Trans4mers - Weinberg Review

The following is my video review of Transformers: Age of Extinction, and then Devin Weinberg's (a good friend of mine) review of the movie in response to my video review.

Noodles Review

Weinberg Review

Note: what follows was originally a ridiculously long text message that has since been slightly edited. In other words, excuse the lols.

DISCLAIMER: things get real this time! I'm a little beat from that long movie, so my writing might be a little less clear than usual. However, I think the ideas are stronger than usual, just dig a little!

Okay let's see. Well I honestly went in to the film not expecting to like it much. And I really didn't mind it. Well some of it. When I wasn't cringing at that script at least! Ugh there were some really, and I mean REALLY bad/weak lines in that script. And they annoyingly kept distracting from Bay's (tbh) salvaging production efforts. Say what you will about him...and I've heard/read it all...I think he pulled off some well-paced direction—yes full of some particularly EGREGIOUS choices—that honestly looked pretty good overall visually. Some really crisp, refreshing shots. Especially in the West! Well fine maybe only in the West... Cuz in the latter acts Bay tends to seep back into a cinematic bang-bang monotonous urban banality that we've already seen explored in the last 3, esp. with DotM. I do agree with your comments about the overlong, bloated 3-act structure (Texas, Chicago, Hong Kong) of this wannabe epic. Too repetitive to be an epic I think.... Things just (try to) keep getting bigger, but still we keep returning to familiar (Megatron!) stomping grounds. Anyway, the acting was fine. I liked the ensemble by the end, but honestly Wahlberg bothered me for a while early on. I will ignore his sudden unexplained fighting/marksmanship skills and his (I think kinda anticlimactic!) semi-Chekhovian football spiral knockout reoccurrence in the Hong Kong apartment fight. And sure, the sets were consistent and for the most part...realistic. But that last word, 'realistic', is where my big problem comes up, execution/story-wise. And yes I know it's a 200 million dollar movie about truck alien toys, but still! The series is based on technology with some semblance of futuristic, mechanical feasibility and life, (more of that post-Nolan/Batman Begins realism fad...) but this installment, however, tended to cross the science/magic line too frequently without sufficient exposition (cuz no amount of exposition could even rationalize it!). —Tangent: and they sure did love their exposition!!—Anyway back to science/magic: the Transformium (a cringe-worthy name that even the movie had to recognize is bad!) was too unrealistic. The way it disassembled and reassembled in motion, in thin air, in battle, in the lab, whatever. The fact that one could turn a My Little Pony into a Beats speaker (OH MY GOD THE INSUFFERABLE PRODUCT PLACEMENT! BEATS. VICTORIA'S SECRET. YEAH WELL THOSE ARE THE ONLY BRANDS I TRUST ANYWAY POINT TAKEN UGH CONSUMERISM) with a wave of one's hand with no regard for rational controlling mechanisms, or material, or heck the rules of space and size (small Transformers stay small!) drove me crazy. It became hard to imagine realistically, and it introduced a weird element of fantasy into a mechanical, alluring world with CGI usually so good it *could* be real. The magical particles went too far... 

From all of this mess though, I actually found myself coming upon a thematic through-line that managed to make me question my life and my own existence and future, which I think IS the point of art (but hey I'm not sure whether any of what follows was intentional or not lol, or if I'm just grasping for straws in a vain, pseudo-intellectual endeavor to produce intriguing criticism and validate the ridiculous amount of time I spent writing this). And anyway that theme was...progress, and so the danger and the uncertainty of a suggested-to-be-inevitable future of technological/moral progression and its effects on nature. A subtle but strong vein of environmentalism persists, perhaps! We use and abuse the autobots, who only want to help us, and we suck them dry until we master what they have to offer and don't need them any more. Same with nature, right! Except this movie turns the tables a bit and gives technology some of what I have pretentiously described (in a short story anthology I was once working on) as "nature's timeless mystique". It's a twisted look at our modern era, with (OMG IRONY) technology, so the Transformers, actually representing nature(!). Just something else to 'conquer'.... That line "Don't you get it? We don't need you any more" fits in with this whole environmental theme. 

