Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

There’s so many mind-crushing implausibilities and ridiculous wrong turns in Michael Bay’s overblown summer blockbuster “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” I could write for days and not scratch the surface of mess. Senseless side plots, useless red herrings, painful comedic stops into lunacy and gay rape jokes, the insistence on objectifying woman as machinery, and an orange-hued John Malkovich as an insipid boss are just some of the high-lowlights in this outing.

But they are not the WTF cherry bomb to any thinking person’s brain. That prize belongs to the sappy end credits song that takes us out the theater door after a 2 hour 35 minute extravaganza of CGI robot smack downs, ceaseless noise and slo-mo explosions. The offending tune is a light FM love tune from a gone-soft rock band named Linkin Park. “Iridescent” is the title, a song made for the “Twilight” crowd. That’s how Bay has you leave a film dedicated to hardware, guns and bombs that spends its last hour tearing Chicago apart block by block, skyscraper by skyscraper, reigning down fire, metal and devastation with ceaseless aplomb. Why not a Pink Floyd classic?

“Dark of the Moon” – I can’t read that without mentally inserting “Side” in the title, speaking of Pink Floyd -- is Bay’s third, longest and biggest film in the franchise about intergalactic robots with the capability to morph into trucks, cars and other objects, warring over the Earth.

Its reckless plot kick-starts with a cool stab of alternate history story-telling quite similar to the recent “X-Men: First Class.” Dig it: The U.S./Soviet race to the moon was a scam, a cover-up con. Why? An alien spaceship belonging to the Autobots – the good guy robots – crash landed on the moon in 1961. The Russians and Americans space raced each other to find the goods first. American won. (Or did they?) Now, the Decepticons -- the bad robots -- are betting that hidden goods at the moon wreckage will allow them to rule humankind.

So “Moon” boils down to the same plot as its predecessors: The bad guys covet a doohickeything that will allow them to rule humankind. Tractor-trailer morphing Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen) and his Autobot pals are there to say, “I don’t think so,” snap a metal finger, and go guns blazing. As Autobot friend Sam Witwicky, Shia LaBeouf absolutely will run in slow-motion across a devastated city, and amid fire, rubble and magic-hour lighting, dismantle/knock over/destroy the doohickeything. He has done this twice before, Sam (Shia) repeats ad nauseam. Plot spolied? Spare me. This isn’t “Winter’s Bone.”

And now here’s where I admit what I cannot hide: I surrendered to Bay’s ear-grinding zooms and booms, and peel a layer off our eyeballs with million dollar CGI shots, and flag-waving bravado against a sunset.

The exact scene: A U.S. Special Forces unit jumps from an aircraft and glides into downtown Chicago. The soldiers soar like eagles amid explosions. We get a helmet cam view, close up and so real, vertigo hits. I gasped with glee. I should have gone 3D. I didn’t. My loss. Bay is just getting started, though.

Another one: In a scene that defies physics (logic died in the first film, did you miss that?), a massive boa constrictor-like Decepticon slithers up a skyscraper, and squeezes it, sending half the structure over on its side, crashing into other buildings. It’s a kick-ass “Holy shit!” scene that should win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

That out of the way, I can go back to the drubbing. Bay is incapable of making a subtle movie, or even a coherent movie, and most likely edits his film with a utility knife on the back of a Red Bull beverage dispenser, in the dark. More than a dozen characters and useless asides could have been cut with no consequence.

This third helping is leaps better than the awful second installment, yet it’s still far short of the first “Transformers.” That film had spark. Despite the handful of “wow” scenes that pulled me in here, the insanely long running time and frenzied high-on-glue pace of every single scene feels more akin to a sensory overload pummeling.

Malkovich, Frances McDormand and John Turturro all race to win a Golden Ham Award in supporting roles. Turturro wins by looking into the camera and laughing hysterically. LaBeouf plays a man as only a horny 12-year-old boy can imagine a man, he hangs out with robots and soldiers all day, has no job, and lives in a dream loft with a hot and always willing girlfriend (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley taking over for Megan Fox in an interchangeable role).

