Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) dir. Michael Bay
Starring: Shia Leboeuf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich

***

By Alan Bacchus

Here we go again – another round of Bay-bashing. And really, it’s so easy to hate this stuff. Certainly in this latest chapter of the Transformers ‘saga’, as before, it's more mind-numbing beat downs of sight and sound. Metal machines pounding each other endlessly, hyper-active human characters talking a mile a minute, American patriotism gone wild.

I had fun with the first film, if anything simply to watch what I had once thought was an unfilmable franchise turned into an impressive array of top notch special effects and eye-popping real world explosions, stunts and action. There were even some genuinely likeable and fun characters to enjoy, namely Sam Witwicky’s affable mom and dad.

By the second film, the repetition wore out its welcome very quickly – like after the first five minutes – thus rendering the theatrical experience assaulting. Even Sam's parents were annoying.

And so, with little expectations other than the smattering of lenient critics calling it the ‘best of the series’, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a pleasant surprise. Sure, it clocks in at two-and-a-half hours, but it moves quickly.

Writer Ehren Kruger’s chief improvement is a simplification in character and plot. The opening establishes the reason for the title, Dark of the Moon – a fun riff on history, wherein Kruger postulates that the reason for the Apollo mission was to investigate and recover a downed alien spacecraft from the early ‘60s. Bay and company have fun with these conspiracy theories, including a jaunt to Chernobyl, and they plot out a fun backstory, which seems to erase what was established in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. So, objection here.

In the present, our hero Sam Witwicky is out of school looking for a job but frustrated that his hero status has been shoved under the rug by the government to cover up the presence of the Transformers robots. The Decepticons still exist in hiding and are plotting a scheme by which they can recover an important artifact from the Moon to revive the body of a long lost Autobot leader. This old robot does come to life in the form of ‘Sentinel Prime’ (voiced well by Leonard Nimoy), who may or may not be working for the Decepticons. Ultimately, the evil robots aim to construct a giant portal that would bring the entire planet of Cybertron to Earth for the purposes of intergalactic colonization.

Surprisingly, Transformers works well in 3-D. Most of the problems with this new medium have been corrected by Mr. Bay – there’s little, if any, ‘double imaging’, the brightness level was normal, the 3-D process accepted Bay’s kinetic action scenes well and I got no headaches! What an improvement from Avatar.

Because of the 3-D process, Bay’s shooting style was significantly toned down, for the better. Longer, wider shots tend to improve the scope of the spectacle aids. In full action, the robots were actually discernible, and for the first time in the series it wasn’t just a swash of colour and light blurred across the screen. In fact, this film might just have the least amount of action with much of it back-ended during the Chicago siege sequence. Bay takes his time and lets humour push the film into the third act when it gets wild and crazy. Arguably the best sequence involves very little robot action. It’s a fun adventure for Sam and his military team sliding across a Chicago building toppling over on its side.

Strong new characters add some freshness where the old ones had become stale. Frances McDormand’s tight-ass Chief of Staff character is fun, and she’s one of three Coen Bros. alum (including mainstay John Turturro) going along with the fun. Burn After Reading’s John Malkovich goes over-the-top in a role as Sam Witwicky’s looney boss. The ubiquitous Ken Jeong does what he does best as an equally looney conspiracy nut. And Alan Tudyk is just plain batshit crazy as a German assistant to John Turturro.

The new Megan Fox, Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, is a marked improvement. She actually might have some acting chops, and she certainly has a better funny bone than Ms. Fox had in the series.

Considering the license to print money this series has become, like the Pirates series, I don't doubt we will see more Transformers movies in the future. But thankfully, I doubt we’ll see Michael Bay back at the helm. Instead, he’ll likely be moving on to more creatively inspiring directorial ventures. We’ll see.

The Island (2006) dir. Michael Bay
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Sean Bean, Djimon Honsou

**

By Alan Bacchus

I’m one of the forgiving critics who can generally look past ridiculous plotting, overwrought hyperkinetic visual stimuli, the often objectionable depiction of women and the general immaturity of Michael Bay’s films and appreciate the pure spectacle of his filmmaking aesthetics. Michael Bay makes Michael Bay movies, and God bless him for it.

