My criticisms of the first movie persist:  I do not understand why boring humans are the stars; nor why Bay scripts exhilarating action and brings it to life with state of the art fx, only to twist, contort and shake his camera to obscure what happened and to whom.  I previously intimated that faith to source material is of minimal value to me, but I am perplexed that a television show based on strong, distinct character design (necessary to market an army of robot toys), should be adopted into movies with generic, confusing and indistinguishably designed robots.

Yet Transformers 2 manages to be substantially worse than its predecessor.  The first was merely dumb; this one is indecipherable, nonsensically twisting and morphing like its robots, all the while brazen with self-contradiction and the laziest of transparently plot-convenient hokum.  I previously suggested that Michael Bay had mastered casual racism, but Transformers 2 shows that he was just getting warmed up:  this time he assaults decency with jive talking Transformers who cannot read.  One of them wears a gold tooth.  I am not making that up.

But worst of all, Transformers 2 drags mercilessly. On paper, Transformers 2 is 2.5 hours long, only seven minutes longer than the first.  On screen, it feels like dying, just waiting and waiting and waiting.

Don’t see this movie.  Not even as a joke.

Tags: Action, popcorn, sci-fi

J.J. Abrams resurrects the preeminent science fiction franchise with a reboot/prequel/origin story of the classic James T. Kirk Enterprise.  Compared to other Star Trek films, Star Trek is a great success, more accessible and watchable than its predecessors. There is a tradeoff here, though:  as a franchise, Star Trek is known for its philosophical quandry and sociopolitical allegory.  While those musings were frequently clumsily handled, they are disappointingly absent here, replaced by polish and more traditional interpersonal conflict.

Comparing Star Trek to Abrams other work is less flattering.  Those hoping to be grabbed with the immediacy of Mission Impossible 3, which Abrams directed, or the unique perspective of Cloverfield, which he produced, will find Star Trek more average.  There are niggling complaints: mediocre action, questionable plot developments and junk/inconsistent science.  But what really keeps Star Trek good, instead of great is that it fails to create above-average suspense, an odd failing from the king of “grab you” entertainment (Lost and Alias are also Abram’s creations).

Tags: Action, popcorn, sci-fi