LAGI ULASAN TRANSFORMER BY HOLLYWOOD FILM CRITIC


Transformers (2007)A Film Review by James Berardinelli
SCIENCE FICTIONUnited States, 2007U.S. Release Date: 7/3/07 (wide)Running Length: 2:15MPAA Classification: PG-13 (Violence, profanity)Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Rachael Taylor, Anthony Andersen, Jon Voight, John Turturro Director: Michael BayScreenplay: Roberto Orci & Alex KurtzmanCinematography: Mitchell AmundsenMusic: Steve JablonskyU.S. Distributor: Dreamworks SKG


When it comes to Transformers, I have no ax to grind, pro or con. For me, it's just another loud, plot-deficient summer motion picture. In this case, nostalgia doesn't grip me - I'm too old to have played with the gadgets or watched the cartoon. I'm sure many fanboys (and girls) will be delighted by what Michael Bay has done to update the Transformers mythos (basically, that means incorporating A-level special effects and blowing lots of things up). On the other hand, those with no particular emotional attachment to the toys and their multimedia offshoots may dislike this movie as much as I did.
Thus far, the summer of 2007 has been full of very loud, very unsatisfying action movies. Transformers tops them all - it's louder, flashier, and more hollow than anything else out there. At 135 minutes, it drags - sometimes painfully so. The movie is top-heavy with exposition, and the only decent action scenes occur in the final 25 minutes. Despite an epileptic camera, those sequences are impressive from a special effects point-of-view, but they aren't exciting. That's because the characters are so poorly developed and the Transformers so singularly uninteresting that the question of who wins or loses doesn't matter. All the effort behind Transformers went into making the robots look cool; nothing went into developing a compelling storyline. Even the headline bout between Optimus Prime and Megatron is pedestrian - two big metallic monsters slugging it out while the camera spins around them as if out of control. It's kind of reminiscent of the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots going at it.
The film tells of the struggle between the good guy Autobots and the bad guy Decepticons as they scour Earth in search of the fabled Allspark (a really big cube of power). The goal of the Decepticons and their leader, Megatron, is to seize the cube as a means of domination and control. The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, want to protect humanity by destroying the Allspark. A secret segment of the U.S. military, Sector Seven, has captured the Allspark and is hiding it deep inside the Hoover Dam. They also have a cryogenically frozen Megatron in custody. (I know that all sounds silly, and it is, but short descriptions of science fiction films often come across as childish.)
Shia LaBeouf, who's as hot as any young working male star, plays Sam Witwicky, a high school boy who becomes involved in this situation because his grandfather's glasses contain a clue to the Allspark's location. His father buys him a car for graduation and it turns out to be Bumblebee, an Autobot. For all the time that the movie spends on developing Sam's home life - including giving him a mother, a father, school rivals, and a hot girlfriend (Megan Fox) - the character remains surprisingly lifeless. LaBeouf's performance is charming and earnest but he never made me care about Sam. The intent is to make this an average guy who becomes heroic after being thrust into extraordinary circumstances, but the movie doesn't get us there.
The movie gets a badly needed jolt of energy a little past the half-way point with the introduction of a zany John Turturro as Sector Seven Agent Simmons. Turturro's off-the-wall performance is in synch with what one might expect from a movie that is essentially one long product placement. In fact, the entire first segment with Simmons (from when he enters Sam's house until he has "first contact" with the Transformers) works better as comedy than anything else. Alas, another veteran actor in the cast, Jon Voight, doesn't fare as well as Turturro. The word "embarrassing" was defined for performances like this one. Voight plays the Secretary of Defense. I kept waiting for Leslie Nielsen to show up as the President.
There's a secondary plot involving a group of young analysts and hackers that goes nowhere. Despite absorbing roughly 20 minutes of screen time, there's no payoff for these characters and they pretty much vanish near the end. Their inclusion is baffling since they appear to serve no purpose beyond padding out the film's running length and providing occasional comedy relief (most of which comes courtesy of Anthony Andersen). Cutting out these characters wouldn't damage the film's integrity. In fact, the tighter focus might make for a better movie.
If the dialogue is anything to go by, Bay has a sense of humor. Not only does he take a moment to poke fun at one of his earlier hit movies, but he allows so many howlingly bad lines to be spoken that the level of self-parody has to be intentional. Transformers is a jumble of the good, the bad, and the ugly, with the latter two categories outweighing the former. The film has a lot of nice touches (such as the opening attack in Qatar, where there is a sense of danger, and the John Hughes-inspired introduction of Sam), but the meat of the story is plodding, recycled sci-fi drivel. That, I suppose, is what happens when a major motion picture is based on a 20-plus year old toy phenomenon.
Transformers is so belabored that it makes Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End seem like a masterpiece of pacing. It makes that "classic" midsummer alien invasion movie, Independence Day, seem like a template for inventive plotting and solid character development. Even by Michael Bay standards, this movie is vapid. Yes, there are plenty of explosions, but those are a dime-a-dozen these days; even Discovery Channel's Mythbusters has them. Transformers isn't clean, big-budget fun; it's clean, big-budget tedium. For Transformers fans, I suppose this is a dream motion picture. For everyone else, it's a nightmare.
© 2007 James Berardinelli