Back in 2005, fresh off the relative disappointments of Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys 2, Bay’s attempt to come back with The Island also failed. His brand of glossy eye candy just didn’t fit into the brainy ‘70s intellectual futurist sci-fi from which the concept of The Island stems.

In this film, we experience the point of view of Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor), one of hundreds of men and women living in a sterile futuristic boarding house of sorts, sequestered from an apparent viral outbreak in the outside world. They spend their days exercising, eating right and wearing identical white jumpsuits. Their one goal in life is to win the lottery, which takes them to ‘the Island’, a seemingly pristine world free of their forced confinement and the contamination of the rest of the world. But when Lincoln starts questioning the absurdity of his sterile lifestyle, it begins his journey of escape and the discovery of the heinous deception at play.

Eventually, Lincoln and his tagalong gal pal Jordan Two Echo (Johansson) escape and get chased by the cool looking police cum SWAT team led by the slick Djimon Honsou. Normally with this type of film, say George Lucas’s THX 1138, escape from containment occurs in the third act. But such timing just doesn’t pass for summer blockbuster entertainment. And so, by the 45 minute mark, Lincoln and Jordan are on the run, fish out of water trying to navigate their way in the real world with Bay attempting to extract humour from their wide-eyed naive reactions to the colloquialisms of our world.

The application of the Bay brand of dialogue, that hyperfast delivery of crude jokes and characters talking over each other in loud, shrill voices, is distinct to the director, but doesn’t fit the genre. Same with the overly lit music video lighting. Everything in the film is a bold colour, whether it’s the yellow sunlight that streams through every window like it’s blazing dusk blinding our eyes, or the overly greenish fluorescent lights showing us the grimy and dirty aspect of the conceptual world.

The most disappointing aspect of the film is the Bay action scenes, and action scenes are the main reason to watch these movies. The central set piece, another highway chase, is a near carbon copy of the Miami freeway chase in Bad Boys 2 (Bay would even try this a third time in Transformers). When the action scenes fail to stimulate us in a Michael Bay picture, the film is doomed.

The third act, which runs way too long, surprises us with the introduction of a doppelganger Ewan McGregor. Bay has some fun with the dual character banter, one a slimy disreputable race car driver and the regular Lincoln a sympathetic innocent to the world.

In the end, The Island is even more forgettable than his most brainless features. Bay should either just stick with the brawn, like in the Transformers franchise, or completely shift gears and exercise his brain for a change. I genuine like the guy and would love to see the latter.

The Island is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

Bad Boys (1995) dir Michael Bay
Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Tea Leone, Tchéky Karyo

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Kudos to Jerry Bruckheimer for jumping starting both Michael Bay’s and Will Smith’s (and to a lesser extent Martin Lawrence’s) careers in one film. For Bay, the jump from music videos to feature film was not a big leap. Anyone familiar with his work on the Celine Dion, Meat Loaf and Aerosmith videos he did in the early 90’s you could see his brand of grandiose melodrama and excessive style in those videos.

With Bad Boys Bay makes the most of a dusted off throwback buddy action comedy and injects it with as much cinematic testosterone as he can to make he and the film stand out in the crowd. Ultimately it feels like an outcast from the bygone 80’s era of ultraviolent and stylishly excessive 80’s action era.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence play Mike Lowry and Marcus Burnett a pair of drug cops chasing down stylish baddies around bright and sunny Miami. Mike is the single man, the suave womanizer and loose cannon – the Mel Gibson of the duo. And Marcus is the Danny Glover, the family man, who continually butts heads with Mike’s aggressive style.

After a stash of heroin disappears from the evidence roomof the police Mike and Marcus are put on the case by their hot headed captain played Joe Pantoliano. When a beautiful witness shows up in need of witness protection Mike and Marcus get assigned to protect her, the hang up being that Mike and Marcus have to switch names and personalities in order to gain her trust. And so a comedy of errors ensues between the normal conservative Marcus having to become a charming bachelor under cover of his suspicious wife.

