More Than Meets The Eye-Strain.

Optimus Poff

The CGI prowess in the movie TRANSFORMERS almost makes us forget that this film is for people who still play with action figures.

Directed by Michael Bay and his motion-sickness cameras, this overwrought production revolves around the All Spark, a mechanical-mystical cube that has knotted the steel knickers of two races of giant robots engaged in civil war over it – the heroic Autobots and the lunatic Decepticons, who want to take over human technology with the cube for their own evil ends. From a planet called Cybertron, they’ve tracked this cube to Earth. Good for them. Bad for us. And our motion sickness.

Caught in the midst of the fracas is young Sam (Shia LeBeouf) and Mikaela (Megan Fox). LeBeouf is eccentrically fibrillated in a slapstick-frenetic performance, stuttering his way through the movie like an American Hugh Grant, or a Ben Stiller, providing some pretty good distraction from the simple story. While Megan Fox struts about with her T&A all aquiver, just aching for it – which, when you look at her, seems like it was all she was ever put on this Earth to do. Case closed, Yeronner.

While Mikaela makes us want to touch her in all the right places, other subplots provide even more distraction. Josh Duhamel (you know, that guy who looks like a straight Ryan Seacrest) runs around as a military guy, Kevin Dunn and Julie White provide great comic relief as Sam’s kvetching parents, Tasmanian Rachael Taylor makes our pants tight with her broad Aussie accent, Anthony Anderson aims at some kind of Overacting Hall of Fame award, and Jon Voight waxes stentorian as the Secretary of Defense – in the movie, he is the mouthpiece for presidential orders because as we all know, the REAL president Bush (depicted in the movie as a moron) is a moron, and could never actually make defense decisions that don’t involve lying through his skunken shithole.

(When a Secret government agent appears, saying he is on direct orders from the president, we snigger so violently at the thought of George W. Bush issuing orders to perform a task which might actually be beneficial to mankind, that milk and peanuts come out our nose; when Voight later affirms the president has ordered the destruction of the defeated robots, again we climb our highest imagination pinnacles to envision that mongrel son of a whore having access to information which we know he doesn’t read and which he couldn’t comprehend were he to read it, we being well aware that he self-admittedly “never reads any of his intelligence reports, scanning them briefly if at all.”)

Like we don’t have enough delays on the 405.

But nothing is as distracting – or as epic – as the “reality” of those giant robots coming to life before our very eyes, transforming from cars and helicopters and tanks. Whereas Michael Bay is probably the best person who could bring such giant imaginary things to life in a grandiose way, he misses the opportunity to make them as awe-inspiring as they should be, turning the Autobots into the Three Stooges, pratfalling all over Sam’s front yard in an attempt to hide from Sam’s parents.

Admittedly, it’s a reasonably amusing scene, but it followed a scene where the mighty Optimus Prime, the Autobot leader (voiced by Peter Cullen), related the tale of why these “autonomous robotic organisms” found their way to Earth. (I hate tales that start, “Ours was a peaceful society… and then war came.” As if “war” is some outside element intruding into a bubble of harmony. If a society descended into war, then by definition it wasn’t peaceful!) Megatron leads the Bad Robots (voiced by Hugo Weaving like he’s searching for Mr. Anderson). Other notable irons include Bumblebee (Mark Ryan), Ironhide (Jess Harnell), and Starscream (Charlie Adler).

As the Autobots stood tall before Sam and Mikaela, there was almost an inspirational moment, as I imagined how the creator of these toys for Hasbro might have felt, seeing his tiny action figures rendered as gods onscreen.

John Turturro suddenly appears as a secret government agent and actually makes it even funnier.

For every excellent freeway chase scene or epic interaction scene, there are the unnecessary scorpion robot scenes or that tiny annoying Decepticon causing havoc. The music (by Steve Jablonsky) is quite moving  – even when the obligatory Running and Screaming starts and all storyline is squeezed into the simplest of singularities: Protect The Cube. As big things that are not really there battle with other big things that are not really there, interacting with cityscape as if they ARE really there.

