Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I really enjoyed the first Transformers movie a couple of years ago. There were a lot of really stupid problems with it, but overall it was a very entertaining movie that combined original Transformers lore with a decent coming-of-age story about a teenage boy and his magic robot car. Unfortunately, all the stupid things I was able to forgive about the first movie completely overwhelm and ultimately sink Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Let's take the still above as just one example. In it, you see Bumblebee, Skids, and Mudflap driving through an airfield that is clearly in the South somewhere. The palm trees give it away. Could be east Texas, could be Florida, but it's probably southern California. However, in the scene before this one, the characters are inside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington DC. How do they get to this airfield? Well, the Transformer Jetfire smashes through some hangar doors at the museum and there they are. Yes, director Michael Bay and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Ehren Kruger want us to believe that there's a gigantic airfield just outside the Air and Space Museum. Just off the national mall in Washington DC. This is only one of several scenes that blatantly ignore basic geography. My second-favorite is when Agent Simmons (John Tuturro) starts talking about using the stars in the constellation Orion's belt as a guide and points to them in the sky. Orion appears nowhere in the sky during this scene.

Bay expects nothing more from his audience except to sit placidly and watch the fighting and explosions. He has never cared much about character development or plots making more than the most basic sense. But Revenge of the Fallen is chock full of gaping holes, logic gaps, and plain old laziness. The audience is supposed to be distracted by the spectacle to the point where they don't even attempt to think about anything else. But even a dumb action movie needs to be at least somewhat self-consistent to work. The first movie didn't hold up very well to scrutiny in hindsight, but the second movie doesn't hold up at all to scrutiny while it's playing. It makes for a tiring experience.

Storywise, there are a couple of plotlines. The Autobots are now working with the U.S. military, in a special ops unit called Nest. They are ready to scramble at any time and fly around the world to deal with Decepticons when they show up. Also in Nest are the two soldiers from the first movie, Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Epps (Tyrese Gibson). Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBouf) is preparing to go off to college, moving from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. He has to leave Bumblebee behind because freshman aren't allowed to have cars. This plot point immediately makes no sense other than to attempt an emotional goodbye scene and to have have Bumblebee show up and save Sam in the nick of time at college a little later on. Because, you know, Bumblebee is a sentient robot, not just a car, and I'm sure he could find a place to park in Philadelphia close to campus. Anyway. Sam accidentally touches a leftover shard of the All-Spark (the first movie's major energy source) and somehow absorbs its knowledge, once again putting him in the middle of a war between the Autobots and Decepticons. The Decepticons, suddenly working for an ancient robot called The Fallen (who is headquartered on one of the moons of Saturn?) need that knowledge to find this thing that will activate a gigantic machine buried somewhere in Egypt. Because the gigantic machine will drain all of the energy from the sun and distribute it to the Transformers, who have been running low ever since the All-Spark was destroyed. And draining the sun will of course destroy all life on Earth, and so it's up to the Autobots and Sam, and don't forget the U.S. military, to stop them.

If that was the extent of the plotting, Revenge of the Fallen would probably be a minor success as a movie. But Bay and his writers, as usual, don't know when to stop. Sam's parents have no real purpose in the movie, and yet they have scene after scene in which they embarrass themselves in the name of comedy. Watching Sam's mom (Julie White) wail on and on about his baby booties while his dad (Kevin Dunn) tells her to calm down is not funny. Watching Sam's mom get blasted on pot brownies and run wild around a college campus while Sam and dad try to stop her is not funny. And the Autobot Twins, Skids and Mudflap, are nearly as racist as advertised. Reams of bandwidth has been wasted on these unfunny comic relief "for the kids" characters already. So I will just say that the insulting hip-hop slang they talk in would merely be stupid if it wasn't combined with faces that look like a robot version of black caricatures from the 1920's. There are also subplots involving an uptight government official, the resurrection of Megatron, Sam's roommate's Transformer-gossip website, the return of Agent Simmons, and poorly manufactured long-distance relationship tension between Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox).

