Father and son on a vendetta

Shogun Assassin (1980)

If you know how this movie was made everything should tell you this is nothing but cheap exploitation made for the dumb audience to get a quick fix of some sword swinging action. Robert Houston got the idea to re-cut two movies from the Lone Wolf and Cub series into one short action filled romp. Namely these two Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) with a tiny bit from the third one as well. All that dubbed into English and with a new swinging soundtrack. So it doesn't sound good on paper, but even in fear of getting some mortal enemies from the fans of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, this is better than the first two parts together. First of all this movie gets the setting up of the story done in a fast and effective way, unlike the original series where it tends to drag on for way too long. Second this movie adds a whole new dimension to the story with the narration by the Cub, which of course is done to explain some of the missing parts, but it actually works wonders for the depth of the characters. And the dubbing, it's one of the best I've seen in any movie dubbed from one language to another. Apparently they used deaf people to read the lips and try to guess what they were saying and then basing the dialog into words that fit the story and the mouth movements. Quite ingenious if you ask me and it works brilliantly. Now most of you who know me and my hate towards remakes and cheap copies are probably wondering how the hell can I like a movie like this which takes a piece of classic cinema art and "destroys" it. Well I see it as a remix, just like in music, most of the time they are not exactly great, but sometimes they can be even better than the original and this is one of those.

Anyway this movie tells the story of Shogun's decapitator, Lone Wolf, who with his son, Cub, seeks revenge on the Shogun who murdered his wife. The Shogun uses all his power to send out ninjas, warriors and assassins to stop the Lone Wolf, but a great samurai warrior with a vengeance on his mind is not stopped so easily. The story is very simple, but there's surprisingly much depth to the characters, mostly because there was so much material to go with I guess it was relatively easy to build strong characters out of those. There's no shortage of action and the body count goes absolutely crazy towards the end. But still there's drama and tragedy behind the showers of blood and decapitated heads. The movie is simply beautifully shot, some of the frames are works of art worth placing on your wall. Too bad the Brittish DVD I watched was from a print that had seen it's better days. There are also a few scenes that are just pure brilliance on the psychological side as well, for example the warming up scene after escaping the burning boat. And call me crazy, but I like the rather simple soundtrack too. Actually the only thing I don't like about this movie is that it credits only Robert Houston as a director while ignoring Kenji Misumi who directed the original movies. Sure Houston cut this version, but still some credit to Misumi who made the amazing source material would be welcome. Anyway I really like this movie and even though I've seen it many times by now it still works wonders. That's a sign of a true classic.
91%

The longest training montage in the history of cinema?

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

First a bit of a disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of martial arts movies, I mean I surely don't hate them but the fighting is not enough for me to make a good movie. So when reviewing a genre defining classic like this I'm sure to anger some fans of the genre because of my ignorance. My expectations were of course high because I had read and been told this was one of the best in the genre, so the premise for the movie was maybe a bit unfair. Anyway, after seeing it I surely didn't hate it, but it didn't really blow my mind either. So this is a story of San Te (Chia Hui Liu) who gets mixed up in a fight between the patriots and the Manchu, two rivalring groups in the Canton area. His friends and family ends up dead so he swears revenge and seeks the help of a Shaolin temple and their knowledge of martial arts. He seems to be a natural talent and ends up going through the different chambers in a record time to become a master. Surprisingly I quite liked the story, it's very basic and simple, but what can you expect from a movie like this so it worked rather brilliantly. Also the movie looked great with some very nicely framed shots and the restored print on the DVD did it perfect justice. The music was not that great, but didn't bother me either, though the sound effects did get a bit annoying after a while, them being extremely repetitive. The acting was also surprisingly good and surely the cast were extremely good at what they did fight wise. Some of the stuff they do is just mezmerising. But the biggest flaw of this movie is funnily enough the training, it goes on way too long. Sure that's the part where all the skills come to show, but really it could have been cut in half with the same effect for me. I mean I'm not a fan of training montages for sure, but it just got a bit tedious with it's duration. Anyway, I wasn't bored and was quite happy to see this one as I had heard about it quite often. I guess for fans of martial arts this is pretty much a perfect movie, for me it was "just" a good movie.
72%

Barbarians, swords, sorcery and sandals - Part 1

I needed to watch some barbarian and sword & sorcery movies for a project I'm working on, so I bought 11 more or less classics from the genre. That being the 80's Conan copies and of course the Conan movies themselves. Here's my thoughts on the first six of them in no particular order. As a warning for the fans of this genre, I must say I'm not a big fan of them so don't hold it against me if I fail to see the greatness of some of these movies.













Red Sonja (1985)

Brigitte Nielsen is Red Sonja, a master sword swinger who seeks revenge on the evil queen who killed her family. The queen has also stolen a magical orb with destructive powers and Red Sonja tries to retrieve it. Joining her in this adventure is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor, a warrior on a quest to destroy the orb. They are also joined by an annoying kid prince and his servant, serving as the comic sidekicks I guess. This movie follows very predictable paths, bit of sword swinging and adventure with of course a bit of romance in there as well. The acting is quite bad most of the time, but then again the cast is there for their looks not because of their acting talents. I guess the real reason this movie was made was that Brigitte Nielsen looked hot in that tight warrior outfit. Highlights of this movie was Ennio Morricone's music, but unfortunately not much else. At parts the movie gets so bad it becomes funny, but then it just becomes bad again, so can't really recommend it as a campy fun movie either. Anyway it had it's moments and kept me somewhat entertained despite it's flaws.
40%

The Blade Master (1984)

From a barbarian movie by Joe D'Amato you'd expect quite a bit of sexploitation. Much to my surprise there was basically none, if you don't count the nice outfit of Mila. Well anyway, this is a bad movie and unfortunately it's not the kind which turns into great comedy for being so bad, so I won't waste much time for it. Apparently this is a sequel for Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982), though absolutely nothing is this one made me want to see what the first, or the third for that matter, are about. Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is this some sort of a great warrior who is living at the far edge of the world which seems to be about a day away from everywhere. One day Mila (Lisa Foster) brings bad news about his mentor who is captured by a bad guy named Zor (David Brandon). So off they go with their mute Asian sidekick, funnily named Thong (Kiro Wehara), to rescue the mentor. Bad effects, horrible acting and a nonsense plot follows. A few scenes cracked me up in laughter, like the snake fight and the hang gliding scene with those hand grenades for example, but mostly the only excitement this movie offered was watching the incredibly short skirt of Mila. So it's not really anything more than just a bad movie. I'm just wondering why did someone make this in the first place? Why did someone finance this horrible excuse of a movie? Why did someone release it as a DVD? And most of all why did I buy it? Well luckily it was cheap, but I'd still rather have my 3.95 back and most importantly my one and a half hours back.
10%

