Rosenbush Cafe

Angry Mobs Get Results (20th Century Fox Photo)

Reviewed by Henry B. Rosenbush

The Simpsons Movie is a greatest hits compilation of the popular animated series extended and refitted for the big screen; Homer does something thoughtless, turns the entire citizenry of Springfield into an angry mob and in the end finds redemption in saving everyone. Having seen the film with a large audience at the midnight showing Friday morning I can tell you unequivocally; you’ll laugh, groan, weep and laugh again during this clever film where the Environmental Protection Agency is the villain!

How often have you attended a movie where the crowd applauded the dimming of the house lights? This was the case where the audience clapped and cheered during the 20th Century Fox fanfare, complete with Ralph Wiggum humming the theme badly. There would be applause at the end and between the familiar Danny Elfman theme song and the closing credits there was plenty of laughter and groans in equal measure.

The Simpsons has just completed an unprecedented 18th season and 400th episode on Fox. Filled with pop culture references, subversive and irrelevant humor, swipes at government ineptitude and one yellow family’s dysfunctional voyage from Springfield to Alaska and back.
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By Henry B. Rosenbush
updated, 10.08.09

When King Kong (1933) beat his chest for the last time, before his now famous fatal fall off the Empire State Building to the New York streets below, Hollywood didn’t continue the gargantuan monster genre. There were the minor entries like Might Joe Young and Son of Kong, but before Gojira leveled Tokyo in the 1954 film no one seemed to realize audiences loved larger than dinosaur monsters.

The Atomic Age not only provided a new kind of global fear and paranoia it supplied the movie industry with a new radioactive sub-genre. As has been discussed in earlier entries, there was no shortage of high and low productions where someone or something was transformed into a monster through radiation.

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Love Canal are three quick examples reinforcing the notion of contamination creating mutations in human beings, the animal kingdom and vegetation. For screenwriting stories previously, no one in the regular segments of the population knew the future dangers although the government sector was fully aware of the potential for massive destruction and loss of life. With The Manhattan Project and the nuclear blasts annihilating Hiroshima and Nagasaki the truth of atomic bombs was revealed to the world.
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By Henry B. Rosenbush

The Day the Earth Stood Still certainly qualifies as the spaceman-lands-on-earth film by which all others imitate, including: It Came From Outer Space, The Thing From Another World, even Earth Versus the Flying Saucers all emulated the landmark science fiction film. The high production values aside, it is difficult to find fault with the 1951 Robert Wise (1914-2005) directed black and white film with its a noir-infused documentary style. Wise was the editor Orson Welles films Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The newsreel technique works, too, as we are introduced right from the beginning that this visitor is really from outer space.

Most current invasion-from-space films exploit key elements from Day and for good reason; the original film achieved excellence in its screenplay (the original short story by Harry Bates Farewell to the Master was expanded and greatly improved by screenwriter Edmund H. North),acting, special effects and a truly otherworldly Theremin-based score by Bernard Herrmann that has been reused to lesser impact in dozens of films.

When a dignified emissary from “the outer planets” arrives in Washington D.C. he is immediately shot and taken prisoner, but not before his pilot, revealed as a 9-foot robot, named Gort, disintegrates the military weaponry. The alien, a humanoid named Klaatu, but who will be known as Carpenter since he has borrowed clothes and a suitcase belonging to a Major Carpenter. Klaatu learns what people are like when he rents a room at boarding house. The colorful array of characters there, especially Frances (Aunt Bea) Bavier, includes widow Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray).

Real life news commentators H.V. Kaltenborn and Drew Pearson deliver the news of a space ship landing in Washington D.C. in a straightforward realistic manner. Image today’s news celebrities spinning the arrival with hyperbole! The Left-Wing Media would blame everything on whichever party controlled the White House and Congress. The Right Wingers would side with the alien and Religious Zealots would view the “visitor” as the Messiah, re: Jesus was a carpenter. Wise always maintained it was not a conscious effort but the Christ mythos was born.
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Road rage taken to the next level (DreamWorks/Paramount Pictures)

Reviewed by Henry B. Rosenbush

In the Stephen King screenplay for the 1983 film version of John Carpenter’s Christine, an introverted teenager gets his first car, albeit used, the hottest girl in high school and more than he bargained for in the possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury. In Michael Bay’s film version of the Hasbro Action Toys, Transformers, an introverted teenager gets another possessed used car and the hottest girl in high school but instead of becoming obsessed with the vengeful spirit of the vehicle he becomes a reluctant hero and savior of planet earth.

