MY MOVIE SHELF: Transformers

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 147  Days to go: 99

Movie #291:  Transformers

Remember when Shia LaBeouf was the adorkable male equivalent of an ingénue? Like, way before anyone ever thought he’d be some weirdo with a paper bag on his head, doing “art installations” and basically acting a fool? He’s still that guy in Transformers. That’s what makes it so funny/awkward/weird/creepy the way his character Sam Witwicky openly lusts after way-too-hot-for-high-school Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). But lust after her he does, and of course he gets her too, because what girl wouldn’t be wooed by a doofus with a sweet alien robot Camaro?

To the surprise of probably no one, I did not watch the Transformers cartoon as a kid. (Don’t assume this means I watched nothing but Rainbow Brite or whatever; I was a big He-Man/She-Ra fan, and Thundarr the Barbarian was the bomb. I also watched Jem and Muppet Babies, because I have layers. Cars and robots just weren’t my thing.) So I can’t really tell you anything about the mythology or any of the characters beyond Optimus Prime and Bumblebee because those were the most notable ones. And I might not have actually known much of anything about them until I was an adult. Luckily, however, my husband was a huge fan of all those robot cartoons, and he’s been a fountain of information. (Did you know, for example, that Transformers, Gobots and Voltron are all completely different things and not at all variations on a theme? I did not.) He tells me who is who and what it means to be an Autobot versus a Decepticon (though, honestly, you’d think the name would’ve given away their evil leanings) and all that jazz. (Jazz, by the way, is voiced by Darius McCrary, the guy who played Eddie Winslow on Family Matters. I totally watched Family Matters.) As far as I can tell in the movie, though, the Decepticons are all sort of colorless robotic looking things, whereas the Autobots are red and blue and yellow and fancy because they’re the good guys and good guys embrace the color wheel.

Transformers as a film is kind of interesting, because it’s easily the best of the franchise. I mean, technically I didn’t watch any of the others, beyond seeing like the first ten minutes of the second one and tagging out for my sanity, but I still guarantee the first one is the best. It’s enjoyable. It’s fun. It’s super explode-y. It’s kind of everything you want in a mindless popcorn summer flick. And yet, it’s also a disjointed mess that is WAY WAY too long. (It has a running time of almost two and a half hours. No movie this dumb should last almost two and a half hours.) It jumps from some sort of desert military attack featuring Josh Duhamel as some badass army guy, then it meets up with Sam and Mikaela being in high school and Sam really wanting money for a car, even though he then immediately admits he already has the money for the car. Then it goes to the U.S. Defense Secretary (Jon Voight) bringing in a bunch of “analysts” to find out who’s trying to hack into the military’s computer systems. And then it hops between those multiple threads for quite a while before introducing John Turturro as the head of some secret “sector seven” before making any attempt to weave those threads together with some jibber jabber about a cube and an “All Spark,” which is only not the worst name for a movie’s MacGuffin because Avatar has “Unobtanium.” It’s no wonder the main draw is the promise of mass explosions, although I have to say it’s pretty disappointing that, even in robot war, the black guy dies first.

“Don’t think about the plot, just blow stuff up.” — Michael Bay’s mission statement.

It doesn’t make the movie less fun, though, which is good, and even I could recognize a few of the insidery Transformers jokes. (And I have Bumblebee’s exact Bee-otch air freshener hanging from my rearview mirror, too. Because I am awesome.) Fans of the original cartoon no doubt got a lot more of those jokes and no doubt thought they were all greatly entertaining, which is no doubt why there have been like three sequels. (Four in 2016!) But I’m not going to bother watching those.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Rounders

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 211  Days to go: 148

Movie #227:  Rounders

On the surface, Rounders is about poker, and while it’s the only real poker movie I’m aware of, it’s also one of the best movies poker could ever hope to have about itself. These guys get poker. I don’t play the kind of poker these guys play — I don’t play high stakes, and I don’t hustle and I certainly don’t visit shady poker houses in seedy corners of the city (any city) — but for anyone who is a serious player (at any level), Rounders knows what it’s like. It knows poker is about the read of the people you’re with. It knows it’s a skill. It knows other people don’t get it. It knows most people can’t play for shit. It knows sometimes you’re the sucker. It knows splashing the pot is a dick move and the only people who string bet are schmucks who think they’re big time even though everything they know about the game came from stupid movies. It knows the rush of getting a great read or playing a perfect hand. It knows the obsessiveness with which you replay all your worst beats. It knows there’s actually information to be gleaned by watching other people play. It knows everything.

Mostly, Rounders knows that the real draw of poker is not the cash. The cash is a benefit; the cash is a necessity. The real draw is the prestige of sitting down with a monster player and out-playing him. The real draw is in the finding out of whether or not you can hang. I’m not a high stakes player, and I don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like to anymore, but I promise you I could sit down against anyone heads-up. Me and Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) have that in common — that confidence, at least. In my case, it’ll probably be a lifetime before I can put anyone’s money where my mouth is, but such is life. We can’t all be Johnny Chan.