Ironmaster (1983)

Umberto Lenzi is more known from his violent crime movies and cannibal films, but like most Italian exploitation directors, he too wanted to cash in with the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and this is what he made. It's basically not a barbarian movie as it's a story about cave men who discover iron, but the themes are quite barbarian. Vood (George Eastman) kills his tribe leader and the hero of the movie, Ela (Sam Pasco), drives him out of the tribe. But Vood discovers an iron blade and comes back to claim the leadership of the tribe by force. Then Ela is cast out while Vood decides to take rule over all of the neighboring tribes. Ela then joins forces with a peace loving tribe of hippies and they of course have a bloody battle. That's the story in a nut shell, but there's plenty more than that. There's lions, men in monkey costumes, disease ridden people who look like zombies and of course the horribly bad acting. The fights are clumsy as usual but this time, this one being an Umberto Lenzi movie, there's some gore effects to spice things up a bit. The music was quite horrible and annoyingly repetitive. For most parts this was just a bad movie, but there were quite a few absolutely brilliant moments that were so horribly bad they were great comedy. So I must say I was surprisingly entertained and in the end this was quite an ok campy trash movie.
48%

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

This is the first feature length movie of Albert Pyun, the self proclaimed master of cheap b-class action movies. True to his filmography and the genre in question this movie is not good either. The story in this one goes something like this, an evil guy called Cromwell (Richard Lynch) resurrects an evil sorcerer just to kill him moments later. Then Cromwell goes on to kill the king and become the king himself. The son and the daughter of the king escape and years later try to take over the kingdom from Cromwell. There's some twists I guess I shouldn't mention in order to not spoil it, even though I wouldn't really recommend watching this movie in the first place. It clearly shows that Pyun is trying to go for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the hero, the music, the dialog and the action, but of course missing the mark by a mile. Though I must say the hero, played by Lee Horsley, was by far the best thus far out of these movies, well at least he tries to bring some comedy into it if nothing else. There are some scenes which were absolutely brilliant in how idiotic they were. For example a scene where an evil jailer gets his head slowly pushed into a grinding wheel which is powered by his own legs. Still makes me laugh to think about it, I mean if your head is about to get grinded out maybe it would be wise to stop pedalling the damn thing. Anyway that's just one example, there are more of those, but unfortunately they are few and far between. So in the end this is not really worth watching, unless you want to waste your time on garbage for a few hilarious scenes.
36%

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Thus far this is the only movie I might consider leaving to my collection out of this bunch. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, but it's so bad it's simply hilarious. The story is basically a copy of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), this time set on planet Ura. Two groups are fighting over the control of a village's only water well, in comes a strange warrior called Kain (David Carradine) who has other plans for the village. You can guess the rest. Anyway, the fighting was bad, the tits were plenty, the acting horrible, the creatures were oddly cute, the effects hilarious, the dialog ridiculous and did I mention the tits already? The movie is horribly edited, it looked like someone did some cuts to the final print of the movie as even the music cuts from time to time and not only between scenes, but within a scene as well. Though that only helped the goofy feeling of the movie. I must say I wasn't bored and I did get some nice laughs, even though I kind of doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon. Maybe I'll save this one for some hangover morning in the future.
65%

Can't find a linkable trailer for this one, so here's the opening credits, for what ever that's worth...

Deathstalker (1983)

Deathstalker (Rick Hill) is a sword swinging warrior whose goals in life are to have sex with as many ladies as possible and to obtain the three powers of creation. He gets one power, a sword, from an old witch, the other two are held by an evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) who just so happens to arrange a big tournament where the winner gets them. So Deathstalker heads to the tournament and is joined by Kaira (Lana Clarkson) a warrior woman in probably the most ridiculous and sexist outfits I've ever seen. That's about all there is to the story, some sword swinging and plenty of tits to follow. I must say the entertainment values were quite high in this movie, especially during the first half, but unfortunately the second half focuses too much on the story and the sword fights, which of course are not much to go with. Apart from the outfit of Kaira there were quite a few hilariously weird moments, for example a funny sex scene which might give homophobes some very bad nightmares. All in all this was an ok bad movie, had some good laughs and it kept me entertained throughout. Though in the end there are so many better good bad movies out there that this one will just vanish in the vast averageness.
50%

That's it for the first part, the second part with the Conan movies and a few other 80's exploitation flicks, will follow eventually when I get the time and mood to watch them. Might end up watching the Conan remake as well, but don't hold your breath for it.

Cancer is fun, money buys you happiness and even the nastiest selfish billionaires are actually kind and warm people

The Bucket List (2007)

Right from the start I must say I didn't like this movie. It's a story about Carter (Morgan Freeman) and Edward (Jack Nicholson) who are both terminally ill with cancer. Edward is a selfish lonesome billionaire who owns the hospital they are staying in and Carter is the "everyman" a smart mechanic with a loving family. As these two opposites are put into the same room to recorver from surgery and chemo, they of course become friends. One day Carter writes a "bucket list" a list of things to do before he kicks the bucket and Edward of course uses his billions to pay for all that. Then the cancer and families are forgotten and the adventure around the world begins. The main characters of the film are nothing like real people. The cancer is nothing like real cancer. And the story is about as impossible as it can get. After devastating chemotherapy and being diagnosed with terminal cancer you of course want to climb the Himalayas. I don't know but at that situation climbing out of bed sounds hard enough for me. Anyway the story is ridiculously far fetched and I surely hope no one with real cancer sees this. And worst of it all, the message this movie is sending out is that money buys you happiness. The only thing good about this movie is the acting with both of the lead characters giving out good performances, but that's not worth seeing the movie.
21%

The Gladiator gets extended

Gladiator (2000)