Though the detail is astounding on these robots, it’s ocular candy to the myocardial infarction degree. Yeh, my eyes hurt. “More Than Meets The Eye” – you can say that again, Dr. Amblyopia. And it doesn’t help if you slow down the frames on DVD. Because the transformations from beast-to-machine are not logical: the parts don’t match or slot into actual physical spaces, the robots and vehicles simply morph back and forth. I still remember, over 20 years ago, my baby cousin playing with “Oktimus Prime” and how ingeniously the robot slotted into his truck alter-ego – not so in the movie – it’s clank and springs and panels and matter being created from nothing. And eye strain.

And when the robots battle each other, I found myself YEARNING for the discomfort of 3D glasses.

The Transformers are apparently the only movie where the action figures came first. I’m sure my cousin, now near 30, saw this movie in Australia. Yes, the movie IS for the action-figure set… that would be ALL of us over the last three decades…

END

Pussy Galore.

Halle Berry brings her cat scratch fever to bear upon corporate villainy and meddling-cop lovers alike in CATWOMAN, with the style of an Egyptian priestess oozing Western sadomasochismo; a puss in boots by any other name.

Strictly Felis silvestris, no doggy-style for this feline.

Poffy-whipped

The MPAA prove beyond a doubt that they are so blunt-skulled as to be astonishingly unaware of that thing called “innuendo,” in rating this vibrating dildo of a movie a mere PG-13.With a character name gooey enough to warrant slapping the screenwriter responsible for it, Patience Phillips (Berry) is the browbeaten employee of a cosmetics company owned by Laurel Hedare (Sharon Stone – need more evidence for Pure Sex? A woman renowned for her clam-shot!) and her British (and therefore villainous) husband. Overhearing corporate high crimes being plotted, Patience is “killed” by Laurel’s goons.

She is “resurrected” by a cat breathing on her… though it may be hard to believe that the movie’s four screenwriters could concoct nothing more plausible, it is revealed that this particular feline has been spitting up hairballs since Cleopatra’s reign and has “chosen” Patience for her… uh, latent nymphomaniacal abandon, it would seem – to be the superhero/antihero for Generation Y.

And before your head explodes over the idiocy of the premise, let’s put it all in purr-spective (sorry!). In a superhero-conscious society, where a guy can be bitten by a radioactive spider and then walk up walls, or where a guy from a technologically advanced civilization like Krypton (with fashion sense that has not advanced beyond 1972 Gay Mardi Gras – candy-apple-flaming underpants over sky-blue leggings? – girl, puh-lease!) can be accepted with straight faces, this “cat-breath” contrivance is almost rocket science.

Being brought back to life encourages Patience to dress like a slut, put on makeup enough to embarrass a prostitute, walk like she’s left the Anal Intruder lodged deep enough to kill a mule deer, and fight crime.

Sensually clobbering bad guys and good guys alike, in her quest to beat out Jenna Jameson as the World’s Biggest Whore, Catwoman uncovers Laurel’s plot to Take Over The World via the diabolical tool of women’s makeup! (Yes, four screenwriters…) Prompting her into using her whip (insert joke here), getting down on all fours (take down trousers here), licking people (touch oneself here) and using double entendre like she’s getting paid by the pun (slap the screenwriters for ruining it for you).

Talented comedienne Alex Borstein (MAD TV, FAMILY GUY) plays the unfortunate cliché Fat Chick “Friend of the Hot Chick” (bane to clubbers the world over). But in Hollywood parlance, Fat Chicks are as far removed from real-life clubber cock-blockers as Lesbos is from San Francisco, these plump sidekicks quivering with instant publicized arousal whenever a human male hoves within farting distance. And – in a movie that squeals its emasculation with Berry’s every half-naked pirouette and erotogenic self-licking display – Benjamin Bratt plays The Chick.

Catwoman’s identity is nailed by Detective Bratt – soon after he nails Patience – and she is jailed (framed by Laurel Hedare) – in a skintight tracksuit that screams Prison Porn Scene; payoff being Patience’s sensual sliding act through the cell bars, as that badass tracksuit hugs her bad ass… oooh yeh! Do it slow for the dirty old men in the audience with their 13-year-old daughters role-modeling themselves after this flirt-crazed, exhibitionist sex-kitten.

Where is your god now, MPAA?

