Armond's Transformers

"When the Transformers explode from common tools into super beings, the kinetic imagery fulfills the surrealism of Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky—if only they had digital. Bay’s advertising eye creates shots that make you stare back, baffled at the intense clarity and depth. A couple of magnificent low-level shots, looking up at the Transformers overhead and traveling alongside their movements is the damnedest thing. One is suspended in awe—a triumph of TV-commercial aesthetics. Bad Boys II and Pearl Harbor had shots like this, but they lacked the fantasy context. That is, a context sustaining both dreams and dread. Bay’s desert battle with aliens is as terrifying as Starship Troopers yet, when linked to conflagration in our own streets, lacks Paul Verhoeven’s masterful use of absurdist nightmare..."