The problem with these big Hollywood spectacles is that they are rather one dimentional, they thoroughly entertain and thrill you when you first see them, maybe even leave you with something to think about. But usually the more times you watch them again the worse they get as there's nothing more for them to give and thus you end up paying too much attention to the small details, which usually tend to not work as well. I've seen this movie now about 5 or 6 times and even though none of those times has topped the first time I saw it at the theater, I still find this one working surprisingly well. The reason I watched this one again was because I updated my old DVD to a Blu-Ray which had the extended cut on it and I hadn't seen that before. I must say these Universal 100th Anniversary Collector's Edition Digibooks are absolutely brilliant. You can find good deals on them with less than 10 euros and with that you get the movie beautifully remastered on high definition and a ton of extra material in a nice book cover. Like I said the movie worked surprisingly well even though I've seen it often enough. Though of course the small things caught my eye a bit too much, like the problems with the background action in the war scene where people are just standing around there in middle of the battle and quite a few other small issues. But really I didn't mind them that much as the movie is still a great action packed drama with brilliant performances by the cast. Nowadays I don't see Russell Crowe's performance as great as I used to, it's still not bad by any means, but it's hugely overshadowed by Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris. So pretty much every supporting actor does more or less a better job than Crowe. Another thing which has changed during the years are the visual effects, back in the days they looked amazing, but now not that much, especially on Blu-Ray some of the CGI shots stand out quite clearly. But luckily there aren't that many of them and otherwise this movie looks and sounds amazing in HD. And about the sounds Hans Zimmer's score is a classic already so that of course works great. Anyway, most of the extended cut material was actually not that great. I mean it was very interesting to see the scenes and at parts they brought a bit more depth to the supporting characters, but to be honest those scenes were rather nonessential and well worth leaving out. So in the end they only dragged the movie a bit too much. This rating is for the extended cut, the theatrical cut, and acording to Ridley Scott that's the director's cut as well, would be a few points higher.
81%

Probably the best war adventure ever made

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

This has been one of my favorites for about as long as I've watched movies. It's brobably the best war adventure ever made and a movie I find myself comparing others of it's kind against. And as I'm a fan of Alistair MacLean's novels and as the screenplay of this was written by him, there's not much to not love about this. Now there of course are problems with this one, it's not exactly historically accurate and it does have some believability issues as it's quite a bit over the top in terms of heroistic action. So if those are things you can't get over, I'd suggest looking into other war movies, but if those are something you can live with then this is one hell of an action packed adventure. The story is intriguing to say the least, it has a fair share of twists and manages to pull out surprises even to the last minutes. Now sure it's a bit far fetched and some of the twists are borderline ridiculous, but yet it's an exciting thrill ride. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood are tough, so tough infact that they could take down the whole Nazi army by themselves and funnily enough that has never bothered me, I belive they actually could be so tough. That boosted with great music and brilliant cinematography makes this an unbelievably magnificent movie.

99%

Sometimes even the villain deserves to be a hero

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Ralph (John C. Reilly) is a video game character in a game called Fix-It Felix. He is bored of his every day life of wrecking things and being the villain to everyone in town. One day he decides that he wants to be the hero for a change so he leaves his game to seek out new adventures on other games. That of course creates a chaos in the game universe and he ends up in all kinds of trouble. First of all I have never been a hard core gamer, I mean sure I've played my fair share of them, but as this movie references to so many other games I didn't recognize half of them. So gamers will most likely get more out of this than I did. Anyway this wasn't a bad movie, actually it was quite a good one. The voice acting was brilliant and the animation looked great. So the movie looked and sounded very good, and all in all I can't find a thing to complain on the technical side. But it's the story which got me a bit bored at times. It's just so predictable. I mean sure there were nice surprises and funny jokes I didn't see coming and a few twists at the end, but really the paths that it follows are very familiar. So even though I was thoroughly entertained it left me with absolutely nothing to go with. Anyway, it was well worth the watch.

73%

The filmography of Quentin Tarantino

As these were not here yet and since I just watched most of them once again, I'll write my thoughts about them here briefly. Sorry about the short reviews on some of them, but really if a movie is perfect there's not much else to add to it. I'll only include the movies directed by Tarantino, even though many of his scripts directed by others are considered as his movies. Maybe one day I'll revisit those as well. You can find my review of Django Unchained here.













Reservoir Dogs (1992)

This wasn't the first Tarantino movie I ever saw, actually I didn't even know about it's existence before I saw the one below. But after that I stormed every video rental shop in the city until I found this. I remember once I finally saw it I was actually disappointed, I mean I still thought it was a good movie, but as I was expecting another Pulp Fiction, I was let down a bit. That of course has changed since then and nowadays I think this is a brilliant masterpiece. Not only is this the best "heist" movie ever made but it's also one of the best crime movies ever made. Can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said a million times, so I'll just say it's a brilliant movie and I'd rank it as Tarantino's third best film.
98%













Pulp Fiction (1994)

I still remember when I first saw this at the theaters, something I guess I'll remember for the rest of my life. I saw it at this crappy small basement theater because I was 17 at the time and the movie had an age limit of 18, but they were cool enough in that theater to not care so much. So me and my date who was a year younger got in without any problems, even though they generally were quite strict about those age limits even back then. Now that I think of it and starting to feel all nostalgic I shouldn't call the theater crappy, I actually wish there still was theaters like that today. They had character and their own feel to them, unlike these multiplexes today. Anyway the reason why I remember it so clearly is because I was totally blown away by the movie. It was something I had never seen before and didn't even think that there could be movies like this. This was one of those movies that changed me in a way. For better or worse that I don't know, but ever since I saw it I've sought out more of these 70's exploitation movies. Seeing this movie today I found some scenes not working as well as back then, like that foot massage discussion seemed to be surprisingly dragging and uninteresting. Then again I still think the second half of this movie is probably the best comedy ever made, so it balances it out more than well. Pretty much a perfect movie, Tarantino's best and one of my all time favourites.
100%













Four Rooms (1995)

