It’s been more than two weeks since our last outing at the Weekly Review outpost so I’ve got a bit to catch up on. At the theater, I gobbled up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Into the Storm, The Giver and Love is Strange (review soon). Since most of the television shows I watch are off air for the summer season, I’ve had a dive into some 2014 films that had slipped under the cracks. I know it seems funny to consider Transformers: Age of Extinction amongst the “forgotten few” but it’s one I missed the screening of that took me a long time to get around to. Three hours of robokake is quite a commitment. Without further adieu, let’s dive in and do some Weekly Review.

Mood Indigo (2014)

Michel Gondry outdoes himself with Mood Indigo. His latest breeze-fest is so wrecklessly bizarre and aggressively strange that the initial charm soon turns to cutesiness and wears off quickly. Without characters that feel as if they’re living, breathing human beings, Gondry’s film is a tiring exploration of how far an audience will tolerate strangeness for the sake of strangeness. Another misfire from a man full of misfires, Mood Indigo is a Rufus Wainwright song; intriguing at first but quickly tiresome. (C)

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

A scrabble of CG set pieces and insanely overwrought characterization, Transformers: Age of Extinction is Bay at his best and worst. The shorts are shorter, the explosions louder, the robots more robotic. American flags wave in the background for no reason whatsoever. What’s so amazing is the fact that at 165 minutes, a movie overstuffed with eardrum-shattering soundsplosions and Optimus Prime whacking enemies with a massive broadsword threatens to put you to sleep. Further, it fails to reach the technical heights of Bay’s last installment, especially considering that the celebrated Dinobots don’t come into play until a good two hours after the movie starts. (D+)

Ida (2014)

Ida has a lot going for it: Pawel Pawlikowski stepping back into the limelight; nuanced performances from leads Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza; a thoughtful, meditative soul; crisp, clean black-and-white cinematography from Lukasz Zal; and historical import. Pawlikowski’s film follows orphan Anna, who is about to take her vows. Before she does, her Mother Superior urges her to discover her roots, upon which Anna discovers that not only is she Jewish but her family was murdered in the Holocaust. Ida is not always an easy film but it’s potent and powerful, rife with themes of absolution and guilt. (B)

13 Sins (2014)

A clever concept undone by piss poor acting, 13 Sins imagines a world in which a powerful group of one percenters enlist everyday nobodies to participate in a twisted game. The game is simple; complete a given task and you win money. The first task is to kill a fly ($1000). The second, to eat it ($3500). As you can imagine, as the dollar signs skyrocket, so do the heinousness of any given assignment. It’s a less clever version of E.L. Katz‘s wonderful Cheap Thrills and, as mentioned, suffers greatly from a cast performing at a low bar. Devon Graye in particular is almost offensively bad, especially considering he’s playing a special needs character more inspired by Simple Jack than Rain Man. (C-)

The Good, The Bad, the Weird (2008)

This is how you remake a film: rip its beating heart out, slam it onto a new continent, whitewash it with different cultural meaning and pump it full of adrenaline. Gorgeously photographed and inlaid with decadent set designs, The Good, The Bad, The Weird takes Sergio Leone‘s magnum opus out of Spain and plants it in Manchuria with a hard-R rating. It’s a wacky take on a classic that’s liberal with its reinvention but homages in ample doses. The skippy score and whack ado performance from Kang-ho Song makes it a rollicking good time and a film worth seeking out and slurping up. (A-)

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