Transformers 2: A 150 minute car wreck, often literally.

I was not a fan of the first film but I found it be an entertaining novelty. I found it fell apart at the end but the first two thirds of Transformers was watchable thanks in part to Shia Lebeouf as the unlucky high school guy trying to woo the alluring Megan Fox. I had misplaced hopes for Tranformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen thinking perhaps that Michael Bay had weighed up what did and didn't work in the first and adjusted the sequel accordingly. In fact all Bay has done is crank everything up to eleven, the clumsy witless humour in the first is accordingly amped up here, so we have two dogs humping each other and bizarrely the mother consuming hash cakes and going reefer mad in the first half an hour. A host of goofy robots and tranformers are added much to the detriment of the film but at least it contrasts well in continuity terms with the acting from all involved which is uniformly hysterical and hammy aside from Megan Fox who is mostly passive and always awful. Shia Lebeouf who I felt to be charismatic enough in the first Tranformers to help save the film is a big liability here, he is a twitching, shouting mess and remains utterly unconvincing. In mitigation the lines given to the actors are bereft of imagination, wit or insight. Although these are fundamental points on which any film should be judged Tranformers 2 clearly wants to be judged on its action, namely the battles between the autobots and the decepticons. The special effects are suitably state of the art but without suspense, without any care for the charecters the lengthy fight scenes get old hat very quickly. The last half an hour of the film essentially forms one long fight sequence between the robots. It is a loud, blurry, kinetic and above all else boring state of affairs. Part of the reason that the film becomes so boring is because it is so predicatable, Optimus Prime is defeated and dies but we know he cannot stay dead, for sequel and marketing reasons. Shia Lebeouf dies in a slo-mo sequence that is so over the top it is unintentionally funny, but we know he can't stay dead, Transformers 2 treats us as idiots milking the scene for all its worth. Its this general disdain for the audience that shines through in the end. You get the impression that Michael Bay is well aware of the deficiencies in his actual story, the predictabilty of it all, the sheer stupidity and mumbo jumbo in the plot devices that bring the Decepticons back to hunt down Lebeouf. Bay's simple answer to this is just to make the film as loud, busy and by extension as obnoxious as possible. Sometimes bodies fly across the screen, mostly its sophisticated computer generated pixels and throughout we might gawp at times but we remain totally uninvolved in the whole affair. Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen is a soulless lumbering titan of a film that has well outstayed its welcome by the first half hour, I fail to remember a less entertaining film and felt oddly dirty after I left the cinema. The campaign to stop Michael bay making films begins here

Post Ferrell Comedy with new Star Zach Galifianakis: The Hangover

With a film like The Hangover so much depends on the acting and chemistry between the actors. I was not aware of any of the three main leads in the film bar Bradley Cooper. I only remember Bradley Cooper from Wedding Crashers where he did such a good job being smug and obnoxious that I actually started to wonder if he was smug and obnoxious. Here Cooper dispels that myth by turning in a likable performance who along with two others have ended up losing the groom of the wedding. Zach Galifianakis steals the show often, playing the funny guy to the straight act of the two others. The script works nicely without ever really grinding or becoming too predictable and unlike this years I love you, Man, The Hangover successfully paints a sweet natured view of male comaraderie without slipping into all out sentimentality or homoeroticism. The manner in which unlikely caper is topped by next unlikely caper called to mind Scorsese's After Hours, What Todd phillips has made is a lighter altogether less surreal After Hours. Its an improvement over his earlier effort Old School and arguably works better without any huge stars attached. Its almost certain to be very popular and very likely to make Galifianakis a star. It has some delightfully un P.C moments as when Galifianakis openly laughs about driving around completely wasted on booze. Heather Graham does a fine job in a cameo as a stripper and still looks great enough to pull it off, recalling the fine old days of roller girl. Tyson just about keeps it together in a one note cameo. Its to the credit of The Hangover that it ducks being too overtly laddish. It is true that women are sidelined in the film, having only a handful of minutes in screentime but the narrative calls for as much. It surpised me being a better film than I had anticipated, the funniest is saved for last with a great credit sequence in which we get to see the activities of the night displayed in a camera found. Best comedy so far this year.

Drag Me To Hell Vs Terminator Salvation

I caught the opening of two hyped early summer films both pitched towards broad audiences and both looking for box office gold. The finished articles themselves couldn't be any further apart though. Drag Me To Hell is Sam Raimi returning to Evil Dead territory and after two somewhat jaded spiderman sequels the switch to his brand of black comedy horror pays off. The narrative is not complex and is a typically generic take on horror but it lets Raimi loose to orchestrate a brillantly crafted piece of film where timing, editing and excellent camera work combine with an almost perfect score. The tone is painted with consummate skill, many parts of the film remain disturbing with a streak of black comedy shot through that bemuses without turning the whole excersise into a joke. Special mention has to be given to the old gypsy persecuting our antagonist, she is by turns menacing and wickedly grotesque, espicially when she frequently resorts to 'gumming' the young lady who she curses. You could say, perhaps, that Raimi throws a few too many jump moments into the film. I did find on my second viewing of the film to be anticipating more than actually experiencing Drag Me To Hell. However this is a small quibble, when I first watched the film I came away not remembering the last time I enjoyed a horror genre film at the cinema quite as much. This is all the more remarkable as Drag Me To Hell only boasts a 15 rating. Although not graphic in blood and guts the sense of dread that the film conjures up early in its running time really does push the 15 rating to its limit. Or so I thought, I suppose 13 and 14 year olds now are as used to gunning down policemen, running over pedestrians on the pavement and picking up prostitutes for some hand relief behind the train station as passe as a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast. This is the Grand Theft Auto generation. As much as I love those games (and I can proudly claim to have beaten the recent intstallment, The Lost and The Damned) it does make you wonder how this morally bankrupt chaos effects young impressionable minds. However, I digress, Drag Me To Hell is a welcome addition to the recent slew of unimaginative remakes and torture porn nastiness that forms the horror genre. The greatest accolade I can give is that some sequences almost rival Jaws in the tension they create. In fact I left the cinema proclaiming that Raimi had made his 'Jaws' which in retrospect is a bit generous but is testament to the thrills that Drag Me To Hell conjures up on first viewing. Drag Me To Hell is a great film to watch in the cinema with its often dazzling camera work and special effects (Raimi just about gets away with dipping quite liberally into the CGI box of tricks). Finally the ending of the film impressed me a great deal, I had a great deal of respect for Sam Raimi embracing the nihlistic take on the genre that Night of The Living Dead and more recently The Blair Witch Project gave us.