For this one I'll give a proper review as this seems to be the one most people haven't seen from Tarantino's filmography. Then again this is only one fourth of a Tarantino movie, but still I think it belongs to this list as there's a clear segment and story of the movie which he wrote and directed. The problem with these kinds of movies is the difference between the makers, which usually makes the movie rather uneven. And that certainly was the problem with this one as well. There was an attempt to glue the stories together with Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth), but unfortunately that was one of the weakest parts of this movie. Tim Roth has never done a worse performance, so much over acting and his character is all over the place all the time. Might be partly the fault of the four different directors, but still it's a weak effort. Anyway this movie has a very bad start as the first story by Allison Anders is just plain crap and even though it's only 15 minutes or so it's still way too long to give any hope for the rest of the movie. The second story by Alexandre Rockwell worked a bit better, though as the bar was set so low by the first one it wasn't much of an effort. Again bad acting and a useless story, though not as painful to watch as the first one. The third story by Robert Rodriguez is where the movie finally gets going and there's some actually funny moments. Antonio Banderas was also very strong, pulling out the best performance of the whole movie. This third story was the strongest one in the movie, apart from the ending of the fourth. Then the fourth story by Quentin Tarantino, it's actually quite a weak story as the basic idea of it is copied from Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Then again that's not the real problem as the idea is what sets up the absolutely drop dead hilarious ending of the movie, it's just the 20 or so minutes leading to it. The dialogue, even though it's nicely flowing as you'd expect from Tarantino, is just plain boring most of the time. Luckily the ending saves a lot, but still it felt like Tarantino didn't really put that much of an effort for this. All in all the movie is not good, with one great episode, one good episode, one bad episode and one just shit, it's way too uneven and mostly badly acted. It's actually a shame as replacing the first two episodes with better stories and better storytellers and someone focusing on directing Tim Roth this would have been a great movie.
45%













Jackie Brown (1997)

Before this movie came out I had become a fan of the 70's exploitation flicks and Pam Grier was one of my favourite actresses, with Coffy (1973) as one of my all-time favourite movies. So expectations were high as always and this one surely delivered. This movie is a bit of an oddity in Tarantino's filmography as it's his only adapted screenplay and it's told in quite a linear format. But that actually only adds to the beauty of this movie. I haven't read the book by Elmore Leonard so can't say for sure how good the adaptation is, but as a stand alone movie this is absolutely perfect. This one probably has the best mood of all of his movies and the best soundtrack to boost it. Tarantino's second best movie.
99%













Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)












Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

I'll put these two together as that's the way they were meant to be, one four hour action extravaganza. I was really blown away by these when I first saw them, but I must say these are the ones I have most seldom revisited out of Tarantino's works. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be amazing, it's just that four hours is a long running time for a movie no matter how great it is. So my only gripe with these is the length, even though watching them again I really can't think of a single scene worth leaving out. It's very hard to place brilliant movies in any order but I'd say this is Tarantino's fifth best film.
95%













Death Proof (2007)

Tarantino's take on a slasher, though this time the usual knife is replaced with a car. The cast is great as always, even though it's a Kurt Russell show. The biggest problem of this movie is that Tarantino kind of forgets that slashers need to have people dying on them, not just chatting along. Sure when the killing starts it's brilliant, but really there's too much talking and not enough action for a grindhouse movie. Tarantino's worst, but still a good movie none the less.
75%













Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The absolutely brilliant cast carries this hilarious movie with maybe Brad Pitt's best performance ever to boost it. The thing that troubles me with this one is the continuity errors, there's way too many of them and even multiple times in one scene. I don't usually complain about things like that and I've seen plenty in Tarantino's other movies as well, but for some reason I keep spotting way too many of them in this one. But that's small details as this is Tarantino's fourth best movie.
97%

Sorry about the short reviews, but really long praising posts are rather boring to read and well I kind of expect most people have already seen these movies.

High tension in a tin can

Voyage to the Bottom ofthe Sea (1961)

I love old sci-fi movies, the wacky designs in them are usually just a feast for the eyes. Not only that but you either get something so absurd that it turns out to be hilariously entertaining or every now and then you actually see a movie that's quite current in themes even today. This was a bit of both. The Americans have invented a new atomic submarine, called Seaview, and during it's first test voyage the Van Allen radiation belt around the Earth catches fire. As the Earth is slowly turning to a barbecue grill and the extinction of the whole human race seems imminent the best scientists around the world seem clueless as how to prevent this. But fear not as the two brightest scientists are on board the Seaview and they have a plan to blow up the Van Allen belt with an atomic rocket. As most of the other scientists seem to disagree with them as they think it would be wiser to just wait for it to burn out, the tensions rise between them and even amongst the crew of Seaview. First the parts that worked even today. Michael Schiffer must have watched this movie for inspiration to the screenplay of Crimson Tide (1995) as there are so many similarities to them, even though the plot around them is quite different. When you have a group of people inside a submarine with no connection to the outside world and the Admiral has a plan that could either save the planet or destroy it, it of course creates conflicts between the crew. And it surely doesn't help that the United Nations have sent a submarine to destroy the Seaview before it can shoot it's rocket. Also the fact that the world is about to end and there's no guarantee that the crazy plan will work the crew needs to figure out how to spend the last moments of their lives, with their loved ones or with a seemingly crazy plan in hopes to stop it. Another thing that worked very well were the problems created between science and religion. So there's quite a few things that worked even today as an interesting and thought provoking movie.

But as it's an old sci-fi movie there's plenty of that absurd stuff in there as well. Of course the whole idea of a ring of fire around the Earth was just ridiculous and the stuff one might find deep at the bottom of the sea turned out to be a hilarious surprise. So there are quite a few of those ridiculous moments as well. Then again they kind of fit the pace of the movie, once the “smart” stuff turned into a stall it went to the “funny” stuff to keep up the interest. The cast were fairly ok, nothing to rave about but surely nothing to complain about either. This movie looked surprisingly good and the restored print on the DVD was a feast for the eyes. Sure some of the effects were bad in modern standards, but still most of the underwater shots looked amazing. A movie well worth watching, especially if you're into old sci-fi.

85%

I meet Abbott and Costello

I have a big gaping hole in my general knowledge as I haven't seen any of the Abbott and Costello movies, so it was time to patch that up. I started with the double feature of Abbott and Costello: MeetFrankenstein/Meet the Mummy as it had the Frankenstein which seemed to be recommended by most as one of their best and the Mummy from the next decade to give some diversity.

 

Abbott and Costello MeetFrankenstein (1948)

This movie should rather be called Abbott and Costello Meet the Universal Monsters as they don't actually meet Frankenstein, but they do meet his monster with Dracula, Wolf Man and a surprise guest at the end. Right from the start I must say I was amazed that Bela Lugosi was playing Dracula and Lon Chaney the Wolf Man, just like they did in the originals. Too bad Boris Karloff isn't playing the Frankenstein's monster, but still two out of three is quite impressive to be honest, though I guess it wasn't that big of a task to get them in the movie as all of the franchises were owned by Universal as was the Abbott and Costello movies. Anyway Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are working at a postal office and one day they get two crates for delivery to the Museum of Horror. Turns out those crates contain the not so dead bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Dracula plans on resurrecting the monster and plant Wilbur's brain on it for more control. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, joins the party in hopes of stopping Dracula and his devious plan, but as it seems every night there's full moon things don't work out as planned. Abbott seems to be the brains of the duo while Costello is the goofier one always getting into trouble, but they both get their equal share of laughs. I really liked the chemistry between them at times it was like watching an old married couple going at each other. Another character that stood out was Dracula as Lugosi gives out quite a great performance in this one. What made this movie stand out from the other horror comedies of it's kind was that it didn't directly make fun of the monsters, they could have just as well been in a horror movie, it's the duo around them creating the comedy. That works surprisingly well. The comedy is a mix of crazy goofball action, slapstick and witty remarks. And especially those witty remarks really cracked me up. Even though time hasn't been kind to this one, I must say this was one of the better horror comedies out there and probably the best of it's time. I was truly entertained and got some very good laughs.

