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Both this installment and the “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” have made me question my enjoyment of the original. I’ve seen “Transformers” since it arrived in theaters but now that I’ve seen the sequels it spawned, it’s hard to explain how the filmmakers went so wrong in what could have been a fun and exciting series. Both sequels  are overlong affairs, completely devoid of excitement or intrigue.

“Dark of the Moon” begins with a strong action sequence in space showing the battle for Cybertron. With 3D glasses, this battle and several other action sequences are impressive. Reminiscent of the battle sequence from the original “Star Wars,” this scene shows what can be done with the use of strong special effects and 3D.

Soon enough, the story begins rewriting history. Intermixed with clips of actors playing Presidents Nixon and Kennedy, real footage shows the former presidents talk about our nation’s first trip to the moon but the film argues that our goals on the moon were far different than what was stated publicly. Like in “X-Men,” an alternate reality is created using real-life events to supplement the story and in both stories, this alternate history lesson works well. Unfortunately, neither the strong special effects or rewriting history can overcome the story’s shortcomings.

When Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) arrives onscreen, the story goes downhill quickly. Sam is a recent college graduate who, after surviving the events of the first two films,  is searching for a job that is worthy of a man who received a medal from President Obama for saving the planet. Sam is living with his girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), who is first seen walking up a flight of stairs in her underwear.  That’s all of the character development we get from her; she’s only onscreen to be Sam’s love interest and, inevitably, to find herself in danger.  Surprisingly enough, Megan Fox is missed in this installment. At least, she was able to create a character in the first film.

As usual, the Decepticons are up to no good as they plan to overrule the Earth and Sam and his friends have to unite to stop them. Unfortunately, the plot spends much of its time meandering around with useless story-lines and unnecessary characters so that when the story finally gets moving, it’s hard to get excited. With weak dialogue and a running time of over two and a half hours, “Transformers 3″ could have easily been edited down to a more manageable running time of two hours. Instead, director Michael Bay chooses to fill the film with silly characters and bad dialogue.

At one point, Sam says to his girlfriend “I just want to matter.” In movies like this, none of the characters really matter. It’s all about the special effects and cars fighting against each other. I enjoyed some of the excellent special effects, a few neat cameos and the rewriting history aspect of the film. Unfortunately, everything else feels like a waste.

If Sam really wanted to matter, he wouldn’t be spending his time in a “Transformers” movie.

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Whenever I’m accused of carrying water for conservative-leaning films, my best defense is always “Transformers 2,” which I ranked as number 1,2, and 3 in my list of the five worst films of that year. Love me some Michael Bay for making the Obama administration part of the problem and treating the United States Military with the respect it deserves, but…

And I’m a Michael Bay defender. Other other than the shaky-cam, I didn’t hate the first one, but it’s no exaggeration for me to say that sitting through the sequel was the most purely painful cinema-going experience of my life  … and I’ve seen “Grace is Gone.”

Bay and his star Shia Le-what’s-his-name have both fessed up to the awfulness of part 2 and have a pretty valid excuse for where it all went so wrong, the writer’s strike. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and trust they’ve learned from their mistakes.

Hard to judge the three-quel from this trailer but at least the camera doesn’t look like it’s having a seizure. We will know a whole lot more July 1st.

If you watch as many movies and TV shows as I do you’ll notice something rather annoying besides all the lame cliches that keep getting trotted out. And that’s the latest cliche to show up over and over again as the big “reveal” of the climax.

The bad guy turns out to be a traitor of some kind.

Either he’s the hero’s close relative, friend, buddy, co-worker…or, if the film deals with the military or national security in some way, the villain turns out to be a “patriot” who is trying to save America from itself by destroying it.

You have to ask yourself, what kind of Freudian slip is this? Writers usually know what they are trying to say. I know that may be hard to believe if you saw Terminator: Salvation or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but yes, writers usually are trying to make some kind of thematic statement.

The idea of a traitor can be powerful in dramatic terms. Someone you trust and rely on turns out to be your real enemy. That can be a very painful thing to discover, but it’s become such a common device in film it is almost a given. Which means what? Hollywood is lazy, or they feel we can’t trust anyone anymore?