On the surface, Rounders is about poker, and it’s a great poker flick, but it’s also about friendship. Mike has this no-good buddy from way back named Worm (Edward Norton), and the two are like brothers. Or at least, Mike has it in his head that they’re like brothers, so he lets Worm take advantage of him. Rounders is about that kind of toxic friendship, where the friends you had as a kid just aren’t your friends anymore — you’ve outgrown them, they haven’t grown up at all — but you keep hanging on. It’s about how tough it is to let go, and how easy it is to be drawn into their drama again, no matter how much time has passed. And as the realization gradually dawns on Mike that Worm is full of shit and not his friend at all, as he’s already in way too deep to dig himself out, it’s positively cringe-inducing. It’s a painful rite of passage, and it costs Mike a lot. It costs him his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol, who was this fresh-faced little gem in 1998 that I have a hard time reconciling with the hard-scrabble Mrs. Darmody from Boardwalk Empire), and it costs him his potential law school career, though maybe he doesn’t care about that as much as he thought (because the movie is also about finding yourself). Norton and Damon actually have great chemistry as dysfunctional friends, and Norton’s Method acting really sells him as quite the worthless wastrel (who, quite frankly, talks the table way too fucking much). Their camaraderie and their dissolution both feel earned, and it adds a higher level of stakes to the film than the money involved ever could.

John Tuturro is kind of fabulously understated as all-knowing, no-playing grinder Joey Knish, and Famke Janssen is sexy as ever as fellow shark Petra, but the real scenery chewer is John Malkovich (naturally) as Teddy KGB. Of course, Malkovich’s accent is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard, and his ridiculously simplistic Oreo tell is like child’s play, but his hilarious pantomiming and gesticulating and trash talking are things of beauty not to be missed. Plus, Martin Landau is off to the side as the minister of sage life advice Professor Petrovsky, and what’s not to like about that?

My only complaint about Rounders, honestly, (except for not liking Worm at all, but that’s kind of the point) is that for a kid who’s supposed to be some sort of table-reading, tell-observing prodigy, Mike (or Matt Damon’s face, one) has more tells than just about anybody. You’d think someone would’ve picked up on that.

Then again, maybe Mike isn’t quite as good as he thinks he is. I could probably take him.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Mr. Deeds

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 191  Days to go: 192

Movie #186:  Mr. Deeds

I don’t get this movie at all. It’s supposed to be sweet but it falls pretty flat. It’s supposed to be funny but it’s not all that funny. And there are about a dozen plot points that never actually go anywhere.

Adam Sandler is Longfellow Deeds, a small town all-around nice guy who is the last living relative of billionaire Preston Blake (Harve Presnell). He inherits $40billion but for some reason he only gets it if he sells his shares of stock to the other board members of the company Blake owned. This part doesn’t make any sense, because the guy was obviously rich outside the company (he owns the New York Jets, for one, but that’ll come up later), but no explanation is given as to why he has to do this.

Winona Ryder plays Babe Bennett, a tabloid reporter for an Inside Edition-esque show who goes undercover as some helpless school nurse from Iowa in order to get close to Deeds. No idea why she has to do this either, but okay. She streaks her hair blonde for the purpose, though, so it must be really important. Of course, when footage leaks from their dates that only “Pam” AKA Babe could’ve taken, Deeds is completely dumbfounded as to how the tabloid show got it. He’s also apparently never read a book or seen a TV show, because Babe’s cover story is thin.

Now, Adam Sandler is dodgy enough in romantic comedies. I’ve only ever seen him successful in ones with Drew Barrymore, presumably because Drew is incredibly charming, the two have obvious affection for one another, and the pairing brings out the best things in Sandler. Winona Ryder, on the other hand, should not make romantic comedies. It’s not that she can’t be funny or that she isn’t an honestly talented actress, it’s just that she doesn’t have the particular type of comedy gene that works in romantic comedies — she’s not the right combination of sweet/jaded/wacky. If anything, Winona’s comedy genes are far more wry, erudite and self-deprecating, with a smattering of naiveté. It works in something like Mermaids or Beetlejuice or Heathers or even Reality Bites, but not in the kind of goofy-sweet films Adam Sandler attempts. It’s a poor combination.

Mr. Deeds features all sorts of odd casting, though. John Turturro is “very, very sneaky” butler Emilio, who is perhaps closer to Blake than anyone suspected — all possibilities of which are bizarre, no matter how you slice it. Peter Gallagher is ambiguously nefarious board member Chuck Cedar, who it is clear wants Deeds to sell his company shares for malicious purposes, but those purposes are never really clarified, nor is it clear why the acquisition of companies Cedar supposedly wants would require all the company’s fifty thousand current employees to be fired. But I guess conflict has to come from somewhere? It’s really dumb.

Conchata Ferrell is also around, mostly as a lovely friend and coworker from Deeds’s hometown, who near the end is needlessly turned into a punchline about having wanted to be a man. And Steve Buscemi wears horrible contact lenses that give him huge, wandering eyeballs that are frankly unsettling. But, boy is it hilarious when he doesn’t know where he’s looking! (Warning: Not hilarious at all.)

The movie is scattered and ambiguous at best, really. There’s the whole black foot Deeds got from “wicked bad frostbite” that is little more than an oddity on its own, but when seen in conjunction with Emilio’s foot fetish it’s as if the writers honestly couldn’t think of anything funnier than feet. Then there’s the Jets quarterback who comes in cussing about his contract, about which Deeds beats him up and then fires him, but nothing really comes of it at all except for the quarterback being forced to call and apologize by his father. It’s not a loose end, per se, but it feels like an incredibly elaborate set up for such a weak pay off. And of course, Chuck Cedar conspires with the tabloid show host (Jared Harris) to — do what, exactly? Expose that Pam is really Babe? I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help either the show or Chuck, but the movie paints it as if it does.

There is just time after time after time that the film makes incredibly dumb or nonsensical choices — even for a silly comedy engineered to be that way — and it honestly ruins the character of Longfellow Deeds who is actually a sweet, honorable and trusting man who is, truth be told, sort of a refreshing stretch for Sandler. Why the filmmakers would undermine that, though, is beyond me.

I don’t get this film at all, and I’m not sure why we have it.