Bumblebee: An Actual Transformers “Film”

You've probably heard my constant rants about Michael Bay and his seeming inability to make anything resembling a movie when it comes to Transformers. There's the classic criticism (they're just a bunch of explosion reels), the more in-depth (the characters are more archetypes than actual characters) and, of course, the usual anti-Bay rants (he obviously hates making the movies and, therefore, tortures us with this garbage). Unfortunately, seemingly because of some weird obsession with keeping Bay happy, Paramount has, for over a decade, pandered to this no-talent hack and given us not one, but five of the worst movies ever burnt onto celluloid. Now, with Bay seemingly finally ready to relinquish his stranglehold on this franchise and let someone, anyone, give it a try, we are presented with Bumblebee, a film the franchise doesn't deserve but sorely needs.

Are you ready to be shocked, readers? I, a person who would rather jab wire hangers into his eyes than watch another Transformers movie (for the sake of a less painful experience), LOVED (you read that right) Bumblebee. The action was kinetic and interesting, the direction was heartfelt, Hailee Steinfeld played a female character who wasn't just brainless eye candy, the humor was actually funny rather than juvenile and, get this, when robots fight, you can actually TELL THEM APART. That's right! They no longer look like some gonzo nature show about the mating rituals of tin foil. Gone are the Red Bull-infused action shots, the seemingly testosterone-induced bouts of misplaced masculinity and the idiotic spinning camera always looking up at everything. Instead, we get a heartfelt love letter to what Transformers could be if the filmmakers can just back up a little and tell an actual story.

Unfortunately, while the movie finally gives us wonderful human characters with actual, you know, character arcs, the movie does stutter on occasion when it comes to some of the less developed amongst their ranks. Jorge Lendenborg's Memo was a a fun but underutilized character who seemed to be just above a complete throwaway near the end and, while I did like Charlie's (Steinfeld) family, they ultimately felt more like placeholders meant to bring her back to the real world when the adventure was finally over. Weirdly enough, I began looking forward to the giant robot fights by the end. Who knew?

As for watching it, do you rigorously defend the first five movies in this franchise as some kind of misunderstood genius? Watch this movie and feel really dumb about that opinion. Did you force your way through those previous movies surgically digging for any kind of diamond in the garbage that was that collective series' apparent forte? Consider this one your long-awaited award for all your suffering. Its a Transformers movie with a Win-win scenario! My brain hurts now.

Trevor Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) takes his animation street cred and uses it to make the first Transformers film that could actually be called a film with Bumblebee, a heartfelt, charming, almost E.T.-like movie about giant robots and their predilections toward world saving/domination occasionally interrupted with giant, transforming robot fights. When mechanically gifted Charlie (Steinfeld) finds a totaled VW Beetle in a junkyard, she repairs it and discovers Bumblebee, an alien rebel fighter sent to Earth to establish a forward base for the Autobot resistance against the Decepticons. Other angry robots show up to wreck things, threads of friendship are woven and John Freaking Cena not only plays a real, honorable character but has the strongest character arc in the movie. Am I...becoming a Transformers fan?

My score: 9/10. Seriously, why hasn't the whole argument about trusting the Decepticons not come up until six movies in? They're called DECEPTICONS.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: The Costume Fits Eventually

The thing I've noticed most about Sony Pictures, other than their inability to make anything (Ghostbusters) worth (Annie) watching beyond some form of fanboy hate-watching, is that they never quite seemed to understand the full extent of what they purchased from Marvel when they originally gained the rights to Spider-Man back in the early 2000s. Sure, they obviously gained the titular character, the ability to change his powers as they saw fit (the webbing thing) and his most iconic villains (Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Green Goblin), but they never seemed to understand just how much the Spider-Man comic book universe had expanded over its five decade-plus run. With Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, they seem to have finally acknowledged how far the series can truly go and, shockingly, have made something worthwhile of the fandom they hope to entice.

On the scale of Spider-Man movies currently in existence, from the weirdo Japanese version where he slapped people (a LOT) to the multiple-trailers-in-a-movie-that-forgot-it-was-supposed-to-be-a-movie Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spiderverse ranks just below its Tobey MacGuire counterparts in terms of quality. It's a great introduction of non-comic fans to the newest Spider-Man, Miles Morales, finally introduces Spider-Gwen as more than just a Peter Parker potential love interest and manages to not only make these characters endearing but somehow make their repetitive origin stories feel original per character (they all pretty much became heroes the same way). Throw in the best soundtrack for a teen-oriented superhero movie since...ever and compliment it with a worthwhile story undoes all that nonsense from Amazing Spider-Man about being “chosen” and you even have a movie that tries to have fun with its own premise without those stupid halfhearted sequel promises common place among these kinds of movies. See, Sony? You CAN make a good Spider-Man movie without advertising your stupid franchising ambitions.

