The Art of Oneself — Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction

In many ways, the Transformers movies have always been somewhat plagued by a weird quasi-meshing of Spileberg's penchant boy-growing-up-among-the-awe narratives with Michael Bay's own crass maximalism (a meaningless word, but how else to describe what's on screen). Age of Extinction eliminates the main component of the former director's hand - Shia Labeouf's alienating and always too smug every-boy - in favor of Marky Mark Wahlberg, who mutates into whatever he needs to be from scene to scene (techie, overly concerned parent, football star, machine gun expert). It's a good metaphor for the film itself, which struck me as a work completely outside of its own interest as a film made by a studio for entertainment. Instead, it morphs into a parade of advertisement for each of its backers — Hasboro, Victoria's Secret, Chevrolet, and Budweiser (not to mention numerous Chinese sponsors I didn't recognize). The last of those companies comes up in a scene so crassly made that you could snip that 30 seconds from the film and it could have easily been a spot during the Super Bowl. A colleague of mine once posited that movie theaters are slowly morphing into the mall—a space for people to hang out more than experience film, and this film certainly made that experience seem like less a warning of doom than a proposition of truth. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Capitalism 2.0.

City of Life and Death: Faces of Death All Around

City of Life and Death

Written and Directed By: Lu Chuan

Starring: Liu Ye, Gao Yuanyuan, Hideo Nakaizumi, Fan Wei, and John Paisley

Director of Photography: Cao Yu, Editor: Teng Yun, Production Designers: Hao Yi and Lin Chaoxiang, Music: Liu Tong

Rated: Unrated, but brutal and necessary violence throughout

            Director Lu Chuan fills his historical epic City of Life and Death with faces. Faces stare right at the camera. Confused faces. Horrified faces. Faces that are unforgettable. Some by themselves; others in a sea of hundreds. The effect reminds the viewer in this difficult and powerful film of a simple premise: these are people.

            And such a reminder is necessary in this retelling of the destruction of Nanking during the early stages of the Second World War The subject has become a popular one for numerous Chinese filmmakers (most of which have never made it past its own borders) but Mr. Lu approaches the subject in a controversial way. Instead of making the film a Chinese propaganda tale, the filmmaker shows some humanity in the Japanese soldiers involved in the massacre, adding complexity that has riled many Chinese natives, but also provided a much more unique approach than his counterparts. For some Chinese critics, this is the equivalent of humanizing Nazis in a Holocaust film, something of course that is now an almost routine trope for American and European filmmakers. And the effect, along with Mr. Lu’s brutal visual style and harrowing drama, creates a brutal piece of art that challenges the idea of humanity.