Well hey, they invested a lot of faith and trust in our current president and look how that worked out. Except this has been going on for at least a decade now.

Let’s take two recent examples of the traitor. The first one is a big spoiler so don’t read the rest of the next paragraph after SPOILER: if you don’t want the movie “ruined” for you.

Smoking Aces 2: Assassins Ball features Tom Berenger as a handicapped lifer CIA desk jockey who is targeted by a whole slew of crazed assassins to want to kill him for some reason, at a certain time and place. The FBI wants to protect him when this hit is going down so they can discover why these killers are after Berenger. He seems to be a loyal worker for the US, a patriot (look out!) who has served his country for 30 years. SPOILER: And of course, he set up his own execution to lure a bunch of rogue assassins into a trap where they’d be killed, because he wanted to cover up the fact he used them to do terrorist acts around the world for the US government. Yes, the US government. Including the Spanish train bombing a few years back. And he doesn’t care if all these FBI agents protecting him get killed in the process. See, anyone called in a patriot in movies these days is a psycho. And, as we saw in last season’s 24 or Die Hard: Live Free or Die, patriots have no problem killing off Americans in the name of saving “America from itself”.

In Avatar we have the progressive’s favorite kind of traitor. The kind who sells out his own people. Avatar’s “hero” is a Marine who decides alien poontang trumps your entire species. He condemns his planet to slow destruction rather than allow them to continue to over-zealously mine some ore. His own troops, who he was supposed to represent, get slaughtered and the rest of his people get shipped off and humiliated so he can get rid of his puny white body and become a big blue stud. Sounds like the worst case of white guilt/penis envy ever imagined.

Talk about Freudian, Mr. Cameron.

Of course, the argument the story makes is sophomoric at best, it’s a Edgar Rice Burrough’s pastiche with some Hayao Miyazaki and Roger Dean thrown in. At no point do the “bad guys” have any sense to try negotiation with the dominate species. It’s a puerile parable of western civilization raping the new world. But what a lot of people seem to miss is the fact that the hero sells out his entire planet which needs this rock to live. And there is no attempt to work out a solution. As bad as the earth people are in the film, condemning your whole species because you like going native is a sad commentary on where some people’s heads at. And it reveals a dark undercurrent in the psychology of left leaning film makers.

Hollywood needs to take a break from his hack plot device. It has already lost its mojo. Let it rest for a few decades so it can regain its punch. And Hollywood, don’t think the success of Avatar had anything to do with its lame political message. All that money you wasted on Iraq bombs should have taught you that lesson by now.

I’m sorry, but things just aren’t working out.

That’s hard to hear, I know, and believe me, it’s hard to say. After all, we’ve had some great times together. But let’s face it – those great times are few and far between these days. In fact, things have been going downhill for a while now, and we both know it.

Remember when we would be together all the time, three or four times a week, even? Well, how often have we been together this year? Three or four total, I think, each time more painful and embarrassing than the last. The Watchmen? Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? How did it come to this?

I guess my feelings began to change when your interest in CGI, which I thought cute at first, became your full blown obsession. Suddenly, that’s all you seemed to care about, and everything you made began to look like a goddamn cartoon. Well, I’m sorry. I’m just not that into cartoons.

By the way, about all those times I told you “Oh, that CG looks so real…I couldn’t even tell” – I faked it. It looks like shit, and doesn’t fool anyone. About time someone told you to your face.

And there’s something else that you need to hear: Your politics have made you a bore.

Oh, I know we’ve disagreed politically for a long time. But that can be fine, healthy even, in a relationship, so long as each party at least respects the other’s point of view. And that’s just it: I don’t feel like you respect me at all anymore, and I’m beginning to wonder if you ever did.

You’ve always been happy to take my money though. That much, at least, I could always count on.

It’s all so depressing. I remember we had that brief rekindling in 2008 with Iron Man and then The Dark Knight. For a while there, I felt toward you like I hadn’t felt in ages. I was happy. But it’s clear to me now that that was a last gasp of a once passionate romance. The disappointments and embarrassments of the last year have put the poor, suffering thing at last out of its misery, and buried it under an ash heap of memories and what-might-have beens.

