The Island

Every day like every other, a clone colony habitually persisting, keeping productive, following the rules, maintaining social distance, no need for further questions.

They believe they've survived a plague that has destroyed all life above ground, and that they're lucky to have escaped civilization's wanton biological destruction.

They have friends and abundant contacts but everything's been accounted for, there isn't the slightest most minuscule deviation from their overlord's strategic plan.

Traditionally this passes unnoticed, like routine shifts undiversified ubiquitous, until one clone (Ewan McGregor as Lincoln Six Echo) starts to question his existence, thereby challenging the consummate order.

There's one way to overcome confinement, they must be chosen to move to the island, the last vestige of sustainable life, still enriching upon the surface.

A glorious day if they win the lottery, full of felicity and jaunty applause, vigorous opportunities surely awaiting, joyous pastimes inveterate pause.

But while sleuthing Six Echo discovers an unspoken terrifying master narrative, which he must share with his blind compatriots, if they're ever to know robust justice.

He breaks free with his frightened love interest (Scarlett Johansson as Jordan Two Delta) to the unforgiving world beyond, mercenaries intent on tracking them down, as they flee for the wilds of Los Angeles. 

Perhaps not the best time to be reviewing The Island, considering its metaphorical import, but it is just a film after all, and COVID-19's a viral reality.

Frustrating to see the spread of fake news which refuses to believe COVID-19 exists, which doesn't take the pandemic seriously, such narratives will only ensure the plague intensifies.

You can also see The Island as a metaphorical critique of working in unregulated industry, without safety procedures or sick days, or pension or difference or critique.

You can work for months for years without incident, but to last decades without sustaining injury is against the imposing odds.

Thus you live in relative comfort with everything provided for year after year, but eventually you have to make sacrifices which seriously endanger your health.

Critiques of the situation aren't tolerated, and accessible knowledge only relates to your job, you can get to know people but not seriously, and you're stuck eating what a computer suggests.

The ending's like the emergence of self-employment, or paid sick leave, higher wages, and an ombudsperson, plus the ability to live somewhere else besides work, and spend your income on manifold goods and services.

If I remember correctly The Island wasn't well received but I'd argue it's one of Michael Bay's best. 

I've never seen him so concerned with social justice.

It's solid thought provoking sci-fi.

6 Underground

A self-made billionaire well-versed in hardboiled expression embraces volatile altruism after having been reanimated (Ryan Reynolds as One).

Having given up on the political process (not me), and assembled an eclectic mulitdimensional team, he proceeds to take on a cruel haughty despot, who bombs schools and gasses his own people.

His brother's the exact opposite and would rule by upstanding means, if he wasn't locked down in a lavish penthouse under cloistered lock and key.

The mission: take out the despot's generals to destabilize the military, then free the forlorn bro from ostentatious disenchantment. Afterwards head to the nation in question to launch a coup and inaugurate political reform. Try not to make friends along the way. And engage in optic dissimilitude.

The team is ready and willing to achieve herculean ascension.

It's full-on cloak and dagger.

With sensationalist logistics.

I don't mean to critique their ambition nor mitigate their heroic impact. Despots who tyrannize their own people when they could be educating them or encouraging communal development are certainly disheartening. 

6 Underground's still somewhat basic, however, with sharp divisions, like a Western for kids, morals fitting snuggly within a domain that overlooks contradictory realities, not that the domain doesn't appease widespread outrage, or challenge ennui claiming nothing can be done.

In this instance, sending in an elite independent group to bring about political reform within a repressed nation seems apt, and there's even a plan to smoothly transition from one political platform to another. No decades of fighting afterwards by warring factions with no interest in harmony. No general hunger or unrest or unemployment while the country tries to figure out what to do.

Haven't both left and right wing proponents encouraged clandestine coups around the globe to disastrous effect, though, isn't political change more substantial if it's self-generated, as seems to have been the case in many currently peaceful countries?

It would be nice if things were as simple as 6 Underground makes them out to be, but simple solutions for problems this complex are often sought for nefarious means.

The film resolutely approaches the fight against tyranny with rapid fire multidisciplinary dialogue, but it's also abounding with gratuitous violence, prostitution, and characters lacking identity.

If you're critiquing a despot for using poisonous gas on his own people, you shouldn't have your heroes use gas to attain their goals later on, even if their gas is harmless.

