Transformers
September 18th, 2007
A punchy B-picture, high on testosterone and a Hollywood megabudget, featuring pleasantly absurd giant robots that turn into cars. The boy-hero’s teenage crush is an improbable babe (Megan Fox) sprung from the pages of a glossy magazine, and because this is a Michael Bay movie, the fights are ridiculously overblown.
Now, I have nothing against popcorn flicks aimed at the thirteen-year-old in all of us, but I can’t stand propaganda. Transformers wallows in the questionable rhetoric of heroism and sacrifice, and the shots of fighter jets taking off at dawn and military helicopters swooping over downtown L.A. just need the superimposed tagline “Army of One” to be turned into recruiting ads. When Shia LaBeouf gets his orders and is told “You are a soldier now,” the fun is all but ruined for this pacifist. With John Turturro as anti-alien G-Man.
Transformers. Michael Bay, 2007. **
I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK
August 29th, 2007
“Amélie in a mental institution,” Marcy quipped as we walked out of the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, where Park Chan-Wooks latest played as part of the Fantasy Filmfest. As usual, she had a point: at the center of I’m a Cyborg is an adorable waif (Lim Su-jeong) who insists on seeing the world in her own peculiar way and is surrounded by a quirky cast of lovable supporting characters.
The filmmaking, as you’d expect from the director of Oldboy, is muscular and inventive. But unlike Jeunet’s unbearably cute Amélie, Cha Young-goon has to face some all-too-real pain. The girl believes herself to be a cyborg (”You know, kind of like a robot”) and is sent to the mental ward after trying to “recharge her batteries” in a way that reads to the rest of the world as a suicide attempt.
Continue reading my review of I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK at About.com.
Saibogujiman kwenchana. Park Chan-wook, 2006. ***