80%

Abbott and Costello Meetthe Mummy (1955)

Abbott and Costello are in Egypt and get mixed up with a murder of an archaeologist and a plot to raise the mummy of Klaris. Even though this movie had it's moments and actually couple of hilariously funny scenes, it's extremely repetitive from the Frankenstein one. The scene at the archaeologist's office was almost like an exact copy of the one at the Museum of Horror from the previous one with the same jokes just a different surrounding. Sure it still managed to squeeze a few laughs from me, but I started to worry that these characters don't have that many jokes in them as there were very familiar scenes later in the movie as well. However there were some quite original ones in there as well, so it's not a total miss. The start was not that easy as it seemed so similar to the previous one, but towards the end this movie kind of found its place. So in the end it was merely an ok comedy. Even though I didn't like this one that much I must say I'll definitely will be watching more of the Abbott and Costello movies in the future as they truly are a funny pair of characters.

50%

Believe it or not, this movie looks great

Life of Pi (2012)

Piscine Molitor Patel is a curious character, first named after a swimming pool in France and then shortened to a mathematical symbol. His parents own a zoo in India, where Pi spends his first years growing up. But things take a different turn as they have to move to Canada, so they pack themselves and the animals into a boat and head towards new adventures. However a storm sinks the ship and Pi ends up in a lifeboat with an assortment of animals, the main one being a Bengal tiger. And so the mystical tale of survival begins. Right from the start I must say this movie looked absolutely stunning and even though the damn 3D was a nuisance again, I didn't mind it that much. Well apart from a few scenes where things come flying into you a bit too much and that freaking pole scene which was just plain annoying. But still most of the time I was just at awe of the beauty on the screen. Suraj Sharma was quite good as the young Pi, but other than that the cast was quite forgettable, then again it didn't matter much as the young Pi is where the movie focuses anyway. Without the 3D I probably wouldn't complain about the length of the movie, I'd be happy to watch imagery this beautiful for more than 2 hours, but with it I got a bit bored at times as the movie is not in a hurry to get you to the end. At the start religion plays a big role in the movie and when Pi says that he has a story that will make you believe in God, that got me very curious about things to come. Especially since I've heard quite a few remarks about this movie that it might just change your life, your beliefs and so forth. Unfortunately though the “deeper” meaning of this movie turns out to be as shallow as a puddle of rainwater on the street, as all it really says is that you choose what you want to believe in. Wow, am I the only one who finds that already rather ridiculously obvious? Well even though I was disappointed in the philosophical side of the movie, it was still quite entertaining and visually stunning experience.

73%

The Hobbit, white beard and the 13 dwarfs

The Hobbit: An UnexpectedJourney (2012)

I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy when they came out, but for some reason I was never really looking forward to seeing this one. Maybe it was the more children's book nature of the original novel and when I read that they are milking every last drop of it with 3 movies from one book which is shorter than any single one of the LOTR books. But I tried to put aside my prejudices as there was still many things I wanted to see in it.

First lets get the technical stuff out of the way. I saw the 48FPS 3D version of the movie and I must say the 3D was surprisingly good. I still think it's a useless gimmick, but this was one of the clearest 3D picture I've seen, so there's been some progress, unfortunately those damn glasses are still a nuisance. The 48FPS on the other hand I'm not exactly convinced on, it felt a bit TV-like, kind of lifting the veil from the movie magic a bit too much. I paid way too much attention to little details which was definitely not a good thing, makeup mistakes, set borders and bad paint jobs were a bit too visible. I kind of doubt that they would slack on those departments, I guess they aren't any different from the LOTR movies, but on those you don't pay any attention to them. So it comes down to the new technology, the old technology needs to evolve a bit more before it would be a viable option to use to capture a huge fantasy movie like this which relies so much on makeup and a mix of physical and virtual sets.

Enough of the tech talk and on with the movie itself. Unfortunately it's not great. It's way too uneven to be a solid entertaining experience following a formulaic nature of introduction-setup-action-introduction-setup-action, rinse and repeat. Way too often the characters get into trouble and just as things look grim out of nowhere comes the salvation, mostly by Gandalf. First time it was ok, but around the third time it became a total joke already. This in addition to the overly comical rollercoaster like action sequences then took out the element of danger from the movie. I know it's more of a children's movie than LOTR, but that's no excuse for doing it poorly. Another thing it was lacking was drama, whenever there's a chance for some deeper drama it seems to turn into almost camp-like nonsense. Why? Is it again because it's a children's movie? Yet there's quite a few heads chopped off on the action scenes, but can't go into dramatic character elements. I just don't understand the reasoning. But it wasn't a totally bad movie. I absolutely loved the Gollum scene, best part of the whole movie, though getting there was not easy. At times it did feel like the long lost brother of LOTR and it tried to take me on an adventure, but too often I just got slapped to the face. All in all I guess it was worth watching, even though it could have easily been an hour shorter. And even though there's quite a bit happening in this movie it still felt like an overly long prelude to something I'm not really sure I want to wait for anymore.

