Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is a 170-minute endurance test thud thud thuding loud as slick CGI and slo-mo explosions litter the screen with buildings, trains, and cars crashing and people running about, always at magic hour. In Bay’s world, every day has five sunsets. The original cast is out, replaced by Mark Wahlberg as a Texas inventor/redneck/father with a Boston accent who happens upon wounded alien robot hero Optimus Prime -– stoic Autobot leader -– and ends up chased by Uncle Sam thugs led by Kelsey Grammer. Our heroes bolt to Utah then Chicago and then Hong Kong, because in China everyone knows kung fu. And Asia means box office coin. Thousands of people die as robots fight and Wahlbeg’s dad saves his pretty teen girl (Nicola Peltz) whose ass Bay glares at, endlessly. The script talks the death of original cinema early on, but “T4” unironically regurgitates films 1-3 and stacks bewildering logic lapses one upon the other. Greatest jaw-dropper: Beijing and Hong Kong within a short drive. Even by the greatest allowance for “dumb” fun and the occasional jolt of a cool image (all those sunsets), Bay’s films are cinema’s death. Soulless, brainless empty robots. D

Real Steel (2011)

“Real Steal” is a deft genre mash-up: “Rocky” meets “Transformers,” with a heavy dose of “The Champ” tacked on for good measure, and Hugh Jackman in the lead. My film snob tastes melted away. The boy inside me cheered. The simple story: In the near future, human boxing is outlawed, replaced by a Michael Bay fever dream: Massive robot boxers going at each other like Ali and Foreman in the ring, no blood or brain damage, just busted-up (and recyclable) metal junk. Jackman is an ex-boxer named Charlie who has gone from dishing and taking KO’s in the ring to running robot boxers for hayseed crowds. Here comes the Underdog Redemption kick as Charlie has an estranged son named Max who, A) Needs a dad after mom dies, and B) Happens to be a junior engineer and avid gamer. Hokey? Much. So what. This is a CGI-heavy effects film that doesn’t let computer wizardly bulldoze story and character. During the climax, Shawn Levy’s camera pans away from the robot action and focuses on the human players instead. We care about these people, lead robot Atom is a blast, and as Max, Dakota Goyo upstages Jackman and the CGI. KO. A-

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+

2009: Best and Worst

The Best*
1. Where the Wild Things Are. The classic book about a wild child growing up becomes a new classic film about the same. Spike Jonze really needs to work more.
2. (Tie) District 9 and Moon. Two sci-fi flicks that remind us this genre can be as smart as it is cool-looking. I can't decide which I like more.
3. Up. Pixar does it again. The 5-minute marriage montage is beautiful and heart-breaking.
4. Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino returns with an alternate history World War II flick that's cooler than fact. An amazing trick.
5. The Hurt Locker. It might skim on war facts and discipline, but this Iraq drama burns deep and long. The opening is unforgettable.
6. Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire. Amazing performances shine with utmost love and evil in this shocking film.
7. Gomorrah. A near-documentary take on mafia crime in modern Italy. I watched it twice back-to-back.
8. (Tie) Coraline & The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Stop-motion animation flicks that brought out the child in me. "Coraline" is absolute genius.
9. Up in the Air. Jason Reitman brilliantly works in real-life laid off workers amid a George Clooney satire about American jobs.
10. Avatar. No one does Hollywood blockbuster like James Cameron. Movie fun galore, and the first and only 3-D must-see.

The Worst*
5. The Twilight Saga: New Moon. How one film can set feminism back by decades. A horrid example for young women.
4. Gamer. The poster child of mindless, soulless violence and debauchery. Ugly, too. I hated this movie.
3. Old Dogs. A family comedy so bad you can see Robin Williams sweat. John Travolta has lost all sense.
2. The Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day. The vile sequel in a franchise made for bigots who think Jesus packed guns, not love.
1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The longest, most painful film I saw all year. My head literally hurt. And I still can't tell the robots apart.

*Always subject to change, and expand.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Michael Bay out Michael Bays himself in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” And that’s not a compliment.

