the ideal choice to make a movie about the attack. He knows spectacle and can handle immense scale. I’ve always thought him a little rough around the edges when it came to handling characterization and dealing with emotions, but he can be counted on to show the scope of the devastation, to blow our minds with explosions, twisted metal and bodies shredded before our eyes.

Of course he can. However, Bay had his own agenda. Not only did he want to tell the story of the battle, but he wanted to simultaneously elevate himself to the status currently enjoyed by James Cameron. In other words, he wanted this to be his Titanic, and therefore he inserted a love triangle that frames the drama of the tragedy of the attack.

Rafe McCawley (Affleck) is a pilot “born to fly.” He is everything heroic and noble about the American prewar spirit, the quintessence of the “boy next door.” His best friend Danny Walker(Hartnett) is also a pilot, and has always been on the edges of Rafe’s shadow, a good man in his own right but a reflection of Rafe’s glory. Rafe meets and falls in love with Evelyn Stewart (Beckinsale), a beautiful nurse. McCawley is itching for action and requests a transfer to the Eagle Squadron, a squad of American pilots assisting in the Battle of Britain. Rafe and Evelyn continue their love affair by letter, but when Rafe is shot down over the English Channel and is presumed dead, Evelyn is inconsolable.

As time goes by, both Evelyn and Danny get over the grief and find solace in each other. They are transferred to the plum naval assignment – Pearl Harbor – and spend most of their days in bars, cafes and at the movies, or just mooning over each other. However, a monkey wrench is thrown into their idyllic situation; Rafe returns from Europe, having been hiding in occupied France for nearly a year. He arrives at Pearl to find his best friend and the love of his life together, and it tears him apart. Of course, Rafe arrives on December 6, 1941. The next morning, all heck breaks loose.

The battle scenes themselves are very well done. Wave after wave of Japanese planes attack the fleet in battleship row, and as bomb after bomb and torpedo after torpedo finds its mark, the proud U.S. Pacific Fleet begins to sink. Some of the sailors react with panic and horror, and freeze in the face of this unthinkable attack. Others, such as real-life hero Dorie Miller (Gooding) find their destiny of glory at hand.

For Stewart, she finds chaos and overwhelming horror as the wounded and the dead begin to find their way to the hospital. She and the nurses must make heroic measures to save some of the more gravely wounded, as overtaxed doctors become nearly superhuman in their efforts. The hospital sequences are among the best in the movie and received some of the least attention.

The movie should have ended there, but goes on for nearly an hour afterwards, ending up with the bombing raid on Tokyo led by the charismatic Jimmy Doolittle (Baldwin). If you’re planning to see this movie, prepare to knock about three hours out of your day and be sure you use the restroom before the movie starts or at least be prepared to use the pause button pretty regularly.

The critics have blasted this movie, and in all frankness, I get the feeling that many of them are reviewing the movie’s extreme budget (budgeted somewhere around $140 million, it is the highest film budget ever approved by a studio to that time) and that there is a great deal of anti-Bay sentiment. Michael Bay isn’t particularly my favorite director, but he does an excellent job on the battle sequence. The biggest problem with Pearl Harbor is that it’s probably about half an hour too long at the very least. The love triangle is a bit predictable, as are the fates of many of the supporting characters (see if you can pick out the doomed players from the crowd).

Pearl Harbor got compared with Titanic, perhaps unfairly, mainly because both movies take a well-known tragedy and frame it with a love triangle. However, whereas the love story enhances the tragedy in Cameron’s movie, it slows down Pearl Harbor. Also, Bay is not known for subtlety and occasionally goes too far; one rousing speech in which FDR (Voight) rises to his feet, polio-stricken as he was, staggers the imagination and immediately yanks your suspension of disbelief to overload.

Affleck, who took a few hits in the reviews for his performance, is actually quite good as McCawley. Affleck is given really a very minimally realized character whose basic purpose is to be heroic, and carries it off impressively well or at least as well as he could given the limitations of Rafe’s personality. Both Hartnett and Beckinsale were beginning their careers at this point; both have continued to improve upon their performances here, particularly Beckinsale who has gained fame for her work in the popular Underworld movies. As for the supporting cast, Baldwin and Sizemore (as the proverbial crusty Sergeant from the Bronx) are memorable, but Voight chews the scenery like the catering truck had gone on strike. Gooding is, as usual, excellent, but he has little more than a cameo.