And do I even need to mention the betrayal that was Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? We’ve never talked about it, but I have to ask: How could you? Words can’t express how sick that made me. Most of all I’ll never forgive you for making me feel dirty and ashamed, even though you were the one responsible. I look at my original Indy trilogy DVDs now, and can scarcely hold back my tears…is there no precious memory you won’t taint? It’s not enough to ruin my present, you have to reach back into my childhood and ruin those wonderful moments as well?

I’m looking at Rotten Tomatoes as I write this, and know that I am making the right decision – every movie out right now is thoroughly “rotten” except one: The Blind Side. Really, The Blind Side? That’s the best you can do? Well, I’m sorry, it’s just not good enough. Maybe you can’t do any better, but I sure can.

I’m sorry, Hollywood; it’s over. Don’t call, don’t text. And don’t try and woo me with promises of Iron Man 2, or another Spider Man. I just can’t do this anymore. I’m tired of telling myself it’ll be different this time, and tired of feeling like a fool and a sucker when it isn’t. I’m tired of being hurt and disappointed. Most of all, I’m just tired of giving you my money and getting crap in return.

I wish you luck with the overseas market. They seem to like crap, and hate America almost as much as you do – I think you were made for each other.

Yours Sincerely,

Matt

“[T]he system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

“The eight most successful movies over the course of the year’s first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star. Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It’s not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons. Will Ferrell’s movie tanked. Julia Roberts laid an egg. Adam Sandler couldn’t sell a ticket. Johnny Depp disappointed. Denzel Washington and John Travolta bombed together. Instead, the movies whose successes depended on their strong leading performances were the ones featuring the 57-year-old Irishman Liam Neeson (Taken, $145 million) and the out-of-work TV comedian Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $146 million).

“The 2009 box-office numbers offer the most dramatic evidence yet that the system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

You can read the piece in full here.

Numbing doesn’t begin to describe the experience. The movie is simply awful, Bay’s worst since “Bad Boys 2.”

Sam (Shia LeBeouf) and Mikaela (Megan Fox) are still together, but he’s on his way east to college and a long distance romance via webcam looms. His first day at school, Sam’s brain starts to go haywire just as the Decepticons ready some kind of comeback that can only be accomplished with what’s in Sam’s head. With the help of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and a number of “comic-relief” Autobots, Sam and Mikaela outrun explosions as big robots fight over something that could kill the sun or something.

The plot is borderline incoherent. Large swaths of lengthy exposition make up mythology for no other reason than to allow for another action set-piece. Everything finally lands in Egypt amongst the pyramids for a “big climax” where the stakes never feel real and it appears no one seemed at all interested in trying to create any sense of danger.  No peril, no tension, just directionless mayhem – much of it in pointless slow motion – and Fox always posed like Victoria Secret model, even while on the run.

Just as President Bush did in the first film, President Obama does take a few hits here. The president is named and his National Security liaison, a posturing, snotty Paul Begala-esque simp who disrespects the military, takes the same appeasement, anti–American Leftist position we saw in Iraq. Rather than blame the bad guys, the President blames the good guys for attracting the bad guys and demands Optimus Prime and the Autobots leave Earth until “every diplomatic option” with the Decepticons is explored. To Bay’s credit this is handled with some subtlety, much more subtlety than the cinematic attacks on Bush these last few years.

As usual, Bay’s affection for the military is obvious and sincere. He portrays them as they are: professional, compassionate and valorous. They just deserve a better movie, but that’s true for all of us.

As far as all the noise about ”jive-talking” ‘bots Skids and Mudflap being some sort of “racist” characterization, that’s simply absurd. Both are completely over-the-top in the satiric department. Like the flamboyant gay man we see everywhere today or Randy Quaid’s portrayal of a redneck Southerner in the “Vacation” movies, there’s not a hint of a mean-spirit anywhere in sight. Is Wednesday “Innoculate Blacks From Satire Day?” You see, I’m all confused, because last week’s uproar from part of the gay community over “Bruno” fell on a Wednesday, too. Anyway, CAIR must be happy. That leaves them the six other days.