55%

A lizard with a six shooter

Rango (2011)

Rango is a domesticated pet chameleon who dreams of big stardom as a great actor. But his aquarium gets thrown out of a car and he ends up in the desert of the wild west. Fighting his way through the scorching heat of the desert sun, an eagle looking for a meal and other dangers on his way, he winds up in a little town called Dirt. Dirt is an outlawed town where only the strongest survive. It's filled with all sorts of critters and everyone seems to be after water. Soon Rango finds himself as the sheriff of Dirt and needs to figure out what has happened to the water supply. The story follows familiar paths from spaghetti westerns and that homage to the genre one of the best aspects of the movie. Spaghetti western fans will find tons of references to pretty much all of the classics and quite a many jokes related to them. Another thing I liked about this were the characters, they aren't the usual cute little animals, these are reptiles, amphibians and other critters that usually don't pop in mind when thinking of something cute. But they are not nasty looking disgusting things, there's still enough character in them that they actually turn out to be quite cute. And most of all they fit the spaghetti western story very well. The comedy was aimed mostly at the adult audience, so don't know if kids can get as much out of this, but at least I surely had fun. Though there is enough of slapstick so I bet the kids can enjoy it as well. Johnny Depp puts on a brilliant show and genuinely seems to enjoy his part, so that was of course a great plus. Unfortunately the rest of the cast didn't shine out as much, but then again there wasn't much of a script for them either. Though I must mention that I was actually surprised that Spirit of the West wasn't played by Clint Eastwood, so props for Timothy Olyphant for the Clint impersonation. The look was quite good also with many shot setups straight from the classic spaghetti westerns and at parts even the music sounded like it would have been made by Ennio Morricone. So there are lots of great things in this one and surely it was a refreshingly different kind of animation, but would have hoped a bit better casting on the smaller roles and a bit tighter script.
70%

The filmography of Michael Bay

I was thinking which director's filmography I should go through next and at first I thought I'd take some other master of the art out of the best of the best. But then I thought it's not good to just focus on the brilliant directors as watching a masterpiece after a masterpiece tends to raise the bar too high for everyone else. So that's why I decided to take a look at Michael Bay. The man who is associated with explosive hyper active action, racist type casting without any character development and idolizing Americana. Not forgetting helicopters flying slow motion in the sunset, the light streaks and flares to spice up dull conversations or the camera that just doesn't stand still for a second. I must say I have a hate/love relationship towards the man. At best he does properly funny action movies which are very entertaining, but at the same time he has no idea how to tell a good story or build drama or characters for that matter. Even the action has been bad in his later films where it's just a CGI mess with no sense of what's going on. But I must say they are still fun, intentionally or not. His commercial and music video background shines through his movies, and that's what they basically are, a mix of commercial product placement and music video. So for what ever it's worth here's Michael Bay's filmography.



Bad Boys (1995)

His first movie actually already has everything he became famous for. There's the sunset, the low flying helicopter, no character development, product placement, light streaks and big explosions. The story is simple crap and surprisingly even Bay himself has said that he didn't like the script. But that's not the point in this movie, it's the action and the comedy. Which it has plenty of both. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is quite great and they actually put up a buddy act that's one of the better ones I've ever seen. And that's the real driving force of this movie, without it this would be just another crappy B-action flick. Speaking about the action, it's nice to see that at start Bay didn't have his hyper active shooting style and the action actually makes sense on screen. So yes the action worked quite well also. What didn't work in addition to the thin story was the character development. Or the lack of it, there is absolutely none. Luckily the characters are so strong to begin with that you really don't need it that much, but that did leave the characters way too one dimentional to bring any drama into the action. The main duo is certainly great and Joe Pantoliano and Tcheky Karyo were quite ok as well. But the damsel in distress, Tea Leoni, was completely useless, her role was basically to look good. It's actually hilarious in the end where she's inserted in all those slow motion shots where the two cops walk with their guns drawn. Just what's her purpose there? Well that gave me laughs, even though I guess it wasn't intended that way. Despite it's quite serious flaws, it's still an entertaining and especially fun action movie. So it does what it's supposed to do even though it doesn't give you anything extra.
66%



The Rock (1996)

Say what you will but this is one of the best action movies ever made. Having said that, this movie is also the movie where Bay first introduced his frantic editing style with most of the shots not more than 2 seconds long and rarely visiting the same angle twice. Something I've later started to hate from the bottom of my heart. But for some reason this is one of the very few movies where it actually doesn't matter at all. This movie is just tons of fun. The overly cheesy patriotism of USA turns into comedy and supports the movie as an extra comic punch very nicely. And believe it or not I really like the story behind all the explosions. I don't mean the story of a lab rat and an old fart fighting a team of highly trained marines, that's pure comedy, but the driving force behind the characters. The bad guy is actually a good guy with a noble cause but with bad means for it, the old Brittish agent wrongfully imprisoned for most of his life and even the lab rat were all genuinely interesting characters. Something you can rarely say in a movie like this. The casting is one of the best of it's kind, Ed Harris, Sean Connery, David Morse and even Nicolas Cage back in the days when he at least still tried to put some effort into acting. Add to those the old legends like John Spencer and Philip Baker Hall and of course my favourite hero actor from the 80's, Michael Biehn, and you have a stellar casting. Another thing that I absolutely love about this movie is the soundtrack, Hans Zimmer's best by far and one of the best I've ever heard. Pure brilliance every note of it. The movie has some idiotic moments that are not saved even by the comedy, but to tell you the truth I can't remember them even though I've seen this movie about 10 times already. That's saying something about the entertainment values. And even though this movie kind of populised the highly annoying fast cutting in action movies, I still can't stop liking this movie, it just works.
98%



Armageddon (1998)

So after making one of the best action movies of the 90's, Bay decided to make a movie about rednecks saving the world. I could write a novel on how hideously horrible this movie is, but to be honest it stinks so much that I don't want to waste my time and energy on it too much. First of all the whole concept of the movie that astronauts, some of the world's smartest and most technically trained men, couldn't drill one god damn hole in the ground is just silly beyond belief. But no, rednecks are the guys who can drill anything, drilling holes is an art after all, so they rather send them in space. The rednecks are of course stereotypes with no depth at all to them, you have your over protective father, reckless hero type, a cowboy, a divorced father with a gambling problem, a sex addict, a dumb fatso who lives with his mother and a big black man right from the days of slavery. It actually made me angry how insulting this movie is towards people, if Bay's world would be the world we live in, then please just let the asteroid wipe us all out. And it's just not the rednecks and the racism towards black people and rednecks themselves, the Russian cosmonaut was just as appalling. It says a lot about the movie that Billy Bob Thornton, a great actor but quite characterized as a redneck, is cast as the director of NASA. Fuck yeh! Ok, so the characters are horrible and even though there are some good actors in this most of the cast is horrible as well. Though at most parts I blame the script and the direction, not the cast. Of course Ben Affleck is hopeless no matter what, but for example I have never seen Steve Buscemi giving out a worse performance. He's a fucking character actor, usually playing himself, so that has to be an achievement. And when I say the script is bad I mean it stinks so bad it makes dog shit smell like roses. Just one example, the pilot pulls a gun on Harry and Chick says "What are you doing with a gun in space?". Nothing wrong with that except that they have freaking miniguns on their spacebuggythingies. Oops, guess they forgot... Well it's just one example out of hundreds, but as I said I'm not going to waste more time on this shit. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen and actually now seeing it for the second time it borders on being brilliant as it really is so bad that it becomes funny. But I'm not going to give it that honour just yet. Though one thing I must still mention, for some weird reason this movie is in The Criterion Collection, a collection of historically important movies from around the world. The Rock (1996) is in there also from Michael Bay and that I can understand why as it really is one of the best action movies, but why this movie is in there I have no idea. Maybe those people at Criterion have a very twisted sense of humour or something.
1%