There is a definitive movie on Pearl Harbor waiting to be made, and unfortunately, this one isn’t it. Still, for all the negativity, here are the positive things: It’s epic size and scope are truly awe-inspiring. It manages, at many points, to raise patriotic fervor to a fever pitch. Thirdly, it poignantly reminds those of us who are too young to remember just what a price was paid for victory, and how badly we were beaten at Pearl Harbor.

Finally, this was a movie that needed to be made when it did, while many of the veterans of that war are still alive. Those I saw of that generation in the movie theater where I first saw the film were visibly affected by the movie, and that has to go to the good on Bay’s ledger.

Da Queen, who in a bit of uncalculated irony dined on sushi before seeing this movie, was a tear-streaked pile of mush for much of the proceedings, and recommends that those sensitive souls who cry at movies bring plenty of tissues, or at least to make sure that their husbands are wearing moisture-absorbent shirts.

For my part, I’m going to say that this is a very flawed movie that nonetheless should be a must-see for all of us. I’ve never had the opportunity to visit the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Hawaii, but until we finally head out that way, this is going to serve as the next-best experience. Perhaps some bright director someday will make a movie about the Arizona, which I would see in a heartbeat. Until then, Pearl Harbor, for all its faults, will have to do as the movie of record for one of America’s defining moments.

WHY RENT THIS: Dazzling battle scenes. Ben Affleck isn’t half-bad (damned by faint praise, I know). Exceedingly patriotic.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Unnecessary love triangle detracts from the drama. A good 45-60 minutes too long. Stretches disbelief a bit too far.

FAMILY MATTERS: War violence, some disturbing images of the wounded, a fair bit of foul language and an even smaller bit of sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Rafe is based loosely on actual fighter pilot Joe Foss whom Bay interviewed prior to shooting the film. Rafe’s speech about the plane being an extension of his body was taken nearly verbatim from that interview.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: The 60th Anniversary edition (of the attack not the film) as well as the Blu-Ray edition includes a History Channel documentary on the attack and a music video by Faith Hill. The four-disc Vista edition includes these, another History Channel documentary on the Doolittle raid, footage of a boot camp the actors all undertook, an interactive version of the attack sequence from several different angles and a choice of different audio tracks, a hidden gag reel as well as a collector’s booklet and poster art cards.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $449.2M on a $140M production budget; against all odds the movie was a hit.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Titanic

FINAL RATING: 5/10

NEXT: Somewhere

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Think twice before hanging out with Shia LaBeouf; there are a lot of angry film critics out there.

(2011) Science Fiction (Paramount) Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, Alan Tudyk, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, Leonard Nimoy (voice), Tyrese Gibson, Buzz Aldrin, Elya Baskin, Peter Cullen (voice), Hugo Weaving (voice), Robert Foxworth (voice), James Remar (voice). Directed by Michael Bay

Nothing exceeds like excess, and by that criterion Transformers: Dark of the Moon exceeds all expectations.

Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) has saved the world – twice – and all he’s got to show for it is a lousy Ivy League education. He longs to make a difference once again but he can’t get any sort of job and has to settle for living on the largesse of his new girlfriend Carly (Huntington-Whiteley), a former British consulate employee now working as an assistant to billionaire Dylan (Dempsey).

To make matters worse, the unemployed Sam is being visited by his judgmental parents Ron (Dunn) and Judy (White). However, Sam manages to get a job in the mail room of a defense contractor run by the somewhat eccentric Bruce Brazos (Malkovich).

Sam would much rather be working with the Autobots in NEST, but the government wants him far away from Optimus Prime (Cullen) as he can be. Lennox (Duhamel) is nominally in charge of the Autobots who are helping the American government putting out small fires around the world; taking out an illegal Iranian nuclear plant and investigating a strange occurrence at Chernobyl, where Lennox discovers Autobot technology may have been responsible for the disaster there.

