The Reviews Thread

I saw this movie at a celebrity media screening on Friday night. Michael Bay and the actors came down to the front before the movie started and talked a little bit about it.

This is by far and away the best summer action movie this year, and i'd even go as far top say that it's probably going to be up there with one of the best action movies ever. I'm not a fan of Michael Bay but he's got it right this time round. The robots are so hardcore I can't even begin to tell you. Top top film

 

^ Glad to hear it man!!!

So, in your honnest and personal opinion, do you think it's true what so many reviews have repeatedly said!??? Which is that TransFormers will leave its mark in hollywood-movie-history such as the likes of GhostBusters, Back to the Future, E.T & Jurassic Park???? It sure sounds like it now.

 

This is from another forum I frequent, from a non-TF-non-Bay fan..

 

son of a ***** i can't wait for this movie... i really think this'll be the greatest action movie of at least the last few years, if not more.

 

^ I think it's save to say by now, that it'll be one of the most badass action movie's of ALL TIME!

 

I'm hearing everything I wanted to hear from these reviews. This movie is gonna kick ass.

 

wow... that's the most glowing approval i think i can hear from this movie. that's exactly the vibe i was hoping for.

 

Don't be so fast, I'm sure we will get plenty of negative reviews very soon. I'm just waiting to hear "all action and FX, no Plot" type reviews from the usual suspects. Some people hold every wide release movie to flicks like Godafather, Citizen Kane, and 2001. This will be no different. Other people have other opinions (and sometimes are payed for it). Fortunatly, box office shuts some people up about quality, because they forget the masses want entertainment. But if it's not Titanic/Spider-man numbers, it failed, despite bringing in a truckload of cash (see Batman Begins, Hulk, Superman Returns, ect.).

 

Nivek, it's sounding like you want this film to suck. >_> I hope that's not the case.


Great reviews, all around. Dang, I'm pumped. I could eat some Decepticon right about now...

 

There has probably been over 30 reviews so far of this film, and I've yet to see one negative review. NOT ONE. You'd think, if this movie wasn't that great, there'd be some pretty skeptical/cautious reviews by now. And to say this movie will fail if it doesn't do $400 million is ludicrous.

 

"It's like a car chase movie, but one in which the cars can grow legs and chase you."

LOL! That's my favorite quote!

 

While I think the positive buzz is great, these aren't really "reviews." More like the "First Looks"... which are almost always positive. I think it has already been stated that the previewers are contractually locked from releasing full reviews until July 1st, no? Before you pounce on me for being negative, I'm just making an observation.

Having said that, that 'ghostbusters/back to the future' quote is very encouraging.

 

Some Aussie newspaper..

The other review is FF2, which got a 2.5/5.. TF got a 4/5.

 

There will no doubt be negative reviews of some kind; always are.... But I've seen about 27 reviews now that all states the same thing!

1: TF has the most mindblowing and believable CG, EVER CREATED!

2: The human aspects are very good, especially Sam's! Yet still the human aspects DOESN'T have the most story, and thereby are NOT taking over the film; they're keeping the main focus on the TF's! (which has been a relief to hear for practickly all!)

3: There is indeed a plot, and it's NOT bad at all! It's just not too heavy NOR complicated (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!)

4: The 2hrs&24min worth of running time flows PERFECTLY, and the movie is a joy to behold, ALL THE WAY! (something all other flicks this summer hasn't been; BIG-TIME!)

5: And think about this one!!!
The 15 set-pieces of action within TF has yet to be given a remark like "it's TOO MUCH!" in the reviews. This hasn't been mentioned ONES! Where as the 7 set-pieces in Spidey 3 was given lots of "Way way too much!" in practickly all its reviews. (it all comes down to editing, which is thankfully a plus-factor within the TF movie)

6: The reviews practickly all say that the film is Bay's absolute BEST to date!