Unfortunately, while all of the hero characters are fun and at least well-drawn, the movie ultimately suffers from the seesaw problem of too many characters misbalanced by the movie not being necessarily long enough to accommodate all of them. As much fun as it was to watch Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) rely on their chemistry to make the plot work so well, the later introductions of Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Freaking Cage) felt rushed and forced the chaotic but fun plot into the realm of chaotic and confusing. You had me hooked, Sony! You didn't have to overthink it halfway through!

As for watching it, are you a Spider-Man fan? If so, you've probably already seen this and read most of the comics currently running on sale on Comixology and you should probably consider going outside for a little while. Have you never really been that interested in comic book heroes to begin with? Good luck with the late December offerings of the Oscar contenders no one really wants to see. Have fun with that choice.

Bob Perischetti and Rodney Rothman debut and help Peter Ramsey (Rise of the Guardians) finally make a good movie with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a nearly encyclopedic review of everything Spider-Man that Sony has been sitting on while cranking out their Spider-Man-colored garbage on us for two decades. You know the story: Miles Morales (and everyone name Peter Parker, apparently) gets bitten by a radioactive spider and blah,blah,blah with great power comes great responsibility blah, blah, blah learns the importance of being a hero and blah,blah, blah meets a bunch of versions of himself from alternate universes and proceeds to give bad guys the worst day of their lives via Spider-Man group punches. That last part was a new one (and pretty awesome).

My score: 8/10. Dear Sony, please, considering that you kind of just fixed the character, don't lose your collective minds and try to pull a Superior Spider-Man arc on us. The world didn't deserve THAT trainwreck when Marvel pulled it on us.

Ralph Breaks The Internet: All the Fun of a Therapy Session

There's something to say about animated movies and their sequels. Barring VERY few exceptions (Finding Dory, Toy Story 3, Shrek 2), they've been underwhelming garbage (Shrek 3), forgettable toy commercials (Minions) and, even in the face of Pixar, pretentious cashgrabs (Cars 2). Now, with Disney ONCE AGAIN not realizing that leaving a good thing alone might be for the best, we have Ralph Breaks The Internet, which begs the eternal question no one ever seriously asks: How much therapy does Ralph really need?

Please, readers, heed my warning: if you have fond memories of Wreck-It Ralph, be they the strangely humorous take on videogames or the more serious view of a midlife crisis, this is not a movie you should ever see or even have a need to think about. Outside of a few well-placed gags (that were, incidentally, already shown in the trailers) and a few one-off references to the original, nothing here comes off as memorable or even worthwhile. Bland new characters, broken old characters, internet humor that never comes off as anything more than misplaced or poorly timed and an overarching narrative about how Ralph (John C. Reilly) still really, really needs some kind of videogame therapist (the character has some serious personality problems). Throw in a completely wasted cameo by Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Calhoun (Jane Lynch) and you even take out two of the more endearing aspects of the original movie. What happened, Disney?

Fortunately, while the casting is mostly for stunt purposes, it does, on occasion, shine through the muck that is its own screenplay. Casting the original voice actresses for their princess parts was both brilliant (they can still pull these characters off decades later) and subversive (it gives the actresses a chance to tear into their own iconic characters and their stupid tropes). And, while Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) was little more than a humorous placeholder in the original (she represented Ralph's desire for acceptance and his willingness to gain it), the internet version at least carries the weight of an interesting character going through her own existential crisis for once. See? Ralph isn't the only one feeling the ravages of time (I think that's a good thing).

As for watching it, don't. Go see the original, feel yourself tear up a little near the end when he comes to that realization about what's important to him and just pretend that's where it ended. Don't bother with this garbage, don't lose your respect for the hurdles the character or those he considered his friends went through (Fix-It Felix's original subplot might be one of the best in any animated movie ever) and just pretend Disney thought this whole corny idea up AFTER a script had been made instead of it being forced on whatever potentially talented screenwriters ended up with the unenviable task of making a sequel to a movie that never asked for it.

