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.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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