Though many would criticize this piece of trash for its dizzying editing, embarrassing dialog, banal storyline, distractingly-ludicrous special effects or wafer-thin characters, it is the underlying HYPOCRISY in “empowering” Womankind by simultaneously exploiting them that belittles the film’s aspirations.

And the rest of those things don’t help.

Not that it had too many aspirations, its main deal being securing thousands of soft-porn moments for Berry, hard-selling this product to drooling consumers waiting for a nipple shot which would never come. (Let’s face it, though: we saw Halle’s naked ta-tas in SWORDFISH and they were nothing to write home about.)

The film’s slippery grasp of its Woman Empowerment theme only served to highlight that women can’t have it both ways: if being forward about their sexuality is Empowerment, they should not stymie men being forward about theirs – yet any sexual signal from a man is considered Sexual Harassment at the woman’s prerogative; and if this movie represents a coup for women’s primacy, then it cannot possibly represent misogyny – yet the same factions who laud this as a blow to male supremacy will also whine about its feminine exploitation!

In the film’s final standoff between Catwoman and Laurel Hedare, it becomes obvious that the two most masculine beings in the story are women (business-wise and physically), the film-makers falling into the same paradoxical trap that all Woman Empowering rhetoric must claw its way out of – that women do not seek equality, but rather usurpation of Man’s role, thereby making them as slanted towards the preeminence of their sex as the men they rally against. (The unfortunate corollary is that in overcoming men on their own turf, they must adopt the traits of men – and “butch” and “macho” should be adjectives reserved for gay guys.)

With every man in this movie emasculated and pussified (Bratt seems decidedly put-out that he must pretend to nurse a wounded shoulder to keep him out of the movie’s climactic catfight), estrogen runs rampant as those 13-year-olds cheer the denigration of the gender that grants them these double standards in the first place.

It is those same double standards that the MPAA hypocritically defer to in granting this film its pornographic liberties.

Because Life, much like this movie, is all about the pussy.

END

Anthropocentric Spin.

I want to hurt this movie. Like it hurt me.

THE CORE opens with a Peter Gallagher clone sans Eyebrows dropping dead at a board meeting – so begins a series of events that establish the Earth’s core has inexplicably stopped spinning, causing electromagnetic anomalies. So scientists must drill down and re-start the spin with The Universal Solvent – nukes.

Earth-hugger Poffy

But the spin begins long before they take the plunge…

Any rationalizing fools who entreat those of us with a modicum of intelligence to “sit back, relax and enjoy this entertainment” do not realize that we who rail against movies of this ilk, do so not because of bogus science per se, but because of the inconsistent bogus science. We may not boast Geophysics degrees, nor do we aspire to atom-splitting scientific accuracy – we just want consistency!

Example 1: If your movie maintains that pigeons use the Earth’s electromagnetic field for “long-distance navigation,” why show pigeons disoriented whilst tooling around the few hundred feet of Trafalgar Square.

Example 2: If your movie cites Real Science to explain the impossibility of generating enough energy to start the planet’s core re-spinning, why not establish that it takes that same impossible amount of energy to stop the core in the first place? More on this later.

This movie has less “science” in it than STAR WARS – and STAR WARS has NO science in it.

At a militia symposium, geophysicist Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, playing your average “biscuit-thrower” college professor: disheveled hair, attire and lifestyle; upon arriving home, throws biscuit to dog which has no name – Hollywood stereotype created by Mel Gibson in LETHAL WEAPON), cites Physics 101, yet none of the generals seem to have even a sixth-grade education, as they stare dismayed at his demo of burning a peach with a spraycan, to illustrate – get this! – how the Sun would burn Earth were it to lose its electromagnetic covering. The stupidity meter could go no lower at that point.

Movies of this ilk are constructed around one or two thrilling sequences upon which the burden of the storyline is draped uncomfortably – such a scene was the introduction to Major Rebecca Childs (grotesquely gorgeous Hilary Swank) as her crew emergency-land Shuttle Endeavour in the LA Aqueduct. The movie’s pitch was all about sonic-booming over Dodger Stadium and navigating through overpass bridges like technofied T-Birds from GREASE. Magnificently-staged, the thrill meter hit climax – consequently, it was all downhill from there.