Other than the awful shaky-cam (which thankfully doesn’t rear its ugly head here), the first “Transformers” at least qualified as dumb summer fun. You certainly couldn’t argue you didn’t get your money’s worth. What went wrong with “Fallen” started with the script and ended in the editing room. And that’s unfortunate because we won’t see many big-budget studio films with the guts to tweak Obama or the decency to portray our military and country in the positive way both deserve.

We’ve celebrated the good.  We’ve dreaded the bad.

Now on to the maybes; those that could fall either way, or just do the minimum by delivering a couple hours of forgettable entertainment. I’ll take that and truth be told, when the lights dim, they’re all “maybes” to me because when the lights dim I’m twelve again. But the lights aren’t dimming now and in the cool light of day I’m on the fence over these.

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May 22nd: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - The first one was a splendid concept brought down by a cookie-cooker plot involving a dad having to redeem himself. The hope is that the sequel is looser and less constrained by boilerplate convention. I’m a little ticked The Mighty Mickey Rooney wasn’t brought back, but it’s still a great concept and one helluva cast.

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May 29th: Drag Me to Hell – After being buried for nearly a decade by Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi makes a long overdue return to his roots in the horror genre. This is a “maybe” because as a huge fan of the “Evil Dead” trilogy, I. Must. Manage. Expectations. Everything that made “Evil Dead” so special, the low-budget, the obvious hunger to succeed… Well, let’s just say that it’s not easy to go home again. Who am I kidding … I’m counting the days.

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May 29th: Up – Pixar or no, animation is not my bag. What can I say, I like actors. In this whole burst of animation over the last decade or so, I’ve only fallen in love with “Ratatouille,” and “The Incredibles,” the former especially. Brad Bird is responsible for both and not involved with “Up.”

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June 5th: The Hangover – Drunken misadventures in Las Vegas. Could be lame, could be a mindless gem like Tom Hanks’ “Bachelor Party.” If the runtime hangs around 90 minutes, there’s hope. Another positive is BenderSpink, a hit-or-miss production company, but they do comedies well. I’m also heartened by the fact that Judd Apatow is in no way involved.

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I know this photo is from the first one and I don’t care.

June 24th: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Except for that godawful shaky-cam, the first one delivered in a lot of ways. It was also openly patriotic and very pro-military. Please, Michael Bay, step away from the shaky-cam. It probably wouldn’t hurt to cut 35-minutes out of the 147-minute runtime, either.

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June 26th: The Hurt Locker - Director Kathryn Bigelow understands driven men of action better than most male directors and earned my eternal goodwill with the lean mean vampire-Western, “Near Dark” way back in 1987. She’s an enormously gifted director, but her script choices always lack. The stories are too long and too cluttered. In some cases, like “Blue Steel” and “Point Break,” you can see there’s a great film struggling to get out. If “Hurt Locker” were 101 minutes instead of 131, my enthusiasm would be higher. I do, however, trust her to tell an Iraq war story respectfully.

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July 31st: Funny People – Judd Apatow has yet to make a film I’m glad I saw. His crudeness is strictly for crudeness sake (you can always feel the strain for the “iconic” moment), his stars are almost always incapable of sincerity or warmth, and his self-indulgence is everywhere with scene after scene that lingers unnecessarily long, way past a payoff. On the other hand, Adam Sandler is the star here and I’ve been a fan of the Happy Madison sensibility since “Billy Madison.” So there’s no telling what to make of this. But I’d bet my house that the 131-minute runtime is a problem.

You might have noticed a pattern here and that’s the length of some of these.

The talent and confidence to tell a simple, linear story with a satisfying climax and sympathetic characters seems all but dead today. “Taken,” “Gran Torino,” and Stallone’s revival of his Rocky and Rambo characters did it, but nowadays too many of these films are over-stuffed as if dulling the senses with special effect excess is the goal. And if you can’t tell a simple story well, all you have left is your effects budget.

That Judd Apatow is taking this philosophy to comedies is the most disturbing trend in modern film since that godawful shaky-cam.

Here’s hoping they’re all classics and make $300 million.