It all makes for a noisy 2 1/2 hours that could easily, easily have been cut to 100 minutes and been a better movie for it. And despite the problems, there are some high points. Bay, for all his faults, knows his way around an explosion and an action scene. While his camerawork is still too herky-jerky to really follow what's going on during a lot of the fights, these robot battles nevertheless have a kick to them. A scene of an aircraft carrier being destroyed is spectacular. And yes, I totally geeked out when the Constructicons merged to form Devastator. Watching Devastator rip into the Great Pyramid is also pretty darn cool. The Decepticon Soundwave, who was a boombox in the original 80's series, is cannily updated as an orbiting satellite for this movie. He intercepts communications and sends the panther-robot Ravage to cause damage down on the surface. Ravage's scenes are possibly the coolest in the movie, as he's one of the few Decepticons with a unique appearance. But all of this adds up to about 30 minutes of worthwhile movie, and you feel every other minute of the long, long running time. Bottom line, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is not a good movie. It's not even a mediocre summer action flick, the kind that you enjoy at the time but instantly forget about. It's flat-out bad. 2/5

When PopMatters was compiling their Most Important Albums of 1999 list, I submitted my own list of about 10 albums I thought were particularly memorable. Most of those made it onto the list, although I didn't get to do a write-up for every one. But there were three personal favorites that didn't make it. Still, I think they deserve consideration, too, so I went ahead and did write-ups for them. After about a...5 day delay, they finally posted my piece to their Blog section.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/107153-three-more-memorable-albums-from-1999/

Today's installment covers the end of August through October and includes my write-ups on Sloan's Between the Bridges and nine inch nails' The Fragile. The Sloan review is actually on the first page, so it's easy to find!

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/102275-august-october-1999

PopMatters turns 10 years old this year, and they are celebrating by looking back on 1999. Back a few months ago, I tried, but was shut out of the PopMatters Important Films of 1999 feature. But I am all over the Music of 1999 feature, as I got to do 4 different write-ups. The first two ran today, as I reminisce about Fountains of Wayne's Utopia Parkway and Blink-182's Enema of the State. Unfortunately I can't link directly to those, but there are a lot of other worthy albums in this feature.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/march-june-1999-the-olivia-tremor-control-to-pavement

This review ended up reading a little clunkier than intended. But the sentiment is entirely correct. Just inverting their usual formula does not necessarily make for a better Mars Volta album. It does make for a calmer one, though.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/95170-the-mars-volta-octahedron/

The Taking of Pelham 123

Director Tony Scott's remake of 70's action flick The Taking of Pelham 123 is a taut, solid film for 90 minutes. Unfortunately, the movie runs 120 minutes. I'll get to that in a bit. The premise involves the hijacking of a subway car and the dispatcher who gets caught in the middle of the ransom demands and hostage negotiation. The movie opens with the hijacking. Four men board and take over a subway train beneath New York City. Cannily, they detach one car from the rest of the train and send the rest of the passengers out of the tunnel, keeping only the riders of the front car as their hostages. The leader, who asks to be called Ryder (John Travolta) gets on the radio with dispatcher Walter Garber, and gives him one hour to get 10 million dollars together and down to the train.

This hour goes down in what feels like real time, although the movie refrains from putting a ticking clock on the screen. But Ryder keeps close track of the time, because he's willing to kill hostages as soon as the time runs out. The conversations between Ryder and Garber are consistently interesting, and when the official hostage negotiator Camonetti (an intentionally aggravating John Turturro) shows up, he throws a wrench into their budding relationship. Of course the mayor (James Gandolfini) has to get involved to approve the 10 million dollars, which adds another layer. From early on, we know that Ryder has another angle than just getting 10 million dollars, and his opening demands for Garber find him talking about the hostages as if they were stock commodities. Once the bad guys establish a wireless network in the tunnel, we know something is up. But the movie doesn't really tip its hand about exactly what this is for a while. Garber, to his credit, pays close attention to what Ryder is saying, but the film doesn't turn him into a super-detective who figures it all out. This is all balanced nicely for the bulk of the movie.

Garber has a backstory too, of course, which we also find out gradually. Even the plot twist that finds Garber delivering the ransom to Ryder and his crew is believable within the context of the film. But shortly afterwards, the movie runs off the rails, so to speak. There is a scene which forces Garber to make a choice, and the choice is not at all believable for the character. It's simply there to force a pair of extended action sequences and to pit Garber against Ryder in a final showdown. This is the point where Pelham 123 goes from taut and tense to braindead summer action flick. There are other minor missteps along the way. A kid on the train has his laptop open underneath the seat with a live webcam feed. His girlfriend gets the feed onto the internet and a local tv station, but nothing interesting happens with this plot point. The ransom is picked up from the Federal Reserve in Brooklyn and only has about 20 minutes to get to downtown Manhattan. This allows the film to cut away to high-speed scenes of a police car and its motorcycle escorts zooming through red lights and trying to avoid midday New York City traffic. As the clock winds down, a character asks, "Why didn't we just put the money on a helicopter?" Yeah. Um, having the characters point out the plot hole does not magically excuse the plot hole. Clearly this was also a flimsy excuse to shove more action into the movie. Later on, Ryder gives Garber 7 minutes to get to the train with the money, and Garber actually gets to take a helicopter. But the time limit here literally disappears as Garber stops and takes time to have a tender three minute conversation with his wife.