7: and so many of them compares the impact of seeing this film to classics like Jurassic Park, E.T, and Back to the Future; meaning that this very movie is bound to leave its permanent mark in Hollywood-Movie-History, just as they did! BIG ****ING WORDS!

No my friend... If there ever were worries, than I can't find them no longer!!! Start beeing happy! All of these reviews are very very GOOD! This could've been a total disaster, and it ISN'T!

 

No what you're saying makes perfectly good sense. You're backing up what you say with a few facts or two. But still, if this movie wasn't that great someone, somewhere, would've blogged or reviewed it negatively despite the lockdown.

After following Spiderman 3 in much the same manner as I'm following the release of this movie, I do have to say the "buzz" for this movie is much more positive this close to it's release. I've lost count of the number of times I've read reviews that drew comparisons (small and large) to past great films such as Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, and E.T. Spiderman 3 started out with good pre/reviews (without all the comparisons), but right at about this far out the so-so/negative reviews started to pile on. I know it's been said 7,245 times in the past month and half, but very soon time will tell the fate of this movie.

 

With all these positive reviews im wondering what a negative review is going to read like. If so many critics are loving this one I don't see any of the possible negative reviews in the future being that negative.

 

There will always be some ol' chap complaining about the theater being too loud, the screen too big, the theater too dark, etc.

 

I'm about 80% confident that it will make a bank, and it should be the summer film we have been waiting for. I'm just pointing out theres always someone pi$$ing off of rooftops to rain on someone parade.

My exspectations are pretty grounded, but I cant ignore it's been a dissapointing summer entertainment and fan wise.

 

Here's another review. Good or bad, you be the judge of that. It doesn't sound that bad to me. Its probably the example of that negative review not being that negative, like FigmanJ said.


Transformers
Brent Simon in Los Angeles
22 Jun 2007 00:00



Dir: Michael Bay. US. 2007. 142mins.
Director Michael Bay delivers another stylishly shot, escapist movie gumball with Transformers, an orgiastic action extravaganza based on Hasbro's line of convertible kids' action toys. Some likeable characters and early, intriguingly seeded plot strands of clandestine overlap are sacrificed at the altar of expediency and clash, and in its third act the movie suffers a tonal blowout, and becomes a furious assault on the senses.


Powered by superlative special effects from Industrial Light & Magic, though, Transformers splays its budget and production value across the screen during almost every scene, and the high hoo-rah factor should turn out young males in droves.

Bay's last film, The Island, bombed domestically in 2005, but was positioned later in the summer, with audiences perhaps suffering sci-fi action fatigue after having fed at the respective genre troughs of War of the Worlds and Fantastic Four. With hearty name-brand appeal, loads of eye-popping action and the surging young star power of Shia LaBeouf, Transformers should experience no such fiasco, the only X-factor being the competitive staying power of Bruce Willis' Live Free Or Die Hard — the fourth installment of a previously R-rated franchise that has been recast as PG-13, and is due out June 27, a week before Transformers.

Owing largely to his visual flamboyance, all but one of Bay's films has made more overseas than in the United States, and with the easy translation of its high-octane action, there's no reason to think Transformers won't be a major international summer player. It opens Taormina on June 21.

For centuries, two races of robotic aliens — the good-guy Autobots and nihilistic Decepticons — have waged a war against one another. Having destroyed their home planet, the remaining survivors — able to take the shape of various cars, trucks and aircraft — have spread out across the universe. Heading to Earth, the Decepticons set upon a military detachment, led by Captain Lennox (Duhamel), in the Qatari desert. Their attempts to hack the military intelligence mainframe — first through this action, and later through a spider-bot that gets on board Air Force One — relate to a powerful cube that both sides seek.

Unbeknownst to him, teenager Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf), the great-grandson of an Arctic explorer, holds an important clue to the cube, called the "Allspark." An amiable outsider consumed with getting his first car, Sam nurses a crush on Mikaela (Fox), a classmate hopelessly out of his league.