Rich Moore and Phil Johnson try to capitalize on their original success with Wreck-It Ralph by ruining the character as a whole with Ralph Breaks The Internet, a mostly humorless, shallow effort that takes a movie about a man accepting the needs of others over his own pursuit of happiness and just re-breaks the character and exacerbates his insecurities. When Sugar Rush is accidentally broken by an arcade patron, Ralph (Reilly) and Vanellope (Silverman) must venture into the megalopolis that is the internet to find a replacement part to save her game. Along the way, characters as shallow as Buzzfeed appear for the sake of “cool” effect, Vanellope goes through her own existential crisis in the form of an always-online racing game and Ralph just breaks under the pressure of his own selfishness (again). I've seen bad sequels that make me only want to ever remember the original. I've never seen one that makes me dislike the original for unforeseeable reasons.

My score: 3/10. Seriously, Disney, get Ralph a therapist! This AA stuff obviously isn't working and he's an emotional minefield of misplaced attachment and egotism.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Making The Underwhelming Bad

It's no secret that I disliked the original Fantastic Beasts movie. The story was underwhelming, the characters were flat, the dialog felt like it was written by an English author who only had a passing knowledge of America in general and probably thought we were all rubes to begin with and, while it was never a terrible movie, it felt mostly unnecessary to the Harry Potter franchise as a whole and to movies specifically. How does Warner Brothers react to a movie with no real new ideas and only the promise of flashy CGI and little substance? Do they just cut their losses and run with the money (it was a box office success)? Do they try excessive merchandising to pull a few more dollars out of the movie before people realize it didn't really have anything to say? Of course not! They make the stupid thing a franchise!

Surprise! Creating a sequel to an underwhelming movie yields worse returns (who knew?)! The dialog is still just as flat as ever, the actual character of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is still just as uninteresting as before, Johnny Depp remains the king of stunt casting as the titular Grindelwald, the pacing is atrocious, the setting feels like nostalgic blackmail (because of the whole Potterverse thing) and the movie somehow destroys Dumbledore (Jude Law) with a completely new canon. Throw in the fact that the movie negates Jacob's (Dan Fogler) sacrifice (the BEST part of the original train wreck) from the original movie in all of fifteen seconds (apparently, memory charms are easy to overcome) and it makes me empathize with, of all things, Voldemort's giant snake and you have something that's not only far too scattershot for its own good but is slowly unmaking that which even made Harry Potter special: there's just no charm here to speak of.

As for good, Jacob is still here and is still kind of fun as the pitiful schmuck of a human in a world way over his head and it remains fun to watch him overreact to things he doesn't understand. Say what you will about the rest of the cast, the writing being a little to full of itself or the fact that J.K. Rowling truly is nothing but a one trick pony in terms of writing, she managed to make Jacob and, if he could have been utilized a little better here, there might have been a saving grace for this movie. Emphasis on “might”.

As for watching it, did you see the entire Harry Potter series? Did it make you curious about stuff that happened seventy years before the events of the books? Did it make you want to learn more about Dumbledore than was already provided in the last few books? Go for this and lose more interest in the Wizarding World, I guess. Do you prefer to remember Harry Potter as a better-than-average series of movies about a boy wizard and his friends and their affinity for getting into trouble (usually involving dark wizards)? Go back and watch those movies and store this tripe somewhere far from your memories. You'll probably be better for it.

David Yates (Tarzan) finally does what no director has accomplished and makes Harry Potter a terrible thing with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, a boring, full of itself rush job of a fantasy movie about a guy no one on Earth cares about (Newt Scamander) trying to save the world from a guy (Grindelwald) we all know fails if we saw any of the previous eight Harry Potter movies. Did you read the books or see the Harry Potter movies and wonder, “How did all that stuff happen seventy years ago?” No? Good! Avoid this garbage.

My score 2/10. Goodbye, Stan Lee. You made the word nerd cool before it was monetized, you created a whole new culture around late-in-life popularity (life begins at 80 for some people, apparently) and you were the rare person to defeat the age-old phrase “The good die young”. You did good, kid...

The Dark: Trying (and still failing) to recapture Evil

As much as I might have liked the 2010 horror film Let Me In, its existence remains indicative of Hollywood's inability (or disinterest) in exploring the concept of evil. To me, the Swedish original Let the Right One In not only captured this concept perfectly but turned it on its very head by making the vampire Eli (Lin Leandersson) the innocent who must kill to survive and the “innocent” child Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) a ticking time bomb of repressed anger and sadistic urges that, had Eli not entered his life, would have eventually turned him into a full-blown monster by the time he'd reached adulthood. With Justin P. Lange's debut horror film The Dark, it finally seems like American movies might finally be able to not only explore this concept properly, but even make it interesting. At least it did for a little while.

