Cinema 2011 #64: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is blockbuster cinema at its worst. It’s a lifeless film with a convoluted plot laboured for a punishingly tedious runtime, populated by forgettable characters whose names you won’t remember and a convoy of alien robotic cars that are, for the most part, entirely indistinguishable. It’s a film in which its director, Michael Bay, believes that any scene can be improved with the presence of large explosions or large breasts, and who takes racial stereotyping to near uncomfortable levels for the sake of a laugh. It is so poorly edited that in spite of the sterling work completed by its visual effects team, it is nearly impossible to actually separate the swaying mass of pixels into identifiable characters. It’s just awful.

It’s made about half a billion dollars in a week.

The story, insofar as any Transformers film has been driven by a coherent plot, revolves once again around Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky, by now an unemployed post-crash college grad bumming around Washington DC with his British girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). Sam’s grown tired of living the civilian life, and pines for the days when he and his friends the Autobots, along with their leader Optimus Prime, could just keep on truckin’. Instead, he finds himself driving a floptimus prime jalopy and at the bottom of the career ladder in the mailroom of a corporation that may prove to be important to the plot.

Peddling my wares...

To be found here...

Cinema 2011 #63: Bad Teacher

There’s a scene, about halfway through Jake Kasdan’s Bad Teacher, in which John Michael Higgins’ Principal Snur is sitting on a toilet in the gents while a fellow teacher evacuates his bowels like a percussionist on the last night of the Proms. Therein lies the problem with Bad Teacher, a film that’s far too broad to be the sly little black comedy it could have been.

The material sounds promising, with Cameron Diaz playing the carefree Elizabeth Halsey, a 7th Grade teacher in an American Middle School and who has absolutely no interest in being there. It’s somewhat refreshing, after years and years of inspiring dramas about the power a teacher can hold in the classroom and how they too can learn to grow, blah blah blah, to come across an educator who’s waiting for the school bell just so she can go out to her car a smoke a joint. After being dumped by her loaded fiancé, Halsey sets her sights on substitute and grade-A doofus Mr. Gettis (played by Diaz’s former flame Justin Timberlake in a solid, if disappointing C-grade performance), whose interest and family wealth will only be piqued by the medium of large boobs. And so, Halsey swindles and rips off everyone she can in order to gain the cup-size advantage over fellow teacher and love rival Miss Squirrel (Lucy Punch).

The battle for that one really twisty Twisty Fry was on

It’s all a shame that the script doesn’t live up to its premise, as Diaz is devilishly fun as the teacher who couldn’t care less. Jason Segel is underused as a jaded gym teacher, and surely more could have been made of the class of oddballs Halsey inherits over the summer holidays. Diaz is consistent, and doesn’t go through a moralising U-turn as the film fades to black, it’s just a shame the black side of this comedy couldn’t have been more consistent too.

Could do better.

2 ½ Likes

Cinema 2011 #62: Bridesmaids

After sitting down and mulling over Bridesmaids, easily the best comedy so far this year with a star-making performance from its writer Kristen Wiig, I got to wondering just why this female ensemble of funny girls, dressed in couture, and talking about love, life and sex worked, when their New York neighbours failed so spectacularly, and twice, to carry over small screen critical success to the cinema? It’s because Bridesmaids, for all its projectile vomiting and food poisoning incontinence, is clever. It’s a brilliantly funny script that speaks volumes on the petty nature of competition and jealousy, on the value of deep-rooted friendship and connects better with a generation who can believe the self-destructive flaws of a woman who’s life post-boom means a dead-end job and moving back in with her mother. Sex and the City 2, on the other hand, had its star walk down a private beach in Dubai while her Indian servant carried a parasol.

Bridesmaids is the story of Annie (Kristen Wiig), and her attempt be the perfect maid of honour to friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), but whose efforts are hampered by circumstance, her own self-destructive tendencies and a fierce rivalry with other bridesmaid Helen, a wealthy society wife played by Rose Byrne, who knows she can do a better job. There will be an itinerary of events to plan and enjoy, from dress shopping to the bachelorette party in Vegas, but will Annie be able to cope with the financial and emotional strain of the wedding while she tries to piece her life back together after the foreclosure of her bakery business in downtown Milwaukee?

Cinema 2011 #61: The Beaver

Mad Mel, beyond Blunderdome. Where’d it all go wrong, eh? From charming A-list movie star and multi-award winning director of challenging historical epics to anti-Semitic alcoholic sexist who allegedly beats up his girlfriend.

Perhaps that’s why his performance in The Beaver, a dramedy about a man’s struggles with marionettes and melancholia, directed by long time friend Jodie Foster, is all the more poignant. Opening with a sweeping prelude through the life of Walter Black, a depressed toy company CEO having tried every method from drumming to medication to self-flagellation to ease his emotional burdens, we see Mel Gibson, a man with all the weight of the world on his shoulders, floating silently in a swimming pool, arms outstretched in Christ-like anguish. A cockney voice, later revealed to be the Beaver himself, tells us of his troubles, how he doesn’t want to be like this, how his family can no longer cope, how he’s become a joke professionally, how alcohol offers his only respite. It’s hard to draw the lines between fact and fiction. Well, at least until Walter starts communicating solely through the medium of a plush puppet on his left arm.

Cinema 2011 #60: Green Lantern

Those poor Warner Bros. With their annual profits courtesy of the Daily Prophet and its scar-faced subscriber about to come to an end, and with the competition suiting up a cavalcade of costumed heroes to near endless critical praise and packed out theatres, the brothers eyes have been turning green. It seemed only logical to option out another comic book character, some flashy guy with cosmic powers and a tacky sovereign on his right hand. Do it right and they’re talking a trilogy, at least. Isn’t he even part of some sort of team, as well? Some sort of unionised superhero book club, or something? That could make money. Just throw lots of money at it, you have to spend it to make it, right? Why not make the whole thing CGI while they’re at it, 3D too, obviously, and throw a handful of plot threads and a host of characters at the screen and just see what sticks, yeah? Green Lantern, that’s his name, right? This could work… this could work… Right? Right?!

No, boys, it didn’t. It really really didn’t.

The difficult second album...

Can be found here...