Both soon find themselves caught up in a tug-of-war, pursued by the Decepticons but protected by the Autobot Bumblebee, who is Sam's new Camaro. With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Sam, Mikaela and Lennox's stories all eventually converge, along with that of the Secretary of Defense (Voight), in a massive battle royale in downtown Los Angeles.

Transformers ' story is certainly no more preposterous than the basic concept mandates. Trading especially on Sam's home life, screenwriting partners Orci and Kurtzman (The Island, Mission: Impossible III) locate a few smart points of entry for early pockets of humour, though a sequence in which the Autobots impatiently hide outside Sam's house while he searches his room for a key piece of evidence drags on for far too long.

In fact, after a lengthy first act spent setting up all the military intrigue, it's somehow less than thrilling when Autobot leader Optimus Prime and the other Transformers show up and actually start talking. The wonderment of the conceit is punctured, and a few of the robot exchanges come across as hammy.

That said, Bay makes certain that the audience isn't left wanting for action, erring on the side of distended, explosive set pieces, as he did most recently in both Bad Boys II and The Island. Trading in the sort of emphatic, canted close-ups and adrenalised style that have been his hallmark throughout his career, Bay, working with cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen (Transporter 2), delivers quick-cut action made up of individually effective, sometimes even iconic shots.

The problem, for those sensitive to matters of rationality is that Bay, for all his arguable skill as a conjurer of sugar-rush catharsis, frequently creates escape through reverse shots rather than any sort of sensible internal story logic. There is little sense of spatial coherence, and even less artful massaging of tension.

At several points during Transformers, a character will duck under an object that moments ago was out of reach in the frame, outrun a robot whose stride is 20 times greater, or pop up on a motorcycle apropos of nothing. The action, then, becomes the cinematic equivalent of a false show-and-tell exercise — bravura demonstration lacking any rooted truth, emotional weight or involvement.

Transformers ' tech credits are solid and its effects work is top-notch, seamlessly integrating actors with their digital robot counterparts. But while there's a state-of-the-art precision and surprising fluidity to the battles — including a pulse-quickening freeway chase that ends with a wicked metallic beheading — the tangle of robot bodies, though anthropomorphic, is an inherently unfamiliar image. After a while, the novel becomes dully repetitive — differently coloured heaps of metal in boxers' clinch, and flinging themselves into one another.

As hard as it is to make an impression in a behemoth of a movie like this, LaBeouf again, as in this spring's solid hit Disturbia, injects Transformers with a bit of his own chatterbox personality: a normal kid bristling with the restless discomfort of youth who finds himself caught up in an unbelievable situation.

Fox, on the other hand, merely photographs nicely, and Duhamel and Gibson are relegated to thankless and underdeveloped roles.

 

Ah, now thats the kind of slightly dickish, snooty reviews that I expect.

 

That's the only part that has me just a little worried, but not much. I hope those moments aren't heavy throughout the entire film. I always let them slide when there's just a few in a film but if it is constant, it can get annoying. Like in Hellboy when he is running across that bridge while the door is closing. No way in hell would he have made it, but since it was really the only scene in that film like that I let it slide and still enjoyed it.

 

So you prefer the far superior reviews that are posted AICN to someone who tries to give a non-biased, realistic review of the movie?

 

Maybe it's because of the overall ambigious feel this review has to me, but it sounds like this guy doesn't like Bay, and therefore refuses to like Tranformers because Bay directed it.

Also, it appears he's not a fan of what this movie has to offer. He's complaining that, "in its third act the movie suffers a tonal blowout, and becomes a furious assault on the senses" when I think an assault on my senses is exactly how I'd want a Transformer's film to end.

"After a while, the novel becomes dully repetitive — differently coloured heaps of metal in boxers' clinch, and flinging themselves into one another." I wonder if this guy thought the same thing about the dinosaurs when he first watched Jurassic Park 1...