Okay, okay, I'm going to be nice because I'm kind of desperate for this kind of horror movie and it will likely be another decade before a screenwriter or director grows the courage to make this kind of thing again: The Dark is a good horror movie that could just have easily taken the horror out to begin with. Nadia Alexander and Toby Nichols have great chemistry as the two leads, the origins of both of their characters border on heartbreaking and terrifying, the circumstances for their meeting seem plausible enough to feel real and, even by the end, I was still hoping they would make it for the sake of each other. Throw in a twist about the potential of recovered humanity and how the world seems to literally be trying to prevent such growth and you even have the rare type of movie that relishes in its own darkness for the sake of growth rather than for the overused cheapness of a simple scare. Its a horror movie that makes you think about who the bad guys might actually be! Try doing that, Saw!

Unfortunately, while the movie flourishes when its two leads are playing off their own suffering on each other (with hints of dedicated companionship throughout), the movie's biggest flaw comes from the fact that the movie feels the most rushed when it needs to ultimately slow down. I was invested with these characters enough to not worry about a run time, movie. You could have at least given me more information on why Mina (Alexander) is becoming the way she is. Saying Alex (Nichols) is causing it “with his love” just isn't as satisfying an answer as you might think.

As for watching it, do you desperately need a horror movie for Halloween? If so, this might be a nice (if slightly more out of the way) alternative to the neutered Halloween sequel I don't recall anyone on the planet ever asking for. Would you prefer to same cheap, consumable tripe that is the Hollywood horror movie? They probably have you covered at all the other angles too (Saw, Paranormal Activity, The Purge). Pick the one your brain will forgive you most for, I guess.

Justin P. Lange directs his first feature length movie with The Dark, an at times awkward, mostly endearing tale of boy meets monster and monster decides not to eat boy because he brings out the good in her (I think that's how that saying goes). When ghoul teenager Mina discovers blind boy Alex hiding in the trunk of one of her victims cars, her decision to let the boy live not only throws her solitary existence into chaos, but awakens long dormant remnants of humanity within her that force her to re-examine not only her origins (its pretty horrific) but learn to actually feel again. Its not exactly the study of evil I wanted, but I'll take it!

My score: 8/10. Seriously, Hollywood. Are you really that scared to make movies that might not toe certain philosophical lines just because they might not draw a large audience? You have the Oscars! That is the definition of an awards show for movies no one watches.

Peppermint: Revenge Gone Wrong

Since perhaps immediately after its initial release, Hollywood has seemed desperate to recreate both the success (still elusive) and feel (slightly closer but still no) of the 1974 revenge action movie Death Wish. And, while these attempts have ranged from mere retreads (every Death Wish sequel) to lazy remakes (the 2018 lazy remake), they've never quite been able to find a match that fits the mold of a normal-human-being-becoming-a-monster-because-revenge type of movie mostly out of lack of skill or the aforementioned inherent laziness. With a slightly new take on this subgenre with Peppermint...they still don't seem to have any idea what they are doing here.

To be nice for a moment, Peppermint, despite being a bland, uninspired movie, does, in fact, have moments that made me hope for something more. The frenetic cinematography of Riley's (Jennifer Garner) possible psychosis is at times terrifying; at times jarring. And, while no one not named Jennifer Garner actually comes away from this movie as little more than a forgettable footnote in a series of footnote characters, Annie Ilozeh as FBI Agent #1 and John Gallagher Jr. as Mustachioed Police Officer were fun in their own fire-and-forget kind of acting that almost made me care enough to want to learn their character's names. Almost.

Unfortunately, this is merely a poor man's Death Wish with all of the anger yet none of the style. The violence is more a stoic examination of violence rather than the fun kill-the-bad-guys-because-reasons type and, despite trying very hard to be clever about its portrayal, never comes off as anything more than overly preachy. This, mixed with the movie's almost incessant urge to be nothing less than COMPLETELY SERIOUS about everything (Revenge movies must have levity to be watchable) causes the movie to feel both rushed and without any real urgency. We know that Riley North is going to kill the bad guys and, most likely, do terrible things to them in the process, but there's never a really compelling reason to watch these acts of revenge play out because they lack any flow outside of being extremely technical. When you notice the camera work before the gunplay in an action movie, the creative half of the production team wasn't doing their jobs.