Though he has different writers for each of his film cadence and rhythm of the dialogue is surprisingly consistent. In BB, Smith and Lawrence feel like a wrestling tag team riffing and rolling with one another with ease, but Bay’s dialogue is read so fast and with such gusto, it becomes a pantomime performance.

Arguably Michael Bay was just getting warmed up in terms of action. There are a few action scenes which only adequately arouse our primal needs for violence and speed. The opening heist scene is well planned out, but is edited with such aggressive force, we lose the true rhythm of the scene.

A few other shoot outs and chases tease us with Bay’s skills in these departments, but it wouldn’t be until Bad Boys 2 where Bay’s skills as an action auteur would come to bear fully. While the sequel was almost universally reviled and cut down by critics, its one of the most astonishing action films ever made – so audacious and derogatory to our senses it becomes almost farcical. And in terms of blowout action comedy few films can rival Bad Boys 2. But more on that later...

Bad Boys is available on Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Armageddon (1998) dir. Michael Bay
Starring: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare

***

By Alan Bacchus

Hell yes, I said, I like ‘Armageddon’ (As Alan gets pummelled by rotten fruit). I think there is a place for Michael Bay in cinema. And there is a place for 'Armageddon'. This preposterous high concept actioner, likely born from a night of heavy drinking wherein Jerry Bruckheimer, was likely dared into making a movie about oil drillers who fly into space, drill in a nuclear bomb and blow up an asteroid hurdling toward earth. I imagine the first draft likely appeared on a cocktail napkin from Spagos.

What the final film turns out to be from this one-liner pitch concept is Hollywood excess at its worst and best. Though it’s Michael Bay’s film, it takes a good producer to put together a film of such absurd magnitude to make it work. First of all, check out the number of writers involved: Jonathan Hensleigh, Tony Gilroy, Robert Ray Pool, Shane Salerno, and yep, J.J. Abrams. And with all the uncredited polishes involved, including a rumoured Robert Towne, it could be double that number. Such is the Hollywood way, the ability of a super producer like Jerry Bruckheimer to coalesce the writings of the cacophony of voices into a unified direction, however preposterous.

This film succeeded so admirably because it knew it’s audience and fine tuned it to hit the Red Stated Nascar bible belt demographic right on it noggin like that mole-wacker game in penny arcades. From the opening narration the film panders to the conservative right – hell, even NRA spokesman CHARLTON HESTON narrates the backstory – the death of the dinosaurs via a giant asteroid, which inevitably will hit earth at some point again in the future. It's characters are well-defined as working class American heroes surmounting their humble, classless or physically challenged meagre lives.

Billy Bob Thornton, for example, who plays 'Truman’, the NASA team leader and good ol’ boy with penchant for breaking down the complicated science talk into simple metaphors like ‘it’s about the size of Texas’ exudes the same George W. Bush naive charm. And the idea that a bunch of working class oil drillers saving the world and besting their ubermensche Astronaut equivalents and the academic elite is underdog screenwriting 101.

And for a pre 9/11 film the flag waving patriotism is as extreme as anything Hollywood has produced - a conscious we’re-number-one attitude we hadn’t seen since the 80’s when Hollywood had to dumb down its politics to Democracy-good, Communism-bad simplicity.

At every turn the film is remarkably consistent with this tone and knowing its target audience. 'Armageddon' actually benefits from this simplicity, never attempting to be more serious than the mushy emotions of it's characters - the journey into space serving to get the characters to confront their fears and achieve the latent potential which 'real life' has stunted for them, as well as to craft a good montage scene or two.

Michael Bay’s rat-a-tat style which extends from his music video visuals, to his hectic editing style, to his dialogue creates a rhythm of hurried pace allows us to skim over the implausibilities, clichés, bad lines, and overwrought melodrama and unnecessary rah-rah patriotism. So for good and bad ‘Armageddon’ is astoundingly ambitious and for the brash, amphetamine-style cinema-brain of Michael Bay, this film will likely become his defining film.