Optimus demands an explanation and finally supercilious CIA chief Mearing (McDormand) gives him one. Apparently, near the end of the civil war that drove the Autobots from Cybertron, an Autobot ship escaped from the planet carrying a secret weapon as well as its designer, Sentinel Prime (Nimoy), the leader of the Autobots before Optimus. That ship crash landed on our moon, prompting the space race of the 1960s.

The Autobots rocket up to the moon and retrieve both Sentinel and the remains of the weapon. As they return, Megatron (Weaving), brooding in the desert after two defeats at the hands of Optimus and Sam Witwicky, puts into motion an evil plan that involves murder, betrayal and plenty of nasty robots coming after Sam and his new girlfriend. The stakes are high as the entire human race could end up as slave labor in the New World Order as envisioned by Megatron – and the Earth itself a desiccated, dried-out husk as her resources are used in the insane rebuilding of Cybertron. Once again, Sam and Optimus must lead the allied human-Autobot forces if both races are to survive.

My son has said that the reason you go to a Transformers movie is to watch robots beating each other up, and he has a point. If that’s why you’re plunking down ten bucks plus to see the movie, you won’t be disappointed. Once the battle starts in earnest, which is about halfway through the nearly two and a half hour movie, it doesn’t let up. The robots just about level Chicago and it is done realistically and spectacularly.

In fact, it’s done so well there seems to be no reason for human participation at all. The first half of the movie is somewhat slow and talky, and the humans are no match in the slightest to the giant robots of Cybertron. It is very much like watching a movie about, say, the Battle of the Bulge from the point of view of an ant colony. All the humans really have to do is dodge falling debris and be blown up by robot plasma shots; when one of the lead characters looks like they’re about to buy it, an Autobot comes out of nowhere to save the day (usually Optimus).

In fact, once the battle starts, LaBeouf has very little to do other than look concerned for his girlfriend, and occasionally shout “OPTI-MUUUUUUUUUUS!!!!” and he does both pretty well. His twitchy persona fits right in with the Witwicky character and although he’s the focus for the first half of the movie, it does break down during the first hour or so as we watch Sam mostly feeling inadequate and sorry for himself. It gets old.

Other than that, Bay did upgrade the supporting cast some, adding McDormand and Malkovich, Oscar nominees both, to the cast and both of the veteran actors deliver, as does Turturro in the returning role of Simmons, the paranoid agent (who is now a bestselling author) as comedy relief. Alan Tudyk, who impressed so much on the “Firefly” series, gets a meaty role as a fey German assistant to Simmons with his own set of skills. He makes the best use of his limited screen time.

As far as adolescent chubby-inducement, Megan Fox is out and former Victoria’s Secret model Huntington-Whiteley is in, making her feature acting debut. Fox was never known for her acting skills but she at least has some; Huntington-Whiteley is there mainly to wear tight dresses, have the camera almost see up her skirt and be put in jeopardy so Sam can rescue her. At least Megan Fox’s character wasn’t nearly as useless.

Transformer fans can rejoice; this is easily the most spectacular movie of the series and for non-fans, this is the best of the lot. Check your brain at the door, get the extra-large tub of popcorn and soda, and bliss out in a dark theater for awhile. This is pure popcorn spectacle on a massive scale and the plot is merely window dressing to the special effects. That’s not always a bad thing.

REASONS TO GO: Lots of robots battling for those who like that kind of thing. Easily the most spectacular film of the series.

REASONS TO STAY: The beginning of the movie lags a bit. The human characters are stiffer than the robots. Humans no match for aliens whatsoever.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a good deal of mayhem and a few bad words, but it’s the scenes of destruction and robot death that might be a bit much for tykes.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Leonard Nimoy, voicing Sentinel Prime, utters the line “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” in homage to a line spoken by Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

HOME OR THEATER: The spectacle demands the big movie theater screen.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

New Releases for the Week of July 1, 2011

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

(DreamWorks) Shia LaBeouf, Rose Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, John Turturro, Ken Jeong, Patrick Dempsey, Leonard Nimoy, Alan Tudyk. Directed by Michael Bay

