I AM NUMBER FOUR- Review

Here's one that's real difficult to write about. It's not a case of hating it for producer and twatbag Michael Bay's involvement, because I recognise that Bay can be said to have a technical aptitude for filmmaking. What makes I Am Number Four such an unsavoury spectacle is that its genesis is entirely what I would previously have imagined the genesis of a Michael Bay project to be- the product of an assembly line.

As to the story, this Twi-lite fantasy flick follows Number Four, one of nine aliens who survived a planetary holocaust in another solar system and fled from the genocidal Mogadorians to Earth. Outright stealing the Doctor's alias, he styles himself as John Smith, a high school student in small-town America. With the Mogadorians on his tail, it emerges that they're killing off the aliens in order, and three have died already, leaving Number Four next in line.

Look, the story behind the book this was based on can be found on other sites, so I'm not going to recap it and overwhelm my review of the film. However, I recommend that you read about the controversy behind this film because it informs the level of suckiness on which it operates. As I've said, it's Twilight-lite, which means that it's something so insubstantial that it's almost ethereal. It more or less flips around the premise 180 degrees- a boy has supernatural powers, a bored small-town girl falls in love, but this time the boy is our hero.

Presumably, the idea is to try and get the insensible target audience for most of Michael Bay's films, 14 year old boys, to go and see a film that is like Twilight, which in turn appeals to Twilight fans, and thus results in huge profit. Whether or not it will work remains to be seen, but it is nevertheless a product of shameless mathematics, rather than anything even resembling imagination. The various elements are not trans-generic, but intertextual- there is literally nothing in here that is not from another text, but names have been changed to protect the unoriginal bastards peddling it.

Bay's gaze is so fixated on sequels, and on box office success, and on replicating the successful formula of other films, that it is impossible to engage with it. I mention Bay and not director DJ Caruso because there was a long period where Bay was attached to direct this thing. It shows, and it's a shame that Caruso, who previously made the noirish and intriguing The Salton Sea, has devolved into a director for hire. There's no room for much of anything creative, because everybody involved is complicit with the formula.

For their part, the cast do alright- there are no casting gaffes as monumentally shit as Shia LaBeouf or Megan Fox, but they're all in stock roles. Alex Pettyfer is the incredibly athletic and dreamy guy who somehow still gets bullied because he's new at school. Dianna Agron is the cute girl who, in this case, is a little bit stalk-y in her amateur photography pursuits. Timothy Olyphant is Henri (Wan Kenobi), a mentor character for whom the only surprise is whether or not he'll turn out to be the traitor behind it all or the guy who sacrifices himself so Number Four can win the day. Kevin Durand is a goddamn skinhead in a trenchcoat. That's what we're dealing with.

And for all of its predictability, it's deceptively difficult to follow. I get that Number Four's goal is to avoid being stabbed up by Mogadorians, but the world building becomes so convoluted, so intent on dangling loose threads for a sequel hook, that it becomes incomprehensible. When it turns into the Transformers patented action clusterfuck in the final act, the only discernible goal remains "don't get killed". Quite an elementary quest in a fantasy film, right?

At least in other franchise non-starters, there was more self-containment. They bothered to tell stories that established the world and left their unrequited sequel hooks to the final shots. I Am Number Four builds a world with its sequel hooks, because it's so bland and forgettable that it's counting on becoming a massive movie series just so it has some continued significance once the credits start rolling. The film is one that's looking forward to its own ending so it can make some money. I was just looking forward to it ending.

I Am Number Four is now showing in cinemas nationwide,
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If you've seen I Am Number Four, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

In The Dark...

Um, what?

Good for the Superbowl, for being the most-watched programme in American television history. Around this time of year, I always notice that some of the same people who say it's not worth caring about the Oscars pretend to care about sports, and watch this football game purely to catch a glimpse of the new infinitesimal glimpses of movie trailers.

With this being a slower week, or as slow as any week can look preceding the descent of a distributive clusterfuck on Friday, I've decided to have a look at one of those trailers, having watched them all online like any right-minded film fan who doesn't like American football. It's a matter of very public record that I'm not a fan of Michael Bay or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so let's have a look at the first properly representative trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

You can bitch about bias, but I have no reason to pre-judge this movie. I gain nothing from it being a pile of shit like the first sequel, so I have to hope for the best. But really, look at this trailer. It looks almost exactly the same as the first two, to the point where it could actually be a fan trailer for the third film, cannibalised from bits of the other films and uploaded on YouTube.




