The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (Tony Scott, 2009)

Tony Scott's remake lacks any and all suspense (as do nearly all his movies despite his penchant for thrillers), but he also finds a surprising resonance in the material. Blessed with a superbly written script, Scott tones down his usual madness and lets his actors do most of the work. Oh, he still can't help himself at times, but Scott puts his talents toward a sense of visual pacing and structure that uses the battle of wits between Garber (Denzel Washington) and Ryder (John Travolta) to slyly bring out back story and sociopolitical themes.

Travolta hams it up to no end, playing ex-con stock trader Ryder like the demon of Wall Street unleashed below the city, his outrage at serving time for his white collar crimes well-timed to the outrageous entitlement displayed by the real stock brokers who took all kinds of shortcuts to make a fast buck. Garber too is guilty, but we see the disparity between them, greed motivating one and financial desperation the other. Washington and Travolta have the awkward task of playing off each other mainly through long-distance radio communication (an analog take on the potential for meaningful friendships through Internet communication?), but they make for one of the richest hero-villain pairs in years and get across some unexpectedly keen social commentary to boot, even if Travolta oversells it. Supporting players John Turturro (as an arrogant negotiator), James Gandolfini (a scandal-ridden mayor) and Luis Guzman (a former MTA employee nervously helping Ryder) also deliver solid performances.

Scott frames his film with flattened compositions, a beautiful array of neon-lit streaks of blue, red and green, and Scott's "Big Board" fetish realized by the flashing subway map back at Rail Control (a board framed, like all of Scott's giant screens, as a means of both clarifying and abstracting action). Yet despite his usual touches of altered speeds and on-screen text, Scott's aforementioned ease off the throttle shows that his love of visual style does not blind him to seeing and focusing on the great chemistry between Washington and Travolta. In fact, as a movie about a sedentary narrative spruced up by slick, action-oriented direction, I found The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 to be not only more tasteful but more emotionally affecting than Danny Boyle's slick con job 127 Hours.


Sidenote: I don't know if Travolta decided to play Ryder as a flagrant homosexual or that's how the part was written, but if and when he ever comes out of the closet, expect this movie to be gutted for clips on late-night shows. Dressed like he just came from a gay bar, Travolta finds ways to be even more suggestive. Describing a teenage hostage to Garber, Ryder notes his outfit and tangentially throws in "he makes it work" before getting back to the threats. Talking with one of his cohorts about Garber, Ryder bypasses the fact he doesn't know what the man looks like and says, "He's got a good voice, though; he'll be my bitch in prison." Bless his heart; he seems to know he'll never be a star again and at least balances out his usual tat with unorthodox performances in this and Hairspray.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay, 2011)

If there is any sliver of decency in this universe, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third entry in the most crass, vile and offensive big-budget franchise in Hollywood history will be its last. If it is any better than the series' previous installment, that is only because it sublimates its racial, gender, political and aesthetic travesties into an even longer, more interminable celebration of reactionary ideals. For a series predicated on the idea that some things are more than meets the eye, the Transformers movies represent one of the least varied, consistently shallow sagas to ever hit the big screen: Transformers 3, like its predecessors, is a masturbatory affair, perhaps even more so than the execrable Revenge of the Fallen. Whatever shred of humanity existed in these films is obliterated, leaving only an unadulterated tribute to He-Man masculinity in response to hysterical conservative perceptions of the Obama era.

Sam (Shia LaBeouf, whose increasingly greasy look in each film he does suggests he hasn't showered since Even Stevens got canceled) saved the world and brokered an alliance between man and Autobot, but no one will give him a job out of Ivy League college. The poor guy has to settle for an absurdly large D.C. apartment and being supported by his disposable new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), whose car-collecting boss, Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), openly flirts with her in front of Sam, further emasculating our hero. Compounded by the American government having locked Sam out from communicating with the Autobots, he needs a complete world invasion of Decepticons to let him prove his manhood, raising the question of just how many people need to die for Shia LaBeouf to feel comfortable about his dick size.

Cars 2 (John Lasseter, 2011)

I will not ask why Cars 2 exists because I've seen the merchandising figures from the first film. Nevertheless, it's a question I couldn't force out of my mind while watching this two-hour bore. After a string of ambitious, beautiful films that established Pixar as one of the most respected studios on Earth, they finally sink to the sad state of their bosses at Disney. This isn't a film, it's a preview of coming attractions at a theme park. I didn't stay through all the credits, but I nearly did just to see if it ended with an advertisement to come check out Cars Land next year at Disney California Adventure.

Underlining the sheer cynicism of this film's conception is the near-total lack of characterization. John Lasseter, whose erstwhile evocation of the young, winsomely childlike George Lucas here brings out the mercenary side of the Star Wars creator, transparently structures the film to avoid personal connection in favor of selling toys. Forgettable as the first Cars was, it at least spent time with its characters; Cars 2 throttles past the drama between Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his loving but tiresome best friend Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), preferring instead to get in as many new vehicles as possible to make sure Disney's merchandise wing ends this year in the black.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Remember that old gag in the movies where the hero dropped a huge bell on the villain and then struck it to deafen the foe inside? As a child, I always wondered if that really worked, especially since the bell was on the ground and therefore wouldn’t really be given to reverberation. Sadly, I didn’t grow up near a cathedral, so I never got to satiate my curiosity. Well, now I know, because I’ve seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a a loud, stupid and even louder disasterpiece as dizzyingly frantic as it is devastatingly boring.