Transformers liaison and now college student Sam Witwicky discovers a terrifying secret, one involving the Space Race and how much the government really knows about the Transformers and the Decepticons. All this leads to a final invasion of Earth by the Decepticons, one which even the Transformers can’t save us from.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, featurettes, promos and web-only content here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D

Genre: Science Fiction

Rating: PG-13 (for intense prolonged sequences of sci-fi action, violence, mayhem and destruction, and for language, some sexuality and innuendo)

Beginners

(Focus) Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic. A young man who has never had much ability to commit to a relationship must cope with the grief of his father’s recent passing. When he meets a girl who might be the key to his future, he flashes back to the last months of his father’s life to find the means to connect with another in his own life.

See the trailer, interviews, clips, and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: R (for language and some sexual content)

Delhi Belly

(UTV) Imran Khan, Kunaal Roy Kapur, Vir Das, Shenaz Treasurywala. A trio of flatmates in New Delhi all have their problems, from overbearing bosses to fiancées who may or may not be the one they want. They all have one problem in common however; a crime lord who has put them on his hit list, and we’re not talking Casey Kasem here.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Crime Comedy

Rating: NR

Larry Crowne

(Universal) Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Bryan Cranston, Taraji P. Henson. Larry Crowne’s world has just come tumbling about his ears. Fired from his job at a big box retail outlet for not having a college education, he enrolls at a community college. Not only does he find his mind expanding, his life begins to expand as he comes out of his shell and falls for a beautiful teacher.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, promos and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Rating: PG-13 (for brief strong language and some sexual content)

Monte Carlo

(20^th Century Fox) Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester, Katie Cassidy, Andie McDowell. A case of mistaken identity lands three high school graduates the vacation of a lifetime. Of course, they’re not about to tell anyone they’re not who everyone thinks they are…which leads to some uncomfortable situations and, hopefully, hilarity. Although I wouldn’t expect too much.

See the trailer, interviews and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Tween Romantic Comedy

Rating: PG (for brief mild language)

Friday the 13th (2009)

Affectionate to a fault, Jason Voorhees will go through plate glass for a hug.

(New Line) Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis van Winkle, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears, Jonathan Sadowski, Julianna Guill, Arlen Escarpeta, Richard Burgi. Directed by Marcus Nispel

There is a Chinese proverb that if you wait by the river long enough, you will live to see your enemies float by you. That may or may not be true, but one thing I can guarantee you: a classic horror film character will float by first.

The picturesque community of Crystal Lake is rocked with the scandal of one of their own, Mrs. Voorhees, going ballistic and chopping up camp counselors at the local summer camp, Camp Crystal Lake, whom she held responsible for the drowning death of her son, Jason (Mears). She got hers when the sole surviving teenager decapitated her, although unbeknownst to her in full view of Jason himself who had somehow risen from the dead.

Years later a group of teenagers go camping and, as teenagers will do, drink, do recreation drugs and fornicate, not necessarily in that order of importance but pretty close to it. They are stalked one at a time by a mysterious, hulking figure in a burlap sack mask that carries a machete and knows how to use it, and use it he does until there is only one girl left, Whitney (Righetti) and he pounces on her like a kitten on a squeaky toy.

Six weeks later, another group of teenagers is headed to the same area; the lake house of the snooty jerkwad Trent (van Winkle). Included in his little group of party people are Chewie (Yoo), the token stoner, or would be if it wasn’t for Lawrence (Escarpeta) who is the other token stoner and not coincidentally, the token African-American as Chewie is the token Asian-American. Wow, the only two minorities in the movie are both weed users. Who’da thought?

Anyway into the mix comes Clay (Padalecki), Whitney’s brother and even though they weren’t much on speaking terms he’d come all the way to Crystal Lake to look for her, even though the cops have essentially written off the cake, in the person of Sherriff Bracke (Burgi). He and Trent butt heads (mainly because Trent is such a Butthead) and Trent’s adorable girlfriend Jenna (Panabaker) go off to hand out some more flyers and look for Whitney in the ruins of good ole Camp Crystal Lake. Of course, they find a lot more than they bargained for.

