ScreenCrave.com » John Turturro

Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Movie Review

Damon Houx — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:44:08 +0000

After the second film – which star Shia LaBeouf and director Michael Bay have publicly apologized for -there was hope that Transformers: Dark of the Moon would settle Michael Bay down, and give him a better story to tell. Working with 3-D, his hyper-editing style wouldn’t work in the format, and there would be no “afterthought” Imax scenes. There would also be no writer’s strike, so the script could be written in a more timely and coherent fashion. And though Michael Bay does action on a scale that is unmatached in the industry, it’s pretty much the same movie, except this time on Ritalin. Find out more below…

The Players:

Director: Michael Bay
Screenplay: Ehren Kruger
Actors: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Patrick Demsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, John Turturro, Alan Tudyk
Original Music by: Steve Jabolonsky
Cinematography by: Amir Mokri

The Plot:

On the planet Cybertron, there’s a great mechanical whatsit that can do awesome things, but it crash-landed on the moon. Astronauts found the crash in 1960′s, but couldn’t do anything about it. Cut to now and Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) is having trouble finding a job, though his girlfriend Carly (Huntington-Whiteley) has an awesome job – but with an obviously evil boss (Demsey) – and an impossibly expensive flat. The Bad guys (the Decepticons) are up to no good, and trick the Autobots into waking up Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy), who’s the only person who can power the great whatsit, which can be used for great good or evil or something. This leads to a virtually hour-long assault on Chicago.

The Michael Bay Paradox:

Everything that is good about this movie – other than the great action beats in the final act – is also everything that’s wrong with the film. The film starts – after its prologue – with Sam looking for a job. At the end of the film – in a movie with a coherent screenplay – the journey would be that Sam officially gets a job working with the Autobots as an ambassador or some such nonsense. Instead, the movie ends when the big fight is over and then adds some narration from Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen). I should note that because so much of what Prime says is stuff like “on our world there was a great war, a war that raged for decades. Autobots fought valiantly, and used all the strength they had, but there seemed to be no hope… until they found a thing. A thing that could change the course of our destiny. A thing… that was lost.” eventually my ears glazed over. Anyway, if this movie was about its human protagonist, him getting a job would be the hook to hang the movie on. And such invokes the paradox – these movies aren’t really about the humans, so is it smart to not care at the end of day? And how much should we care about humans in a story that features cars that turn into robots? Bay doesn’t actively view his narrative with contempt, but he seems to care less about it than he does what interests him: Cars, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s body, and destruction.

Michael Bay is one of the great action directors when he puts his mind to it, and when he has the tools the man can craft the hell out of a sequence. The parts where guys wearing wingsuits jump out of crashing helicopters and fly around downtown Chicago is insane, so is the sequence where the main characters are in a building that’s collapsing. These aren’t “wow, cool digital effects” moments, they are “What? That’s awesome!” moments. In another time, Michael Bay would be the go-to second unit director (it wasn’t until Spielberg changed the game that most action sequences were not left mostly to the second unit, though historically, it feels like The French Connection and The Wild Bunch started that trend). Bay would be a great 2nd unit guy also because he obviously has no feel for actors, and his sense of humor is based around loudness. Transformers 3 – like so much of the big summer movies we get these days – is filled with a number of great ingredients that are all half-cooked. And it’s not that Bay gets a bad performance out of someone like John Malkovich or Ken Jeong (painful in his five minute cameo), it’s that he doesn’t want performances so much as a collection of affectations.

