Review: Transforms: Age of Extinction

by. Joe Moss
★★

Michael Bay's latest installment of Transformers definitely lives up to the hype associated with most Michael Bay movies. There's plenty of CGI and 'bang for your buck'...BUT there's the also typical cheesiness that makes you feel your watching a cartoon-based movie; subpar acting from an outstanding cast; and an anemic plot-line that leaves you groaning quite often. "Transformers: Age of Extinction" does a wonderful job fixing many mistakes of past Transformers movies, there are a few plot ideas that completely rewrite the cartoons of the 80's, and...ultimately...left me feeling wholly unfulfilled.

This film picks up 5 years after the events of "Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon." Cade Yeager (Mark Walhberg) is a down and out inventor in Texas who desperately needs to find that 'big idea' so that he is able to make ends meet, save his homestead, and send his 17 year-old daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz) to college. In the midst of his scrounging for parts, he stumbles across a beat-up rig that he wishes to take home and disassemble for scrap. Nevertheless, while cleaning it, discovers that the truck is 'more than meets the eye' and rightly assumes he's stumbled into a long-lost Transformer. In the process of assessing his options and discovering who the transformer truly is, the CIA, headed by Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) and his lackey Savoy (Titus Welliver), swoops down upon the homestead with great anger and terrible vengeance ready to destroy, maim, or kill without question. Once Optimus Prime is discovered the remainder of the movie deals with uncovering the plot by the government that finds itself 'unknowingly' in cahoots with a Deceptacon bounty-hunter, Lockdown, who will exchange a 'seed' for Optimus.

What this film lacks is MANY elements of plot that would fill the innumerable gaps. Ehren Kruger, who penned the screenplays for the last 2 Transformers films, attempted to make many necessary correlations with the other 2 films, and fix a few gaps in those...but then left many new gaps in the process. Where does the Lockdown/CIA pact come into play? Where does Kelsey Grammer's character come from since it's stated he's 'been around for 20 years' yet not in the other 3 movies? How does KSI (Stanley Tucci's business) get an exclusive contract to forge the metal of the destroyed Autobots and Deceptacons? The foreshadowing of the 'seed' at the beginning of the movie, and the subsequent discovery of those happenings by Dr. Tirrel (Sophia Myles), really doesn't add much to the film as a whole - rather it is a completely unnecessary plot fragment that should have been edited out. From where do the dinobots come? Is that what the beginning of the movie was really trying to do was show us? Their evolution as a means of setting up the next 2 films in the franchise?

And then we have the newly introduced 'pretty face' of the film in Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz). who comes to us from "Deck the Halls (2006)" and the horrible "Last Airbender (2010)." While gorgeous, her obvious lack of acting talent and running about like a damsel in distress the ENTIRE film--while simultaneously attempting to act like she's got it together--takes away from the story. BUT...sadly...her distress is what ties helps tie the 2nd and 3rd acts of the film together with the first. I guess Michael Bay follows a formula of 'bring a beautiful face into the movie to distract people from the subpar plot'...Megan Fox, and Rosey Huntington-Whiteley anyone...

Additional to the plot issues, the film editing powerhouse trio of Roger Barton, William Goldenberg and Paul Rubell (who have worked on many Oscar winning and nominated films) definitely dropped the proverbial ball at numerous points in this editing process. There was bad CGI fitted into live action scenes that made many elements of the Transformers themselves seem cartoonish in contrast (as seen at the right)...

I will admit that the visual effects team, sound editing team, and set design did an amazing job. The Transformers themselves seemed more lifelike than ever and the transformation from man-like creature to camouflaged robot was more seamless than ever...but is that enough to make the movie truly great?

My favorite part of the film was the climactic battle in Hong Kong when the Dinobots appear full fledged into the fray. I always loved those big lumbering idiots as a kid, and while they do not talk in the film, and all of them have fire-breath...where in the cartoons only Grimlock and Slag ever used it...they were the CGI equivalent of a gold mine. In fact, most of the audience in the theater I was seated cheered when they appeared on screen. This last 25 minutes made the film worthwhile--as a childhood nostalgia revisited. And yet...you can see the editing of Grimlock into the film is much like before...cartoon like. Yikes!!

Review: Godzilla

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★★

It seems to me that the monster movie genre would be one of the most difficult genres to screw up. Yet somehow Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin managed to do just that with their atrocious 1998 version of "Godzilla." Most of the film made absolutely no sense and paid no tribute to the original source material. Furthermore, it ruined the film careers of just about all those involved. Now, 16 years later, filmmaker Gareth Edwards tries his hand at Godzilla. His result is a vast improvement on the 1998 movie (which isn't very hard to do) but it still doesn't exactly feel very satisfying in the end.

Our main character here is Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a Navy Lieutenant and member of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team returning home to San Francisco from a mission overseas. His wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen) and son Sam are happy to have him back, but their excitement is short lived. Ford is called up to go tend to his father Joe (Bryan Cranston) who has been detained by police in Japan for trespassing in a quarantined radiation zone. Joe is trying to prove that some “thing” caused a meltdown at the nuclear power plant where he worked 15 years ago. Of course no one believes him. 

And of course he's right. A team of scientists, lead by Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), is hiding a cocoon that feeds off the radiation of the former plant. The creature, which they call a Muto, breaks out and starts terrorizing everything. But something else knows that this Muto is here. A giant lizard from the sea that Serizawa calls Godzilla who only has one purpose: to prey on these creatures. 

"Godzilla" has all the makings of a pretty fantastic old school monster movie, but it ultimately falls short of being that great. It really has nothing to do with the story because the screenplay by Max Bornstein is surprisingly solid. There is plenty of rooting interest in these characters, especially since they dedicate so much time to setting up the back-story of the Brody family. It's pretty dark too with very little humor built into the script.

The problem is there are very few scenes featuring monsters in this monster movie. Isn't that what you want to see in a monster movie? One shot shows two monsters ready to engage in epic battle, but the camera is behind two doors as they shut. The last thing we see are these two creatures inches away from each other but we don’t see them fighting. Two big ugly monsters fighting each other is what makes the old "Godzilla" movies so entertaining. You won't hear me say this often but I think the thing that hurts this "Godzilla" the most is the story.

I find it hard to fault the movie for this, but I have to. The movie's title character doesn't even show up for an hour, and after that he’s never the star. You're paying for monsters fighting, and that's what they should be delivering. But where I'm torn is that the dramatic narrative is actually very polished. I find it very hard to fault anything like that, but this is an instance where “more monster/less story” would have been desirable.

Director Gareth Edwards hasn't done much else before being handed the large budget for this film, and he proves himself to be a success. He handles the well-developed script well and does not go overboard with his use of CGI. Sure, the monsters and the destruction they leave behind aren’t real, but it blends in seamlessly with the organic action in the foreground.

And the monster battles when we do get to see them are great and enormously entertaining. Edwards pays great homage to the original "Godzilla" movies by letting the monsters have at it with no regard to anything around them. Even the score from composer Alexandre Desplat has a nostalgic feel for the monster movies of old. But he doesn't maintain that old style throughout the film. He adds some nice dissonant cues to the more intense moments, which help prove that he's one of the best music composers working today. 

"Godzilla" is more than just a standard monster movie and it’s certainly better than any Roland Emmerich disaster film. There's a lot of depth in this movie, which is nice to see from a big budget studio picture. But that gets in the way of us wanting to see what we came to the movies to see. There's very little Godzilla in "Godzilla." I can't say I loved it because it didn't deliver what it promises by the title. The story is great, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not what we paid to see. It's supposed to be a monster movie, and that's not what this is.