On the other hand, Tony Scott has been making action movies for a long time, and the action scenes here are all well-done, even if they don't make a lot of sense from a plot standpoint. Travolta and Washington both seem to be having a lot of fun with their roles, and both Ryder and Garber are flawed but likable in their own way. Luis Guzman shows up as Ryder's right hand man and manages to make an impact as well. If only veteran screenwriter Brian Helgeland hadn't bowed to studio pressure to make a typical Hollywood action ending, Pelham 123 could've been a nice surprise. As it is, it ends up being solid but unremarkable. 3/5

Pontypool

Pontypool is a low-budget Canadian horror movie that tries mightily to get by on snippets of audio and a general sense of confusion. It doesn't quite work, but the source material should share an equal amount of the blame for this interesting near-miss. Based on a novel by screenwriter Tony Burgess, Pontypool centers on Grant Mazzy (veteran character actor Stephen McHattie), a recently-fired talk radio host who has landed in the small Ontario town of Pontypool doing morning drive-time radio. Of course, when you're in a small town, the morning drive consists mostly of traffic, weather, news, and school closings. Mazzy would like nothing more than to get the listeners of Pontypool riled up, but his producer Sydney (Lisa Houle) continually tells him to back off and just do the news. Also at the radio station is Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly), an eager young assistant who recently returned from a military tour in Afghanistan.

Aside from an opening scene where Grant is driving through the dark to get to the radio station, the film takes place entirely inside the station. The story gets going quite quickly, though, as the station starts receiving calls from witnesses who are reporting some sort of riot down at a local doctor's office. The station's "eye in the sky", Ken Loney, checks in with a report from his helicopter, but his description of what's happening is no more coherent than the callers. Before you know it, Mazzy is fielding a call from a BBC television reporter asking them to explain what is going on in Pontypool. But Grant, Sydney, and Laurel Ann, stuck inside the station, have no real idea what's happening. The BBC man mentions French-Canadian soldiers quarantining the town, but we have no idea what is true and what isn't. But clearly something big is going on outside.

Eventually the stakes rise as the mob makes its way to the station and Ken finds himself trapped inside a grain silo, trying to hide. We never see Ken, of course, so all we have to go on are his panicked phone calls. We never even see the mob, either, just hearing voices and seeing hands on the frosted glass windows. All of this is at least interesting, but director Bruce McDonald has a hard time building tension from these elements. With the reports from outside so vague and confused, we never know exactly what's true and it keeps the threat at arm's length, once-removed from the characters on the screen. A new character appears late in the movie, one who actually does seem to know what's going on. But this character hurts the film as much as he helps- he's unnecessarily nebbish and easily distractable. To top it off, the explanation for what is happening to the people of Pontypool is so bizarre that it's hard to wrap your head around. It's certainly an original idea, but it is not well-explained on screen. Maybe it works better in a novel, on the page, but there doesn't seem to be time in the movie for the characters to really suss it out and for them and us to understand what's happening.

Also hurting Pontypool is its lack of budget. The radio station setting does the film no favors as a set. It seems comfortable and warm and even when people appear outside, it doesn't seem like they're in any danger of getting inside. Because you get the feeling the filmmakers couldn't afford to pay the extras. There are two violent scenes in the film, and one is quite explicit and at least a little disturbing. But the other happens off-camera for no good reason other than budgetary concerns of having to do the makeup and blood effects necessary to make it look convincing. The acting in the film is quite good, though. McHattie owns the movie as Mazzy, a big-time personality trapped in a small-time market who never wants to get off the stage. Lisa Houle is also quite believable as the exasperated Sydney, and Georgina Reilly does good work as Laurel Ann. The three of them do a convincing job of seeming like a new team who have recently been thrown together. They know their jobs, but they aren't completely comfortable with each other yet. Still, good acting only gets you so far. The hemmed-in setting and the complicated, out-there explanation about what's going on keep this movie from realizing its potential. 2.5/5

Pontypool is available on most cable systems throughout the summer via IFC On Demand.

