Review: TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT 
(ACTION/SCI-FI) 
★
Directed by Michael Bay
Screenplay by Art Marcum & Matt Holloway & Ken Nolan
Story by Akiva Goldsman, and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway & Ken Nolan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel, Laura Haddock, Santiago Cabrera, Isabela Moner, Jerrod Carmichael, Stanley Tucci, Liam Garrigan, Martin McCreadie, Rob Witcomb, Marcus Fraser, John Hollingworth, Frank Welker (voice), Peter Cullen (voice), John Goodman (voice), Jim Carter (voice), Gemma Chan (voice)
Rated PG-13 for violence and intense sequences of sci-fi action, language, and some innuendo.
149 minutes
Verdict: It's too long, too stuffed, too lazy, too disinterested, too dumb, and too bad.

12 hours and 41 minutes.  That's how long of all Michael Bay's five Transformers films are combined.  Approximately $967 million.  That's how much they've all cost.  $3.77 billion worldwide.  That's how much they've grossed.  29%.  That's the average percentage of positive critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for the series.  The Transformers series is simply a crushing, depressing and inevitable fact of life that we have to live with today.  Somebody must like them, 'cause they keep making money, but damn.  There's nothing fresh and nothing surprising to be gleaned from the franchise as it currently exists, and TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT merely perpetuates the soulless, numbing drudgery.  It goes on and on and on, and one can only sit there and question the point of anything.  This is two-and-half-hours, and most of it isn't even action.  It's mostly exposition, and nobody cares.  So Transformers have been on Earth throughout history, and they showed up in King Arthur times, and they killed Nazis, and there's some secret society of "Witwiccans" who I guess are the Transformers' best pals, and Earth is secretly another planet with horns, and it's not clear that any of this matters because they're just making it up as they go along.  It's less mean-spirited than the last installment, AGE OF EXTINCTION (no inexplicable lingering on the charred corpse of the comic relief sidekick this time around), and hey, it's 15 minutes shorter, but for the love of God, it's still so effing long.  It's still unclear who this movie is for (I mean, people with money, I guess), between being too violent, crass, profane and lengthy for most children, but at the same time, the characters are increasingly cartoonish and there's even a strange, half-hearted attempt to introduce a child co-lead in the first half of the movie.  This movie has four credited writers, and you've got to wonder if maybe they simply all wrote their own stories with their own characters and then smooshed them all together, because there's so many characters and scenes that are plainly superfluous.