Pearl Harbor (2001)

Ok, this movie is supposed to be some kind of a big homage to the soldiers of the war and the people involved with it. I saw an overly long cheesy piece of crap that does nothing even remotely like that. It's just about the same as if Bay would have taken a dump on the entombed U.S.S. Arizona. The thing is that the only sympathetic characters in this movie are the Japanese, now I must say I was surprised that they weren't depicted as monsters and for that I have to give it some credit. But really everyone else seems to be one dimentional obnoxious idiots. Anyway, the movie starts off with a quick buddy establishment, we are given glimpses of the past to make us belive that Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are good friends. Well I kind of missed that part which should bind them together, at a later point it didn't matter much as they are supposed to be mad at eachother, but then they are supposed to be buddies again and it just doesn't work. The buddy bit just a small problem compared to the "romance" that is what I would imagine a 12 year old girl might write in her diary. And we have to endure this torture for the next hour or so. I can see that they are trying to go for the 40's romantic movies with that, but really why would someone even try to do that? The modern audience expects a bit more depth to the romance than they did back then. The concept of a romance hasn't changed one bit since then, but the way people buy it surely has, so I just have to wonder what the hell were they thinking with this horse shit. So then the bombs start to fall and all hell breaks lose. Luckily the sound effects were loud enough so people who fell asleep in the first hour and a half should wake up by now. But what we get is not a dramatic recreation of the attack, there's certainly no drama in it, hell there's no feeling at all. It's nothing but an explosive war masturbation by Bay. I can imagine him getting all excited like a little kid about all the shit he can blow up while making it look as "cool" as he can. What's "cool" about an attack that killed more than 3000 people? Well unfortunately after the overly long action sequence the movie isn't over and we have to endure an hour more of this utter garbage. There of course needs to be a payback from the attack so the movie can end with an up note, not that there was any tragedy in the attack in this movie in the first place, but lets just imagine there would have been for good sport. Well the two "buddies" are supposed to bind together again, but again I missed it. Was it after they beat eachother up and woke up in the car? Was it while they were killing the Japanese in the air? Was it when they got recruited for the secret mission? Or was it when Doolittle asked them if everything was ok? I mean come on, the viewer has already lost every bit of interest to these characters at this point so why even bother going further. Well they bomb some Japanese factory, Hartnett gets killed, Affleck gets the girl and USA kicks ass, woo-fucking-hoo. They conviniently "forgot" to mention the real reason why Japan surrendered, the two a-bombs. But then again as that would make the audience see how the mighty US of A answered a sucker punch with quite an inhumane act of monstrosity and you can't have that in a movie about heroes. Saddest thing of it all is that the total amount of money spent on production and promotion of this movie roughly equaled the amount of damage caused in the actual attack. They would have made a better homage by spending that money on the veterans themselves and some new history books for the schools.
2%



Bad Boys II (2003)

Bay takes another swing at the Bad Boys and of course the budget is now a lot bigger so there's tons more of everything. After the last two monstrosities this movie actually feels like a breath of fresh air and seeing it right after Pearl Harbor (2001) it feels like a masterpiece. But it's certainly not a masterpiece, it's just an ok action flick. So how does it compare to the first part? Surprisingly well actually. The chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is still there, even though it not as funny as it was in the first part. They are clearly trying too hard at parts and it goes a bit overboard, but they still have their moments and give out plenty of laughs. The story was still crap, but maybe a tad better than the first part. Not like anyone would have expected a realistic take on things anyways so it doesn't matter that much. I didn't like the main villain, played by Jordi Molla, he was lacking charisma needed for the part and thus it was kind of a miss. Rest of the cast is quite ok with some familiar faces from the first part. Even though it can't top the first part in the buddy act, the action in this one is so over the top that it's crazy. There's three huge car chases all well worth mentioning. The first one with the car transport truck is quite great with all of it's carnage. The second one is brilliant in it's macabre dark comedy with all the bodies flying around. But the third one is just insane with the Hummer crashing into everything in it's path. Total destruction and that's what I liked about this. Michael Bay likes to blow shit up and call me crazy but I enjoy watching that money burn. So this is a good sequel and even better than the first part, but still it's lacking in too many other departments except action, so it's nowhere near as good as The Rock (1996). The saddest thing is that after this movie the big budget R-rated movies pretty much died. Well they didn't die, but only a very few were made since. Which is a shame of course.
69%



The Island (2005)

After the explosive violent and surprisingly brutal fun ride Bay went back to the more easy going action. This is a story about a man and a woman who find out they are clones, made only to act as spare parts for the people who ordered them. The company which breeds the clones assures the public that the clones are vegetables without any feelings, but yet they must raise them as "normal" humans because of some nonsense about the parts not working if the person is kept sedated. The two clones escape and set on a mission to uncover the whole business of cloning people for medical purposes. I actually liked the story quite a bit, the moral dilemma of taking "spare parts" from a copy of yourself to extend your own life. Also the vanity of mankind that a woman would buy a copy of herself to give birth to a baby so she could keep her form. But that whole cloning dilemma isn't really a new idea and actually it was ripped straight from The Clonus Horror (1979). Now this movie is actually better than The Clonus Horror (1979), but as this movie doesn't mention any connection to it, it's basically the same as a stealing the idea which kind of watered it down. Anyway into the nice idea there's inserted this absolutely ridiculous action adventure plot that is just too silly to keep the interest up. Sure there's tons of action and explosions, it's Michael Bay after all, but I really got just bored watching it as there was no feeling to it. Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson try to do their best with the crappy dialog they are given and do a fairly ok job regarding the script. Rest of the cast were quite disposable. The ultra fast editing gets very boring and the movie looks like a Michael Bay movie looks, tons of light streaks, overly saturated contrasty imagery and the camera doesn't stay put for long. Quite a waste of time and money.
23%