NOFX has returned with a good album! Coaster isn't going to take its place among their greats, but it's a damn sight better than They've Actually Gotten Worse Live and Wolves in Wolves' Clothing.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/94640-nofx-coaster/

The Hangover

The Hangover is a great summer comedy with an equally great marketing campaign. I didn't catch it opening weekend, but now that I've seen it I have to say it deserves all the success it's getting. It's tough to sell a comedy with no stars to a mainstream audience, but Warner Bros. found a way to do it. The premise is simple. Four guys take a one-night road trip to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. The next morning, three of them wake up to find their swanky Caesar's Palace suite in ruins and groom-to-be Doug is missing. And none of them remember what happened the night before. So they're forced to find clues and retrace their steps to figure out what happened to Doug.

Clearly Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) had a hell of a night, what with a tiger in the bathroom, the flatscreen tv hanging off of the wall, and one of their mattresses impaled on a statue at ground level. Soon enough they're running around Vegas, talking to doctors and strippers and the employees at a low-rent wedding chapel. Oh, and Mike Tyson, too. Did I mention there's also a baby in the room? A lot of wacky shit went on overnight.

Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have written a loopy, sun-drenched comedy that pulls no punches. This is a gleefully R-rated movie with no shortage of nudity and cursing, but what really makes The Hangover work is its three leads. Phil, Stu, and Alan are very different people and the casting is perfect. Phil is a teacher with no respect for his job and little respect for anyone else. Cooper plays him as a hard-partier with a gleam in his eye, and this very well could be the breakout role he's been building to over the past couple of years. Ed Helms does his usual nerdy, nebbish persona as Stu, but tones down the annoyingness that's a hallmark of his character on The Office. Here he's a dentist who is dating an awful, controlling bitch (Melissa Harris, making the most of a small role) that lies to about the entire trip. The fact that he wakes up missing a tooth is a priceless gag that the movie uses to maximum effect. Then there's Alan. Galifianakis is excellent here. Alan is a confused mess of a man who seems like he took too many drugs a while back and never fully got his mind back.

And that's about all I want to say here. The rest would be just giving away jokes, and it's better to leave it unspoiled. But I spent the entire movie laughing my ass off and it's definitely the funniest movie of 2009 so far. 4.5/5

This is some creepy, atmospheric stuff- synthesized soundscapes with no beat to speak of. Too bad it all starts to sound the same after awhile.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/94262-envenomist-the-helix/

Austin's Honey Claws follow-up their debut album with this 4-song EP. It's pretty good, but I still think they sound best when they stick to minimalist indie-rap.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/93418-honey-claws-healer-ep/

Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Anvil: The Story of Anvil is a documentary about a metal band you've probably never heard of. They had a brief shining moment in the early 80's, when their song "Metal on Metal" became an underground hit. The movie opens with footage of the band playing to a full stadium in Japan in 1984. There are a bunch of interviews from admiring members of other bands, including Metallica, Anthrax, and Slayer- all of whom went on to become huge. But, despite their famous admirers, Anvil languished in obscurity, never getting the break they needed. After this introduction, the movie catches up with Anvil in 2005, as they prepare to go on a European tour, their first in years. But first we see the primary band members, singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, at their day jobs in suburban Toronto. Kudlow delivers lunches to elementary schools, while Reiner works as a handyman, doing everything from electrical wiring to laying brick and mortar. They still play in the band, mostly on weekends at bars around Ontario. The other members of the quartet, Ivan Hurd and Glenn Five, joined the band in the mid-90's and actually receive very little screentime throughout the film. No, this movie is all about Kudlow and Reiner, the guys who have been in it for the long haul.

The tour starts off strong, as the band plays to a big crowd at a late-summer rock festival and Kudlow gets giddy over seeing various other rock stars backstage. But once the band starts playing regular shows around Europe, well, there are some ups and downs. The tour manager, Tiziana Arrigoni, tries her best but she isn't very good at her job. There are missed trains, empty clubs, and a disastrous tour-closing festival in Transylvania that doesn't draw nearly as many people as the promoters promised. So the band returns to Toronto, determined to record their 13th album. Kudlow hits upon the idea of getting Chris Tsangarides, their producer in the early 80's, to listen to their demos and try to convince him to get back together with them. Tsangarides accepts, but without a record label behind them, the band needs money to finance the recording.