I know the characters aren't supposed to know each other due to mission parameters, but this film would have been stronger with much more character depth.

Depth of action excels in the opening moments, however, with the best car chase I've ever seen.  

It's a solid action film.

That loses something in its naive oversimplification.

The Rock

Decided to revisit The Rock last Summer after stopping by a local thrift store, and impressed was I as it chaotically unreeled.

It reminded me of a time when I still considered blockbusters to represent the best of what cinema had to offer, long before I discovered non-British European movies (I already knew about British films), Québec's vital film industry, Takashi Miike, Kurosawa, or Criterions.

Blockbusters are still kind of fun, especially when they're deep, the big picture critiqued in miniature, striking slices of stark sensation.

After the insane number of sequels released last Summer I even found myself wishing another Skyscraper was in the works, not a Skyscraper sequel, to be precise, but something sort of different that at least attempted to start something new.

Even if it channelled Die Hard.

I've mentioned this before.

Stuber filled the gap meanwhile.

The Rock never had any sequels and if it had they likely would have seemed preposterous, or at least too logically improbable, if they had sought to reunite Cage (Stanley Goodspeed) and Connery (John Patrick Mason).

The film's actual plot still likely seems preposterous if you read or talk to people about it, or see it I suppose, even if it rationalizes insanity well.

If you don't like action films or sports I imagine watching The Rock would be excruciating, 20 plus years later no less, some of its best lines as ra ra as they are hyper-reactively appropriate, like watching solid Monday Night Football, a Raptors/Clippers showdown, the Leafs facing off in Montréal, or Hamilton taking on the Argos.

As far as I remember, it was released before globalization took off, or just as it was taking off, when America was examining itself critically, even from militaristic perspectives.

And the hero's a green nerd (Cage) who'll pay $600 for one of the Beatles's worst albums (old vinyl though), his partner a dangerous Brit who's been locked up for at least 30 years, like Michael Bay of all directors was deeply concerned with creating something memorable, something that had never been seen before, in sharp contrast to so many new action films.

Take some of these scenes.

After some tourists find themselves locked up on the Rock, there's a really short moment that lasts long enough for one of them to say, "what kind of fucked up tour is this?"

It's funny, and could have easily been left out, but Bay realized how cool it was, and kept it in to generate humour and tension.

I've never seen anything like it in a Marvel film, even if they excel at multidimensionally entertaining.

There's also a high speed chase through San Francisco that revels in cinematic mayhem, that introduces a tour of the city, on a trolly, as everything goes to hell.

Then, as an elite group of Navy SEALs prepares to take on well-heeled Marines on Alcatraz, and Mr. Goodspeed seeks a breakdown of what's going on, one of the SEALS (Danny Nucci as Lieutenant Shepard), a relatively unknown actor at the time who had yet to say anything in the film, delivers an extremely precise borderline passionate synopsis, that startles as it summarizes, and shocks with exhilarating brevity.

What an opportunity for a young actor.

Nucci totally nails it.

There's nothing like that scene, that moment, in current action films, like the lines were created to give someone the opportunity to build a career, instead of all the roles going to world cinema's best and brightest.

It's like the actors in The Rock are fighting to build or sustain a career, from Vanessa Marcil (Carla Pestalozzi) to Tony Todd (Captain Darrow) to David Morse (Major Tom Baxter) to John C. McGinley (Captain Hendrix), no one holding back or resting on old school precedent, just givin' 'er hardcore with ample opportunity to do so.

There are at least 17 actors who stand out in this film.

That's a script that cultivates 1990s diversity (written by David Weisberg, Douglas Cook and Mark Rosner).

Cage and Connery work well together, the former frenetically perspiring athleticism, as he's suddenly thrust into the frenzied fray, replete with doubt, inexperience, and a pregnant partner, Michael Biehn (Commander Anderson), Ed Harris (General Francis X. Hummel), and William Forsythe (Ernest Paxton) givin' 'er too, the film's just so damned professional.

With a ne'er-do-well landing on a spike near the end.

This is what blockbusters could be like before pirating.

Greater risks.

Greater reward.

I'm recommending The Rock.

And watching it again this Winter.