Transforming an adolescent fantasy world replete with the cute, but unattainable girl who will become an inadvertent girl friend and concomitantly help defeat a race of extraterrestrial robots is a noble conceit, especially in an effects-laden offering. There are cool moments, but Transformers is a half hour too long and a repetitive nature soon permeates the film and growing wearisome after a thrilling first half, although partly redeemed by a climax with wreckage strewn in every direction as city streets become a war zone.
On a purely cinematic level the movie is one of Industrial Light and Magic’s best recent works. In Christine, Roy Arbogast supervised practical effects allowing the car to become damaged and renew itself to pristine condition. By the standards of FX in 1983 it was the cutting edge stuff. Buying up duplicate cars to destroy and using rubberized effects to make crashed Furies reanimate was the single reason to see this earlier film.

We’ve come much further in digital recreations of reality so that now we have movies with impossible gags made believable. Humans rarely have to endanger themselves in these science fiction realms because computers generate the worlds and chaos.

With Bay, who has much experience making big budget action films, think Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, for starters, received invaluable assistance from the military and the City of Los Angeles so he could transform scenes that could have been computerized into full scale live action. Real explosions with highly dangerous primer cords and nifty shots of vehicles tossed through the air into buildings, for real! Getting the use of a secret jet that isn’t in the military arsenal yet and a prototype Camaro (only four in the world) to give the audience something new to see is an amazing feat.

With actors getting deposited into real action and running, firing weapons and dodging debris makes the paycheck worthwhile, but knowing they are willing to give us verisimilitude makes the big scenes bristle with real danger.

Megan Fox and Shia LeBeouf: Soul mates amid robotic wreckage

In Transformers, we see swift deconstructions of a rusty yellow and black Camaro become Bumblebee, which later updates itself as a newer model. A believable perf by Shia LaBeouf (Disturbia, Constantine) imbued with teenaged awkwardness coupled with honest sincerity; Sam Witwicky is an average kid who through a turn of clever plot devices becomes paired with Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). Wooed with assistance from Bumblebee’s all too human understanding of pop music culture, and an endless radio dial of classic love tunes is much lighter than the same, albeit dark-humored contrivance of Christine.

The production team spares no expense is presenting unique special effects of helicopters, cars, trucks, jet planes and even a portable disc player modifying themselves into huge robots with weaponry advanced beyond earth technology. Bridges, interstate highways, deserts, skyscrapers and metropolitan streets become the battlefield with vehicles and concrete tossed like lightweight toys.

The evil robots are represented as Decepticons, headed by Megatron (voiced by The Matrix character, Agent Smith, Hugo Weaving) fought a civil war on their home planet Cybertron with the Autobots.

Until the exciting showdown with Autobot Leader Optimus Prime (voiced by the original OP Peter Cullen), Megatron will spend most of the movie frozen beneath Hoover Dam, which we learned was order constructed by President Hubert Hoover to shield the robot, found in on an Artic expedition by Sam’s great-great grandfather.

Allspark, a Hellraiser-inspired cube of unknown power is wanted by both groups, although for entirely different reasons; it can transform objects into evil killing machines and we even see a few created during the climax that are not destroyed. Guess they are in hiding until the expected sequel.

Rather than let the cube fall into the Decepticons’ possession, unleashing universal Armageddon, Optimus Prime entrusts it to Sam with the knowledge as a last result the good robot will fuse with the cube to destroy it.

Given this plot is based on action figures that could disassemble and reassemble from cars, trucks or military vehicles into robots there isn’t much mystery regarding the visuals; they are superb and executed so rapidly each scene will merit freeze framing when the DVD is released to see the seamless effects.

The opening sequence is a knockout when an ominous black helicopter lands at a U.S. military base in Qatar, and proceeds to transform into a malevolent robot that knocks out communications, hurls tanks at soldiers and devastates everything and everyone except a handful of soldiers who must get a message to Washington that invasion is imminent.

The robot has also downloaded military secrets before the transmission is interrupted. A later daring hack aboard Air Force One is a standout as an arachnid robot becoming a portable compact disc player to avoid detection before breeching security again via computer link-up. This shiny little creature rants indecipherable dialogue while it zips around as if buzzed on crack; funny, but equally equal lethal as its big brothers.

I found it amusing that after all the destruction of military men and hardware and downloading of military secrets the information was readily available on EBay!

The screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, from a story by Orci, Kurtzman and John Rogers, give us a plenty of action and little time for relationships. Although human causalities are high few actual deaths are seen in close up. The annihilation of the base and the surviving soldiers escape from the desert are high points. End credits give thanks to a plethora of governmental entities including the four branches of service and the Pentagon.

Unfortunately, there are the predictable superfluous characters, like the over-the-top reading by John Turturro as an uptight fed who could only exist in a movie and Sam’s parents Ron and Judy. Kevin Dunn portrays Ron as a supremely anal gardener. Dunn is one of those actors who seem to specialize in characters you’d truly enjoy seeing killed. No, he isn’t.

