Transformers: Dark of the Moon *

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

John Malkovich, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Frances McDormand

Condemning a Transformers movie for its lacking qualities has become as expected as having the very same movies squeeze every penny from the entire world population when they are released. What is it about Michael Bay's destruction extravaganzas that results so appealing and entertaining to people from China to Chile?

In theory it could be our everlasting desire to see our world being blown to pieces but perhaps when it comes to a Bay movie, it might be something else, perhaps all we want to see is how deeper will he sink cinema as an art form.

This is of course a rather snobbish theory and probably has nothing to do with what actually goes inside audiences minds as they watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a movie so preposterously bad that it can only be described as an exercise in extreme bad taste. From its historical revision premise that attributes the entire space race to a mysterious lunar landing caused by the Autobots, to its waste of perfectly good thespian talent (Frances McDormand, the bills must be raking up if you're in this), the film constantly pushes buttons in just how mediocre and shamelessly inefficient a movie can be.

Most of the story centers once again on the charmless Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) who has been dumped by Megan Fox's character and is on the rebound with British import Carly, played by the oh-so-stunningly-beautiful Huntington-Whiteley.

How the average looking Sam gets these beauties? One can never say and this is even alluded to in a cringe worthy scene where his own mother (Julie White) asks him if it's because he has a big dick.

However, the more clever the movie thinks it's getting, the more perversely putrid it gets. By casting Dempsey as a villain for example Bay assumes he's bending some sort of genre conventions and pushing the boundaries of summer movie magic, when the truth is that he doesn't know how to design a character, much less direct an actor with enough subtlety and nuance to make us believe their back stories and emotional motives.

You may say, we don't go for Transformers for the emotional content but even as a spectacle, the movie remains derivative and rather ugly looking.

For all its fanfare about state-of-the-art CGI and 3D, the film looks like more of what we got in the first installments, with the robots' transformation only being slightly more impressive than the lust with which Bay shoots them in their car incarnation. Crap, after all, looks the same in two or more dimensions.

Worst of all might be the ideological content of the film, because for all its talks of alien forces and non-country specific references, Transformers are essentially a reactionary representation of the United States of America. Bay, who isn't the cleverest cookie in the political cinema jar, tries to turn his robotic giants into saviors of the planet, when all they really do is provide him with an easy way out of saying things like he thinks them.

In this one, the outrageous imperialism of the robots is obvious when after pretending to leave the planet (Bay tries to make them both saviors and migrant martyrs) they return and Optimus Prime declares how they will go against the law in order to defend freedom.

This idea isn't only disgusting because in the previous installment Bay gleefully destroyed the entire history of the Middle East but because in this, of all years, the idea of military invasion and the perpetuation of military colonies results completely tacky.

But fear not, Bay doesn't only offend the international community. In the film's centerpiece he uses the city of Chicago as a playground for destruction. With some scenes disturbingly recalling the attacks of September 11, you can't hep but wonder where exactly does this man fail to see how much he crosses the line.

Bay is like the conservative teenager who decides to join the army because a videogame taught him how cool it would be to kill people. Then again, what can you expect from a man who in one moment has an octopus-like robot performing something that resembles bukkake on poor Huntington-Whiteley's character?

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps *1/2

Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan
Eli Wallach, Frank Langella, John Buffalo Mailer, Susan Sarandon

