SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Unlike the first movie, in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, director Michael Bay brings to back to 17,000 BC to relate us to a tale of Transformers first encounter with mankind. The movie proceeds with the present where the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime team up with the US military to combat the Decepticons hiding out on Earth.

Although the Decepticons leader, Megatron is dead and his corpse is lying underneath an ocean secured by the US Navy, through smooth coordination from hacking into the satellite to retrieving the remaining AllSpark pieces, the Decepticons manage to relieve Megatron and yet, another plot to destroy Earth is conceived. In fact, Megatron’s master, The Fallen wants to destroy both the Earth and the Sun. Incredibly ambitious.

Megan Fox in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

Back to the humans, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) has a considerably major role in the second Transformers film, yet his sexy and sultry girlfriend, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) appears once awhile with him flashing her lovely assets even more frequently than the first film. Although the movie has better plots and storyline this time around, at times, Michael Bay seems to be wanting to outdo every major blockbusters which were shown in the past couple of years. This would more or less include the Indiana Jones with pursuit of rare artifacts in Egypt, Da Vinci Code with the mystery-solving puzzle, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with the mention of The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Jumper with the teleportation through “space bridge” to Egypt, and many more.

Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf running for their lives in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

Of course, the movie also introduces a bunch of new robots, including the twins Skids and Mudflap, the Constructicons which eventually combine to form Devastator, Soundwave and many more. The movie even introduces a Pretender robot, which camouflage as a human to seduce Sam.

Bumblebee in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

Overall, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen does not really disappoint at all with plenty of actions and some funny jokes with the inclusion of funny sidekicks such as John Turturro and Ramón Rodríguez. However, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen does not really satisfy as well, because at the end of the film, the feeling of awe was there, but not the satisfaction.

My ratings: 8 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Shia LaBeouf & Michelle Monaghan in "Eagle Eye"

The movie begins with the armed forces getting a lead on a suspected terrorist by using a remote control aircraft that’s equipped with video camera. However, the system is not able to get a clear shot out of the man and recommends the mission to be aborted. The Secretary of Defense (Michael Chiklis) agrees with the recommendation as he feels it’s too risky, but the President of the United States orders the mission to be executed. It turns out that those who were killed are civilians and the terrorists retaliate by bombing the U.S. Embassies in several locations around the world.

Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) is a slacker who works at Copy Cabana, a photocopier store. He needs to win some poker money from his loser friends in order to settle the rental of his apartment. Misfortune hits him when Jerry finds out that his brother, Ethan has died in a road accident.

Fortune comes knocking when Jerry finds USD $750,000 in his bank account. When he returns home, he finds his apartment is filled with weapons, explosives and documents. He receives a mysterious phone call from an unknown woman who warns him that the FBI are about to arrest him in thirty seconds and he has no choice but to escape. Jerry’s refusal to believe the woman’s voice gets him caught by the FBI, led by Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton) and Air Force Office of Special Investigations Special Agent Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson).

The unknown woman arranges Jerry’s escape and make him join single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) into a black Porsche Cayenne. Holloman is already seated in the car as she was earlier forced by the unknown woman to get into the car by threatening to kill her son, Sam a trumpet player on his way to Washington, D.C. for a band recital.

Agent Perez figures out that Ethan was a technician and he has locked down ARIA from carrying out her plan. However, ARIA is the one who has eliminated Ethan and Ethan didn’t die from a road accident.

Jerry is forced to impersonate Ethan in order to override the code that has earlier locked down the computer. When ARIA has cleared the lock down and is able to resume Operation Guillotine, she instructs Rachel to kill Jerry so he won’t be able to lock the computer down again. Rachel fails to kill Jerry as she is not able to overcome her conscience despite the threat by ARIA to kill Sam. Jerry and Rachel part ways but Jerry is caught up by Agent Morgan. They both learn that ARIA has a list of whom she will kill in order to eliminate public threat including the President of the United States. However, ARIA sends a Predator B UCAV to destroy Jerry. Agent Morgan sacrifices himself to destroy the aircraft in order to save Jerry.

Rachel is given a necklace fitted with the explosive crystal by The Secretary of Defense and sent to watch the President’s speech. Sam’s class, whose recital has been moved from the Kennedy Center to the Capitol for the President’s State of the Union Address, starts to play. The trigger that will set off the explosive necklace is set to activate when Sam plays a high F on his trumpet. Jerry fires a few shot into the air, halting the performance and emptying the room, but provokes a Secret Service agent to shoot him.

Jerry who survives the gunshot, receives the Congressional Gold Medal for his bravery. The movie ends with Jerry attending Sam’s birthday party.

Overall, it is a spectacular movie with brilliant plots and engrossing moments. Shia LeBouef does not disappoint with his solid performance throughout the film. Eagle Eye is definitely worth watching.

My ratings: 7 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), “Mutt” Williams (Shia LaBouef) and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The movie opens with a group of teenagers joyrides through the Nevada desert in a vintage car, listening to deafening rock music from the radio. It is obviously the 1950’s. Indiana Jones and his friend George “Mac” McHale (Ray Winstone) have been kidnapped by the Russian military led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) and are brought to Area 51. Spalko wants Jones to locate a mysterious object in the warehouse and when they have found the box and unearthed it, it seems to be something from another world. Before long, Indy escapes after realizing his friend “Mac” works for the communists.