As for watching it, The Nun's out if you want a good pre-Halloween scare (or at least a series of silly jumpscares instead) and Kin is still the same underwhelming but fun outing it was last week so...pick your slightly better poison this week? Honestly, you could get the same (but cheaper) experience as Peppermint by giving yourself a minor concussion and just watching Death Wish on mute. Otherwise, just watch Alias again if you are that desperate to see Garner beat up bad guys. That might be the first time I've ever recommended Alias as a cure for anything...

Pierre Morel (Taken) tries to recapture his former glory of taking aging actors and trying to give them new leases as action stars and fails miserably with Peppermint, a nonsensical, bland, poorly acted train wreck of a revenge movie with all of the anger of Death Wish but none of the skill to parlay that anger into anything watchable. After a Los Angeles cartel murders her family, Riley North transforms from suburban soccer mom to Mrs. Punisher via improbable plotting and even more ridiculous character arcs. Outside of seeing Garner shoot bad guys in the face, this movie is probably best left in the bargain bin.

My score: 4/10. Goodbye, Burt Reynolds. You said you lived your life for the money, for the glory, and for the fun, but I like to think you did it mostly for the fun.

Kin: When Brothers Help Each Other in a War Zone

Some movies, it would seem, are not really meant to draw an audience regardless of their merits. Despite being somehow snuck into theaters and occasionally boasting a surprisingly stellar cast, these types of movies tend to range from forgettably fun (Monster Trucks) to trying-too-hard wastes of time (The November Man) and, unfortunately for said movies, this tends to lead not only to lackluster returns from audiences (both of the aforementioned movies failed miserably at the box office) but even prevents the opportunity for cult-status due to lack of any clearly redeemable aspect (only Monster Trucks has had any kind of limited fandom since its release). Now, with The Baker Brothers' first attempt at feature length science fiction with Kin...maybe these young directors should take some courses in advertising.

To be nice, Kin is a fun, if flawed movie with enough humanity to bear its heart and enough flair to keep you interested for its nearly-bearable run time. Myles Truitt is fun as the young lead Eli, Jack Reynor and Zoe Kravitz acquit themselves nicely as surrogate parents of the moment to the kind of wayward youth, its message about how good is always the hardest choice borders on charming and, yes, the actual effects centered around the weird space gun Eli finds is both cool and intelligently implemented for the best audience-pleasing effect possible at this kind of price range. Throw in yet another creepily sleazy turn by James Franco and heartfelt blink-and-you'll-miss-it performance by Dennis Quad and you even have some better named actors giving it their all despite not really needing to considering this movies prospects. It was a movie meant to fail and those involved tried their hardest anyway. That would be inspiring if it weren't so depressing.

Unfortunately, while the human aspect of the movie aims for the stars and comes just short, the actual twist to the movie is both forgettable and poorly implemented. Sure, its always fun to watch Eli blow holes in walls with an alien ray gun, but the actual reasoning for it existing where he found it to begin with feels cheap and forced. And, while its easy to get behind Franco's angry gangster working through his losses with really bad behavior and Quad's stoic father figure trying desperately to protect his youngest son from falling in with the bad side of the world, the rest of the bigger-named cast feels tacked on and forgettable. Seriously, how do you manage to snag Carrie Coon and Michael B. Jordan for the equivalent of five minute cameos and have them feel so blasé?

As for watching it, wait this one out for a few months. Television is where this movie should have begun and is likely where it will (hopefully) find an appreciative audience. Still reeling from an absolutely dead August and wishing September would just get better faster? Well...Peppermint comes out next week and it seems pretty cool? Patiences is a virtue?

Jonathan and Josh Baker graduate from short sci-fi with what would be expected with Kin, an at-times brilliant movie about family with an alien ray gun thrown into the mix that never really gets beyond that due to budgetary constraints and obvious first film jitters. While attempting to scavenge abandoned buildings in Detroit for copper wires, wayward teen Eli (Truitt) stumbles upon a group of dead alien-or-future soldiers and promptly steals one of their weapons, setting off an extended chase sequence across half the country involving a violent street gang after his older ex-con brother Jimmy (Reynor), a stripper from Nebraska named Milly (Kravitz) and lots and lots of wonky sci-fi explosions that culminate in epic-for-its-budget shootout and a lackluster ending you wish you saw coming an hour earlier. I've had worse times with no-budget sci-fi.

My score: 6/10. Is it weird that the dialog in this script seemed to be aiming for an R-rating but, when it came time for violence, stuck strictly to the PG-13 angle? It often confuses me when a movie with this much swearing acts scared to show any blood.