A favorite shot, that really cemented this interpretation for me, was of a destroyed bicycle in the third act. It conjured images of industrialism and the very point and net human benefit of technology and our impact on the natural world; I remember a character (I think the business head guy) saying "If we don't do it, someone else will". Inevitability! (Or just a dumb cliché). So this was all one huge role of 'progress' in the movie (nature-technology-humanity) but then the theme is also incarnated in that silly science-to-magic progression I complained about earlier. The film then took this progress motif to the self-referential extreme(!) with that all-around-meta third-act story explosion about these mysterious Creators of the Transformers, and Optimus's newfound plight. Everything just keeps getting bigger.... And I would also argue that the film itself echoes/questions/satirizes (I'm obsessed with the idea that meta=satire, in my own work and the work of others, so you'll prob hear me bring that up again in future, sorry lol), on an even grander scale, this same idea of progress and progression and conventional escalation in a cinematic sense. A reboot with a new cast certainly says something. Look at the duration, look at the budget, look at the cast size, and look at that near-convoluted story structure, I believe the most complex we've seen yet in the franchise. Everything is bigger! And it's just too much. It's like Bay is asking about this blockbuster culture and the cycle of inevitable expansion into madness. And the same with technology and nature. And science and magic. IT'S ALL PROGRESS. Or not. Probably not. But you know what? If I can look for these ideas, and if I can think about them, and evaluate them in human context, then the film must certainly have done something right. But hey whatever. I enjoyed it. Maybe a 6 out of 10 Noodles...

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The Fault in Our Stars - Noodles Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GrU0qjQw4

Watch my review for The Fault in Our Stars, Hollywood's newest adaptation of a popular teen novel with a sappy romance that's too good to be true. However, we who aren't die hard fans already may also be pleasantly surprised... Find out what I thought of this film and others on my YouTube channel: Noodles Movies

Maleficent - Noodles Review

Here's my video review of Disney's Maleficent, a live action retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty but from the villain's perspective, offering us a side of her we've never seen before... is that a good thing or a bad thing? Check out the video to find out! And Subscribe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R9l075E9fQ

Top 5 Movie Villains of All Time

So since Maleficent just came out, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the villain's perspective, I've decided it's relevant to tell you guys about my top 5 favorite movie villains of all time. This is just my opinion, so don't freak out when HAL-9000 or Norman Bates isn't on here.

5. Michael Corleone

The Godfather Part II (1974)
Although Michael Corleone is the main character you follow in The Godfather trilogy it's no doubt that once he inherits the title of "Godfather" at the end of the first movie, he means business. From the last act of the first film, you see how relentless Michael Corleone is. But in the second film, he's evil and merciless throughout, even ordering the killing of his own brother for not siding with the family. That is a serious Mafia man.


4. Keyser Soze 
The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Usual Suspects is one of my favorite movies of all time, and to me it has the greatest ending of all time. For some reason, I just really like when a film has the guts to have the villain win in the end, and this film fits that. You only hear rumors of Keyser Soze throughout the whole movie and he's such a mysterious character that the ending reveal is even that much more fulfilling. If you thought Corleone was vicious, know that Keyser Soze killed his own family just to prove a point that he means business. And throughout the movie, you know he's pulling every little string.




3. T-1000
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Arnold Schwarzeneggar in the original Terminator is a great villain as the T-800, but the T-1000 in Terminator 2 is what always caught my attention. Robert Patrick really sells the fact that he's a relentless android. He's so set on his mission and will stop at nothing to kill John Connnor, ya just gotta love that about a villain. And the way he runs looks so cool, you really believe he's a robot. Plus, he's liquid metal, that was the coolest thing ever when this movie came out.

2. Hannibal Lecter 
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
I was tempted to put Hannibal as #1, because Anthony Hopkins is just so chilling and menacing in the role. In just 15 minutes of screen time he was awarded the Oscar for best actor. Almost every line of that comes out of this characters mouth is gold, and I could quote Hannibal for days. You really buy into it that he really is smarter than everyone else in the room, but that he's also extremely psychotic. Hopkins is amazing as Hannibal in Red Dragon and Hannibal, but he really outshines everything in this movie.

1. The Joker
The Dark Knight (2008)
Heath Ledger as the Joker was legendary, and after watching this movie for the first time, I absolutely became obsessed with his portrayal. He conveys the menace, dark humor, and crazy of Joker but adds his own interpretations of grit and chaos. Though it's unfortunate that Heath Ledger passed shortly after finishing this movie, I'm glad he was able to give us one of the most memorable performances in cinema history because his Joker is extremely unique while retaining the best elements of the original comic book character, and is endlessly quotable; making him my definitely my favorite movie villain of all time and quite possible one of my favorite movie characters of all time.

Godzilla 2014 - Noodles Review

If you haven't already been to my new YouTube channel, do so! Here is my video review of the new Godzilla movie, so check it out! Don't forget to like and subscribe! Thanks and stay tuned for future video reviews. 

(if the video above doesn't work, use this link: Godzilla - Noodles Review)

X-Men: Days of Future Past - Noodles Review

X-Men: Days of Future Past - Noodles Video Review

I've started making video reviews on YouTube so click the link to watch my latest review of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YiPmrIxqJc