Slant Magazine

Your ambivalence is honored by other venerable critics—O'Herir at Salon has written what amounts to a love poem for the fabulous and confabulating extremes of this movie and its filmmaker. He quotes David Erhlich's sentiments: "Luis Buñuel by way of Stan Brakhage." In this instance I think of Christopher Nolan's accomplishment last summer, and his turgid style, in the face of this Wagnerian popcorn schlock. I'll always prefer the robots.

Also to say, greatly enjoy reading your reviews—how you regard composition and characterization especially—and, unfortunately (?) I will subject myself to this rubbish heap because I'm hankering for exactly this sort of gorgeously thrashing provocation.

Michael Bay is certainly nothing short of an accidental auteurist! With his latest offering he takes the ockham's razor to the summer blockbuster, carving out the superfluous- a story,characterization, et al, while distilling the necessary and tweaking his Bay-ian formula—an aesthetic evident and evolving throughout his canon to a maximum to produce the purest testimony of an evident cinematic apocalypse.

Also worthy of interest is Bay's provocative depiction of the british bimb0. Her reduction to an object of the gaze is evident throughout the film. In one glorious shot where she scuttles to the telescope to view the enemy forces Bay cuts from this collagen prone bombshell(sic!) to a fancy golden maned bitch seated on a similar chair passively viewing the ensuing mayhem! Such honesty and fearless purity of vision effectively transcends the entire camp of critical left field detractors!

As a final note : im sure future post modernists shall hail this film as the newest reincarnation of B-movie conventions of our times. the 'b' now read as Blockbuster.

No. No. No.

This movie is awful, truly awful. Jaime treats it as if it gets a few things "right", I'd argue that no, it doesn't. The only reason it's even somewhat entertaining is money: spend enough of it, and there's got to be some kind of good result.

It's interesting that he (Jaime is a guy, right? Just a sexist assumption of mine) brings up War of the Worlds and Cloverfield, two far, far better films that did more with less...Spielberg's film costing 120 million and Reeves' only $25. In both of those films, I actually gave a shit who lived or died, whereas in Transformers 3, I'm half hoping that LeBoeuf or Miss Puffy Lips would get squished every five minutes.

Jaime, that you give this piece of shit two and a half stars, while giving the far more interesting X-Men: First Class one and a half, really confuses me.

Yeah, I don't buy it. Your defense of Bay's "auteurist" aesthetic sense—"a man who never outgrew directing Super Bowl commercials"; "Bay has a style—a weird one, certainly, a hybrid of a nose-picking jock and a slick ad man who shoots a can of Pepsi, a Chevy Camaro, and a leggy blonde with the same voyeur's eye, and his bizarre gallery of ethnic sounds, voices, and faces is not without precedent"—makes this movie sound about as appealing as...well, exactly the things you described. Okay, he has a distinct aesthetic, but who gives a shit?

But I guess that goes back to the problem you defined at the beginning, about ambivalence. But at the same time, I guess it doesn't, because I'd be more than willing to give a Bay movie a shot if a persuasive argument could be made for it, and a "collapsing-office-tower sequence that appears in either the film's fifth or sixth hour" ain't it.

No offense to the reviewer, but if Bay does have an artistic M.O. to be reckoned with, it certainly isn't done here. All I gleaned from this review was: "Transformers 3 is exactly like every other Michael Bay movie; unlike most people, I partially like Michael Bay." Well, okay.

Trotchky, "Who gives a shit" is pretty relative, so let me attempt to clarify my perspective a little bit here. Frankly, I don't give a shit whether a movie is good or not...not in the usual sense, anyway. When people were telling me "THE KING'S SPEECH is a good movie," my response was similar to yours: who gives a shit?

For me to say that a director has "a style" isn't a value-neutral statement, it means that the director's work is visually and—perhaps more importantly since it distinguishes one filmmaker's work from the next in ways that are even more decisive than the visual—*rhythmically* distinct from what I would imagine from the direction merely being a straightforward presentation of what's in the script. As I am an auteurist, I get interested in a film when it occurs to me to say "this is being directed."

I don't think this is an altogether good film. I wouldn't have figured a "fresh tomato" for 2.5 out of 4 stars, but what do I know?

I *do* find Bay's style interesting and I can hold both thoughts (not a good film, interesting direction) in my head at the same time.

So, in answer to your question, "Who gives a shit?" Well, erm, yours truly!

Snarpo, I find Matthew Vaughn more interesting than Bay, and he's made two really good movies...unfortunately I cannot concur that X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is one of them.

I have to wonder, what is with the tone of these comments here? "No. No. No." "Yeah, I don't buy it." I'm not selling anything, and my review is not some decree from on high, it's an attempt to parse out my ambivalence towards the film in question.

Ugh, I just wrote out this long-winded essay as a response, but it didn't make much sense.

Honestly, I just disagree with you because I really think Bay's an awful filmmaker. Just because he does the same things over and over doesn't make him particularly interesting. In fact, it makes him boring as hell. Factor in the racist, sexist, militarist, product-placement filled, lowest-common denominator tone of his work and defending him seems—to me—almost insulting to film.

But hey, you've done the job of a good film critic...you've kinda pissed me off and forced me to pay attention to the rest of your reviews. Score one for Slant!

@snarpo—"Jaime, that you give this piece of shit two and a half stars, while giving the far more interesting X-Men: First Class one and a half, really confuses me."

I am not surprised. Paul Haggis' Crash has four stars here and The Visitot has two.

@bandwagon—Paul Haggis' Crash has THREE stars here, David Cronenberg's has four. Confusing those two is almost a moral offense in my book.

I'll throw my hat into the ring: out of 5, I gave both Transformers 3 and X-Men: First Class 3 stars. But I think I prefer Bay's film, if only because it's a bit more honest about its puerile joys. X-Men's Big Themes are too overstated at times, but dammit if Fassbender and Bacon don't carry a lot of energy into the film.

So hey guys. I know it's sometimes tempting to think that Slant has some kind of weird ratings cabal going on here. Heck, I think that sometimes. But there are lots of critics doing the work, and the names change as the years pass.

So it wasn't me that gave CRASH a 3-star rating. I hate the film. I abhor it. It's an abortion of cinema. I don't have to sign anything that says I agree with other ratings in order to write for Ed. There's no "Joe Slant" sitting in a room somewhere, issuing ratings.

@robhumanick—Totally agree! My bad and all that. But the point is that PH's Crash was deemed better that The Visitor.

@ Jaime—Friends again!

Oh, wait—you still gave this one one and a half too many. Wands out!