Well, it doesn't have Megan Fox in it like the first two, but it does have a big fucking fight in a major city, like the end of Transformers. It's also impossible to tell what the fuck is going on in any given still from an action scene, like in Revenge of the Fallenm, even taken from 720p video. Observe.

 

 

I can understand not wanting to showcase the plot (I know, don't laugh), but if you choose to showcase your action sequences instead, it's a pretty piss-poor show. You'd be better served by checking out the spots for Super 8 or Captain America, or just the trailer for Richard Ayoade's Submarine, which came out the morning after the Superbowl and manages to look more visually arresting than any of the major blockbusters peddled the night before.

I know it seems like I'm bashing Transformers: Dark of the Moon already, especially as this is a rant posted in a slow week, but I'm only judging its piece-of-shit trailer (and also the piece-of-shit title) and not the film itself. My mind is not already made up about Bay's final outing with the giant robots, because above all else, he can't make a worse film than Revenge of the Fallen, can he?

Can he?

Wrongoloids

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

Who knew a comedy about suicide bombers could actually be sweet and rather poignant? Some still don't know it, hence the usual brigade out to slap about Four Lions for being morally reprehensible in the like. Of course they've completely overlooked the latest Michael Bay mandated remake monstrosity A Nightmare on Elm Street in the process. Have no fear (not a likely proposition in the latter), I will be covering both.
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So, there's a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. You know the story, or at least what remains of it here- some teens have the same dreams as each other, and dying in dreams means dying in reality. Worse luck for them, as a vengeful gribbly called Freddy Krueger is out and about. There's an effort to install some new plot twists here, from the fairly interesting idea of micro-naps brought on by intense sleep deprivation, to the heinous twist on Freddie's origins that makes for yet another cynically stupid horror remake with Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes footing the bill.

This is the first feature film by music video director Samuel Bayer, a name which in this context sounds like a pseudonym for the cinematic Voldemort himself, but I'm assured he only produced it. So Bayer had this to say after his film got the moderately successful US opening weekend he needed to carry on in the business.

"Look, I’m gonna catch a lot of heat for this, but some of these fans on the web should just get up, stretch, breathe, go outside and get some fresh air, maybe get a girlfriend and just get a life. They should see the movie and make up their own minds.”

Essentially, he says fuck you very much for paying to see my shit movie. OK, so pre-release, the film wasn't exactly endearing itself to me, and even though I eventually saw it without paying, I realised I should actually see it because he made one good point. People should be able to make up their own minds.

One scene in this sums up my reaction- remember the quicksand stairs from the 1984 Wes Craven original? That scene is replicated on a landing here, which gives the effect of our miserable young heroine wading through shit. That scene is the distilled essence of 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street, for two key reasons.

1. It's part of a greatest hits package of the original film, replicating memorable scenes with a massively dulled effect.
2. Watching the film is like wading through shit.

It is not only unspeakably awful, but it's boring too. It actually lends itself to awful rhetoric from critics, because it's so easy to feel sleepy while watching it. Guessing that's why they changed the tagline from "Don't Fall Asleep" to "Never Sleep Again" fairly late in the marketing campaign. Not that it heightens the terror even one jot, it's just incredibly boring. The sound design is as ever catered towards a quick jump scare, but still serves as an alarm clock for anyone who's drifting off from the sheer dullness of the proceedings.

Take a moment's silence for Jackie Earle Haley, who really deserved better than this. He's a good choice to play Freddy and he's clearly a fan of the character, but he has nothing to do here. And worse, he has to deal with the terrible swap-out they do on Freddy's origins. Apparently a child murderer wasn't bad enough, so they make him a paedophile instead, something that Haley is forced to trot out by leering over our growed-up lead emos before he eviscerates them. With last year's Friday the 13th, that's two horror remakes in a row from the Arch Bay-stard that have distilled any threat and menace in a monster down to sex. So sex is sexy. Monsters are not. Are you scared yet?