Julie White steals her scenes as a tipsy mom who provides the non-violent PG-13 rating with an amusing but awkward masturbation riff. With the Autobots trying to blend in outside Sam’s house, which is difficult for 30-foot robots in the suburbs, he searches for his ancestor’s eyeglasses. The glasses are earlier explained as containing information the on the whereabouts of the Allspark. After finally opening his door but without his parents realizing Mikaela is there, too, Judy has inquired as to if he was masturbating as the reason for the closed door. Her reaction is priceless realizing Mikaela is there, while Sam holds a box presumably containing adult magazines he had just taken from Mikaela!

When he first gives a ride home from the lake, after she dumps her sexist boyfriend, Mikaela is clad in a short blue jean-skirt and 21-year-old Fox, in her third movie, is earnest but mainly cast for pulchritude.

Among the other noteworthy supporting cast are Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel), who wants to get home to his recently born daughter, and Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson) as heroes whose paths cross with Sam and Mikeala and stalwart Jon Voight in the southern-fried Donald Rumsfeld turn as Secretary of Defense. The President, briefly hinted as a Texan buffoon aboard Air Force One, for once is not directly involved in the decisions that invariably save the world! Voight has the distinction of being more intelligent and sensible than any President, especially the current one, in defeating the invaders.

There is a multicultural group of soldiers that dwindles through attacks as they make it back to America for the final showdown. We lose track of some lesser characters and a hacker, brought in by a girl computer whiz, late in the film is disposable as is the need for him.

As a sidebar to the film, I was intrigued at one scene that was given short thrift but was still potent. Bumblebee is captured by Turturro’s group of nameless Feds and basically strung up and tortured! Parallels to Gitmo cannot be overlooked. After Voight, who gets to fire weapons at the arachnid robot rather than order others, and the captain help Sam get to the damaged Bee to release it. The robot is clearly conflicted upon its release (freezing is the bots’ nemesis) and raises cannon appendages before seeing Sam, who is clearly protective of the car, implore him to not destroy them. Forgive and forget are hallmarks in cinema; torture, wrongful arrests, abducted parents are all meshed here but with only minor consequence.

This is a movie about gigantic robotic monsters just add a dash of World Wrestling theatrics and teenagers in peril and love and the rest is an $8.50 rollercoaster without the ride!

As expected for a summer blockbuster the technical credits are all top-notch, from the sound design, especially during transformation scenes, to the set design. Transformers raked in over $224 million at the box-office through 13 days and was the Number 1 Film until being knocked off the top spot by the newest Harry Potter flick. This is the second theatrical version; the animated The Transformers: The Movie (1986) is now a cult favorite. It was made as a lead in for the third season of the syndicated series (1984-87).

A Paramount release of a DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures presentation, in association with Hasbro, of a di Bonaventura Pictures production. Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Tom DeSanto, Don Murphy, Ian Bryce. Executive producers, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Brian Goldner, Mark Vahradian. Co-producers, Allegra Clegg, Ken Bates. Directed by Michael Bay. Screenplay, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci; story, Kurtzman, Orci, John Rogers.

Camera (color, widescreen), Mitchell Amundsen; editors, Paul Rubell, Glen Scantlebury, Thomas A. Muldoon; music, Steve Jablonsky; music supervisor, Dave Jordan; production designer, Jeff Mann; art directors, Sean Haworth, Beat Frutiger, Kevin Kavanaugh; costume designer, Deborah L. Scott; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Erik Aadahl; sound mixer, Peter J. Devlin; visual effects supervisor, Scott Farrar; visual effects, Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain; special effects supervisor, John Frazier; animation supervisor, Scott Benza; stunt coordinators, associate producers, Matthew Cohan, Michelle McGonagle; assistant director, Simon Warnock; second unit director, stunt coordinator, Ken Bates; casting, Janet Hirshenson, Jane Jenkins, Michelle Lewitt.

MPAA Rating PG-13 For Violence and Profanity. Running Time: 2:20. Reviewed July 7, 2007 at the Rave Theater, Hoover, Alabama

Cast
Sam Witwicky - Shia LaBeouf
Sgt. Epps - Tyrese Gibson
Capt. Lennox - Josh Duhamel
Glen Whitmann - Anthony Anderson
Mikaela Banes - Megan Fox
Maggie Madsen - Rachael Taylor
Agent Simmons - John Turturro
John Keller - Jon Voight
Also starring: Kevin Dunn, Michael O’Neill, Julie White, Amaury Nolasco, Bernie Mac, Johnny Sanchez. Voices: Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Mark Ryan, Jess Harnell, Robert Foxworth, Jimmie Wood, Darius McCrary, Charlie Adler, Reno Wilson.