Bay has directed nine films – with more than half costing over a hundred million dollars – so you have to wonder how intentional this is. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was attacked for being incoherent, racist and pretty much terrible, and if this is his apology, he still has almost all of the same problems, it’s just not as aggressive in the presentation. It seems that Bay works best when he has a strong producer behind him (Read: Jerry Bruckheimer), and it seems Steven Spielberg was more hands on with the first film than the sequels (though he supposedly gave Bay the opening sequence idea, something that he squanders). Again, Bay is either a savant, or this is intentional. But the whole film is filled with scenes like one that happens in the middle of the movie: Sam and his girlfriend head to see the Autobots, but the guards won’t let him in. Everyone starts yelling, and the guards destroy his car because he doesn’t have proper clearance. Then, after the yelling stops, Sam and his girlfriend are let in and told things that are supposedly the most top secret secrets in the history of tops and secrets. Sam and his girlfriend. What was the point of the yelling scene? If bad writing is including needless words, there’s easily a good thirty minutes to an hour that could be cut from the first ninety minutes, and you would never know they were gone. Perhaps this is Bay’s way of winking at the audience, or expressing his contempt for the material. But at this point, it’s fair to say this is the Michael Bay touch.

Oh, another example: in a good screenplay, the humans have one rocket which can supposedly take out the great whatsit, and climb the building to use it. But then they never use it while in the building and never use it, period. It’s like it got forgotten by the filmmakers. Why do they set up the rocket if they never use it as it is intended to be used? Basically it’s the excuse to get them into the collapsing building. The problem is that it’s a great sequence, but the connective tissue is made moot.

The Good:

The 3-D: This is probably the only film this year where seeing it in 3-D may make it a better experience, and Bay has fun with this stuff. And when the soldiers are flying around Chicago in their wingsuits it looks great.
The Final Action Set Piece: There are things in it that are so out of hand that it’s fair to say you’ve never seen anything like it before.

The Bad:

The Humans: Alan Tudykis the rare performer in this film that is actually winning, but even there he’s playing a gay-ish German guy. Franes McDormand – who enters the film delivering some of the most on the nose exposition in cinema history – and Johns Turturro and Malkovich get to run around and yell a lot. They are all excellent performers, but… this? Shia LaBeouf is either bored or obnoxious, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is so ogled by the camera that it turns the audience into leches. I wouldn’t say she’s good or bad in the film, so much as there to be looked at. That said, Megan Fox deserves more credit for making a character out of the same shtick.

Bay’s appropriation of National Tragedies: Michael Bay turned the bombing of Pearl Harbor into an action set piece, so his sensitivity to tragedy is virtually nil, but there’s a sequence that recalls the Challenger disaster that is simply tasteless. I was worried the same would be said of the collapsing building set piece, but that’s so well choreographed that it does evoke the same sort of contempt.

The Comedy: Bay’s sense of humor has long been that of a twelve year old boy who is uncomfortable with his sexuality and is proudly xenophobic. The bits with Ken Jeong are much shorter than the roommate/sidekick in the last film, but are just as painful to watch.

The Screenplay: There’s a number of great lines in the film MacGruber, but one of the best is when Ryan Phillipe says to the main character “I’ve learned a lot from you, mostly what not to do, but…” This screenplay should be taught as an example of how not to do things. There is no sense of build in the film, and there’s often a sense that the plot is just an excuse to get to the next scene – which often leads nowhere interesting. This – much like The Phantom Menace - is filled with so much “cart before the horse” business.

Overall:

I can’t recommend the good in this film (which is really, really good) over the bad, because this film is Hollywood throwing everything they’ve got at it, except at the things that normally make a movie good. Pace, characters, empathy, plot, etc. Though there are a number of schlocky films that deserve praise for exceptional stunts, and good sequences in the midst of bad performances and technical limitations, those films are not usually made with this sort of money. Alas, in a summer of misfires, and half and half’s, this is the one that really delivers the big budget spectacle that they got close to in films like Thor and The Green Lantern. One wishes there was a compelling story to go along with it.

Rating: 4.5/10

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is in theaters now.

Gallery:

Trailer:

Cars 2 Photos: John Turturro and Eddie Izzard’s Characters

Krystal Clark — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:51:28 +0000

Over the past few months Disney-Pixar have unveiled multiple character photos from their upcoming sequel Cars 2. The film will hit theaters this summer and will once again feature the voices of Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy. Two other actors who’ll lend their vocal talents to the film are John Turturro and Eddie Izzard, and we’ve got their animated alter egos below…

Can you guess which vehicle is voiced by Turturro? If you picked the overtly Italian one at the top, you’re correct! His name is Francesco Bernoulli, and Pixar chief John Lasseter describes him as being “completely, wonderfully full of himself.” That should be an interesting portrayal.