Were it not my duty to entertain in some way as I expect you to read through all this, I could sum up this remake succinctly. A Nightmare on Elm Street is bad. I don't hold the original up as the untouchable horror classic that others have, but this is really just eye-wateringly and arse-clenchingly bad. You could expect no more or less from Platinum Dunes, but Bayer takes an immutably scary idea in the form of Freddy Krueger and rehashes it without innovation or even any real horror. The script operates in syllogism and the acting is, with Jackie Earle Haley excepted, fucking awful. You will not care for these characters, you care only for when this 90 minute shitfest will stop dragging and you can go and watch something else instead.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is now playing in cinemas nationwide.


Altogether less damaging and more wholesome is Four Lions, which comes into selected cinemas after a troubled journey. Writer and director Chris Morris well-known for courting controversy through the really quite brilliant Channel 4 series Brass Eye, and thus it's taken a while to get the funding for this one. It's all about a motley crew of suicide bombers, determined to make an indelible mark on a culture that they despise. Or at least two of them are, the other two being slightly less aware of what they're letting themselves in for. With division in the ranks, they look for a target that will put them down in history on their way to the Rubber Dinghy Rapids they expect in paradise.

I don't really think this film is wrong or bad, obviously. Come on, it's a film where the key conflict in the film occurs over a Facebook application starring animated puffins. It was never going to do any real damage. Thus the anticipated harsh reaction from the British Muslim community doesn't seem to have materialised.

Instead, there have been calls to ban the film from the families of 7/7 victims. Understandably, a film that makes this topic funny will be a sore point, but with deepest sympathies, the solution is just not to watch it if it may be upsetting. For anyone else, there's actually a rather bittersweet undercurrent to the satire, but Morris never shies away from making some incisive gags about extremism.


Our leonine quartet are too stupid to actually orchestrate the large scale panic they misguidedly hope for, making the film somewhat poignant. These four are still real people- two of whom haven't quite grasped that the end result of their mission will involve their deaths and another of whom has a loving family. If you were made to root for terrorists, it'd be obscene, but Morris quite delicately sends up one of the most terrible facts of modern religion without ever mocking human tragedy.

Mel Brooks once said that he mocked Hitler in The Producers because fear loses its power if you're able to laugh at it. While Morris hasn't gone down that road, he actually goes some way towards a character study of suicide bombers rather than an outright farce. It does err closer to farce than to the satire of Morris' earlier works, and at times that's jarring with the more human element. Our anti-heroes are not traditional caricatures.

I wouldn't say it's not the kind of comedy you laugh at, because there are a lot of fantastic jokes in Four Lions. It was just altogether different from the film I expected, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's obviously been meticulously researched and I don't believe there's anything malicious about it at all. Morris fans may be surprised, but there's still much to admire about this uproarious yet tactful comedy.

Four Lions is now playing in selected cinemas- seek it out!
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If you have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street and Four Lions and want to comment on the films or my reviews, or simply need help with your strong urge to strap a bomb to yourself and find the Platinum Dunes HQ, why not comment below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Review: Transformers- Revenge of the Fallen

I like midnight screenings. The atmosphere is generally good at such screenings, because everyone there has made an extra special effort to see the film first, so you can expect they'll be fans. It was with some trepidation that I remembered this while sitting in the cinema auditorium early on Friday morning, because it was clearly full of people who liked 2007's Transformers. Having rewatched the first film recently, I decided I can't hate it for being stupid. I can hate it for idolising both the US military and a fake orange porn-star who can't act her way out of a paper bag, sure, but not for being stupid. It's a Michael Bay film, so that's par for the course. However, I like to think I came to the sequel with an open mind- it wasn't impossible that Bay would create a totally superior sequel, and so I was cautiously optimistic once the trailers finished.

And what follows is my review. No summary for those who are just skimming- I demand that you read all of it. Mostly because this film will do huge numbers at the box office no matter what I say about it, and I honestly believe it's less painful to read this review than it is to watch the film itself. It's taken me this long to review it because I actually have had problems articulating how bad this is. I'm not so childish as to ruin the plot, so I've taken measures to make this review as spoiler-free as I possibly can. There is a fair bit of profanity, but I try to use that sparingly in reviews, so I won't apologise for the frequent verbal gesticulating in this one.

