Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

It’s been ages since I saw Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” The 1987 classic is a blur to me, but Michael Douglas’ portrayal of Gordon Gekko – the hedonistic shark who swum in evil – remains in memory. Who knew a whole generation of real Wall Street tycoons would take Gekko as God, and bring about economic turmoil that nearly crippled our nation? With Stone’s return to Gekko’s world, I thought the man would burn furiously as he tackles the 2008 economic crash. No. Forget the trading floor, this is a dead slaughterhouse of missed opportunities, ham-fisted symbolism, and an outrageously happy climax that betrays every point that comes before it, and every principle held by those who distrust unguarded capitalism. We focus on hothead stockbroker Jake (Shia LaBeouf), whose girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) is the daughter of Gekko, himself eight years out of prison. Gekko sees our hero as an “in” to his daughter; Jake sees Gekko as an “in” to ambition. This triangle raises questions it can’t answer, including, “Why would a left-wing reporter who hates Wall Street live with a stock broker cub shark?” Pathetically, Stone no longer cares if “greed is good” or not as he races to a ludicrous ending. D

Lawless (2012)

If you watch the 1930s-set backwoods gangster flick “Lawless” and don’t know better, and you’d be a major idiot not to know better, you might think tiny, mountainous Franklin County, Va., is over the hill and through the woods and one covered bridge over from big bad Windy City Chicago. Director John Hillcoat and screenwriter (and rock god) Nick Cave, who previously collaborated on the excellent “The Proposition” and the very good “The Road,” likely believe so.

But I digress, as I always do with the details. 

The duo has taken the wonderfully titled non-fiction family-history novel “The Wettest County in the World” by (my proximity) local author Matt Bondurant and drably re-titled it as “Lawless.” It follows a backwoods trio of Bondurant brothers (Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, and Jason Clarke) who moonlight as moonshiners, selling the vile-looking homemade hooch during the days of Prohibition. Sure enough, things go wrong. In the span of just a few weeks, a (1) former go-go dancer, (2) infamous mob boss, and (3) corrupt federal agent -– all from Chicago, all on separate missions in life -– end up in wee Rocky Mount, and onto the brothers, they respectively, 1) Land a job at the family diner/gas station, 2) Sniff out killer booze to sell back home, and 3) Terrorize the siblings with endlessly wicked means of unlawful law enforcement. The newcomers are played by 1) Jessica Chastain, 2) Gary Oldman, and 3) Guy Pearce. 

The Rocky Mount and Chicago depicted here each must have one only dirt road going out, and it meets in the middle, and provide light-speed travel a la “Star Trek.” Hell, today in real life, it takes roughly 12 hours to get from Rocky Mount to Chicago. Here, pre-Interstate, pre-cruise control, it is magically faster. How fast is to get to Philadelphia? Does the title refer to liquor running, or the rules of physics, time, and distance?

But no matter these logic lapses, nor the cliché dialogue, “Lawless” floats and sinks on the acting. I’ll focus on the guys as the women (Mia Wasikowska also co-stars as a love interest) are only allowed to look “purty” and be supportive to their menfolk. Tom “Bane” Hardy grunts most of his scenes to ill-advised comic effect, while Clarke howls madly with his slimly written character. LeBeouf, former son of Indiana Jones, gives his best as a wimpy runt who must become a hardened man, but his character arc is foolish in the end. Oldman’s nasty scenes are a mere but oh-so-welcome series of cameos.

It’s –- shocker -- Pearce that near kills this film. “Proposition,” “Memento” and “L.A. Confidential” are each new classics, and he excels in all. Here, he overacts himself right out of the movie as a sissy snot named Rakes, channeling Dennis Hopper playing Dame Edna playing an endlessly psychotic version of super-agent-man Elliot Ness with a subscription to GQ for Sadists. Sporting ridiculously greased and parted hair, and shaved eyebrows, Rakes fears blood, and yet –- it is inferred -– gets his thrills raping crippled boys after he murders them in the woods. In a gangster flick in the New York of Mars by David Lynch on full-tilt “Wild at Heart” craziness, his character would stick out as a ridiculous clown. Here? Please.

Oh, one piece of divine greatness: Legendary bluegrass singer and Southwestern Virginia native Ralph Stanley covers the Velvet Underground’s “White Light /White Heat” at film’s end, and it’s an absolutely riveting, soul crushing performance that deserves a far better movie to precede it. For that matter, the entire music score, led by the genius Cave, elevates the movie, especially a breath-taking church singing which hits the soul dead center with pure joy-of-God beauty that can uplift an agnostic. The film misses. 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+

Eagle Eye (2008)

"Eagle Eye" is an entertaining flick. It races at a brisk pace and has enough action, stunt work and explosions to keep the mind from wandering, and the always rockin' Billy Bob Thornton is back in a government hard-ass role similar to his cool turn in "Armageddon." But it wasn't even a quarter of the way into this Steven Spielberg-produced movie that I realized I'd watched this many times before, most notably in the classic "North by Northwest" and several Will Smith movies.

Shia LaBeouf (not Cary Grant or Smith) stars as Jerry Shaw, the ne'er do well twin brother of a highly decorated, recently killed Air Force officer (also LaBeouf). The day after his twin is buried, though, Jerry's empty bank account suddenly is flush with money and his apartment is loaded wall to wall with fake passports, explosives and guns. Jerry stupidly takes the cash and handles just about every weapon before his cell phone rings and a cold female voice warns him to flee before the FBI arrives. Meanwhile, a single mom (Michelle Monaghan) receives a call from the same voice, ordering her to take a nearby car and drive away or her young son will be killed. The two soon meet and are ordered to Washington, D.C., with the entire federal government on the hunt.

Without giving away the busy plot's boring instigator, I will say this: I was deeply surprised that Spielberg could be behind such a cliched, obvious twist that a pre-teen could figure it out. Spielberg apparently kicked this plot around for years, before handing it off to helmer D. J. Caruso (who directed La Beauf in "Disturbia"). True to its background, "Eagle Eye" plays exactly as a second-rate idea that's been dusted off and re-gifted. There are far too many gaping plot holes to ignore, and the ending is too implausible to bear. (Spoiler alert: The hero lives, when, in fact, the remains of his bullet-riddled body would fit inside a Tic Tac box had this been real. Also, if the Secret Service were this dumb, we'd cycle through presidents like condoms at a frat house.)

Still, LaBeouf, Monoghan and an awesome Thornton (as an FBI agent), plus some truly great stunt work and car crashes, save the film from a crash and burn. A paper-thin marginal thumbs up. B-

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+