So far, I've actually been able to keep track of these plots fairly well, at least in the moment of watching each of the Transformers movies (REVENGE OF THE FALLEN was a little trickier, but I don't feel like I missed anything), but all the exposition of THE LAST KNIGHT threw me for a loop.  Maybe I'm just getting old.  Anyway, the movie opens interestingly enough in the midst of a colossal, frenetic medieval battle between King Arthur (Liam Garrigan), and his knights, and some nameless enemy.  It's nuts, chaotic and total medieval Bayhem from the moment the movie starts, with a lot of people engulfed in flames.  Apparently, Bay actually wanted to make a King Arthur movie, and frankly, I would rather have watched that.  It might not have been good either, but it would certainly have been more interesting.  Arthur and his knights are on the defensive, awaiting salvation from the wizard Merlin (Stanley Tucci, decidedly not playing his character from the previous film, but still giving the best performance of the whole ordeal), who is actually a drunken charlatan but comes to the rescue nonetheless when he makes a deal with, you guessed it, Transformers!  Chilling on Earth in a big spaceship in England, the Knights of Cybertron give Merlin a "magic" staff that gives him and Arthur the power to win the battle.  Flash-forward to the present, and Optimus Prime is in deep space, having left Earth in search of his creator at the end of the last movie, when he arrives on Cybertron and is stunned to see it destroyed (I may be missing something, but wasn't the fact that Cybertron was destroyed the whole reason they were on Earth chasing after the AllSpark cube in the first movie?).  He soon encounters his maker, a metal floating lady named Quintessa (voiced by Gemma Chan) who uses her powers to make part of his face red, turning him into "Nemesis Prime", so he'll help her destroy Earth (which is secretly an ancient Transformer planet called "Unicron", like 'unicorn' with a couple of letters switched around), which is growing horns.  After that, we don't see Prime, Optimus or Nemesis, for most of the movie.  There's about as much of him in this as there was of the Dinobots in the last one.  Meanwhile on Earth, the planet is growing horns.  Transformers are banned and hunted the world over (except in Cuba, where John Turturro makes occasional appearances as his former secret agent conspiracy nut character Seymour Simmons), and an international fighting force called the Tranformers Reaction Force (TRF), including returning character William Lennox (Josh Duhamel, sporting Mr. Fantastic's hair), is murdering the crap out of them.  Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), a Texan inventor with a Boston accent, provides sanctuary for the surviving Autobots in a South Dakota Indian reservation junkyard and goes around the country with Bumblebee rescuing them from the TRF.  During an altercation in an abandoned part of Chicago, (destroyed in the events of the third movie) Cade picks up Izabella (Isabela Moner), an orphaned girl who's been living with Transformers until the TRF came in and murdered the crap out of them.  Cade receives an ancient talisman from a dying Knight of Cybertron who happens to be there, and then they all go back to South Dakota, while the TRF makes a deal with Megatron (voiced by the prolific Frank Welker), you know, the villain from all the other movies?  None of this makes sense, barely any of it is necessary, and then we get a lengthy scene of Megatron dealing with the TRF over which imprisoned Decepticons he can have as part of his team.  The Decepticons and the TRF find the junkyard, but Cade and Izabella escape and are rescued by Cogman (voiced by Jim Carter), a sassy robot butler belonging to Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins, adding this next to M:I-II on the list of unfortunate but probably lucrative jobs).  Basically an exposition machine, Sir Edmund informs them that the talisman that was given to Cade is linked to Merlin's staff and has chosen him to fulfill a quest tied to the destiny of English professor Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock), the last descendant of Merlin.

So, that's the "plot."  This is a franchise rooted in the base appeal of watching big robots fighting other big robots, but the best part in this movie is when some knights are fighting some other knights.  There are too many characters when the main characters barely matter as it is, and they're all acting without motivation simply to get to the next set-piece.  Every decision onscreen and behind the camera appears to be rooted in disinterested impulse.  Michael Bay does not make "good" movies, but even while they're all hella too long, he can make movies that are modestly interesting, if only because he wears his limitations and ambitions on his sleeve.  PEARL HARBOR is awful, borderline unwatchable, but it's also a rare look at a filmmaker with his juvenile, uncurious vision attempting to create an Oscar-bait movie with TITANIC-meets-SAVING PRIVATE RYAN as his model.  It sounds snarky, but it really is momentarily fascinating.  He seems to like good movies, and he jumps for the Coen brothers' sloppy seconds at every turn (Steve Buscemi and John Goodman do voices for similar-looking robots in THE LAST KNIGHT, and Goodman's not so bad), but his movies are so dumb, so frenetic, so toxic and so cynical.  There's an interest in his approach, but not a curiosity or personal motivation beyond the will to imitate something that came before.  This is a man who made a really cool action sequence out of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  But with Transformers, we've already seen him do it again and again, and he's on cruise control now.  THE LAST KNIGHT doesn't even have the mean-spiritedness or regressive "humor" of earlier installments of the franchise to shock the viewer into incredulity.  It's just senseless.

