You will not see a review of any Michael Bay films here at Mediasickness because I’m not going to pay to see one. However Roger Ebert gets paid well to write reviews and he did see Transformers 3. His review is a classic. There is nothing else needed to be said about the movie, which is surely a giant steaming pile of shit.
“I have a quaint notion that one of the purposes of editing is to make it clear why one shot follows another, or why several shots occur in the order that they do. “Transformers 3″ has long stretches involving careless and illogical assemblies of inelegant shots. One special effect happens, and the another special effect happens, and we are expected to be grateful that we have seen two special effects.” -Ebert
It is a pathetic and disgusting fact that a majority of young Americans would watch Goodbye Solo, and all the films of Ramin Bahrani, and be bored to tears. I’m talking about my own sad generation; people in their 20s, college students and young professionals, supposedly ‘educated’ people. In the age of attention deficit disorder where friends will order a piece of garbage like Transformers off On Demand and watch it while simultaneously texting away on their Blackberry’s and surfing the web, there isn’t much of an audience for an opaque character study about the relationship between a severely depressed elderly man and an ebullient Senegalese taxi cab driver in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Read more…
It is a sad day. At The Movies, the long running review program started by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel in 1982 has been canceled. It just couldn’t sustain after Roger Ebert lost his voice and was forced to leave the show. It went through a dark period when shithead Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz hosted for a year before being kicked off in favor of two of my favorite critics, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, who revived it for a short period. Of course it would never be what it once was with Siskel and Ebert and even Ebert and Roeper. Read more…
Ebert’s lead paragraph is a perfect example of why he is still the best and most entertaining critic in the western hemisphere.
‘I’m at a loss for words, so let me say these right away: “The Book of Eli” is very watchable. You won’t be sorry you went. It grips your attention, and then at the end throws in several WTF! moments, which are a bonus. They make everything in the entire movie impossible and incomprehensible — but, hey, WTF.’ Read more…
Ale and his sister Isamar in their small one-mattress room in 'Chop Shop' (2007)
Chop Shop, the second feature from Ramin Bahrani, is a rare breed. It is a film that tells a story not usually found in American cinema, that of the of a minority living in poverty. It is a work of simple beauty. Shot on location in Queens, New York in the shadows of Shea Stadium, Chop Shop is neo-realism to the core. Featuring a cast of non-actors, it has more in common with Vittorio De Sica’s classic Bicycle Thieves than anything made in the United States. There is no score or soundtrack, all the music and sounds are diagetic. Watching it feels like watching a great foreign film, it takes us to another world because it is so uncommon to see. However this other world is not post-World War II Rome or Istanbul or New Delhi, it is contemporary New York City. Read more…
After over a decade in the making, the self-proclaimed revolutionary film experience Avatar finally saw the light of day in 2009 and immediately gained a heap of praise from critics and fanboys alike. The masses battled snowstorms and dressed up in blue to get to their nearest 3D Imax screens to see what the magician James Cameron could concoct with the biggest budget of all time. Cameron was right about one thing, Avatar looks great. It is by far the most impressive CGI world ever created and the 3D effects actually work to improve the viewing experience for the first time in the history of 3D effects. Here’s the problem, James Cameron may still be a master of special effects, but he also has not changed at all from the hack writer that he was when he penned Titanic. Maybe some room should have been made in that reported $350 million budget to hire someone to assist Cameron in writing dialogue. Leave it to Cameron to make a love story between a giant blue alien and crippled Marine into a brainless rehashed borefest. - KW
8: ‘Finding Nemo’ (2003)
Ellen Degeneres in 'Finding Nemo.'
Pixar’s ‘Finding Nemo’ is championed by the most annoying demographic: The grown-up desperately trying to regain the lost whimsy of childhood. Led by the voice-overs of lame joke purveyors, Ellen Degeneres and Albert Brooks, ‘Finding Nemo’ desperately tries to entertain the middle ground between parents and children. While the tykes may enjoy the aquatic tale of a father clownfish looking for his lost son, adults will be left trying to find a film to replace ‘Finding Nemo’ after being subjected to its 200th viewing. Or perhaps it would just be wiser to find a bottle of the hard stuff to drown out the obnoxious clatter of cartoon voices. – TM Read more…