Transformers: The Last Knight

Can science, myth, religion, history, the aristocracy, the people, the British, Americans, the privileged, the self-made, the men, the women, humankind, and Autobots, be chaotically yet adventurously, ideologically yet practically, intergalactically yet locally, or quite simply extracurricularly brought together in a wild brainiacally styled jewelled Nile Summertime extravaganza, complete with a spellbinding mix of the brash and the delicate which epically unites risk, love, service and dedication, to thoroughly entertain while multilaterally seeking knowledge, like a trip to New York, or a voyage down under?

Yes.

I would say, "yes, yes they can."

"Affirmative" even.

A constructive ebb and flow.

It's always fun when the new Transformers films are released but I'll admit I've never enjoyed one as much as The Last Knight.

I mean, I'll actually watch this one again.

It's number 5 too.

So many metamorphic developments.

Plucky little Izabella (Isabela Moner), resiliently in search of friends and family.

The hyperreactive robotic butler (Jim Carter as Cogman), who flamboyantly yet earnestly adds neurotic inspirational spice.

Agent Simmons (Jon Turturro) is back, theorizing and analyzing his way to the heart of the narrative's conceit.

Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins), youthfully and mischievously contemporizing more than a millennia of British legend.

England and the United States romantically come to terms?, the couple in question perhaps creating an invincible universal super being?

Plus secret entrances, spontaneous sushi, cheeky self-reflexive criticisms of blockbuster music, Cuba once again warmly featured in a 2017 American mainstream release, prophetic books preserved, getting-away-with-it explanations, scenarios, Bumblebee (Erik Aadahl), First Nations fluidity, Tony Hale (JPL Engineer), whales.

The wild script energetically shifts from sentiment to shock to certitude to sensation, manifold short scenes eclectically yet straightforwardly stitched together with (en)lightninglike speed and ornate dishevelled awareness.

Fascinated, 'twas I.

I've often thought these films don't focus enough on Transformers, but Last Knight presents a solid shapeshifting/organic blend, its biological proclivities overwhelming desires to see Transformers discursively deliberating, relevant contributing human factors, caught up in the thick of it, creating solutions intuitively their own.

In fact, the subplot involving Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) was my least favourite part of the film.

The extraordinary examination of British History and its relationship to transforming-lifeforms-from-space easily made up for it though.

I'd love to see Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice during the witching hour.

How did they move those rocks?

They be pretty freakin' huge.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Humanity has forsaken and betrayed the Autobots in the latest Transformers sequel, forcing them to strategically dissimulate in order to avoid detection.

An intergalactic jailer by the name of Lockdown (Mark Ryan) seeks to imprison Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), punishing him for disobeying his creators, uniformly inhibiting his hard-fought freedom fighting.

Megatron's brain has been harvested and the technological secrets residing within have led brilliant scientist Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) to believe that the power of the Transformer can be governed by Homo sapiens.

A new generation of Transformer is therefore created, to be used as military drones, the Autobots having become obsolete.

Fortunately a feisty independent struggling inventor has discovered the whereabouts of Mr. Prime, and he remembers the sacrifices he made, improvisationally fighting by his side.

Scolding his young daughter all the while.

The resulting combat, wherein the American individual boldly teams up with the abandoned to challenge the forces of oppression, is ingeniously summed up in the film's best scene, which sees Mr. Joyce cowering in a Hong Kong elevator, a momentary respite, from the cataclysmic confrontations.

Anyone notice the apartment complexes in Hong Kong?

Wow.

The act of creation unites the converging storylines, along with issues of operational control, to thematically cap the series's 4th instalment.

Convincingly hypothesizing a new set of sociotechnological indicators, while economically aligning them for the film's terrestrial inhabitants, earning a living subconsciously contends with manufacturing a soul, to experimentally produce a sensationally revelled playing field.

Because Age of Extinction is so long, the introduction of the Dinobots seems somewhat tacked-on.

However, the introduction of the Dinobots, is, awesome.

The President doesn't make an appearance and I'm betting when he or she does it turns out to be one of the members of Dark of the Moon's most disputatious romantic couplings.

Their presence was missing from Age of Extinction.

But the anticipation is something to look forward to.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

The Autobots and Decepticons battle once again in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, one group caring for the future of humanity, the other, not so much.