There really isn’t much plot here, as you’d expect. This is most certainly a Friday the 13^th movie, a proud addition to the franchise. It has everything the original series had; impaling, decapitations, electrocutions, drownings and lots and LOTS of nubile, bare breasts.

It’s everything that was good and bad about the original series. Jason is virtually unkillable, sets some nasty traps and kills his victims in inventive but gruesome ways. It also has all the stereotyping and misogyny that was the hallmark of the original series here. All the women in the remake are either sluts or bitches or both. There is no in-between and that’s probably how a lot of the young male target audience probably views the female sex in general. The two nice girls are either mistaken for mommy or wind up kicking Jason’s ass. Hardcore feminists, be warned.

For the record, I think you have to take all of that with a grain of salt. These are not movies that are meant to be cultural barometers, nor are they meant to be taken all that seriously. It’s a means to blow off some steam, watch some attractive young people get sliced, diced, roasted or stabbed. It doesn’t even matter that much how good the acting is, although Padalecki, of TV’s “Supernatural” and Panabaker make due. Note to those who are attracted to such things – Julianna Guill is smokin’ hot.

Director Nispel, who also re-started the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise for the same producers (which includes Transformers director Michael Bay) is becoming something of an expert on re-imagining horror franchise of the 1980s (I can only guess what he’d do with Hellraiser) and he is on his way to becoming one of the better horror directors of this era.

It comes down to what your personal tastes are. If you really loved the Friday the 13^th series in all its bloody glory, you’ll be in hog heaven with the new one. If you despised it, you’d do best to ignore this one altogether. If your opinion was somewhere in between, this is a competently done horror movie with an excess of blood and boobs. If that’s your thing, you’ve found a winner.

WHY RENT THIS: A definite return to the type of horror film we all know and loved from the 1980s.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The things that we didn’t love in horror films of the ‘80s are all still here.

FAMILY VALUES: Much graphic gore and violence, more bare breasts than you can shake a stick at and plenty of foul language. Perfect for pre-schoolers….NOT!!!!!

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The character of Sheriff Bracke was named for Peter Bracke, author of Crystal Lake Memories, a reference book on the Friday the 13^th series.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: The Blu-Ray edition has a featurette on the setting up of the seven most horrific murders of the movie. It gives you a good idea of how the make-up, special effects and props departments work together with the actor to make these scenes happen.

FINAL RATING: 4/10

TOMORROW: Burn After Reading

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

In this movie machines command far more attention than the stars.

(DreamWorks) Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Dunn, Ramon Rodriguez, Julie White, Isabel Lucas, John Benjamin Hickey, Rainn Wilson, Michael Papajohn, Deep Roy. Directed by Michael Bay.

The most anticipated movie of summer 2009 was easily Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. After Michael Bay’s Transformers was a megahit in 2007, a sequel was inevitable. The questions are; would it be entertaining and would it be as good as the first.

Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) is trying to put his past behind him. Having helped defeat a race of evil robots, he is ready to resume a more-or-less normal life. He’s leaving home for college at an Ivy League school, much to the pride of his mother (White) and to the financial discomfiture of his father (Dunn). He is still with Mikaela (Fox), a much hotter girlfriend than he has a right to be with, and a robot guardian who transforms from a sick sportscar into Bumblebee a mute robot with the loyalty of a terrier.

However, destiny isn’t quite done with Sam Witwicky. A sliver from the Allspark that was destroyed in the first movie remained in his hoodie. When Sam picks it up, he begins to have visions of strange symbols, the meaning of which he can’t understand. He also begins to display an understanding of math and physics that is way beyond what humans currently understand.

The benevolent Autobots have not strayed far from Earth. Led by the noble Optimus Prime, they assist NEST, a military team led by Major Lennox (Duhamel) dedicated to rooting out stray Decepticons that have remained after the battle in which their leader, Megatron was apparently destroyed. Optimus and Lennox are disturbed because they have been a lot busier of late than they’ve ever been. Lennox believes that a signal sent out into space by Megatron before Optimus shut him down may have attracted new Decepticons to Earth, but for what purpose? With the Allspark gone, there isn’t anything left on Earth that the Decepticons would want – or is there?