Stanley Tucci‘s suavely turtle-necked Dr. Conrad Zimsky is simply to insult Dr. Carl Sagan. Ironic that we meet Zimsky exiting his “Einstein Seminars,” even whilst this movie leaves Einstein’s most rigorous theorem (E=mc2) in a deep hole.

Tchéky Karyo, as Frenchman Serge, is the only likable character. Of the admittedly talented cast, his performance alone is so poignant that we’re truly saddened to see him die. (His end was pre-ordained; he was, after all, French.) In the grandest of hackneyed traditions, only the Attractive American White Couple survive whilst every one of the dubiously-titled “terranauts” onboard the drilling craft goes down.

Gorgeously grotesque D.J. Qualls is computer-hacker, Rat, called in by the gubmint to communicate with the drilling craft from the surface; an “unlikely hero” character who is really one of those rootless, amoral beings who make our online lives unbearable with viruses and identity theft and their wholly unnecessary existence – rather than being put on a pedestal, these people should be dumped down a deep crevasse.

There’s the Square-Jawed American Pilot (least-known of the principals, Bruce Greenwood – ergo, first to die); Delroy Lindo as Token Black Dude, Dr. “Braz”; Richard Jenkins (from SIX FEET UNDER – is that some kind of bad joke worse than the puns I’ve been making?) and Alfre Woodard as the preposterously miscast Flight Director. The actors did their best, but the blathering catastrophe of the script kept them low. In a movie this bad, one suspects that either Karyo or Tucci filled a role that F. Murray Abraham was too busy to fill because he was too busy digging himself into a hole on some other bad movie.

Braz constructs their drilling craft with a substance called Unobtainium (stop that laughing in back!), which, he tells us, converts heat and pressure to energy, so the deeper it gets, the stronger it gets….er, I think the misinformed “scientist” meant to say that energy in the form of heat and pressure is converted to mass by the Unobtainium. (Remember that “E=mc2” thingy?) Was the “science consultant” on this movie an actual scientist or a guy that read too many comicbooks? – and, more importantly, may I book some time to put him six feet under?

The script was made of Unobtainium. The deeper it got, the more energy it expended in keeping us from frying in outrage.

Note that “implausible” = fiction; “impossible” = fantasy. A drilling craft outfitted with a laser that disintegrates solid rock to nothingness: implausible. Humans sustaining diamond-crushing pressure in the Earth’s mantle – no matter what they’re wearing, let alone wafer-thin spacesuits: impossible. Throughout the film, Impossibility outweighing Implausibility makes THE CORE Science Fantasy, not Science “Fiction,” so cease associating it with a once-legitimate term.

When physics knowledge was at a groundling stage, scientifically-inept tales like JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH were acceptable, but these days, even the common rabble are well-versed in general physics, so it is inexcusable that knowledge be so denigrated, ignored and subjugated to the inadequacies of feeble-minded technicians with big budgets, who promulgate ANTI-knowledge with their idiotic product…

Deep in the plot, where everyone takes turns saying something scientifically illiterate, Zimsky reveals that a man-made device, “Destiny,” is responsible for the stalled core. I’ll say this once: nothing man-made can output the amount of energy needed to stall a planet’s core. What part of “nothing man-made” don’t the film-makers understand? If these arrogant, anthropocentric, bacterial mites were to explode every nuclear weapon the government denies possessing, it would still not affect the planet’s spin, orbit or sturdiness; it would not even wipe out “all life,” but the great percentage of larger organisms that depend on photosynthesis in their food chain (mainly plants and mammals).

Conceited humans refuse to acknowledge One True Fact: the PLANET will be fine – whether or not the core spins at all; whether or not humans exist at all. You’re only “saving” it for your own selfish ends…

As the Attractive American White Couple are rescued, Rat cries, “The earth is healing itself!” – Well, uh, it was never really “sick,” rodent – obviously jubilant that he can now stop working for The Man and go back to creating viruses and stealing identities online, like the worthless piece of excrement he always was.

But before he hacks into the World Wide Web for spiritually bereft reasons, he does it one last time “nobly” – to promulgate the biographies of the “heroes” who died whilst defying physics laws through uninformed dialog. Whilst we vainly try to clear our e-mail logjams, that’s all we need – more spam.

Can I start to hurt you now, to let the real healing begin?

END