Film reviews
The Vow
A saccharine and paint-by-numbers slice of romance, which is largely boosted by the appeal of its two leads.
Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace (3D)
The under-utilised 3D adds little to this prequel, which only serves as a sore reminder of the brilliance of the original films.
Any Questions For Ben?
The talented bunch of actors ably cut through the surface gloss, but it’s tough to remain invested in the plight of the self-absorbed lead.
Shame
It starts off as brutal but arresting stuff, and the two lead performances are scorching, but disappointingly dissolves into a case of tragedy for the sake of tragedy.
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Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (Film)
Rating: M
Running Time: 147
Country: USA
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Megan Fox, Shia LaBeouf, Isabel Lucas, John Turturro, Hugo Weaving
Distributor: Paramount
Release Date: June 24, 2009
Film Worth: $5.00
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth“…all over the shop.”
Transformers (2007) is a [sigh] Michael Bay movie based on a range of Hasbro toys. It's also a noisy, overlong, overrated action flick that perplexingly made a heaving sack-load of money. To pretentiously quote Macbeth, it was "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury - signifying nothing." However, it followed its own internal logic and yes, some of the robots looked "kinda cool". Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, on the other hand, does not follow internal logic, external logic or indeed any other kind of logic. It's, really, all over the shop. Some scenes seem, erm, "faithful" (?) to the Hasbro toys, whereas other sequences are Terminator-like, which is ironic as Terminator Salvation suffered from featuring too many big Transformery robots.
Look, it's easy to take swipes at big, loud, long Michael Bay movies - but quite honestly, spending such an obscene amount of cash on something this erratic is offensive. Sure, there are jaw-dropping moments where amazing looking big robots beat the scrap out of other big robots (mainly in the first 45 minutes and the last 15). The direction has improved; Bay has pulled the camera out a bit and let's us actually see what's going on...but did we need the twin, gold-toothed, "gangsta" comedy robots?
Bay seems to want to make every nanosecond of screen time exciting. But after two and a half hours of yet another robot transforming into something; lingering, slow mo shots of (admittedly sexy-as-hell) Megan Fox's collagen enhanced lips; or the likeable but dear-God-man-start-doing-good-films Shia LaBeouf looking pensive, it all becomes deadening. The more interesting ideas (the ancient Fallen and so on) are lost within a sea of noise and explosions, while seeing John Turturro as "comic relief" flat out sucks.
People will try to tell you, "Relax! It's all good dumb fun, unclench and enjoy! Leave your brain at the door!" Well, quite honestly, you can try with all your might, but bad storytelling is bad storytelling, no matter how many explosions, robots and hot chicks you have on screen.