Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012)

Who knew Dreamworks’ animated adventure-comedy "Madagascar" (2005) would churn out two sequels and a cartoon series? The first movie was solid fun as four Central Park Zoo animals -– a lion (Ben Stiller), a zebra (Chris Rock), a giraffe (David Schwimmer) and a hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) -– and a pack of penguins made a break for freedom and ended up in, well, Madagascar. The sequel was a cash-grab mess. "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" is marginally better as our heroes make a break for, well, Europe, as a means to get back to NYC. They join a circus train and bring on the wrath of a rabid animal control officer (Frances McDormand). The animation veers from wildly imaginative (Rome!) to a 3D gonzo neon acid trip for children too young to know the meaning of acid trip. As with most Dreamworks works, the movie relies on sight gags, but the creators trash their best idea: A tiger who can jump through a wedding band. McDormand’s villain is a hoot, yes, but the sight of her taking a saw to the hero lion’s neck veers close to Daniel Pearl territory. B-

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Ten minutes into “Moonrise Kingdom,” I realized I had my fill of Wes Anderson, the Gen X darling filmmaker who tells tales of quirky hipsters and outsiders using ironic air quotes peppered with hip art deco sets and hip costumes. I’m sick of all of Anderson’s hipness. The guy aims and fails for some aura of New Wave French film with a story about pre-teen love birds (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) on the run from parents, police, and Khaki Scout Troop leaders in 1960s New England. To woo youngsters, Anderson tosses in fires, floods, storms, impaled dogs, and so much forced acting from famous actors (Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis, and Edward Norton among them), that it all feels like the over-the-top high school play that closed out “Rushmore,” a damn fine film. Yes, Jason Schwartzman appears. So does Bob Balaban as a narrator who changes camera lights. The obnoxious music score almost drowns out the realization that the central arc of Hayward as a beauty hip (again!) to Euro culture falling for a sad nerd is bullshit. Anderson’s kingdom of cool -– I loved “Fantastic Mr. Fox” -- has gone tepid. I’m out. C-

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+

Fargo (1996)

The Coen Brothers, whom I eternally adore, should have won an armful of Oscars for “Fargo,” a most excellent and most bleak comedy/thriller that doubles as a morality play so good, you could play it in church. If your place of worship allowed the screening of films were men are fed to a wood chipper. (Hey, it’s not like “Exodus” is squeaky clean, people. Roll with me.)

Set in northern Midwest, “Fargo” follows a loser car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) who hires two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in order to get a ransom from his rich father-in-law. Even Buscemi’s dim bulb doesn’t get that device, asking: “Why not just borrow the money?” As Mutt and Jeff later flee with the kidnapped wife, they kill three people on an icy length of North Dakota highway. Thus enters whip-smart local Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand, who napped an Oscar) as a hugely pregnant police officer investigating the deaths.

The Coen Brothers clearly have their tongues firmly planted in cheek for most of this “true story” that plays like a grisly ode to Hitchcock’s best, and a satire of greed and stupidity. But damn if they don’t play the neatest card trick by having Marge and her painter husband (John Carroll Lynch of “Zodiac”) be the pinnacle of a moral, loving middle-aged couple. And then Marge gets to deliver a lecture on the senseless violence and greed that makes up much of the 90 minutes of plot. This kind of film can’t be duplicated. And many have tried. It was my favorite film of 1996.

The whole cast is top notch, but it’s Macy who stands out in a role that should have won him an Oscar. His Jerry is a clueless weasel who’s drowned even before he jumps into the swimming pool. And, yet, Macy makes it impossible to hate the man. His frantic emergency call to the old man is hilarious. A

Blood Simple (1984) and Miller's Crossing (1990)

I love me some Coen Brothers. Love 'em, and here's two of their best. Freakin' awesome films.

I recently read an interview where director Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire") discusses the brothers Joel and Ethan. "Blood Simple," he says, is their first and best film. It's hard to disagree with that. (Well, see below.) Set in Texas, this pitch-black film noir ala "Twilight Zone" comedy follows the twisting rotten relationship between two lovers (Frances McDormand and John Getz), an unbalanced husband (Dan Hedaya) and a cackling, double-crossing psychopathic P.I. (M. Emmet Walsh). With gallons of bloods and one character who won't stay dead, this crackles with intense suspense and a sickeningly funny, hair-raising climax. The game is raised by Barry Sonnenfeld's wandering, roving and jumping camera, and Walsh's evil yellow-suited cowboy. He's still the Coens' most devious creation; his laugh is unforgettable. The film, too.

"Miller's Crossing" is another classic from Joel and Ethan, this one mixing in classics "The Godfather" with "Yojimbo" and a dozen other double-cross films involving Bogart-era mobsters, dames, bookies and hoods in the woods. Oh, and some sickly dark comedy. Gabriel Byrne has never been better or cooler as Tom, a mafia lieutenant who breaks with his boss (Albert Finney) to join the other side (led by John Polito) while juggling a tramp girlfriend (Marcia Gay Harden) and her gay sleazebag bookie brother (John Turturro). Smart, brilliant, and a knowing tribute/smack down to all crime films, every shot is a work of art and every character fascinating. There's whip smart and funny dialogue, too. Midway through the film the Coens give us a scene that they have yet to top: Byrne, pistol in hand, stalking a screaming, screeching Turturro into a forest. Hell, the whole film may be their best.

Both films: A+