You can tell from the get-go that continuity doesn’t play a large role in the Transformers universe: Bumblebee fixed his voice in the last film, but it’s not working here; the robots are hiding, even though they tore apart Los Angeles. Now the Autobots work with the U.S. government and answer to the President. Apparently no other country can ask anything of the aliens, except for a few British soldiers, because at least they speak English. That's God's language! It's what Bible is written in and everything. And the aliens continue hide in bright neon cars, which is extremely helpful in their covert ops to flush out remaining Decepticons.

Plot-wise, you better buckle up. The first “Transformers” suffered from a needlessly convoluted story, but this takes the cake: apparently the robots have been on Earth since the dawn of man and they built the pyramids to hide their weaponry. This is all explained in turgid patches of exposition. Why are the pyramids seemingly the one thing in the Bible that everyone's always willing to change? You know, the one thing with actual physical proof; clearly it was made by aliens, not Jewish slaves. Oh, and the Decepticons want to kill our sun. Not our sun, Decepticons! That’s where we get our light and heatness! Who will the moon talk to?

Obviously, this film is for children, but it’s simply insulting. Furthermore, I wouldn’t recommend taking a child to this film, because it’s filled with swearing and endless non-veiled innuendo. This is a film about toys, for Pete’s sake. Now, I am of the generation that grew up with Ren & Stimpy and Rocko’s Modern Life, so I know a thing or two about innuendo in children’s programming. But at least that was buried; Transformers 2 is a barrage of leg humping, pot brownies and – I’m not kidding – robot testicles.

Worst of all are the racist caricatures of two Autobots named Mudflap and Skids. The last film featured a jive-talking Autobot (they even called him “Jazz”) who existed to be not only the first Autobot to die but the only one to die. This is worse: the pair not only speak like stereotypical ill-educated black people but are illiterate and actually have a simian appearance. One of them sports a gold tooth. There are Asian and Arab stereotypes here and there but these two are downright appalling, yet they got the biggest laughs of the film. Apparently, space racism (spacism?) is hilarious.

Not that the women fare any better. In Michael Bay's world, the women don't get to be funny, unless they're having a nervous breakdown concerning their children leaving home or stuffed with pot (at which point they act nothing like a stoned person). No, they just have to stand there and look pretty, or at least what Bay thinks is pretty. Megan Fox's dialogue consists of a few atrocious sentences of flirting subsequently replaced by shrieking "SAM!!" in a terrified voice. Bay just plays her up for eye candy, but he does everything in his power to make her look plastic and creepy. In a film where one human is revealed to be a Transformer, I kept waiting for Fox's character to be thus exposed, though I suppose it would lack an iota of surprise.

LaBeouf himself is unmemorable; I think that Spielberg could turn him into the next Tom Hanks yet (at least in terms of an everyman quality; he certainly doesn't have Hanks' range and charisma), but the kid needs to pick his roles more carefully. He gives an admirable go of trying to play this nonsense with a straight face as everyone around him plays the fool. Speaking of which, let's just not even mention how much scenery John Turturro is chewing. Nor is it any use, I imagine, to point out that the same man who was in Do the Right Thing, the greatest commentary on race of the last 20 years, here works in a deli run by his Jewish harpy of a mother. I think he just might be the titular Fallen.

Now, I know what the fanboys are about thinking right about now: “Hey, man, I just like to shut off my brain to see a move. Sorry it’s not La Dolce Vita.” Such nonsense says more about that person than it ever does about a film. Second, Transformers 2 is the first film that will shut your brain down for you: its four (!) editors cannot keep a single moment of action from being disorienting, and every fight is nothing more than a mesh of unidentifiable fluorescent metal as the humans run from explosions in slow-motion. These action scenes are big and flashy, but they’re so damn confusing you have to wait until it’s all over to figure out what happened. And why do the just punch each other when they all sport missile launchers and heavy cannons? The only time you have any sense of clarity is when each side is firing at the other with some distance between them.

A more levelheaded person might suggest that I not expect so much from a film based on toys, which is an apt observation. But this film is nothing more than a string of advertisements and product placements for all the companies who bankrolled it. I fear that I incur the snide eye-rolling of the Internet by calling this the worst film I've ever seen, but which would you rather watch: a movie with such abysmal production values that it becomes bizarrely hilarious, or a morally bankrupt, artistically corrupt celebration of the very worst ideals that America has embodied over the last eight years, of fascism, isolationism and flag-wavering superiority? With a second act that drags like molasses and an utter lack of thematic exploration, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an 80-minute movie crammed into two and a half hours. Michael Bay didn’t bring the Transformers to life; he made a $200 million adaptation of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.