Review: CARS 3

CARS 3
(ANIMATION/FAMILY-ADVENTURE)
★★1/2
Directed by Brian Fee
Screenplay by Kiel Murray, Bob Peterson and Mike Rich
Story by Brian Fee, Ben Queen and Eyal Podell & Jonathan E. Stewart
Featuring the Voices of: Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Nathan Fillion, Larry the Cable Guy, Armie Hammer, Ray Magliozzi, Tom Magliozzi, Tony Shalhoub, Bonnie Hunt, Lea DeLaria, Kerry Washington, Bob Costas, Margo Martindale, Darrell Waltrip, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Bob Peterson, Paul Newman
Rated G
Verdict: The Cars series is mollified and more mature in its third chapter, but mostly, it's 'fine'.
YOU MAY ENJOY CARS 3 IF YOU LIKED:
CARS  (2006)
CARS 2  (2011)
FINDING DORY  (2016)
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY  (2013)
TOY STORY 3  (2010)

It's the Pixar sequel that nobody asked for, but there was no way we weren't going to get it anyway.  At least it's better than CARS 2, but that's not an especially high bar.  There's this thing about Pixar and critics where, they've had such an unparalleled strong run from TOY STORY in 1995 and to TOY STORY 3 in 2010, and 9 classics and near-classics in between (actually, A BUG'S LIFE isn't that great), that they have a ton of built-up good will, and even if Pixar does make a stinker, a lot of critics will give it a pass.  The usual justification is that "even Pixar's worst movie is better than most other studios' best movies", which isn't technically true (although you could say that Pixar's best movies are a lot better than those other studios' best movies), and even with CARS 2, most of them had to admit it.  It's the only Pixar production to date to not receive a majority of positive reviews on the popular review aggregating site, Rotten Tomatoes.  Even the original CARS is a significant deep downward on the scale within the Pixar streak.  The thing is, I used to roll my eyes at critics who gave a movie like CARS a half-hearted positive review because it was supposedly better than what other animation studios were churning out, but in an age where the cheap, shitty schlockmeisters at Illumination Entertainment are hauling in billion-dollar grosses, I'll throw my hat into the ring for CARS 3.

CARS 3 returns to the inexplicable, constantly-question-raising Cars world a substantial amount of years after CARS 2.  Introducing some confusing notions of how long a car's lifespan is and when they hit old age, Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is getting older, and the racetrack that he once dominated alongside his peers is growing unfamiliar, with newer, faster, souped-up racers taking the lead.  At the front of the new pack is the arrogant Jackson Storm (voiced by Armie Hammer), whose top speed outpaces Lightning at his best, and when Lightning suffers a devastating crash (probably the most brutal cartoon car wreck in history), it leaves the question open as to whether he'll return to the track at all.  With his sponsor, Rust-eze, bought up by an elitist business car, Sterling (voiced by Nathan Fillion), who aims to capitalize on Lightning's highly merchandisable legacy (not sure how we're supposed to feel about this in what's pretty much a toy commercial for the Disney Company), Lightning is paired up Cruz Ramirez (voiced by Cristela Alonzo), a peppy young racing technician who's got all the gadgets.  When the tech route doesn't seem to be working, however, and Lightning wants to get back in touch with the basics, they seek out Doc Hudson's mentor, the legendary crew chief Smokey (voiced by Chris Cooper).

One point that must be made; while the Cars universe becomes hilariously difficult to reckon with when you look at it with a wide view (Where do baby cars come from?  Are they made in a factory or do the cars sexually reproduce?  Is this supposed to take place in some version of our world?  Where are the humans?  Is this some sort of dystopian future where mankind has died out and our machine took over?), most of that stuff technically doesn't matter for the movie to work, and maybe it can all just exist strictly on an imaginary plane of existence.  CARS 3 makes at least one of those 'how do cars' lives work' questions immediately relevant though, because the way older race cars age out and have to retire is at the center of this story and doesn't make sense.  Some people will wonder, 'Where are is this younger generation of cars suddenly coming from?' and it's a legitimate question, but I can let that go.  However, one thing we know about the 'senior citizen' cars in this world is that they leak oil, which is akin to incontinence here, but rustiness seems to factor in too.  The rustiest major character in this series though is Mater, and it's not at all clear if there's a significant age difference between him and Lightning.  Plus, they can apparently repair crash damage and paint themselves over, so maybe rust is mostly a class thing or a matter of pride for individualistic cars.  But they can keep replacing parts and polishing themselves up forever, it seems, so they're potentially immortal, right?  They can be murdered or presumably die in a particularly violent accident, as clearly shown in CARS 2, but they shouldn't be able to die of old age, right?  Except that with the death of his voice, Paul Newman, in between films, Doc Hudson (who appears in flashback scenes of CARS 3, utilizing previously unused recordings and some imitation voicework) died in between the first and second films, presumably from old age.  But in CARS 3, we meet Doc's trainer and a whole assortment of cars from a whole generation before Doc, and they're all alive and kicking.  None of this makes sense, so it's tough to understand Lightning McQueen's part of all this within the racing world, that he can be past his prime, even though he'll still be driving his top speed generations later down the road.  Why would anyone ever have to retire?  Why can't he get new parts to make himself as fast as these new cars?  Don't tell me I'm overthinking it, maybe you're underthinking it.