‘Armageddon’ is available on Blu-Ray from Disney Studios Home Entertainment

Transformers (2007) dir. Michael Bay
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Megan Fox, Anthony Anderson, John Turturro, Jon Voight

***1/2

Michael Bay pulls out all the stops and brings “Transformers” to the screen like only he can. Michael Bay makes his kind of films, so if you don’t like ‘em you probably won’t like “Transformers”.

“Transformers” is brawny machismo filmmaking. Fast cars, hot chicks, buff dudes, hard rock music, slo-mo explosions, big guns, big helicopters, and fighter jets. And when you include transforming robots that just sweetens the concoction.

The story centers on Sam Whitwiky, nerdy loser who buys his first car – a beat up yellow Camaro. His attachment to the car grows when he discovers it has a life of its own. Meanwhile, the U.S. military have been attacked by a series of alien robots (Decepticons) in the Middle East. The Decepticons proceed to hack into the military database system in search of a mysterious cube which fell to Earth from their home planet Cybertron many years ago. Sam discovers his car is actually one of a race of friendly robots (Autobots) who have come to protect Sam, who holds the key to finding the cube. A gigantic battle between the two sets of robots ensues to ensure the balance of peace on earth.

Taking a page from “War of the Worlds”, “Independence Day” and all other ‘aliens attack Earth films’, the suspense of the film derives from the reactions of the characters to the mystery surrounding the transformers. And even though we see our first robot transform in its full glory in the opening scene of the film, each time a new character sees something transform it’s like we’re seeing it for the first time as well. Bay embellishes these moments over and over again. But it never tires. The sight truly is awesome, due in large part to the seamless special effects of the robots.

Bay makes the CGI look so good because he puts them into real situations, real locations, real sets with real people. In the hands of someone like George Lucas who overuses the technology, the film could have quickly turned into an animated film. But we never feel as if we’re watching animated characters. The destruction is utterly real and knowing Michael Bay’s track record he probably destroyed a lot of property. When something explodes it’s a real explosion. As usual Bay never lets up and he takes great care to make every shot and every scene look good.

Though Bay is known for his action sequences, he also has his own brand of humour. And there’s nothing perfunctory about it either. “Transformers” is not ashamed to mock itself and its characters. Bay actually crafts some very witty and entertaining exchanges of dialogue. Sam’s parents steal their scenes from the robots when they barge into Sam’s bedroom. The quick dialogue is fun and razor sharp, and seems inspired by the madcapness of the Marx Brothers. Anthony Anderson is well cast as Glen Whitman, the nerdy hacker. The banter with Glen and his cousin whom we first see playing Dance Dance Revolution in his bedroom is hilarious. The moment is minute in the grand scheme of the film, but this attention to the detail elevates “Transformers” beyond just another action film.

As far as the story goes, it’s paper thin and unnecessarily so. There’s the obvious maguffin, in the form of the ‘energy cube’, and there’s more than enough speeches and voiceovered exposition that explain the backstory. I can’t let Bay off the hook on this one. If the attention to detail I just wrote about was taken to the plot, the film could have been even better.

Another fault is about the robot characters themselves. Though they are intricately designed, they lack any kind of character behind the metal. Bumblebee is the most interesting because of his attachment to Sam, but he rarely speaks due to a malfunction with his voice software program or something like that. Optimus Prime is a heroic and noble leader, but it’s because we are told that. Other than his speeches his nobility isn’t reflected in his actions. And aside from one line by Megatron to Starscream about their leadership quarrels, the Decepticons are non-existent as characters. I suspect these characters will be fleshed out in future sequels, so I guess we’ll have to wait.

The screening I attended on opening day was filled with a full house of 12-20 year-olds anxious and primed to enjoy the film. As a result the viewing experience was enhanced with audience participation. On three separate occasions there was loud thunderous applause in the middle of the film. Aside from maybe “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” I can’t recall a screening in the last 10 years with more enthusiasm. So do yourself a favour, see the film soon, with an audience, in the theatre, you won’t be disappointed. Enjoy.