If anything Transformers Dark of the Moon is the kind of multi-achieving movie that has a definite beginning, middle and end. I am so digging the Trannies 3.

Before I start gushing let me add the caveat about the screening. I feel this following description goes a long way in describing how the movie going experience is being impacted by digital technology. We’re in the time envelope that will see rapid change. But for now the mandate calls for all digital theaters by July 2024, a year from now.

The theater where the movie was screened, which I think has some of the best projection in town by the way (Edwards Marq*e) had switched the digital print to another house and this caused a glitch in the software. The film has a digital code that corresponds to a specific projector, so as this theater has 24 projectors and the print was on the wrong projector there was downtime. ONE-HOUR-AND-TEN-MINIUTES.

I saw Joe Leydon walk out with his wife at the 60-minute mark. I talked to the manager in charge afterwards. I asked him why it took so long to get the correct code or whatever to restart the movie. He told me in no uncertain terms that they were in contact immediately with the 24/7-troubleshooting-3D-hotline but that it literally took the extra 70-minutes for all the t’s to be crossed and i’s to be dotted, in order to re-configure the code. How does this bode for the future of digital cinema? Okay it’s starting to get a little windy up here on my soapbox so back to the pressing matter of what this film is all about.

Transformer 3 manages to include cameo appearances by Bill O’Reilly and Buzz Aldrin that actually achieve a kind of tongue-in-cheek resonance not found in the usual plethora of celebrity movie cameos. The plot revolves around a top-secret discovery of a crashed alien craft in 1962. In the scheme of things we have yet another (Inglourious Basterds, X Men First Class) re-telling of history. There are Russian and American secrets that are tossed out in the first act. But the real treat is seeing minor characters come and go, like John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, Glenn Morshower, and especially Alan Tudyk in a complicated turn. The second act evolves the maturation transformation in Shia LaBeouf’s Wit in a character-bridge that engulfs all the Transformer movies.

We get mired in a second act that features prominent turns from John Tuturro and Frances McDormand, both staples of Coen Brothers films yet I was wondering if they had actually every been in a Coen Bros. film together. It’s like when I was watching Midnight in Paris for the second time and only realized then that Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams had been in a film together previously (Wedding Crashers). But nothing can prepare you for the last act.

A fairly photo-realistic battle to the death takes place in downtown Chicago and lasts for about an hour. Good continuity and good effects. Perhaps not surprisingly Bay’s direction is efficient and focused, giving each sequence its perfunctory ass and action points of view.

I’m not some geek who knows everything there’s to know about robot movies but I did cogitate that Leonard Nimoy was the voice of one of the transformer robots and that he intoned a line from Spock at the end of Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan.

- Michael Bergeron