Transformers (2007)

I loved Transformers as a kid in the 80's. I had pretty much all of the toys and the cartoon show was the high point of the week. Then of course I grew up and got other interests so Transformers was left behind. Even though I knew I wouldn't be the target group of this movie anymore, I still wanted to see it. My expectations for it were very low, mostly because of Michael Bay. And surely enough it wasn't a good movie, but much to my surprise it wasn't a bad one either. This is a movie I would have loved to death when I was 10, it has everything I loved in movies back then. But now as it takes a bit more than explosive action to get my attention I saw a bit too many things I didn't like. First of all this movie is racist. I mean if a guy like me who is whiter than white from a country like Finland can see that, then there really has to be something wrong with it. All the black people in this movie are portrayed as one dimentional stereotypes who are there just for entertainment values for the white folk so they can feel better about themselves. Even the robot, Jazz, that's clearly another black stereotype is the only one to be killed. Only black person who doesn't seem to be type cast is the soldier with the credit card, though his character's biggest moment is screaming "left cheek!" over and over again after which he disappears. Not exactly a world image you want to give to your children. That being said I still liked Bernie Mac as the used car salesman, he was simply hilarious. And in general the comedy in the movie was actually quite good. John Turturro's character was also hilarious and he did a great job with the part. Shia LaBeouf was also a nice surprise and pulled off the hero role quite well. Which can't be said about Megan Fox, sure she looks great but can't act at all. Also Jon Voight was quite bland, though the dialog given to the character wasn't helping the part one bit. Then the main thing, the robots. Well I think they looked somewhat ok. I mean I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions of them, now they just had too much going on in details that it was hard to make sense of them. But that being said they did look a lot more realistic than the smooth cartoon or toy versions. The reason why I would have hoped for a bit cleaner versions is that they are never really introduced apart from Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. Now they just tend to blend in with each other and it makes it sometimes hard to tell them apart. And that's where one of the major problems of the movie lies, the way the action is shot. It's just one big CGI mess. There's tons of stuff going on and it's shot with a hyper active shooting style, that results in a total chaos which makes absolutely no sense at all. Sure the kids might like it, but the thing is when you have no idea who hits who and where, you really lose interest and just watch the fireworks without any idea of what you are supposed to see. And what's up with the Autobots, am I the only one who thinks everyone else but Optimus Prime were completely useless? Sure they shoot, do flips and set up a show, but mostly they just got their asses kicked while Optimus was the only one who managed to actually kill the Decepticons. This movie also features one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen, right up there with Jar Jar Binks, that little robot that just doesn't seem to die. So there are huge problems with the movie, but still I didn't get bored and had some fun with it. It even managed to raise the little kid in me as I almost cheered when we see Optimus Prime for the first time. But unfortunately in the end it's still a bad movie with some quite good moments.
42%



Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Didn't see this one when it came out, but decided to watch it now as I'm going through Michael Bay's filmography. Being a sequel to a big action movie it of course tries to top it by being even bigger. There's more robots, more army, more action, more explosions, more goofy characters, more product placement and more "Bayhem". And of course the robots are bigger, the army has bigger weapons, the explosions are bigger and the goofy characters of course are a bigger nuisance. But the movie just doesn't go bigger, it also goes smaller with tons of smaller little robot critters which are there to show how diverse their race is or some other nonsense like that. Just as I had declared that little robot in the first one as one of the most annoying characters in the history of movies, this one goes better. There's actually 3 robots that all are way more annoying than the one in the first part. There's the "twins", two robots that make you want to go and get a can of gasoline so you can burn yourself from the misery of watching them. And for fucks sake they even have goofy teeth, one with a golden tooth for that matter, what the hell does a robot do with teeth anyways? That little toy car robot is no better, even worse actually, but luckily it spends quite a bit of time in a box so we don't have to watch it. Apart from those the new robots seemed quite ok, even that old fart Jetfire who was also idiotically stereotyped, but at least he didn't make me want to go on a killing frenzy. But as before it really doesn't matter much how good the new robots were as you don't really see them, only glimpses of them spinning around while fighting. So the annoying CGI mess action continues right where it left on the first part and is actually even worse on this one. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on when shit blew up and CGI mess was spinning on the screen. I'm not a young kid with ADHD so I can't keep up with this lightning cutting pace. Then again if it was a bit slower and smoother it would bring out all the mistakes and inconsistencies of the action, so I kind of understand why they use it. But instead of covering up the mistakes, maybe they could have just properly planned them and shot them in a way that they would look good. That's Michael Bay's worst problem (well in addition of being a racist and sexist and all the other stuff), he just can't direct action. I actually watched the extras of the blu-ray i rented and there was a big segment on this huge explosion that made the Guiness book of records as the biggest explosion ever shot with live actors next to it. In the movie it's nothing special, you've watched non stop effect assault for the last 30 minutes with a hideous fast pace cutting. So when this big bang comes it looks like a nice breath of some easy action, not spectacular or huge or anything like that, only that it's nice that we actually get to watch a shot more than 2 seconds. On the extras however it looks absolutely brilliant, but in the movie it's simply lost in the "Bayhem". Not going to go into the story, it's what it is, not like you could write anything about the meaning of life in a movie about transforming robots so lets leave it to what it is, entertainment. The cast is the same and those who were good on the first one are good here as well and Megan Fox didn't learn how to act in the two years in between so nothing has changed. I must mention the huge amount of mistakes there are in the movie. It clearly was rushed to get finished as you see the cameraman's shadow on multiple occasions and that one slow motion explosion where Megan Fox goes transparent is just something hideous. Also many of the effect shots are very poor. For example when the Devastator is digging up the machine from the pyramid, the falling "stones" look like something I could do better on my own computer. I would love to bash this movie to the ground for the horrible piece of garbage it is with all of it's product placements and formulaic exploitative nature. But I still found it to be somewhat entertaining, however a good movie it surely isn't.
30%


After watching all of the Bay movies again I must say I'm more on the hate side, despite him making one of the best action movies of the 90's and two fairly good action flicks. The thing is that the shit he has also poured out smells so bad it tarnishes the glory of those few good ones. Well anyway that's something to think about when Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) comes out. I'm not going to see it in the theatre as I'm planning on keeping my promise of not watching any sequel/prequel/comicbook/cartoon/toy/remake/etc. movies in the theatre this year.