Next, we have the army green SUV voiced by Izzard, whose name is Miles Axlerod. He’s “a former oil baron who now spends his life both researching alternative fuels and hosting the Grand Prix race.”

Synopsis:

Star race car Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) and the incomparable tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) take their friendship to exciting new places in Cars 2 when they head overseas to compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix to determine the world’s fastest car. But the road to the championship is filled with plenty of potholes, detours and hilarious surprises when Mater gets caught up in an intriguing adventure of his own: international espionage. Adding to the fast-paced fun is a colorful new all-car cast that includes secret agents, menacing villains and international racing competitors.

Cars 2 opens in theaters nationwide on June 24, 2011 (in Disney Digital 3D and IMAX 3D).

What do you think of Turturro and Izzard’s characters in Cars 2?

Source: Cinemablend

First Look at The Nutcracker in 3D

Krystal Clark — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:08:18 +0000

This week, ScreenCrave was given the opportunity to see a sneak peek of the upcoming holiday film, The Nutcracker in 3D. Based off of the popular Christmas ballet of the same name, the film is directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy and stars Elle Fanning, Charlie Rowe, Nathan Lane, and John Turturro. We watched an exclusive 30 minutes of the film that featured plenty of dazzling special effects, larger than life costumes, and wondrous music. Here’s what we saw…

We were told ahead of time that the footage we were about to see was 2 weeks away from the final print. Therefore, a few technical glitches might arise during the screening. With that in mind we sat back, relaxed, and watched one of the opening sequences that featured Uncle Albert (Lane), Mary (Fanning), and her brother Max (Aaron Michael Drozin). The trio entered the living room where Mary noticed that her favorite doll, The Nutcracker was broken. She was enraged to discover that it was damaged by Max, and the two began to argue.

To keep the siblings from fighting Uncle Albert broke out into a song called, “It’s all relative.” Distracted, Mary and Max began to sing along and made their way upstairs where Albert tucked them into their beds. Mary asked her Uncle if he could tuck them in every night and instead of giving her a legitimate answer he just looked at her lovingly and disappeared into thin air. At this point Mary got up and grabbed her broken Nutcracker doll, and while she attempted to fix it, it began talking to her!

Once the wooden toy learns that Mary’s faith in him is greater than any he’s ever known he realizes that she can help him on his journey. The Nutcracker, or as he likes to be called “N.C.” goes down to the living room where the Christmas tree, and a doll house have grown to epic proportions and all the toys have been brought to life.

Out of everything shown in this sneak peek, the Christmas tree was the most impressive. It had so many layers, so many characters, and so many nooks and crannies to investigate. There’s one scene in particular that really stood out amongst all the others and it featured Mary and N.C. traveling through the tree with all the ornaments coming to life. The amount of detail that went into that shot was amazing.

Overall, we’re looking forward to seeing the finished product after all the kinks have been worked out. The only downside was that the 3D wasn’t as visible as we wanted it to be. But like they said in the beginning, this wasn’t a finished cut. When they do finalize the effects the scenes will definitely pop a lot better and be more visually interesting.

The Nutcracker in 3D opens in theaters everywhere on November 24th.

Official Nutcracker 3D Trailer

Krystal Clark — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:51:33 +0000

The first trailer has been released for the big screen adaptation, The Nutcracker 3D. It’s based on the story that inspired acclaimed Russian composer Piotr Tchaikovsky to create his iconic ballet, and the film includes plenty of new music and choreography that will only further emphasize the legend. Check out the trailer…

Official Synopsis:

The Nutcracker 3D centers on nine-year-old Mary (Elle Fanning) whose dull Viennese Christmas is suddenly filled with excitement and adventure following the arrival of her beloved Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane) and his gift of an enchanted nutcracker.