TRANSFORMERS- REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

Who's in it? Shia LeBeouf (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Megan Fox (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People), John Turturro (You Don't Mess with the Zohan), Ramon Rodriguez (Pride and Glory) and Josh Duhamel (Transformers).

What's it all about? Two years after the All-Spark was destroyed, Sam Witwicky (LeBeouf) is off to college when he's embroiled in the war between the Autobots (goody robots) and the Decepticons (baddie robots) once more. It emerges that the Transformers have had a much greater hand in human development than anyone realised, and the original Decepticon, known as the Fallen, is out for revenge on Autobot leader Optimus Prime, and on the Earth...

Any good? The paradox of Revenge of the Fallen is that, as a Michael Bay film, it ought to start badly, continue to be bad, and then finish awfully. You'd certainly expect exactly that from the build-up I've given this review, but I actually caught myself enjoying the film for the first 45 minutes or so. There's an interesting diplomatic set-up with the Autobots and the US Government, and Sam's comic-relief parents are used sparingly and with slightly better effect than in Transformers. Bigger than that however, the major set-piece of the first hour is a fight set in a forest that, besides displaying an apparent disregard for anything tree-related on Bay's part, is actually stunning. I cared about what was happening in a way I never had in the first film. The feeling of being slightly unclean aside, it was refreshing to actually enjoy what I was watching.

However, this does not last, and it becomes ever more apparent that Michael Bay is concerned solely with showing us what it looks like when you're given $200m with which to film whatever you want. And a lot of that is very bang, boom, wallop. As in the first film, the bangs, booms AND wallops are all vapid, uninteresting and same-y once that superbly realised forest sequence has been and gone. But this time the bangs, booms and wallops are spread over 149 minutes, and that's about 100 minutes too long, considering what follows. After a key plot turn at the end of this golden period, the plot derails with all the horror of a train full of puppies crashing into an aircraft carrier full of screaming babies. While the comic relief was restrained largely to Sam's parents in the beginning of the film, it feels like every other character here is now there for some lame attempt at a laugh.

"I died for your sins, Sam... so stop putting me in shitty movies."

And boy, is the comedy in this film lame. I can only imagine Michael Bay was sat watching Verne Troyer hump Beyonce Knowles' leg in the third Austin Powers film and thought it was so funny that he put no less than FOUR humping jokes into this one. That people were laughing at these moments in the cinema made me despair for humanity, to put it bluntly. And then there were the Twins. Oh, sweet cattle of Seattle, those Twins. Remember how everyone really fucking hates Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace? It's like they went out of their way to include TWO characters exactly as annoying as him. And these two robots get more screen-time than any of the 44 other robots in the film. Not that you can tell many of them apart, due to the simple fact that there's 46 of them. If one of the biggest problems in the first one was that you couldn't particularly tell what bit of robot was hitting whose bit of robot, then why in the name of Optimus Prime would you add MORE robots?!

And more importantly, why when you have the superbly voiced and animated Optimus Prime, Megatron and the eponymous Fallen, would you focus on the fucking Twins?! They are hideous, borderline racist stereotypes who should never have got past the drawing board- nay, the fucking skirting board! And I reiterate what I say about those other three characters- Megatron was clearly the best part of the first one and I was actually happy to see him back, and this time around, Optimus Prime is actually imbued with some of that "better than Jesus" heroism stuff that you hear the really dedicated fanboys talking about. And of course, there's the Fallen. In a film subtitled Revenge of the Fallen, you'd think the Fallen would really be the centre of the plot. And that his role would involve revenge. But after the plot hares off into so many different strands, trying to bring back everyone from the first film as well as introduce the aforementioned multitude of additional robots, the title just doesn't ring true.

Nuh-uh. The film's not really about the Fallen. Or his revenge. Or anything, really.