The thing about this Cars series is, I can really just sit back and enjoy watching those cartoon cars driving around.  All inside the computer, you can get up close and they move alone so smoothly through Pixar's always richly detailed landscapes, and you get the sound of the rubber tires gripping and scraping little pebbles along the asphalt.  Yeah, a lot of movies have cars in them, and when you're just listening to the sound and watching the movement of the tires, it's a little bit hypnotic.  I don't know why.  Personally, I know dick about actual cars, like, I'm no gearhead, but I like watching them move around in these movies.  But then there's the cartoon "squash-and-stretch", and then they start talking, and it's this whole world filled with sentient cars that seem to be made of metal but move like rubber, and they have their big windshield eyes and mouths with teeth, and you start freaking out and wondering "What the hell is going on here?! "  No, but seriously, it feels kind of juvenile.  It seems funny, because we're talking about a studio that churns out movies about toys coming to life when people aren't looking, a world of friendly monsters who are scared of children, talking fish and so on, and sure, we'll plop our kids in front of them, but we're just as likely to watch them ourselves.  They don't feel childish.  The Cars series kind of does.  It's not as bad as the Despicable Me movies, but not everything is, you know?  I'm not sure I'd say CARS 3 is better than the first one, mainly because the story doesn't come together as neatly (to be fair, the first CARS straight-up ripped its story from DOC HOLLYWOOD), but CARS 3 is probably the most "mature" of the series.  They're trying to do the TOY STORY 3 thing, with a story about nostalgia and passing the torch, but clearly not on the same level nor with the same strength going in. 

After the headache-inducing frenzy of CARS 2, the third chapter is significantly mollified and even reflective, although there's still the intermittent goofy slapstick mayhem that kids expect, such as an iffy demolition derby sequence or a montage of Lightning's disastrous training attempts.  There's less plot this time around than the other two, and it takes its time on Lightning's journey of self-rediscovery before sort of abruptly rushing to get things in position for the finish line.  It hints at payoffs more than it sets them up, and a lot of the stuff involving Smokey and his crew of veteran racers is undercooked and not as well tied into the story as Pixar would have done in their prime.  It has a few funny moments, and as you'd expect from the studio that's being doing computer-animated feature films the longest, their visual craft is richer and more lush than anyone else in the game, which then reminds how prevalent the corner-cutting in Illumination's movies is.  Pixar and Disney, man, they're the only ones who care to make their computer animation look half-decent.  It's nothing special, but it looks nice, and hey, it could be worse (see CARS 2).  There's less of Mater this time too, so that's obviously a plus (even though he's in it more than you'd expect from his overall absence from the marketing).  Mostly though, I just like to watch the cartoon cars driving around.

                                                                                                                                                                         Images via Disney

Review: WONDER WOMAN

WONDER WOMAN

(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY)

★★★

Directed by Patty Jenkins

Screenplay by Allan Heinberg

Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Said Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis, Elena Anaya, Lilly Aspell, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Ann Ogbomo

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content.

141 minutes

Verdict: It runs long and doesn't exactly rewrite the superhero movie formula, but it's handsomely-crafted, epic and intimate, with two very likable leads; the DCEU can finally lay claim to a good movie.

