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By Cole Smithey
‘Transformers’
Movie Trailer
Stories of Michael Bay’s shouting
fits during the filming of “Transformers”
have spread around Hollywood,
and the blockbuster director’s
outsized sense of everything finds
its level on-screen with massive
machine ultra-violence that’s
bloodless if not deafeningly loud.
Amid a plethora of shameless product
placements for American car companies,
and a certain toy manufacturer,
lies a bare-bones story about
high school junior Sam Witwicky
(Shia LaBeouf) on a mission to
get his first car and start dating
hot chics, namely one Mikaela
Banes (Megan Fox). Sam realizes
his Steven Spielberg-approved
“upper-middle-class” dream and
much more when he purchases a
rusty ’70s Camaro that conceals
a transforming alien robot called
Bumblebee. As fate would have
it, Sam is hot on the alien robot
go-to list as the great-grandson
of an Arctic explorer who retrieved
a frozen gigantic evil robot called
Megatron (leader of the Decepticons)
along with a cube of “raw power”
called an “Allspark” that the
bots badly want. Endless noisy
chase sequences and city-leveling
titan clashes attend the CGI masturbation
between good and bad colossal
robots, as if there were a difference.
“Transformers” is designed as
an insider movie made to order
for fans of the ’80s- era cartoon,
toys, videogames and comic books
about Autobots and Decepticons,
two opposing gangs of gnarly metal-morphing
robots that expand exponentially
from cars, planes and tractor
trailers into massive metal gladiators.
Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter
Cullen) is the good-guy leader
of the Autobots, who speaks in
a condescending God voice intoning
theme-line ultimatums and platitudes
that might impress 10-year-olds,
but could send cringes through
adults concerned about the potential
brainwashing effect on their children.
Rhetorical sloganeering stems
from a pro-war bent that’s supported
by the film’s parallel subplot,
set in Qatar where U.S. military
forces fight a losing battle against
Decepticons concealed as helicopters
or as giant reticulated metal
scorpions capable of adapting
the weapons being used against
them. The familiar sports maxim
“no pain, no gain” is changed
into an often repeated “no sacrifice,
no victory” adage that carries
a higher grade of zealotry. When
an armed fighter tells Sam, “You’re
a soldier now,” it’s agonizingly
clear that the filmmakers are
intent on gearing child audiences
toward combat, although it’s unclear
who or what they might be fighting.
As in “The Last Mimzy,” an entire
family is hauled off to the pokey
by a Homeland Security-styled
team. In this case, it’s Sam’s
mom and dad that are aimlessly
arrested by John Turturro as the
goofball Agent Simmons. The film’s
poster tagline, “Protect / Destroy”
resonates with America’s oxymoronic
national and foreign policy. And
the story devolves into an urban
battle climax where civilian causalities
invisibly pile up beneath tons
of rubble. For our trouble, we
are anesthetized to the violence
with plenty of bombastic music
and a fusillade of crashing sounds
albeit sans the screams of any
wounded victims.
There are plenty of racist and
sexist jabs interspersed throughout
with dialogue about “bros before
hos,” and Sam’s car freshener
spelling out “Bee-otch.” On Air
Force One, a Bush-like President
asks a female assistant to “wrangle
him up some ding dongs.” Jon Voight
slums as a Secretary of Defense
John Keller who wants us to know
that the robots are “way too smart
for the Iranians.”
Even as a big spectacle popcorn
movie, “Transformers” comes across
as dumb-as-a-stump for all of
its idiotic robot characterizations
that make Jar Jar Binks (“Star
Wars: Episode I - The Phantom
Menace”) sound like a genius by
comparison. It’s a sickening force-feeding
commercial frenzy to sell cars,
toys and war in the same breath
that it pawns itself off as “cinema.”
This is not cinema. This is acid
kool-aid for children. Don’t drink
it. CV
‘SiCKO’
Movie Trailer
Michael Moore’s knack for framing
political and social issues in
a surprisingly entertaining documentary
format is a journalistic phenomenon
that picks up where ’60s era activist
filmmakers like Barbara Kopple
(“Harlan County USA”) left off.
Davis Guggenheim’s “An Inconvenient
Truth” might have been the first
movie, documentary or otherwise,
to effect noticeable social change,
but Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”
became the highest grossing doc
in history, by far. Unlike in
his previous films, Moore himself
doesn’t appear until roughly 40-minutes
in, by which time he’s set the
parameters of his intercontinental
comparative medical care window-shopping
tour.
“SiCKO” isn’t about the 50 million
Americans living without health
care, of which 18,000 will die
needlessly this year, but rather
about middle-class Americans living
with medical coverage in a system
that charges increasing prices
for an ever-shortening list of
services while poorer countries
run circles around us. The point
is summed up in a “Star Wars”-style
scroll that lists conditions that
will make you ineligible for health
care under corporate health care
pirates like Aetna or Cigna. The
juxtaposition of George Lucas’
famous sci-fi motif alongside
the anti-humanitarian index provokes
the kind of uncomfortable laughter
that Moore is famous for extracting
in the face of systemic failures.
“SiCKO” bops along with cheesy
pop music references, archive
film and TV footage and brief
history lessons about iconic figures
such as Canada’s Tommy Clement
Douglas, who introduced universal
public Medicare in 1961. But Moore’s
idealistic motivations resound
in his subject’s personal stories,
like the American carpenter who
severed two fingers in a band-saw
accident and had to choose between
paying $60,000 to reattach his
middle finger or $12,000 to have
his ring finger put back together.
Then there’s the woman who drives
across the border to Canada to
get cervical cancer treatment
that her HMO doesn’t cover. Perhaps
the most tragic story comes from
a woman whose baby daughter died
because she was refused emergency
room care since her health care
didn’t cover it.
Switch to a blissful young London
couple exiting a hospital where
they had their baby at no cost,
and with the knowledge that any
and all medication will be available
free of charge. A graph reveals
that the USA is ranked by the
World Health Organization as 37th
among countries for its health
care. After the recently publicized
story about a woman who perished
due to neglect in a Los Angeles
hospital emergency room, we may
well have slipped below 38th place
Slovenia.
Michael Moore, the dramatist,
pays off on the promised emotional
climax of “SiCKO” when he loads
up a boat of sick Americans headed
for Guantanamo Bay, where he hopes
to cash in on some of the great
free medical care being afforded
to prisoners inside the notorious
penal colony. After a blacked
out rendering of their watery
passage to Cuba, Moore calls out
on a bullhorn to Guantanamo’s
gun towers to allow he and three
9/11-rescue workers to enter.
It’s a bold bit of transparent
grandstanding that nevertheless
makes the point that Moore was
brave and dumb enough to risk
being shot in order to give his
movie momentum toward an inevitable
visit to a Havana hospital. The
9/11-rescue workers are all in
obviously bad health, unable to
breathe properly and desperate
for medical attention. Their stories
of disenfranchisement from the
country they bravely supported
in its darkest hour is devastating,
and when they meet with a group
of Cuban firefighters for a ceremony
honoring their efforts, you can’t
help but get choked up. How is
it possible that these human examples
of charitable ethics get more
respect and better treatment in
Cuba than they do in America?
It’s a question that has been
quashed by the recent revelation
that the Bush Administration is
investigating the three “heroes”
for having gone with Moore to
Cuba for medical treatment that
they could not get here. CV
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