On Christmas night, Mary’s new friend, The Nutcracker (Charlie Rowe) or “NC,” comes to life and takes her on a wondrous journey into his magical world of fairies, sugarplums, and other Christmas toys which come to life. Mary soon realizes that this fantastical kingdom is facing danger from the tyrannical rule of the evil Rat King (John Turturro) and his devious mother (Frances de la Tour). When NC is taken hostage, Mary and her newfound toy friends must uncover the secret of the Rat King to rescue NC and his kingdom.

Even though the idea of another 3D movie annoys the hell out of me, it looks like it will actually work for this film. The mixture of CGI and live action, with the dances and the music could be a visual treat. Fanning was perfectly cast as the lead, and Turtorro is almost unrecognizable in his costume. It will be interesting to see him in something like this.

The Nutcracker 3D is scheduled to hit theaters on November 24th.

What do you think of the trailer?

Source: Apple

Review: What Just Happened?

Mali Elfman — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:47:24 +0000

The title says it all. Which leads me to believe that, that empty feeling you walk out of the theater with is exactly what they wanted you to feel.

I remember when I was about 10 and I asked someone who worked in “the biz”, what a Producer does. He said something along the lines of “a bit of everything.” I asked, what that meant. He couldn’t answer. At least he couldn’t come up with an answer that a 10-year-old would be satisfied with. I think this film is exactly that. It is a bit of everything, but doesn’t know exactly what it’s meant to do.

The film as a whole is clever, but everything in it is not. The first half of the film is quick enough that you’re entertained, but the second half appears to wash away into a sea of nothingness. I get that, that is their point. That they are giving you the ending that no one will give you. BUT if you’re going to do that you have to do something else to make it worthwhile. The dialogue and the dark humor should be top notch and it’s just not quite there.

The acting in it is amazing. Obviously this film had struck a cord with Hollywood actors because they managed to gather Robert De Niro, Stanely Tucci, Bruce Willis, John Turturro, Catherine Keener, Robin Wright Penn, Sean Penn and more. If they would have had anyone but the best, this film would have been atrocious. With this cast it would be a challenge to really fuck it up.

I don’t know how far this film will go as it seems like an inside joke with Hollywood. From Bruce Willis throw a huge tantrum because they want him to shave his beard, to the over emotional director, to the studios controlling everything that gets made. Although they over-dramatize the situations in many ways this film is very true to life and it’s very bleak. I have a thing about depressing movies, if the filmmakers are going to go there I want there to be some redemption at the end or some reason for the depression, I got neither from this film. The film seems very real as in, it’s the way life goes. But I know the way life goes. I have to live with “the way life goes” every single day. I need hope, change, or complete destruction to be okay with watching something so dismal.

It’s hard to watch a character that never seems to get anything right and never really changes. He even realizes he should change, he realizes his life is shit, and yet he does nothing. Robert De Niro’s character is so un-likable and without almost no redeeming qualities. You pity him. But you can only feel that way for so long seeing as he’s the one that has made his life that way and won’t do anything to change it. But perhaps that’s the point. Realizing that the people who stifle filmmakers creativity, the people who make the big bucks and live in the nice cars, the people who tell you what to do are really the most miserable of all.

I will say this. The film is interesting, it made me think, and it made for a great conversation after. I don’t think the film itself is that great, but I think the thoughts it provokes and the way it feelings it leaves one with are enough to make it worth a gander.

In theaters November 13th.

For more information check out whatjusthappenedfilm.com

ScreenCrave.com » John Turturro

Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Movie Review

The Players:

The Plot:

The Michael Bay Paradox:

The Good:

The Bad:

Overall:

Rating: 4.5/10

Gallery:

Trailer:

Related Posts

Cars 2 Photos: John Turturro and Eddie Izzard’s Characters

Related Posts

First Look at The Nutcracker in 3D

Related Posts

Official Nutcracker 3D Trailer

Related Posts

Review: What Just Happened?

Related Posts