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN WONDER WOMAN IF YOU LIKED:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER  (2011)
THOR  (2011)
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE  (2016)
MAN OF STEEL  (2013)
MONSTER  (2003)

If WONDER WOMAN were the best movie of the so-called "DC Extended Universe" or DCEU (Warner Brothers/DC Comics' response to the Marvel Cinematic Universe series of interconnected films), frankly, it wouldn't mean dick (or vagina, I guess, considering the material).  Of the three films that preceded it, MAN OF STEEL is the best by far, and MAN OF STEEL is not a good movie.  It's an okay-ish movie that runs way too long and devolves into a mind-numbing, utterly excessive fistfight in a second half that features far more rubble than heroism.  Last year, the DCEU attempted to shift into high gear with two productions, and the question is, which one was worse?  Was it BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, an infuriatingly long, aggressively self-important angst-fest about two horrible superhumans acting horrible before finally fighting each other and teaming up because their moms have the same name?  Or was it SUICIDE SQUAD, the mercifully shorter but no less smelly dumpster fire lacking in rhyme or reason where underdeveloped, over-styled and uninteresting bad guys (who aren't even explicitly much worse than the "heroes" we've seen in this universe) traverse an abandoned city and fight faceless rock people with baseball bats and guns?  But WONDER WOMAN is the best movie to come out of the DCEU so far, and even if it doesn't exactly rewrite the superhero genre in any way, it looks good and it's so refreshing to finally have a hero who doesn't act like a dick all the time.

There's been a lot of hype about this movie being a "win for feminism", but I think the argument that it's a win for feminism is an even bigger win for the marketing department at Warner Brothers/DC.  I mean, let's face it; this is still a corporate product designed to sell tickets, toys and anything else that can be branded, and it's simply bewildering that it took this long for them to branch out into the girl power demographic.  It's great that it's a major mainstream Hollywood blockbuster directed by a woman and that it's a female-driven superhero movie, and there should be a lot more of that (say, about half of them, maybe?), but come on, this is so much more about capitalism than it is about feminism.  Plus, there's a weird kink element to Wonder Woman that I'm not sure what to make of, with the sexy outfit, the cuffs and the lasso (not that being sexy and kinky can't be part of the feminist ideal).  I don't know, it just seems a little silly.  I mean, I'm all for feminism, equal rights, fair treatment, respect for others and all that, but sometimes these corporatized and hip social feminisms feel frustrating and off point, and maybe that's because I'm frustrating and off point.  But, you know, as Wonder Woman learns, we're all fighting our own personal battles as human beings.  Woman or not, it's good to have Patty Jenkins directing a movie like this, and it's been a while.  She was originally set to direct THOR: THE DARK WORLD before leaving due to that age-old reason, "creative differences", and she's directed a few episodes of television, but it's been fourteen years since her Academy Award-winning last feature film, MONSTER, and that was her directorial debut.  It's like the trend of picking up directors of small independent films to direct super-sized blockbusters (i.e. Colin Trevorrow going from SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED to JURASSIC WORLD, Marc Webb from (500) DAYS OF SUMMER to THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and Gareth Edwards from MONSTERS to GODZILLA (2014)), but on a much longer time frame.
The screenplay by DC Comics writer Allan Heinberg (who also shares story credit with Zack Snyder and PAN writer Jason Fuchs) benefits some from Marvel having already broken the ground on superheroes within an historical war setting (the first Captain America movie) and ancient mythology and swords & sorcery fantasy as part of the superhero genre (the Thor movies), but it's also a reasonably straightforward superhero hero's journey origin story.  Set near the end of World War I in 1918, Diana (Gal Gadot, who sort of resembles a young Angelina Jolie, who would likely have played the role if the movie were made 20 years ago) is the curious and innocent princess of Themiscyra, the hidden island kingdom of the Amazons, a tribe of warrior women who were charged with the responsibility of guarding the world of mankind from the machinations of the evil god of war, Ares, but who has not been seen in thousands of years.  When American spy pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crosses through the barrier that hides their island and crashes into the ocean, it's the first time Diana has ever seen anything of the world outside and when she rescues him and he tells her of the World War taking place out there, she concludes that it's the work of Ares and only she can kill him.  Against her mother's (Connie Nielsen) protestations and with the training of the Amazonian general Antiope (Robin Wright), Diana joins Steve in his mission to prevent the Germans, led by the sadistic General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and his mad scientist associate Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya) from unleashing an extremely powerful form of poison gas that would prolong the war interminably. 