Director (and onetime roadie and fan) Sacha Gervasi knows what he's doing here. The band obviously trusts him, and he gets candid confessions from Kudlow and Reiner as well as their wives and siblings. Kudlow, despite never catching a break, remains ever the optimist. You get the feeling that the band would've given it up long ago if it wasn't for his positive outlook. And when he does get discouraged, he tends to take it out on Reiner, an easygoing guy who just loves playing. Seeing them fight and make up is surprisingly emotional, and hearing Kudlow's mother and siblings talk about him and his career choice is equally moving. But the emotional moments of the film wouldn't work without the lighter moments, and, sad as it is to see an old, probably washed-up band flail around in search of finally getting that break, it's also really, really funny. The film ends without a heartwarming postscript, and yet, it's the film itself that is providing Anvil with the recognition they've been seeking for the past 25 years. Because the movie has been so well-reviewed and is becoming something of a cult hit already, Anvil is becoming a minor sensation. I'll add my voice to the overwhelmingly positive chorus- Anvil: The Story of Anvil is one of the best movies of 2009. 4.5/5

So Many Dynamos are a pretty cool synth-rock band that are heavily inspired by old-school Nintendo music. If only they knew how to write a vocal hook, they'd be close to awesome.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/72952-so-many-dynamos-the-loud-wars/

No Doubt w/ Paramore, The Sounds, Sunday, May 31, The Woodlands, TX@ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

We had lawn tickets for this sold-out show, so we had to arrive early to get a good spot, despite not caring about the opening acts. We got in at about 6:30 and found an excellent place to sit. Fortunately, the weather cooperated and it was a beautiful night in Houston. Walking around, there were a lot of people who shelled out the $35 and $40 for No Doubt t-shirts. There were also many, many girls and women at the show who seemed to be very confused by when exactly No Doubt was popular. It was the mid-to-late 90's, ladies! But these people came dressed up in their best 80's outfits, with leg warmers and bracelets and teased-out big hair. It was a little surreal.

First up for the evening was Sweden's The Sounds, who only got to play for about 25 minutes. Their set was solid, with a lot of fast, jittery guitar lines and some cool synth riffs. The female lead singer was enthusiastic and they seemed to be having a lot of fun despite playing to a half-full amphitheater. The second opener was Paramore, which brought the large contingent of teen and tween girls to their feet. The band's take on punky pop was energetic and catchy, but certainly not good enough to warrant the huge squeal of recognition every familiar song received. Also, every time lead singer Hayley Williams said anything to the audience, she got that same huge squeal. It was interesting to watch the crowd on the lawn all get to their feet at the beginning of the set, then gradually sit down as the set went on, finally leaving only the die-hards standing.

One good thing about this show was the efficiency. After each opening band finished, an army of road crew descended on the stage, moving equipment off and on quickly and keeping the between-set wait to under 30 minutes. No Doubt's stage set was very impressive, all white with sleek curves. You could tell it had been designed in the same retro-50's futuristic style as Disney's Tomorrowland and LAX. Horn and keyboard players Stephen Bradley and Gabe McNair spent most of the show on the top tier of the set, while drummer Adrian Young's kit was on the second tier, dead-center. Guitarist Tom Dumont took up his place at stage right while bassist Tony Kanal was on stage left, leaving singer Gwen Stefani the middle of the stage. Stefani even had her hair in an old-school hairstyle to emphasize that this was No Doubt, not her solo career. To go along with the set, the band themselves were dressed in white outfits. And to top things off, there was a massive video screen behind the set, which alternately showed complementary and distracting videos throughout the night.

The band opened things up with "Spiderwebs", and breezed through a 90-minute set that included most of their hits and a handful of less-famous songs. The horn players sounded great and the band seemed to be having a great time. It was like that all night. All six of the members (Why Bradley and McNair, who have been with the band for almost 15 years, are not official full members of the band is beyond me) seemed energized and happy to be back together. Rock Steady's "Hella Good" was second, and its dark dance groove was accompanied by pulsing graphics on the video screen. After that, the set sort of blurs together for me, but I know it was a very fun concert. "Ex-Girlfriend" was one of the highlights of the night, energized with some spy-video fooling around on the big screen. Other highlights included "New", "Different People", "Excuse Me Mr.", "Bathwater", and even "Don't Speak", of which I'm not usually a huge fan.

The crowd sang along the whole time, especially on the songs from Tragic Kingdom. The biggest cheer of the night, of course, came with the closer, "Just a Girl." While some people began filing out at this point, most of the audience hung around for the encore, which started with "Rock Steady" and closed with the exuberant "Sunday Morning." I have to say, I've always enjoyed No Doubt without totally loving them, but this concert was really great. The band knows how to put on a fun show.


"Spiderwebs"

Cake, Wednesday, April 29, Houston, TX@ Verizon Wireless Theater

Once again, I went to see a show a while back but held off on posting my write-up until PopMatters put it up officially. So here's my review of "An Evening With Cake" in Houston. http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/93237-cake/