Regardless of how many times you may have seen Splendor in the Grass, the moment when Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) learns about the Great Depression never fails to turn your heart upside down.
Such a moment was supposed to occur in the fractured Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, as it deals with recent economic disasters that have affected the world in unexpected ways. We expect it to come when we see Gordon Gekko (Douglas) being released from prison in late 2001 and we expect it to occur again when the movie jumps forward in time to the chaotic 2008.
However nothing really happens and we are left wondering exactly what was the point in making this film.
On the surface it's basically a remake of Wall Street. Gordon Gekko's time in jail nothing but a MacGuffin so that he can regain the prominence he had during his 80's peak.
He writes a book called Is Greed Good? and the masses flock to him like a messiah. Among the crowds is idealistic Jacob Moore (LaBeouf) a wide-eyed proprietary trader who admires Gekko and wishes to be like him. Essentially LaBeouf is playing Charlie Sheen.
Of course, this being the aughts and all, besides being one greedy little bastard he also has a thing for the environment and for his girlfriend Winnie (Mulligan), Gekko's estranged daughter who has gone all Elektra on him by becoming a leftist, money-hating, journalist.
To say that nothing much happens in this sequel would be an understatement given how most of the film consists of scenes where the young Jake and the old sharks (which besides Douglas include Brolin, Langella and a scene stealing Eli Wallach) discuss vengeance, power and money like characters straight out of Clash of the Titans.
Other than the awkwardness of the plot, we often wonder what drew Oliver Stone back to this themes. Throughout the movie his direction seems to be trying to find itself.
Part of him is so in love with Wall Street that he seems to think he invented the 80's. Winnie tells Jake "you're so Wall Street it makes me sick" referring to both the actual stock market and the movie which isn't as iconic as Stone wants to think.
Another part of him seems to feel proud about having predicted back in 1987 that the world's economy would just continue collapsing until we all approached doomsday; however, this part of him also feels guilty and like Jake tries to atone through innumerable mentions of what alternative energy can do for the planet.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps doesn't know whether to condemn or to glorify and its overlong running time makes us sit through what ultimately is an unnecessary debate.
The one thing that rarely fails is Douglas. Even if Stone tries hard to humanize him (Gekko says "I'm human" more than once) the actor tries his best to remind us that first and foremost Gordon Gekko was so effective because he wasn't human.
Precisely because of his larger-than-life greed it was that he became who he was and not for one minute should we expect him to be turned into a politically correct version of materialism.
This is best embodied in a pathetic end during which Stone once again puts Gekko in the wrong kind of spotlight and we're left wondering if he's making some sort of comment about how easily human beings give "bailouts" to those who have wronged us (which would've turned the film into a twisted, great satire) or if he's just turning Gordon into the Grinch.
It's safe to say that the idea of Gekko getting the last laugh is something 80's Stone would've made, what we end up with right now is a reminder that he doesn't make them like he used to.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen *

Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox
Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

What is the difference between Michael Bay and an 8 year-old? An 8 year-old doesn't need 200 million dollars to create chaos. Cymbal roll.
In the sequel to the highly successful 2007 film, Bay squeezes every CGI and crazy pyrotechnic effect he can get out of his budget, completely forgetting about things such as plot and character and delivers the remains of a film clouded by smoke and loud sound effects.
In between action sequences, change of locales and unnecessary scenes we can put together the pieces of a plot in which the Autobots and Decepticons are at war once again.
This time the Decepticons are after a centuries' old device which will help them destroy Earth and perpetuate their existence.
The Autobots who have made an alliance with humans are trying to stop them. Meanwhile Sam (LaBeouf) is trying to lead a normal life and moves to college where he tries to keep a long distance relationship with his girlfriend Mikaela (Fox).
While in the last film Bay at least tried to deliver something that resembled coherence, this sequel is all about going big.
Therefore the robots get new parts, the battles are longer and the running time expands to a gargantuan and horrible two and a half hours that culminate in Egypt.
And Michael Bay is certainly no David Lean, so he fills each minute of film with pure junk. Pointing out why the film is so bad may not be as worthy as wondering how does Bay get away with stuff like this?
There's racist robots (twin Chevrolets Mudflap and Skids), John Turturro's ass in a jock and a little Decepticon humping Fox's leg.
All things which have come to be associated with teenage male audiences for whom sexual fantasies equal slow motion explosions, war and Playboy centerfolds.
But haven't these things become associated with them because of people like Bay? His movies have, shockingly, become some of the highest grossing films in history and his target audience is that of young males.
But who came first, them or Bay? That question is as enigmatic and troublesome as all the plot holes, cursing and gross robot actions in the movie.
Then there's the whole issue of how much pleasure Bay seems to get out of destroying historical landmarks, even if it's fake. This time the Egyptian pyramids get the crap beaten out of them, which makes what happened in the Iraq museum during the invasion less of a mystery.
Bay has decided his audience enjoys history being destroyed, having a disdain for authority and education as something "cool" and filling up emptiness with shots of Megan Fox's breasts bouncing in slow motion.
If this isn't enough to make you sick, the thought that you actually saw this movie will.
A Decepticon refers to Fox as " hot but not so bright" and that's about the only authentic thing you will get out of this movie.

Eagle Eye *

Director: D.J. Caruso
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan
Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Ethan Embry

