Recent Netflixery
Oh how it pains me to admit the depth of my shallowness some times. To wit, the last two movies I rented were "Next," the Nicolas Cage fantasy adventure and the Transformers movie. Let me deal with the former first. Actually better than I expected. Nic Cage is nothing -ever- but Nic Cage but he makes passing fair action adventure movies so I took a chance. If you have an hour and a half to spare and haven't seen it, you could do worse. Skip the extras though. Total waste of synaptic electrons. I have one serious beef. At one point Cage tells the old joke about the Zen Master at the hot dog stand ("make me one with everything"). And he utterly screws the pooch on it: "I'll have one with everything." That ... makes ... no ... sense!
Let me preface my remarks about "Transformers" by saying that I hate Michael Bay. "Armageddon" was the biggest colonic product I have seen in forever. Massive poopage. And I like just about all the actors in that show. As much as I love Kate Beckinsale, I couldn't even bring myself to watch "Pearl Harbor" because of my antipathy to the Bay person. But Lileks posted a brief rave about the robot movie and I am in an action adventure mood so, all right already. Damn. I could not have enjoyed it more. Thank goodness I have the new speakers with the subwoofer! Loud and thumping (a problem in "Armageddon") was just what the non-stop slam-bang of this flick needed. It could easily lose fifteen minutes of Shia LaBeouf's family, Anthony Anderson and his family but once this ramps up, it just doesn't stop. The robot transformations are nothing short of amazing but they're actually too complex. The fights are massive but, again, too complex. There's to much debris flying around to make sense of what's going on. It's the opening space battle from the last and most craptacular of the Star Wars movies all over again. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
But then there are FX shots like two massive robots crashing through a building shown from the outside of the structure with offices full of scurrying people in full view. That was a 'wow' shot no question.
So as much as I hate myself for saying this, I loved "Transformers." And I resent that. I still hate Michael Bay though. I can't let that go.