LaBeouf irritates here more than he did in “Indiana Jones and the Bad Movie About the Alien Skulls,” a true feat, while Huntington-Whitley does what she is told, by Bay, which means pout lips, bend over, spread your legs when getting out of a car, you know, the kind of woman only a horny 12-year-old boy can imagine. or Bay. C+

Quiz Show (1994)

Directed by Robert Redford and penned by Paul Attanasio, “Quiz Show” details the “TV is God” bubble pop that no one – or not enough people – ever heard. On the well-loved 1950s game show “Twenty-One,” a guy named Herbie Stempel (John Turturro) is winning night after night. But his nerdy, Jewish-by-way-of-Queens persona doesn’t jive for advertisers. Herb is forced out. Enter Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), a Columbia University instructor from a dreamy New England family and with movie-star looks to boot. “Quiz Show” details how this show and these guys came crashing down to earth, because it’s all fake. Redford spins many plates – TV ethics, education, bigotry, the quest to surpass one’s father, and pure corruption of power -- and does so perfectly. The 1950s have rarely been re-created with such loving detail and rhythm, and with such a steely eye on the façade of America as the pillar of truth and success, operated by men who only want money and fame. Best scene: At tale’s end, Stempel looks on with glee and then horror as Van Doren is ripped to shreds, with his parents watching helpless, by angry reporters. Redford’s view of truth on television is timeless. A

You Don't Mess With the Zohan (2008)

Getting through the first chunk of the Adam Sandler comedy/action spoof "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" is painful. I clicked it off when Sandler's character, an Israeli super soldier with unlimited strength, sodomized himself with a fish within four minutes of the start. Yet, bored the next night, I went back again.

The result is not too terrible.

The plot: Zohan -- the ultimate kick-ass Jew soldier -- dreams of coming to America to become a hair stylist. He fakes his death and steals away on a plane to the United States. He lands a job at a dinky hair salon, owned by an Arabic beauty, and in Warren Beatty style, bangs all the sex-starved female customers. Who all happen to be 60-plus. Those faux sex scenes are over-the-top, with a spray hose, shampoo and various hair creams talking the place of body parts and fluids. The stupid action comes in again when old foes -- including Rob Schneider -- figure out the lathering lothario's con.

"Zohan" is overly long, overly crude and wildly uneven, but the premise is funny and the political satire on Arabic/Jewish fighting is welcome. At one point a character insists that the religious foes have been fighting for 2,000 years, so it has to end sometime soon. The film doesn't end soon. I'm not sure if I watched the director's cut, but the near-two-hour length is a chore.

If the writing did't constantly veer toward middle school boy's bathroom humor, it'd be a good and sharp political comedy. But it isn't. Mariah Carey appears as herself, proofing again she has zero screen charisma. John Turturro, once an Oscar caliber actor, debases himself as a kinda sorta terrorist. C-

Barton Fink (1991)

The title character of "Barton Fink" -- a twisted "comedy" from brilliant brothers Joel and Ethan Coen -- finds himself in hell, but disguised as World War II-era Hollywood. Fink (John Turturro) is a World War II-era New York playwright on the cusp of a single hit and is whisked away to Hollywood to work in "pictures."

If anyone has any doubts about the distaste that the Coens have for Hollywood big shots and big money, this is the answer. They hate the place. Fink is hired to write a script for a wrestling movie, and is quickly told that the plot, characters and tone is irrelevant, as long as he includes a dame or an orphan. People love dames and they love orphans, he's told. When Fink suggests why not both, he's given a stare of death by his new boss (the hilarious Michael Lerner). If Fink's job seems hellish, his hotel truly is a pit of fire and sulfur. The hotel clerk (Steve Buscemi) is a twig of a man, who appears covered in dust. Every inch of the hotel also appears covered in grime, untouched since the turn of the century. Even the sick green wallpaper is peeling off the walls. Then there's his neighbor, an insurance salesman (John Goodman) who won't stop talking. Not that it matters. The Coens aren't easy on their lonely writer, either. He claims to write for and about the common man, like Goodman, but he really only cares about himself.

A baffling twist comes midway through this comedy, one that could only work in a Coen Brothers film. Or Hitchcock. From there this seemingly broad, neat Hollywood satire (and hotel comedy spoof) turns dark and hot. And I do mean hot, as the hotel becomes an inferno. And unlike badly done CGI films, the flames here appear (are?) real -- the actors swelter and turn red in the blistering, flaming heat. This is a genius film: you don't see the end coming, but when it does it's sadly ironic, and every line bleeds quotable classic. (One complaint: "What's in the box!?!")

The Coens have never made a truly awful film, but their misfires -- "The Hudsucker Proxy," "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The LadyKillers" -- all skated in line with big-studio Hollywood fare. Or close to it. The winners, be they comedy or not -- "Fargo," "Miller's Crossing," "Blood Simple" and the new classic "No Country For Old Men" -- fell far outside the Blockbuster route. I'm probably grasping at straws to say that Fink represents a Ethan/Joel mash up if the brothers ever turned Hollywood hack or New York sap, but they still have their soul. Thank goodness. A