Enjoyed the first act of the film as Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) struggles to find a job, competently dealing with the shocks of the working world while reservedly accepting that successfully defeating the forces of evil twice does not necessarily guarantee that one will find full-time rewarding employment. Nevertheless, he still finds a position in the mail room of an innovative company and proceeds to prove himself while impressing partner Carly Spencer (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) and mollifying his ill-tempered father (Kevin Dunn).

Until fellow employee Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong) suddenly provides him with top secret intelligence regarding the Ark, a spacecraft which escaped Cybertron during its transformational Armageddon and proceeded to crash land on Earth's moon.

Reunited with Seymour Simmons (John Turturro), they then unravel a plot involving the stockpiling of pillars on the moon and the murder of many of the people involved with American and Russian moon missions.

It turns out an Autobot named Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) piloted the Ark away from Cybertron in order to ensure the Autobots's survival, but had really struck a deal with Megatron (Hugo Weaving) to betray them, believing that the future of the Transformers would pay more dividends in Decepticon hands.

With the help of Spencer's boss and Witwicky's rival Dylan Gould (Patrick Dempsey), the Decepticons conquer the earth and prepare to use Sentinel's technology to transport Cybertron to its solar system.

There are many quirky scenes that make the first act stand out, including the struggles of Alan Tudyk's character Dutch, awkward elevator encounters, and Sam and Jerry's discussion in the stall of a men's washroom. These scenes infuse the film with a catchy comedic sensibility that lightens the tension and disrupts the action, briefly, the sharp introduction of a distinct staccato which doesn't ruin the overall affect as it did in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (the comedy in a Transformers film finally worked for me).

The film also features the significant transitions most of the characters have entertainingly negotiated since Revenge of the Fallen, which, I suppose, is one of the principle points.

As if we're all Transformers.

Transformers 3's second act is primarily concerned with the Autobot/human counterattack and the momentum fluidly built up beforehand stalls significantly. I suppose if you have a constructed bountiful world that is then devastated it makes sense to ensure that its dynamic isn't present in the Decepticon aftermath. But it also makes sense to then build towards a salient climax wherein that world's productivity is brilliantly revitalized, and Dark of the Moon does contain a climax and its origins are revitalized, but the content used to fill this traditional form didn't exactly motivate me, apart from the quasi-rapprochement entre Simmons and Mearing (Frances McDormand).

Nonetheless, its saving grace is represented by how it presents the ways in which the right perverts "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" maxim, by placing it in Decepiticon hands, who, basically want to bring their world to ours, or supplant Earth's culture with another, the imperialist few using their resources to destroy the longevity of the many, in the interests of the one, the dark of the moon (note the necessity of maintaining a prominent place for the study of First Nations culture within educational systems).

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picks up with the Autobots and the American military chasing down villainous Decepticons throughout planet Earth. Humanoid hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is preparing for both college and a long term relationship with love interest Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) before discovering that his previous encounter with the Allspark has given him exceptional scientific and linguistic abilities. And Starscream (Charlie Adler) has rallied the troops with the assistance of The Fallen (Tony Todd) and is preparing to resurrect Megatron (Hugo Weaving) so that he can lead an invasion force to use an ancient device buried within a pyramid to harvest the energon lying within our Sun.

But he didn't count on contending against the power of love.

With nearly two and a half hours of footage, the film covers a tremendous amount of ground planted with the same silly comedic distractions and fast-paced shallow dialogue that dominated its predecessor. At the same time, with so many characters demanding their voice be heard, and so many plot threads requiring a cinematic stitch, I suppose terse dialogue is necessary if not disappointing. John Turtorro (Agent Simmons) steals the show once again and revitalizes the second act with an energetically offbeat and charismatic transformation. And there were a number of points after the second hour where I thought Revenge of the Fallen was going to end in an Empire Strikes Back like fashion (without a carbonite parallel) and leave us eagerly anticipating the next installment. But it kept going and the audience kept cheering and I couldn't help feeling old for searching for something more than explosive battles, competent clichés (Turtorro stating "not on my watch" for instance), and frustrating familial filibusters.

One Transformer did stand out for me however because his presence attached a bit of ambiguity to the either/or dynamic lying at the heart of the Autobot/Decepticon feud. Jetfire (Mark Ryan) was once a Decepticon but decided to join the Autobots after centuries of fighting. True, there are still only two choices, Autobots or Decepticons, but it's nice to see a freethinking character who was able to change his allegiances based upon his subjective interpretation of his historical circumstances.