MOVIE REVIEW
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Paramount Pictures
Movies do not get more painstakingly idiotic than “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – an orgy of clanging metal, propagandistic wide shots, short declarative sentences passing for dialogue and uncontrolled camera pans. Where Michael Bay’s first crack at the “Transformers” franchise – though itself a dubious venture – managed to evoke a sort of silly, slapdash spirit, the sequel quickly collapses into unmitigated big-budget tedium, all dressed up with nowhere to go. It indulges all of its maker’s worst instincts, without demonstrating any of the muscular storytelling that’s become his true specialty.
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MOVIE REVIEW
The Unborn (2009)
Peter Iovino/Rogue Pictures
Give David S. Goyer some credit: At least the writer-director of “The Unborn” shows some awareness of horror’s cultural legacy beyond “Saw” and “Hostel.” He’s made a film about a dybbuk, which is (as described by Wikipedia) “a malicious possessing spirit, believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person,” that serves as a primary figure in Eastern European Jewish folklore.
Unfortunately, the movie emergent from that initial conceit owes less to the tradition it evokes then the bland, sanitized aesthetic so familiar to PG-13 Hollywood horror. It’s full of cheap thrills that mostly consist of people popping up out of nowhere and dialogue comprised largely of theological gobbledygook. Sadly, none of it even qualifies as so bad it’s hilarious, save for the image of Gary Oldman as a rabbi, loudly incanting an exorcism in Hebrew.
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