Mason Inman - science journalist

2007-07-08, 19:00:39 

Here's the New Yorker's Anthony Lane on the new movie "Transformers":

Transformers... were a line of toys that could, given sufficient wrenching, be turned from cars and planes into robots and back again. Nowadays, we would call this recycling, but at the climax of the Cold War it felt more like eternal readiness. You could sit moodily in the back of your parents’ Pontiac Sunbird and imagine cruise missiles bursting out of the headlamps.

I love his brilliant snarkiness. That's the main reason I read his movie reviews. I hate knowing what's going to happen in a movie, so I almost never read the reviews of movies I actually want to see. I only read reviews of movies like "Transformers" that I'd go out of my way to avoid seeing.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that Lane thinks Werner Herzog's new movie lacks Herzog's typical feel.

...nobody watching the freeze-frame of [Christian] Bale’s grin, and hearing the thudding surge of the musical score, would guess for a second that this is a Werner Herzog film. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a Michael Bay [director of "Transformers," "Armageddon," and "Pearl Harbor"] moment, but in its mood—the solid pomp of emotional relief—it slides into the groove of “Uncommon Valor,” “Behind Enemy Lines,” and other mainstream parables of men lost and found.

This is one of Herzog's only films not made through his production company, and I believe the first with major Hollywood players. Lane says he doesn't think Herzog sold out, but in any case the end result sounds tepid. Fortunately, Herzog told the same story through a documentary "Little Dieter Wants to Fly," so I think I'll check out that instead.