TRANSFORMER!!!!

Transformer menyerang Malaysia. Sekali lagi buat ke ribuan kalinya, Hollywood meracuni fikiran bumi manusia dengan formula beracunnya. Semua orang Malaysia teruja dengan kehadiran Transformer. Panggung wayang penuh sepanjang hari menyingkirkan semua filem lain apatah lagi filem tempatan yang nyawa nyawa ikan seperti DIVA.

Apa istimewanya transformer? Ceritanya? CGI nya? atau...robotnya..? Tapi realitinya hanya satu, apa saja makanan tidak berkhasiat dari Hollywood kita kunyah dan telan tanpa bismillah...

INI ADALAH SEBAHAGIAN PETIKAN ULASAN ROGER EBERT - PENGKRITIK FILEM TERKENAL HOLLYWOOD TERHADAP FILEM TRANSFORMER YANG DISANJUNG SEBAHAGIAN BESAR RAKYAT MALAYSIA

Everything comes down to an epic battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons, and that's when my attention began to wander, and the movie lost a potential fourth star. First let me say that the robots, created by Industrial Light and Magic, are indeed delightful creatures; you can look hard and see the truck windshields, hubcaps and junkyard stuff they're made of. And their movements are ingenious, especially a scorpionlike robot in the desert. (Little spider robots owe something to the similar creatures in Spielberg's "Minority Report," and we note he is a producer of this movie.) How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible.
All the same, the mechanical battle goes on and on and on and on, with robots banging into each other and crashing into buildings, and buildings falling into the street, and the military firing, and jets sweeping overhead, and Megatron and the good hero, Optimus Prime, duking it out, and the soundtrack sawing away at thrilling music, and enough is enough. Just because CGI makes such endless sequences possible doesn't make them necessary. They should be choreographed to reflect a strategy and not simply reflect shapeless, random violence. Here the robots are like TV wrestlers who are down but usually not out.
I saw the movie on the largest screen in our nearest multiplex. It was standing room only, and hundreds were turned away. Even the name of Hasbro, maker of the Transformers toys, was cheered during the titles, and the audience laughed and applauded and loved all the human parts and the opening comedy. But when the battle of the titans began, a curious thing happened. The theater fell dead silent. No cheers. No reaction whether Optimus Prime or Megatron was on top. No nothing. I looked around and saw only passive faces looking at the screen.
My guess is we're getting to the point where CGI should be used as a topping and not the whole pizza. The movie runs 144 minutes. You could bring it in at two hours by cutting CGI shots, and have a better movie.

