Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Photos and review by: Alan Ralph @AlanHasPicks
“More Than Meats the Eye” is what happens when McDonald’s worst nightmare Mac Sabbath books a tour with a bunch of Transformers and they all Drive Thru the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on a warm Thursday evening.
Continue reading “Show Review: Mac Sabbath drives thru the Great American Music Hall!”
If only the Transformers film series began in 2018 with Bumblebee, a compelling audience-pleasing character introduction akin to 2008’s Iron Man, and then expanded the Transformers universe from there. Instead, we have five noisy, forgettable, often offensive Transformers films directed by Michael Bay between 2007-2017 in the back of our minds. Bumblebee successfully stripped the franchise back down to its essential parts and concentrated on a Spielbergian 1980s character-driven story with impressive robot action set pieces sprinkled throughout. It functioned as an effective standalone film and baseline for how to tell these stories in a cinematic way. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts functions as a sequel and a new series starting point, continuing a few important elements from its predecessor, like emotionally relatable characters and unique robot personalities, but it runs well off the rails by introducing far too many plot devices and ending with a long, no stakes CGI mess.
Continue reading “Film Review: “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts””
A few years back, I wrote a “live blog” of Transformers 4: I Can’t Remember the Subtitle, the first in the Michael Bay x Hasbro series of films to star Mark Wahlberg. It was a pretty silly movie, but looked amazing in IMAX 3-D, as many scenes were shot natively with IMAX 3-D cameras. This time around, nearly every shot in the final film comes from IMAX 3-D cameras, so of course I had to head out to the theater to provide another Transformers live blog!
Continue reading “Film Review: Transformers: The Last Knight“
Transformers Age of Extinction, aka Transformers 4, is basically a tech demo for the IMAX 3D format. Only seconds into the nearly 3-hour movie, many in the audience were gasping with awe. Are movies supposed to look this amazing? And when they do, can we forgive basically everything else about them? Follow along as I “live blog” Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. (I’ve left out spoilers, and made up most of the times since I didn’t actually write this in the movie.) Continue reading “Film Review: Transformers Age of Extinction”
Remember the good ole’ days of Super Bowl movie trailers (~15 years ago) when there were only 2-4 of them and they were completely jaw-dropping? Armageddon and The Mask of Zorro in 1998, The Mummy and The Matrix in 1999, Gladiator in 2000. Nowadays, the internet is set ablaze with news of movie trailers set to premiere during the big game (with some premiering online before the game). Super Bowl movie ads just don’t have the ‘wow’-factor they used to. This year, more than eight movies had their trailers broadcast during the commercial breaks. It was mostly a visual feast of action/adventure fare, and most were new, aside from a few including 3 Days to Kill and Monument’s Men (which has too many ads playing currently). So, here are the cream of the crop:
Transformers: Age of Extinction
No Shia? I’m game! No, seriously, we’re all fairly confident that this movie has little chance of being any better than the previous three crap-fests. That being said, Optimus Prime riding a robo-dinosaur? Again, I’m game!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNfOcV0eeg4