And that's another thing! All the returning cast members! It's bad when a sequel needlessly suffers from "the whole gang's back!" syndrome, but this takes it to ludicrous extremes, as Bay's films are wont to. Ignoring the two abominable young leads for a moment (was their romance so timeless that we had to endure it for another 149 minutes?), more or less everyone is back. Remember Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson's characters from the first film? They're back, for little reason other than having been in the first one and being in the US military. Remember Simmons, John Turturro's shady government character in the first film? He's back. Hell, they travel halfway around the world for Simmons, just to have him explain what the fuck has happened to the plot since they left the forest! And I feel slightly unfair criticising Simmons, because Turturro soldiers on with the poor lot he gets in the script, and is in fact one of the more watchable aspects of Revenge of the Fallen.

But now onto the inevtable. I don't hate Shia LeBeouf, but I think he's terribly over-rated- he's gone from being one of the more enjoyable parts of the first film to being one of the many awful parts of this film, via an excruciating turn as the son of Indiana Jones. There's none of the charm that some of his lower profile performances exuded, and I'm swiftly losing patience with his work, full-stop. And then there's Megan Fox. I have never found her hot, nor will I ever, and if karmic retribution should turn out to be an actuality, anyone who's told me that she is shall be struck down, as seen in the picture below. More pressingly though, Fox absolutely cannot act. This is a woman who really made a big impression in the world of acting in another Bay film, Bad Boys II, in the memorable and gruelling role of "Stars-and-Stripes Bikini Kid Dancing Under Waterfall". And in this film as in any other, she is rubbish, rubbish, RUBBISH. And she's still not attractive!

Yeah kid, that'll teach you to worship your false orange idol.

It's handy though, because Bay's portrayal of Megan Fox is a useful allegory for his entire approach to directing. You get the feeling that if he were directing outright honest porn instead of big Hollywood films, he'd be lauded as a genius. You know, by professors of cinema and such-like, as opposed to being lauded by 13 year old boys worshipping false orange idols. That's because his approach to anything, be it robots hitting each other, women fixing automobiles or most notably, the US military, has something leery and unsettling about it. Part of me is curious about what a Michael Bay porn film would look like- it'd have explosions and the like. But I digress, his pornographic approach to film is what makes this so inexcusable. Transformers is apparently critic-proof because this is a franchise for kids, not adults. Why then do we see so many references to women as sex objects, drugs (YES, drugs) and racial stereotypes? Are these appropriate for kids? I'm actually astonished that this film can still make money, and be accepted as a summer blockbuster, after the success of Iron Man, The Dark Knight and Star Trek, and even more amazed that this film has the same screenwriters as the latter of those films. How did they go so right there and so wrong here?!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the lowest common denominator- Leni Riefenstahl made more likable films than this. Even as enjoyable and as lightweight as I found the opening 45 minutes or so, there are still those hideous tropes of Michael Bay's filmography on display- lens flare, upskirt shots and masturbatory idolatry of the US military. Particularly nauseating is Sam's college, where every student looks like some variation on Megan Fox, which would personally be my idea of an academic nightmare. It gets the rating it does solely for the promise of the early film, and that much-mentioned fight in the forest. The rest is ludicrously self-indulgent, stupidly long and worst of all, it's not even entertaining rubbish. I've already mentioned the lack of the Fallen, so Transformers: How Fucking Annoying Are These Twins? might be a more prudent title for the film. Or more succinctly- Transformers: Bleh Bleh Bleh Bleh Bleh!

Awful! Awful! Awful! (Mostly.)



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If you think that star rating is slightly odd considering the drubbing I just gave this film, just remember that I at least liked the start of it. The forest fight is like a scene from another movie, and I'd give everything up to and including that point a 4/5, because I was entertained, so I felt it was doing its job. Seeing as how I'd give the rest a 0/5, the maths goes like this.

4 + 0 = 4
4/2= 2

So it's 2/5. Though still probably the worst film of the year.

(shudders) The next update will definitely involve The Hangover, and probably Telstar and Looking for Eric, looking at my plans for the rest of the week. Just be glad we've got Transformers out of the way- I can't see anything this year making me rant at you as much as this did. One thing to come out of this review- I like to imagine Michael Bay scribbling that simile down in a notepad- "Aircraft carrier... screaming babies..."- for future reference.

Until next time, don't watch Revenge of the Fallen,
Mark

With thanks to Fearn Sobers for the Movie Goat art- for more of her work, go to her site, fesoes.net, linked on the sidebar.