The reason for the season turns out to be found in an ancient fact; the Transformers had been on Earth thousands of years before. It turns out they had been hopping from planet to planet, utilizing a machine that was able to extract energy from stars. The Primes, the ruling class of the Transformers, had forbidden the use of this machine on a planet that had life on it, but one of their brethren, to be known thereafter as The Fallen, attempted to use the machine on Earth, leading to a battle that would ignite the civil war that continued for millennia. The machine remained hidden on Earth, and the means to use it protected by the very bodies of the Primes. The Fallen, locked in exile off-planet, has plans to reactivate the machine and claim final victory over his nemesis Optimus Prime, but he would need his apprentice Megatron to do it. The wheels are turning and events set in motion. The stakes are sky-high; if Sam Witwicky can’t decipher what these symbols mean, the human race is lost.

Michael Bay has developed a reputation as a director as one who specializes in loud, aggressive action movies with lots of explosions, and this one is no different. In some ways, it’s the perfect summer movie – it doesn’t require too much thought and moves from one action sequence to the next with a minimum of exposition and a maximum of explosion. There are also gratuitous shots of Megan Fox looking worried (and sexy), annoyed (and sexy), disappointed (and sexy), scared (and sexy) and sexy (and….oh never mind). It’s a wet dream of a movie for adolescent boys. The pacing is meant for those with the attention span of adolescent boys.

The problem here is that most of the acting is as wooden as a log cabin. LaBeouf in particular seemed uninvested in the movie; I got the impression that we would have seen more passion from him at the bank while he was depositing the very large check he undoubtedly received for making the movie. Also, I have no idea why Megan Fox is in this movie other than to provide the target audience of young boys some sort of fantasy figure to run in slow-mo away from explosions. On that end she is at least successful; she looks very good running in slow-mo away from explosions. Only Turturro, Dunn and pop star Tyrese seem to be having any fun at all and Turturro is so over-the-top he’s almost annoying, like he’s a villain in a Robert Rodriguez children’s movie.

The special effects and action sequences are top-notch; I can guarantee you get more than your money’s worth in those departments. They’re good enough in fact to allow for a mild recommendation, which is more or less irrelevant because this movie will make big box office bucks regardless of what any critic has to say. And say it they will, and not without justification. My issue with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is not that it’s a bad movie; just that it’s a lazy one. It could have been written better, it could have been a much more satisfying film in so many ways if the filmmakers had taken the time to give it just a little bit of depth. One of my favorite movies from last summer was Iron Man – there was no shortage of action in that movie, but it was well-written and well-acted. Iron Man is a movie I own on DVD; I doubt I will be that interested in owning Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen unless it shows up in the Blockbuster pre-owned bin at a ridiculously low price.

So about those questions I asked earlier: is it entertaining? Definitely yes. Is it better than the first movie? I’d have to say no. If the reason you’re coming to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is, as my 20-year-old slacker son says, an excuse to see robots battling each other, you’re in for a treat. I have to admit, though, that’s an awfully low bar of expectations to have in this day and age.

WHY RENT THIS: Special effects and robot battle scenes are extraordinary. Those who grew up with the Transformers are going to not only want to rent this but buy this for their home collection.

REASONS TO STAY: Poorly written and woodenly acted. It’s sometimes difficult to tell which robot is battling which, and who the good guys are (hint: they are the ones with color). It’s definitely aimed at adolescent males which may be a problem if you aren’t one.

FAMILY VALUES: Smaller children may be terrified at the battle scenes and the very LOUD sound effects.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: John Turturro was allowed to climb the pyramids in Giza for a climactic scene, a rarely-granted privilege. While filming the scene, he became so overwhelmed by the location that he broke down in tears.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: On the 2-Disc DVD and Blu-Ray editions, there is a feature on the history of the Transformers, and one in which a film crew accompanied director Michael Bay for 24 hours revolving around the film’s premiere in Tokyo. On Blu-Ray there is an Allspark feature that allows you to Transform customizable vehicles to see what happens. There is also a database of new characters for the movie that allow viewers to take a unique 3-D 360 degree look at the machines.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Away From Her