Harry Potter and the Transformers

A two-fer deal here, since neither is very long....

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books. I've tried, and a friend gave me a paperback copy of the first, but it fails utterly to grab my interest. The first two films are snooze-worthy. While the first does a decent job of introducing everyone, the second isn't worth remembering. I didn't bother to see the third at the theatre because the second was so...dull.

That was a mistake. The Prisoner of Azkaban was superb and proved that the problem with the first two films was the director. The Goblet of Fire, the fourth film, continued the trend with yet another director, and now I'm completely hooked. Happily, The Order of the Phoenix, the fifth film, continues the trend. Mostly.

I qualify that because not a lot really happens. Indeed, in terms of the series as a whole, Order completes its task within the last half hour or so. Most everything else is just fluff. Thankfully, it's pleasant fluff and David Yates does a decent job of it, though he's no match for either Alfonso Cuarón (Prisoner) or Mike Newell (Goblet). Some little but key details get introduced, including the creation of Dumbledore's Army.

The film belongs firmly to Harry Potter which is good and bad. I've come to believe that Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Grainger are to the Potter universe what Kirk, McCoy, and Spock were to the original Star Trek, and the stories work at their best when the three work together. Here, Potter takes center stage and that leaves Ron and Hermione in the wings, gathering dust. Sad and hopefully corrected in the next film.

And having seen all this setup here, I'm ready for The Half-Blood Prince, also being directed by Yates. Alas, we must all wait until November 2008. And even longer for The Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final film.

Transformers

I hated these toys when they were big and famous. I loathed the TV show. It made my skin crawl when my young son played with these things, coddled in his desire by his mother and cruel grandparents (j/k). Transformers, more than meets the eye my left butt-cheek.

But this film.... Oh. My. God.

Shallow characters? Yes. Beyond simplistic plot? Yes. Ridiculous situations and dialogue? Yes. Doesn't matter, don't care, ate it up, loved it.

First there are the visuals. ILM goes beyond great here. You watch this film and you know that has to be a CGI special effects shot because cars just don't do things like that, like change into two-legged robots complete with cannons and rockets. Yet there is never a moment when the VFX fails and jolts you out of the film's reality. You just accept the fact that there are these enormous robots that can fold themselves into the shape of cars. You start to wonder how Michael Bay et al managed to get their hands on such super-secret military hardware.

Speaking of Michael Bay, he was either born to direct this film or was genetically engineered to do so. I'm not a huge fan of his work. The Rock, er, rocks, while Pearl Harbor, well, just sinks. Here, though, there's evidence that Steven Spielberg reined him in just enough to make it all work. Bay films have always portrayed the US military in a good light, and this film is no different. And it just all works because paper thin plot and all, everyone is working the problem and politics are completely tossed into the shredder.

The film bombards you with Moments. Just like that. Moments, with a capital "M". You see a lot of them in the various previews, clips, and trailers on the Internet. A stand-out occurs during the climatic firefight on a city street, where an Autobot (Transformer talk for "good guy") fires into the ground to launch himself into the air, up and over an innocent bystander, who gaps in ultra close-up horror as this multi-ton thing flies just over her hairdo and onto the other side while twisting in air, transforming an arm into another weapon to block and incoming round from a Decepticon (Transformer talk for "bad guy"), and while doing that returns fire all done in perfect slow motion, and I generally hate slow motion but not here.

The film does stunts like that all the time and gets away with it every time. Some have complained that the action is filmed too close-up, so that often the fights look like rolling heaps of trash cans lacking form or definition. I agree, to an extent. I think the intent was to film those moments from the point of view of the humans involved, and looked at that way it works perfectly.

That's my quibble for Transformers. The film flat-out rocks. No, it's not as good as Ratatouille (But really, what is?), but it's a very good summer action film that delights the eye and captures the imagination.