May 31, 2007

Film Critic Quote of the Week

Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns, on one of the summer's most contentious movie debates:

"The Internet is also on fire regarding that other Independence Day blockbuster, Michael Bay’s Transformers. This makes me sad for so many reasons. First of all, it’s heartbreaking to witness so many young men of legal voting age spending so much time and effort trying to figure out if Bay’s addition of painted flames on Optimus Prime represents some sort of betrayal of the sacred source material. Furthermore, this is Michael Bay we’re talking about, a filmmaker so egregiously and consistently awful and evil, he’s like Ed Wood reborn as a drunken, date-raping, frat-boy bully. Finally, I never figured out this whole Transformers thing to begin with: So there’s a robot truck fighting a robot handgun, but the pistol is bigger than the 18-wheeler?"
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. The movie sounds like a lot less than meets the eye. But if it's a hit, could a $200 million big-screen treatment of "Go-Bots" be far behind?

For movies this weekend: See "Knocked Up." Please. It's brilliant. Not quite so brilliant? "Mr. Brooks," which I caught last night, which is an incredibly goofy mess of a movie that's a little weird to work as a thriller, but a little too serious to work as camp. About five extra subplots, and the long-awaited dramatic debut of Dane Cook, don't help much either, and neither does a horrible, totally insulting ending. Mitigating factors include a dream cast (Kevin Costner! William Hurt! Demi Moore!) if the movie had been made in 1988, and the return of Reiko Aylesworth (Michelle from "24"!), who's in two brief scenes.

Posted by Stephen Silver at May 31, 2007 11:15 PM
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