DUNIA KECIL ANAK HALAL

Dunia kecil anak halal telah tercipta pada August 2006. Dunia kecil itu telah melahirkan enam orang anak halal yang bernama Inderaputera, Johanna, Atikah, Erzan, Danial dan Shah. Anak anak Halal itu menerjah badai kota raya untuk tumpang bernafas di atas bumi manusia ciptaan yang maha esa. Terlalu banyak yang mereka harus tempuhi dalam melakarkan erti sebuah persahabatan dan cinta sejati. Tiada siapa yang dapat memisahkan mereka selain dari kematian...sebuah takdir yang paling berkuasa.

"SETIAP DARI KITA ADA TAKDIRNYA TERSENDIRI, HIDUP TIDAK BERAKHIR DALAM UNDANG UNDANG MANUSIA KERANA DUNIA KECIL INI ADALAH PENJARA TERINDAH CIPTAAN YANG MAHA ESA......." inderaputera FARID KAMIL

"Kota ini adalah teman yang paling istimewa buat kita..dan kota ini juga adalah musuh yang paling kejam yang telah menghancurkan cinta dan kasih sayang kita..." Johanna MAYA KARIN

"KALAU SAMPAI WAKTUKU, KU MAHU TAK SEORANG PUN MERAYU...TIDAK JUGA KAU, TAK PERLU SEDU SEDAN ITU, AKU INI BINATANG JALANG, DARI KUMPULANNYA TERBUANG...!" atikah, (chairil anwar) FASHA SANDHA

MISLINA MUSTAFA

Dia adalah Murni di dalam Bukak Api. Dia adalah Mak Ara di dalam Puaka Tebing Biru, dia adalah Mak Esah di dalam [Photo]Mukhsin. Setiap kemunculannya sering tidak dapat padam dari ingatan penonton. Dia adalah satu satunya pelakon asal dari filem pendek ANAK HALAL 1999 yang di bawa ke layar lebar ANAK HALAL 2007.

Semoga Malaysia membuka mata pada bakat istimewa ini. Insyaallah....Karya lakonan Mislina Mustaffa:

Hijau - Osman Ali 1997

Anak Halal - Osman Ali 1999

Intan Mahsuri - Osman Ali 2002

Surat Untuk Bulan - Osman Ali 2004

Puaka Tebing Biru - Osman Ali 2007

Mukhsin - Osman Ali 2007

Anak Halal - Osman Ali 2007

BRONT SUHAIMI & REMY ISHAK

Bront memegang peranan Danial dalam filem ANAK HALAL. Bakat Bront telah dikesan oleh beberapa orang pengarah filem seperti Mamat Khalid, The Velvet Boys, Man Laksa, Kala Malam Bulan Mengambang, kemudian Bade Hj Azmi melalui filem Castello dan Bilut, Ogy Ahmad Daud melalui drama bersiri Cinta Tsunami dan juga Osman Ali melalui telemovie Atas Nama Cinta, Rumah Itu Duniaku serta iklan HOTLINK.

Manakala Remy Ishak pula telah pernah diberi peluang oleh Osman Ali melalui filem AQUARIUM CINTA(belum ditayangkan) serta beberapa buah drama televisyen seperti NATASYA.

RAJA FARAH & ADI PUTERA

Adi Putera merupakan satu nama yang semakin dikenali di dalam arena drama televisyen melalui lakonan di dalam beberapa buah drama seperti Myazara dan juga Kalis Cinta. Penampilan awalnya bermula melalui drama bersiri Haryati di bawah arahan Erma Fatima. Raja Farah pula merupakan seorang actress muda berbakat besar yang mula dikenali ramai melalui filem pertamanya SALON. Selepas SALON Raja Farah diberi peluang membintangi beberapa buah drama bersiri popular seperti Misi XXray serta filem Aquarium Cinta sebagai heroin.Di dalam ANAK HALAL mereka berdua memainkan peranan sebagai dua bersaudara yang begitu akrab dan sama sama berjuang mempertarungkan hidup dalam arus modernisasi.