What happens in the alien spaceship, stays in the alien spaceship.

Transformers: The Last Knight

(2017)

(SPOILERS) Why do I watch these things? Because I’m an idiot, most probably. This is such an almost surreally odd movie series, attempting to overlay character arcs and motivation, mysticism and religiosity, on a range of Hasbro toys, that part of me would almost like it to succeed. Unfortunately – except perhaps during its first outing – it’s only ever bungling in its application of these ideas and entirely indifferent to its characters, an eye on other franchises (not least Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings) for “mythic” import married to an ultra-juvenile grasp of humour laced with unseemly sexism. Step forward Michael Bay, the Hollywood director out to prove the ‘80s never died. Transformers: The Last Knight may well be the end of the line for his decade-long association with the series, though, even if it isn’t the end of the series itself.

Because spin-off Bumblebee’s out next year, and somehow, a seventh Transformers is still on the schedule for 2019, despite the autobottom having fallen out of the market between 2014’s Age of Extinction and this ($500m less box office worldwide is fairly substantial, even for a series whose last two entries both made $1bn+). Paramount, desperate for some – any – self-perpetuating movie series, may have to shape up and face facts. After all, Universal has shuttered its Dark Universe due to the negative cost-reward on The Mummy, and if the stats Deadline Hollywood estimated for Age of Extinction are anything to go by, The Last Knight will be lucky to break even.

I’m only surprised the well hadn’t run dry before this (a similar thing happened with Fox running Ice Age into the ground last year, albeit that series wasn’t nearly as expensive). Bay and his team of writers (the hack’s hack Akiva Goldsman, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan and Art Marcum) come up with an at least arrestingly screw-loose conceit – a group of Transformers hid out on Earth way back when, offering their services to Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table – but then do nothing much with it. Once the prologue is dispensed with and we flash forward 1600 years, we lose the main vaguely entertaining element of the picture, Stanley Tucci’s Merlin (even if his dialogue stinks: “God, I’m sozzled”). Tucci, in a different role, was the only genuinely worthwhile part of Age of Extinction, but he’s in this one for a fraction of the time and delivers only a fraction of the yuks (John Turturro also returns, but again, he’s barely there).

The plot is a virtually incomprehensible mishmash of Arthurian tropes, apocalyptic angst and English heritage (Mark Wahlberg returns as the absurdly named Cade Yeager, discovering he is the Last Knight of Iacon; Laura Haddock’s equally dafflily monickered Viviene Wembly, Professor of English Literature at Oxford but looking for all the world like the latest passenger boarding Bay’s Victoria’s Secret Express, is Merlin’s last descendant; Unicron – Cybertron’s ancient enemy, actually the Earth, no less – can be accessed via Stonehenge), vying for attention with the usual Bay onset combustion and puerility. There’s a subplot in which Optimus Prime is brainwashed by Transformers “creator” Quintessa (who resembles something out of Species) and then gets tiresomely self-flagellating about being a bastard under the influence, but really, it’s a fool’s errand to try to make anything coherent out of any of this. The robots are mostly either dull or stupid and the humans mostly likewise. But, while I’d in no measure suggest persevering with the movie, there are a couple of exceptions.

Sqweek, a cross between the droids in The Black Hole and Earth to Echo, at least has a wacky/cute personality. Jim Carter’s Cogman is a polite but belligerent humanoid robot, one who hams it up on the organ to “make the moment more epic” and serves Sir Ant’s Sir Edmund Burton. Yes, Ant is in this, quite why only his bank manager knows. Mark Wahlberg gets insulted quite a lot, by both Cogman and Vivian, which has some limited potential, but not enough. And that’s about it. On the more disturbing side, anyone keeping a track of Bay’s dubious record for lusting after minors (Age of Extinction’s Romeo and Juliet law) will be yet more concerned by his overt sexualisation of fifteen-year-old Isabela Moner.

Transformers: The Last Knight, in trying to ape any franchise teasing a future instalment, sets up Transformers 7 with Quintessa on Earth and in human form. I guess I vaguely wonder what this series will look like without Bay calling the shots (like Pacific Rim Uprising, probably, which is not good). He may be thunderingly inveterate in his mullet-headed machismo, but he’s also a master when it comes to photo-real effects work. It’s just a shame it’s put to such instantly disposable use when any number of big studio movies are churning out substandard SFX week in, week out. Who knows, Travis Knight may bring something of the sensibility of Laika studios to Bumblebee (who we now know was actively involved in defeating the Nazi menace in WWII). It might be a great movie that unlocks the secret potential of a cinematic Transformers…. Nah.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

This popularity of yours. Is there a trick to it?

The Two Popes (2019)
(SPOILERS) Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes joke, in which he dropped The Two Popes onto a list of the year’s films about paedophiles, rather preceded the picture’s Oscar prospects (three nominations), but also rather encapsulated the conversation currently synonymous with the forever tainted Roman Catholic church; it’s the first thing anyone thinks of. And let’s face it, Jonathan Pryce’s unamused response to the gag could have been similarly reserved for the fate of his respected but neglected film. More people will have heard Ricky’s joke than will surely ever see the movie. Which, aside from a couple of solid lead performances, probably isn’t such an omission.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.

Look, the last time I was told the Germans had gone, it didn't end well.

1917 (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I first heard the premise of Sam Mendes’ Oscar-bait World War I movie – co-produced by Amblin Partners, as Spielberg just loves his sentimental war carnage – my first response was that it sounded highly contrived, and that I’d like to know how, precisely, the story Mendes’ granddad told him would bear any relation to the events he’d be depicting. And just why he felt it would be appropriate to honour his relative’s memory via a one-shot gimmick. None of that has gone away on seeing the film. It’s a technical marvel, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography is, as you’d expect, superlative, but that mastery rather underlines that 1917 is all technique, that when it’s over and you get a chance to draw your breath, the experience feels a little hollow, a little cynical and highly calculated, and leaves you wondering what, if anything, Mendes was really trying to achieve, beyond an edge-of-the-seat (near enough) first-person actioner.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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