From a film that has a streak of black comedy and involves its audience with a sly wink to a film devoid of any good humour at all. Terminator Salvation is as a po-faced and serious film you will find released this year. The plot clearly involves time travel and the future but none of this is really explained, we are just expected to buy into the world of Mad Max meets Transformers with Helena Bonham Carter's disembodied head. From what I could tell towards the end of the film Miss Carters head was behind the whole thing, placing terminators here, there and everywhere. I can't be totally sure of that however because halfway through the film I dislodged myself from my seat and went for a leisurely smoke outside the cinema before trying to pay for a bag of wine gums, then giving up and just taking them because no staff could be seen. They certainly could not have been glued to Terminator Salvation because simply put the film has one of the worst problems any film can have, its very boring. The most exciting parts of the film, at least for diehard fans of the series, come near the end, at which point Terminator Salvation has long outstayed its welcome. The film starts at a pedestrian pace but with lots of noise and typical explosions, Christian Bale looks as serious and intense as possible doing his action thing. The Terminators themeselves make an apperance quite quickly but distinctly underwhelmed me, being filmed generally from waist up I found myself mulling on the crew just out of shot pulling levers to make the shoddy robots turn this way and that. This is clearly indicative of how Terminator Salvation eschews any imagination leading to originality and instead uses a series of tired cliches in its visual design. Which is to say it really does look like Mad Max, a lazy shorthand depicting post apocalypse earth. So far, so drab but the moment when I started to actively find the film to be grating with me in an unpleasant way came with the bizarre giant transformer/terminator human prison that drops robot motorbikes. It really did seem to be the material of videogames rather than cinema. From here Terminator Salvation introduces to us a mute child dressed in rags with an afro, who I found to be incredibly irritating and about as convincing as the mandatory love interest in the narrative which is devoid of any chemistry and about as unlikely as director McG being Oscar nominated this year. I do not wish to be prejudiced but my hopes were slim for this film when I noted McG at the helm. This principally dates back to seeing Charlies Angels full throttle at a cinema in Chicago because the people I was with could not be persuaded to see another film (it may explain that they were Australian women). I loathed the film. I also dislike McG films simply because he calls himself McG, its the kind of self branding that aches to be hip but reeks of vapid, shallow desperation. In essence thats really what Terminator Salvation is, vapid and shallow and in Hindsight its clear why Christian Bale lost his mind and indulged in his famous rant. He must of realized at some point that he had signed on to make shit. High octane shit. For someone with quite high quality control and dedication to the craft (see Bales work in The Machinist and also with Werner Herzog if you doubt his credentials) this must of been a somewhat painful realization. In mitigation he should of done what any self respecting actor would do on hearing the word McG, run. The material and Bale do not make easy bedfellows, his acting is too intense for the material and he seems he is constantly reaching for a depth that just isn't there. Consequently it is a disjointed performance that Bale gives, he seems to be acting in a different film than the rest of the cast - at least kudos to him for this. I genuinely cannot tell if the best really is at the end of the film or if I was so relieved to see the end in sight that I made more of an effort to engage with the film. Either way the introduction of a comically over muscled Arnie as the original Terminator did raise a smile, as did the absurd manner in which he tore into everyone and everything and just kept coming. The latter was, however, unitentionally comical. I found this to be the only part of Terminator Salvation that came close to being entertaining. The whole project has the distinct feel of being played far too seriously, without fun, almost as if McG was well aware of his lightweight credentials going in to direct the film - This would also certainly account for the hiring of Bale, to give the film credibilty. Its all very ironic because the film has no credibilty whatsoever, if it was directed by Martin Scorsese featuring Phillip Seymour Hoffman Terminator Salvation would still be a failure because it has a lousy script with lousy dialogue. In a perverse way at least they got the right man for the job in McG, few have more experience with lousy scripts and dialogue. The most damning appraisal I can give Terminator Salvation is that in visual style and in plain quality of script it echoes the clunky and dreadful remake of Deathrace that was inflicted on the cinema going public last year. The best we can hope for now is that the box office returns are not quite good enough to encourage McG to return to this project, like a dog returns to sniff his vomit, and churn out another sequel. Looking at his track record with the two Charlies Angels films and already seeing McG talk about further installments in various interviews it seems that this is too much to hope for. This is a dystopian future that is far more depressing than the one offered to us by skynet.