Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Dir: Michael Bay)

Wife: The food here is terrible.
Husband: Yeah, but look at the size of the portions!

For sheer moviegoing value, you can't beat Michael Bay, a director whose films are so bloated, busy, and full of heroic imagery that you get an entire summer's worth of blockbusters in one sitting. But just like eating a large bag of Doritos eventually leads to regret and self loathing, sitting through an entire Bay film brings on the hate and it's hard to live with yourself in the morning.

Where to start with this regrettable extension of the Transformers brand? Like the similarly incomprehensible Jerry Bruckheimer produced "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Revenge of the Fallen" is a globe-spanning bauble hunt involving shards of the All-Spark and the Matrix of Leadership all integral to the quest to cultivate much-needed Energon. With a script that is clearly an afterthought--a means to get us from Point A to Point B and to create an excuse for giant robots fighting--why make it all so complicated? All of these baubles have appeared in the Transformers mythology at one point or another, but does a franchise created solely to sell toys deserve slavish accuracy in its adaptation for the big screen? All that's gained is confusion and a few grins of recognition from devoted fanboys.

The Michael Bay aesthetic has not changed with his latest film. Every shot is a hero shot with a helicopter mounted camera view always preferable to a static close-up. In Michael Bay world there are no static close-ups. Every moment is as equally important as the next. There are no moments of reflection and calm before the action gears start turning once again. It's frankly exhausting and displays a profound lack of storytelling skill. His storytelling is further hobbled by his inability to establish visual geography. Visual geography allows a viewer to orient himself within the filmed space, understand the players involved and what's at stake. Bay just buys the largest fireworks display possible, lights it on fire and moves his camera from one point to another--never for longer than seven seconds.

"Revenge of the Fallen" also displays clumsy attempts at humor including dogs humping each other, robots humping humans, and robots with testicles. Every woman in the movie is either a super model or lunatic and the film trades in unnecessary stereotypes. The two worst offenders are the jive talking Skids and Mudflap who have gold teeth, monkey shaped faces, foul mouths, and can't read. Bay's world is an ugly, over caffeinated place.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (Dir: Tony Scott)

Your ability to enjoy "Pelham," Tony Scott's slight but serviceable thriller remake, depends on how much you can stand John Travolta hamming it up as The Villain. He's bad. Real bad. You can tell by the fact that he has evil facial hair and has a tendency to switch from gleefully ironic line readings to uncontrolled rage at a moment's notice. When Travolta plays villains he always appears to be having a ton of fun. Usually more fun than the audience. His "Pelham" baddie is almost tolerable and falls on the Travolta villain spectrum between "Battlefield Earth"--awful--and "Face/Off"--actually menacing.

He shares screen time with Denzel Washington as a somewhat paunchy transit worker forced into a hostage situation he would rather avoid. There are some great scenes in the early going when we get to see Washington behind his desk directing the many trains of the New York City subway system through the use of a giant electronic display. At one point he is referred to as maestro and it's a pleasure to see someone doing a complicated, demanding job well as he directs the cars steadily on their way. These scenes are important to the film and endear you to a character that gets satisfyingly more complicated as the film wears on.

Washington soon finds himself trying to negotiate on behalf of Travolta's subway hostages. The scenes at the train station are tight, interesting, and offer compelling character moments while Travolta's subway menace moments are flabby and rote. We are seeing two different films and Washington's is substantially more interesting. When the two films merge, the film speeds on to a violent climax that will not surprise any seasoned moviegoer. Tony Scott's direction is frequently distracting as his use of freeze frame and slow motion do little to heighten tension. Washington is enough of a force to keep the movie interesting and he keeps it chugging along.

Land of the Lost (Dir: Brad Silberling)

Can production design alone redeem a movie? The answer is no, otherwise an expansive day-glo fantasy oddball wonderland would have saved the execrable "Batman and Robin." But excellent, knowing production design, a commitment to an absurd sci-fi premise, and some low-key comic performances can and all make for a fun summer diversion. The design of the film honors the original hacky tacky look of the Sid and Marty Kroft series of the same name, but creates a whole world from it. The film's sets are kitschy, but not ironic. The movie honors the show's original bargain basement production values but on a blockbuster scale.

The film's script also hews closely to the off-wall premise of the "Land of the Lost" series, but streamlines the whole affair. The show always had some interesting ideas at play, but the pacing was glacial and unraveling its few mysteries took far too long. Here the inter-dimensional conflict between the primitive Sleestak and their more advanced Altrusian forefathers gets wrapped up in an hour and a half. With the help of the ape-man Cha-ka (Jorma Taccone), Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Ferell), Will (Danny McBride, "Eastbound and Down"), and Holly (Anna Friel, "Pushing Daisies") evade Grumpy the T-Rex and try to save mankind. Pulled into a world made up of creatures and landmarks culled from across time and space, Dr. Marshall and crew uncover a conspiracy to control the universe.

Those who haven't been fans of Ferrell or McBride in the past won't be won over by this film which essentially has them riffing on the same characters they play so well--pompous ass and crass simple kind a' man, respectively. But even as the two riff the whole absurd plot keeps turning giving the movie a lighter touch than the throw everything at the screen and see what sticks "Anchorman."

"Land of the Lost" is too goofy and too committed to its unique aesthetic and storyline to have broad appeal. But there is enough visual inventiveness and oddball humor to entertain a certain type of moviegoer.