An exercise in preposterousness, "Eagle Eye" might very well be the most expensive rant against the Patriot Act ever conceived.
Yet to give this film any sort of political connotations is to shower it with the kindness and goodwill it doesn't care to provide its audience.
LaBeouf stars as Jerry Shaw, a twenty something slacker who comes home one day to find his apartment filled with explosives, weapons and forged documents.
His cell phone rings and a female voice warns him that the FBI will be there any minute and that he must escape.
Simultaneously, young single mother Rachel Holloman (Monaghan) is contacted by the same female voice who warns her that her little son will be killed unless she follows specific orders.
Soon Rachel and Jerry find themselves teaming up to complete the mission given by the mysterious voice, who contacts them through strangers' cell phones, TV screens, aiport signs, moving cranes and every other device short of a coconut phone or smoke signals.
The unlikely team finds itself travelling across the country while being followed by FBI agents (Thornton, Embry and Dawson each as exchangeable as the other) and uncovering a horrific plan forged by the most unexpected source. And not because of the source itself, but the channel, which is as lazy an excuse for a filmmaker as the "it was all a dream" device in literature.
LaBeouf is as always a charming and semi-reliable screen presence (although you may sometimes wonder how many shocked expressions he can come up with during one sequence), Monaghan is nothing but ornament and the rest of the characters could've been played by computers and nobody would've known the difference.
If there is any political connotaion within this film it might come in the opposing creative forces that are so obvious watching what the director was going for (and judging from his filmography it's easy to guess) and the bigger need to give the movie some brains.
Because "Eagle Eye" would be a decent, popcorn thriller if it didn't try at some point to become meaningful (which one can't help but assume was influence of executive producer Steven Spielberg), because whatever it thinks it has to say gets lost among the tons of car chases, explosions and quick cuts.
While Caruso obviously wanted to pay homage to the "ordinary man in extraordinary situation" brilliance of Hitchcock (even if LaBeouf is definitely no Jimmy Stewart and Thornton no Cary Grant), the rest of the plot feels like it's trying too hard to expose just how awful and scary technology is.
The director steals key moments from "North by Northwest" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much", but before you can say "que será será", there's a flash of "2001: a Space Odyseey" and the film has become self parody.
Going out of "Eagle Eye", after spending half the movie texting your friends warning them not to see it, you'll realize that the only thing it leaves you with is the bittersweet aftertaste that comes with realizing that even a computer would vote Democrat.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ***

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett

Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone

The "Indiana Jones" films have always been successful for one important reason; with their gleeful combination of excitement, vintage serial aesthetics and pure star power, they make you feel like it's the first time you've been to the movies.

The series kickstarted more than a quarter of century ago with the flawless "Raiders of the Lost Ark" which was followed by two other films, in what turned the main character into the ultimate adventure hero.

Now at 65, Ford reprises his role as the khaki, whip and Fedora clad, snake hating archaelogist with the same refreshing energy and charisma he possessed twenty years ago.

Following what has become a formula, the film opens with the Paramount logo turning into a real mountain, this time set in Nevada (which instantly reminds you of Richard Dreyfuss) where a group of KGB agents, led by Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko (a superb Blanchett in full Ninotchka before Paris mode) have kidnapped Indy and take him to an army vault where he is forced to help them find a mysterious crate.

After failing to stop the Communists, surviving a nuclear attack and being suspected by the FBI of having Red liaisons, Indy is fired from the university where he works in and sets off to find Harold Oxley (Hurt), his mentor who mysteriously disappeared while doing research in South America.

All of this, of course, has happened within the first thirty minutes which also introduce us to Mutt Williams (LaBeouf) a greaser who becomes Indy's sidekick, the search of the mysterious title skulls in Perú and the return of Marion Ravenwood (Allen who is perhaps the best thing in the movie).

By no means a reinvention, this is a direct throwback to what we have come to expect of Indy's films. including the visuals (director of photography Janusz Kaminski emulates Douglas Slocombe's work from the first three films and the visual gags paying homage to the Lucas/Spielberg filmography are a joy to behold).

In a constantly changing world, where threats come in unexpected shapes and forms, it's somehow relieving to return to a time and place where enemies came with distinctive uniforms and accents.

What's ironic is that as insulting and politically incorrect as that sounds at the center of the film lies the contradiction that is Imperialist ingenuity, something so well concocted and marketed that it ends up appealing to everyone because it touches the unique ground of human excitement.

Not to say that "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is American propaganda, because even if it reduces Communist Russians to villain stereotypes it has established that none of this is real and for a Spielberg film it's even a bit critical of the era.

When Indiana gets blacklisted, we see a country so blinded by fear that it didn't care to make a difference between right and wrong and when later we see a 50's archetypical American suburb get smashed to bits by nuclear testing we come closer to grasping the terror behind it.

Not even Mayans where the Inca ought to be or the continuous need to raise the level on stunts and pyrotechnics will take you out of this ride.

And that's the other thing that makes "Indiana Jones" so fantastic: their ability to exist in a world where everything can, and probably will, happen.

A parallel universe of sorts where Indian, Mayan and Christian deities all get to share the spotlight with bizarre military plans based on conspiracy theories.

And a universe for that matter where a senior citizen is able to reignite the engines of our deepest fantasies, the ones we grew up to, the ones in which we were astronauts, spies or archaelogists and the world seemed to be but the next adventure.