Transformers

Michael Bay’s 2007 Transformers offered Bay at his most surprisingly reflective and unexpectedly restrained — the domestic scenes involving Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and his parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) felt particularly sincere — and also his most ingenious, as he merged man and machine in beautifully choreographed fight sequences to get us wondering, “How’d he do that?” Well, he’s done it again — it, but nothing more. It bores, which isn’t to suggest that Bay’s not entirely into it. There are scant moments in this, um, story about a matrix keymajiggy that unlocks the sun-killing whoziwhatsis when he seems to be paying attention, such as a sequence during which a resurrected Megatron (hoo-boy) kidnaps Sam and fills the kid’s orifices with insectlike Decepticons that slither around his innards for a look-see. Bay’s in touch with his inner Cronenberg during this lone, profoundly isolated moment, the one scene during which you can actually tell what’s happening — and to whom, because he lets the gross-out speak for itself. But why speak when you can SCREAM for almost two and a half hours?