I didn't know much about the Wonder Woman character going in, and I still feel like there's a lot about her and her world that don't quite make sense, but the character on screen and as played by Gadot is solid, and so is Pine.  As Marvel did with CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, they also have a team of diverse characters as part of their squad who each bring interesting concepts to the mix and build on the "everyone is fighting their own battles" theme of the movie, but these are "sample size" characters.  Ewen Bremner is the hard-drinking, shell-shocked Scottish sniper Charlie, and Said Taghmaoui is the uncouth, unfiltered secret agent Sameer.  Eugene Brave Rock, who's apparently a stunt man/actor from the AMC series Hell on Wheels, plays the opportunistic smuggler Chief and is not very good at acting.
The pace is unusually moderate for today's action movies, and while a lot of the time it's nice and has plenty of room to breathe, a bit of fine tuning and careful trimming could have made it better (everyone is acting like it's such a great thing that there were no scenes deleted, but come on, usually scenes are deleted for a reason, and unless it's Harvey Weinstein blundering into the editing room like a bull in a china shop, a little judicious editing is a good thing), but at least in terms of Diana and Steve, the characters are given their due and their relationship is carefully constructed. 
It's typical on a movie of this size for a director to maintain focus on the character-centric scenes while second and third unit directors cover the action set-pieces, and in this movie, the difference is weirdly apparent.  The character scenes revolving around Diana and Steve are all great and really invest in those characters, and while most of the action is good, a lot of it feels like it's made for a different movie.  At least of what she's made, the Diana and Steve scenes feel like Patty Jenkins, but the action is pretty much straight-up Zack Snyder, and as long as it's only the action that feels like Zack Snyder, that's not a huge problem, but it is a little odd to jump from this classy, handsome-looking period fantasy movie and right into lots of slow motion, speed-ramping and the electric theme from BATMAN V SUPERMAN.  One exception however, and one of the best scenes in the movie (despite not entirely making logical sense, but shut up brain, you're being boring) is a scene when Wonder Woman leads a charge out of the trenches on the Western Front and right into No Man's Land, inspiring others to follow as she deflects a massive hail of bullets.  Meanwhile, scenes pertaining to the villainous General Ludendorff and Dr. Maru, aka "Dr. Poison", are weirdly campy, as if from a whole other comic book movie.

Whatever the politics of it all, the movie largely succeeds on the surprising strength of Gadot as a leading lady.  She can "kick ass" as the annoying cliché goes, coming from an unusually colorful background as both Miss Israel 2004 and a former combat trainer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 2006 Lebanon War, and she's also a pretty magnetic screen presence.  She was the favorite part of BATMAN V SUPERMAN for a lot of people, although I personally didn't care too much and didn't feel like she was a sufficient part of the story, that she was shoehorned in for marketing purposes and Zack Snyder used her for a few of his standard hero shots to make fanboys cream their jeans.  In WONDER WOMAN, she has a chance to do her thing, and yeah, she's really good.
With Marvel Studios currently dominating the all-powerful superhero genre, even while they have a pretty good batting record, they're also pretty consistent, and if they can do it at least as well as this, DC should be adding variety, but BATMAN V SUPERMAN and SUICIDE SQUAD suck so hard.  I'm not fully on board with the popular concept of Marvel movies not looking "cinematic", but I sort of understand where they're coming from in some cases, and WONDER WOMAN in contrast has a very handsomely-crafted visual style, and even without being as playful or "jokey" as most Marvel, it's fun and unburdened by the sagging self-importance of the Snyder films.  Where it most improves on the other DCEU movies though, is that it finally delivers a superhero who's actually heroic.  Now, if only it were about 15 minutes leaner.