Poems Of Robert Service

Transformers Dark of the Moon, Larry Crowne, The Mountie and a Czech retrospective

The big movies this week satisfy all ages. Boys can watch the Transformers fight it out; young girls can ogle the sights of Paris and Monte Carlo along with Selena Gomez and adults can watch Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts face the recession. There are also Canadian and Czech movies.

Here’s the list:

Transformers: Dark of the Moon  3 stars

Larry Crowne   3

The Mountie    2 ½ 

The White Dove  3 ½

Valley of the Bees  4

Monte Carlo   --

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: I’ll say this much: you really get your money’s worth with this third film in the series. That is, if you don’t pay the extra for the unnecessary 3-D and you’re clear on what you’re after. Big, noisy scenes of destruction. The kind you imagined playing on the floor as a little boy. The last 50 minutes here is one big battle between the two transformer factions, the Autobots, representing freedom, and the Decepticons, who favor tyranny. They really mess up downtown Chicago in an orgy of thrilling special effects. You have to admire the craft displayed on screen.

The film is both more of what we saw in the previous two films and an improvement over them. The storytelling is better. The yarn is clearer even as it has become more complex. It now deals with hidden alliances and several levels of deceit. As one character says, when there’s a war on and you don’t have a stake in either side, go with the one that’s winning. He’s not the only one with that philosophy, as Shia LaBeouf, back as the Autobots’ human friend, finds out. This time he catches wind of a plot to build a “space bridge” that will “reshape the universe”. He, by the way now has a new girlfriend. Megan Fox is gone (unexplained) and a model from England, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, is now doing even less acting, but a lot of posing.

At one point, the camera pans slowly up her body while offscreen Patrick Dempsey describes the sleek lines of his new car. Director Michael Bay is not one for subtlety. He’s also got a few gay references, several tough bosses (Dempsey, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand) and a transformer blasting the head off the Lincoln statue in Washington, all in all a pretty dim view of humanity. We already know that. What I do find uncomfortable is the way movies now tamper with history. We just got the X-men’s ludicrous twist on the Cuban Missile crisis and now we’re told the race to the moon was really to beat the Russians to a crashed Transformers space ship. Even Buzz Aldrin appears, yes the real one, the second man on the moon, who says “We were sworn to secrecy.”  Ridiculous.

Poem of the day – Infirmities by Robert Service | Poems ...

How often do I wish I wereWhat people call a character;A ripe and cherubic old chappieWho lives to make his fellows happy;With in his eyes a merry twinkle,And round his lips a laughing wrinkle;Who radiating hope and cheerGrows kindlier with every year.For this ideal let me strive,And keep the lad in me alive;Nor argument nor anger know,But my own way ...

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