2003 - BAD BOYS II, it's another Michael Bay film

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are the stars in a sequel to Bad Boys a film that probably nobody wanted or needed to have a sequel .  But the real star of this movie is the director Michael Bay.  

Bay indulges himself with over the top action scenes in let's face it a story that absolutely no one could ever care about.  Smith and Lawrence are Miami cops trying to stop a big drug gang.  But they really are just a couple of pawns in Bay's action chessboard of a film.

At 147 minutes this crime/action stuff is probably way to long for it's own good.  But if you're in the mood for Bay's brand of film making, well there are worse ways to waste your time.

 

 

The so called screenplay was by Ron Shelton and Jerry Stab.

2104 - TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION - # 4 in the series

Coming in close to 3 hours.  It's hard to believe we've come this far in this rock em sock em robot extravaganza since the 1984 cartoon series that I believe aired in syndication.  The original cartoon series was cheaply made with limited animation and simplistic plots for kids, primarily young boys.  It was all about selling toys back then.

30 years later this series is now a big budget Hollywood production although the plots are still about on the level of the cartoon series.  2007 was the first appearance of the Transformers directed by the master of large scale action, Michael Bay.  Bay has now invested about 7 years of his life in this series but since the films have made so much money I can imagine he has been well paid.  Come to think of it, I've been watching these films for 7 years now and nobody is paying me for my time.

Sick at home with food poisoning of all things, this seemed like the perfect non think film to watch while my temperature climbed to 102.  However after about an hour of robots throwing each other around  I grabbed my laptop and spent the rest of the running time of the film wasting my time on the internet while the computer generated robots constantly bashed and smashed each other.

It seems like these big robot movies have kind of worn out their welcome but this latest Transformers movie has made a lot of money guaranteeing that there will be a Transporters 5.  But let it be said this is not a good popcorn film.

165 minutes.

2011 - TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, or more crap for the treadmill

Unbelievably 2 hours and 30 minutes of robots bashing and busting each other and anything else that gets in their way.  This is the third in the Shia LaBeouf trilogy not to be confused with the Apu trilogy or Pagnol's Fanny trilogy.

The appeal for Michael Bay seems to be in staging elaborate scenes of improbable mass destruction while slobbering over the latest female flavor of the moment Rosie Huntington something or other.

The third film in this series is basically the same as the first two films no better or worse than the previous films.

154 minutes.

2009 - TRANSFORMERS REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, or watching hard core porn this weekend

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is a long but very busy summer movie. It's not about giant robots from outer space. It's not about a new dimension in science fiction story telling. It's not about trailer trash Barbie doll Megan Fox who struggles to act. It's not about Shia LeBouf as a college bound boy who takes a detour to "Transformer Heaven" on the way to his Bachelor of Arts degree. It's a hard core military porno movie.

 

  

 

The whole reason for this film is for men to get their rocks off watching scenes of tough talking Patton like generals deploying their troops while sitting in front of giant TV monitors at the Pentagon. The generals say things like, "get me Central Command, clear that airspace for an immediate drop, and drop smoke for the air strike." It's got lots of scenes of soldiers staging up for attacks with their cool weapons. 

 

I will skip the obvious metaphor of the big gun as a penis substitute because anyone can make that connection, but who couldn't help but notice that the civilian put in charge of the elite military unit was clearly an impotent homosexual bent on ruining everything the military had been training for. This was a cunning commentary on the need for a continued persecution of gays in the United States military. There is even a mention of President Obama being sent to an underground hideout because just for the record he is clearly a wimp as well. George Bush didn't run and hide after 911, I think.

 In the end the United States military and I want to make this clear, the UNITED STATES military saves the world from the evil robots. We got no help from NATO or any of those worthless Third World countries. We...the UNITED STATES military won the battle, the nice giant robots helped a little bit but we dropped all the bombs on the Iranians or Decepticons or what ever they were called, it doesn't really matter. The final scene is of the cast sailing away on an aircraft carrier into the sunset, because in the end that's the way it had to be. It was a perfect ending to help celebrate our nation's birthday. After the movie ended I went outside and fondled my son's green army men for a long time, it was very satisfying. 

Running time 149 minutes, written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. 

2001 - PEARL HARBOR another big budget mess

Pearl Harbor was yet another big  Michael Bay film. He was shooting for an epic love story against the background of the Japanese attack on December 7th. Making a movie like this is a tricky business, a filmmaker has to have a pretty strong story to hang against a big event like the Pearl Harbor attack. This movie doesn't really have that going for it.


Pearl Harbor is the typical love triangle between "two friends and the woman they love". The one friend is presumed lost in combat, so his buddy moves in on his girlfriend to comfort her, and well one thing leads to another, the girlfriend gets pregnant, the dead friend returns from the dead and we end up with a big mess on our hands. This is the kind of junk that television soap operas could do in their sleep, but for some reason the screenwriter couldn't seem to work up the energy to make this interesting.

The love story is resolved by having the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, destroy the United States pacific fleet, kill thousands of sailors and blow up most of Hawaii which seems like overkill to resolve everyone's personal and romantic problems.

There are a few positives to this movie.   Nobody stages big action scenes like Michael Bay, he is the master. You actually get a feeling for what the attack might have been like that day, with the planes flying in low, the men trapped in the sinking ships, and the panic of the US military during the attack.

As usual the Japanese military plans the attack moving little toy ships around a big map, and a lot of the dialog is pretty lame. The actors actually are pretty decent. Ben Affleck does a good job as the guy who returns from the dead. The woman playing the nurse and girlfriend of Ben Affleck, isn't bad.   Jon Voight is good as FDR, as is Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Doolittle.  What's his name, Josh Hartnett makes no impression at all, but he is a nice pretty boy.   Dan Ackroyd is extremely miscast as a naval intelligence officer, and shatters the believably of the film whenever he's on screen.

Pearl Harbor is a failure but it's not the worst epic ever put on screen. However it doesn't appear to be what was intended when they filmed it.

Written by Randall Wallace, the running time is an epic 183 minutes