When the end credits rolled on this 150-minute marathon of confusing CGI robot smack downs, massive explosions, fart and pot jokes, and gratuitous girl butt and booby shots, I was exhausted. Not mentally. There’s nothing mental about this film. No, my eyes ached, my ears ringed and my head bobbled about on my sore neck. And days later I’m still not sure if I can tell Megtatron from Starscream.

Who are those guys? Not that Michael Bay really cares, but they are part of Decepticons – a villainous alien robot species bent on wiping out Earth. The Autobots, meanwhile, are the righteous counterpoint – good robots dedicated to saving all life. Both robotic teams “hide” among us by disguising themselves as cars, trucks, planes, construction equipment, coffee makers and anything else big or small, mechanical and electronic.

But, if you’ve seen the first “Transformers” film from 2007, you already know this. And you know Optimus Prime, a robot that can turn into a Peterbilt tractor trailer, is leader of the Autobots and friends with Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a California teen. You also sure as heck know those gratuitous girly butt and booby shots belong to Sam’s girlfriend, played by Megan Fox. I can’t remember her character’s name. Not that it matters either. Bay certainly doesn’t care about her name, or anything Fox can contribute, other than standing still while a ground-level camera pan focuses in where her shorts meet her crotch.

The first “Transformers” was silly high-octane action flick stuffed with the clichés of Bay’s past films -- slow-mo action shots of people running, roving cameras swirling around gap-mouthed actors, and hard-core war porn celebrating all things tough and American. But it also was infused with that “what’s next?” magical spark wonder that gooses so much science fiction. I liked it, despite my movie snob self.

But “Fallen” is missing that spark. It’s burdened with those Bay clichés, all cranked to 100,000, driven from start to finish with a relentless pace that never allows the film to breathe or the viewer (or even characters) to take in the scope of what’s happening. This plot follows exactly that of the first: The Decepticons want an ancient thingamajig hidden at a world landmark that will give them great power over the Autobots and the universe. Rather than Megatron leading the evil charge, though, there is The Fallen – the “first” Decepticon, a cross between The Emperor in “Star Wars” and Lucifer. (Yes, Optimus Prime gets his savior moment.)

So, what does Bay care about? He is a “shot” director. By that, I mean he only cares about setting up the coolest single camera shot ever put on film, with no concern for how it contributes to the story, or character development or anything else on screen. If it looks cool, it goes in. Sunsets in this world last hours. This is why the endless action montages don’t matter worth a gigabyte despite everything CGI looking impressive and shiny. Almost nothing adds up or gels, and I’ll be damned if I could tell the Autobots apart from the Decepticons during any given fight. I’ve never seen an action film where I spent more time figuring who’s kicking whose butt, rather than staring in awe of how that butt is being kicked.

As the robotic faces and bodies are interchangeable on our heroes, so are most of the personalities. Only Optimus and Bumblebee (a Corvette here, despite the name) stand out among dozens of metal characters, each one more irritating than the previous. As for The Fallen, he has to be the biggest let down in my recent film memory, even out-disappointing Darth Maul who went belly up in George Lucas’ “Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace” before you could blink. Actually, I take that back. At least you could tell Darth Maul from the scenery. The personalities of a band of U.S. soldiers also are equally flat. If they all died, I wouldn’t care.

But that’s typical Bay for you. All pulverizing shock and awe with nothing to back it up.

One kicker I can’t get out of my head: Early in the film, the Decepticons send a robot spy in the guise of a sorority party girl to track Sam. The girl certainly looks real (Bay’s camera probes her body as it does Fox’s. Seriously, this man must base his whole concept of women on old Van Halen videos), so this means the villains have perfected the art of mimicking humans – flesh, weight, skin tone, saliva and organs. Not just creating 4-D holograms of motorists and pilots. And once sorority robogirl is decimated, the point is never brought up again. It just falls by the way side like so much in the film (how ‘bout that satellite?). It could have goosed the hell out of this franchise: What if … oh, never mind. I’m nit-picking script points and not thinking of that sweet orange-hued closing shot of a sunset, with our heroes on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Sure was pretty. And in slow mo. And meaningless. A true Michael Bay moment. D+