Bumblebee (2018)

Director: Travis Knight

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Ortiz

Have I Seen it Before: No. What would possibly possess me to be in any kind of a hurry to watch a Transformers film?

Did I Like It: Okay. Well, here’s the confession. I kind of—sort of—like the first Transformers (2007). It has just enough of the influence of Spielberg where the film is more about a boy and his connection with his car (who happens to be sentient) than it is about the struggle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. 

Every subsequent film in the series that I had the misfortune to have been exposed to is so laden with exposition and an endless series of meaningless MacGuffins that each film became the equivalent of spending several hours reading the cardboard backing of an action figure. I gave up on Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) long before its interminable nearly three-hour runtime. Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) was a non-starter for me long before the near-war crime of its 149 minutes was unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.

So it is with great relief that I report Bumblebee—a film no one asked for and no sane studio should have green-lit—is a delight from start to finish. The glip-glorps and whoozi-whatzis that propelled… plots?... in the previous films are stripped away, and all we know about the various Transformers in the context of this film are:

1)     The Transformers come from Cybertron.

2)     Cybertron is at war.

3)     Bumblebee is a good guy. To a far less important extent, so is Optimus Prime.

And that is all you need. Everything else is only of interest to people who have mint-condition Generation One Starscreams* hermetically sealed in their basement.

With the artifice of the franchise now stripped away, the human element that the first film hints at comes back in full force. Shia LaBeouf was sort of a wry, detached figure in the first film, and his affection for the alien car he lucked into never felt like a real performance. Much to Hailee Steinfeld’s credit, I believe the friendship between her and Bumblbee throughout the picture. Her character never becomes a cliché. She never once detaches herself from the proceedings, and one can easily imagine a less polished actor doing just that. After all, there are five films of evidence.

Who knew this series could find its resurgence by making a film actually about people? If the Transformers can turn things around like this, maybe there is hope for other big-budget franchises.

I reserve the right to revoke that optimism upon the release of any further Transformer movies, and probably will.

*That’s a thing, right?

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Director: Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

Cast: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Bryan Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage, Liev Schreiber

Have I Seen it Before: Have I ever even seen anything like it? Let’s put it this way: I normally only list only four cast members. Here, as there are so many other great ones doing great work here, limiting things to only four felt somehow unfair.

Did I Like It: God, yes.

Why, of why, didn’t Lucasfilm just let Lord and Miller make the Solo movie they wanted to make? They have an absolutely unbroken track record of turning idiotic ideas (The Lego Movie (2014), 21 Jump Street (2012), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)) into insanely watchable movies. They’re involvement here is only tangential, but they manage to turn a pretty good idea into a surprising, wondrous epic that is certainly in the running for best Spider-Man movie ever, best animated movie of the year, and is hands down the best animated feature film featuring superheroes of all time. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)—a film I dearly love and the previous king of the category—has been dethroned.

Now, transdimensional fiestas, and meta commentary on the sprawling history of a seminal character is more than enough to attract my interest. The animation style, fusing together traditional cel, Pixar-level 3D, and a frenetic appreciation for an era of comic books just ever-so-slightly past both serves the story at every moment, and manages to be entirely new, all at the same time. I tend to stay away from 3d presentations, but when I see this movie again—and I surely will—I may deign to take on an extra pair of glasses for the experience.

That every character—even the supporting ones—has an equal claim to pathos and hilarity is truly remarkable. The cast—as I mentioned above—delivers on this seemingly impossible task. 

Shameik Moore imbues Miles Morales, the film’s newest Spider-Man with such likable charisma, that anyone whole complains about a black Spider-Man is going to find new depths of foolishness in their complaints. All of the clever flash of the movie would fail to come together if Morales’ story and Moore’s performance weren’t among the best parts of a film already filled with best parts.

Among the others, Chris Pine is a perfect amalgam of ever cinematic Spider-Man to date, emphasis on the perfect, while Jake Johnson is a far more schlubby (and dare I say attainable) version of the same. The arc of Johnson’s Parker and his relationship with Morales gives hope to this thirty-something who realizes Spider-men keep getting younger, while I do the opposite. John Mulaney becomes the cartoon character we never knew he was destined to be. While I’m loathe to lump together and put near the end Hailee Steinfeld and Kimiko Glenn as Spider-Gwen and Peni Parker, theirs were the versions of the character I was least familiar with, and the ones I’m most eager to read more about as soon as possible. Even Nicolas Cage comes to play first and get paid second. It’s been a long time, Nic! It almost made me forget about Left Behind (2014), and actually gets me to warm up to the idea of Mandy. 

Go see this movie. It comes with my highest recommendation.