After surviving a nuclear test by hiding in a refrigerator, Indy’s back to the classroom teaching. While in the train, he is pursued by a young man called Mutt Williams (Shia LeBeouf) who looks like James Dean with slicked hair, motorcycle and a pocket knife. Mutt tells Indy that an old colleague, Professor Oxley (John Hurt) is going to be killed and gives him letters from Oxley. This leads them to find a crystal skull in Peru without knowing “Mac” and Spalko are following them relentlessly.

Indy and Mutt manage to find and rescue Oxley and Mario Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy’s love interest from Raiders of the Lost Ark who happens to be Mutt’s mom. Together, they make a daring escape not once but twice, the second time succeed after a rough topsy-turvy battle through the jungles. Along the way, Mutt displays some superb skill of swordplay and even he even swings like the monkeys and ends up in the jeep with Indy. When Indy encounters “Mac”, “Mac” tells Indy that he works for the CIA and Indy believes him as easy as a pie. Everyone runs helter-skelter after they all landed on the colony of gigantic siafu ants. Miraculously, the ants avoid crystal skull, so Indy and Colonel Dovchenko (Igor Jijikine) are able to battle it out hand-to-hand combat on the ant’s colony.

After escaping from the Russians, Indy and the gang (including “Mac”) ends up in the water when Ravenwood makes an unbelievable attempt at driving through the cliff only to land on a tree besides the cliff which safely brings Indy and the gang down to the ground. After falling through three waterfalls, everyone survive without barely a scratch (we are not talking about the normal waterfalls, these waterfalls are almost like the size of Victoria Falls). Through the final waterfall, they have discovered the entrance without knowing “Mac” has secretly dropped a tracking device for Spalko to track their location.

The Indiana Jones movies are always exhilarating and bring never-ending excitement and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is no different. Though there are flaws in the movie like none of core characters got injured, jumping jeep from the cliff and landed safely, falling and surviving waterfalls, surviving nuclear bomb in a refrigerator, we all know Indiana Jones is an action hero and Harrison Ford does it right again. Shia LeBeouf has apparently grown up from the Transformers movie into a rougher young adult while Cate Blanchett plays her role well as a Russian communist, in fact, she even speaks flawlessly in Russian accent. Besides the usual heart-pounding excitement, the movie is somewhat lightheartedly funny. Like it or hate it, the movie is put together perfectly by the brilliant Spielberg and Lucas and are played well, every bit of it.

My ratings: 9 out of 10.

Contrary to what most people said about Michael Bay’s movies, Transformers (2007) is probably directed by the most suitable person as Michael Bay managed to prove all the critics wrong by creating such an awesome masterpiece. Although the new Transformers movie has the robots changed its shapes and transformations from the original, they are nevertheless awesome and most suitable for a movie for this generation compared to the 1986 movie. In the making of Transformers, Michael Bay admitted there were more than 10,000 parts just for Optimus Prime – and I believe he means the parts in CGI form.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie started with the AllSpark cube floating aimlessly in the space after a humongous war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. The cube somewhat landed on no other than Earth. Although Megatron managed to get to Earth before any other Transformers, but he was frozen and dormant. The puzzling thing is, what actually made Megatron frozen? It could be the temperature in the Arctic Circle, but somewhat Megatron managed to kill Sam Witwicky’s grandpa, Captain Witwicky before he got frozen. While Captain Witwicky managed to find the location of the AllSpark cube, he got killed and the rest of the crews somehow transported the gigantic cube back to the States using whatever means they have (they didn’t show this part). Despite the puzzling parts, the movie continues with Blackout (Decepticon) landed in US military base in Qatar and a huge fight scene pursues. Or its more like a one-way war with Blackout destroying almost everything in the base and left only a few survivors.

As the people in the Pentagon found out that Blackout (or an unidentified being at that moment) was attempting to hack into Pentagon to dig some information and all they have got was a signal, they setup many different groups of highly intellectual people (geeks) to investigate and identify the signal. Maggie Madsen (Rachael Taylor) and her team managed to find out that the signal belongs to a living robot with DNA cells but Defense Secretary John Keller (Jon Voight) did not believe in a thing she said unless she has the evidence. As a last resort, she then copied the highly classified data using a 2GB SD card and went to her friend/adviser, Glen Whitmann’s (Anthony Anderson) house to uncover the data. Somewhat the defense department managed to trace them in somewhat a very short time and FBI caught Maggie and Glen.

Then the movie takes us to the classroom where Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) has to present something in his history class. He talked about his grandpa, Captain Witwicky’s great exploration and discovery but ensues to auction off the items (including the glasses) in the classroom with a mouth of words to his eBay auction. His teacher initially gave him a “B-” but he managed to convince him to change it to “A-” which means he gets to get his dad to pay half of his first car, which led us to Bumblebee, initially a 1974 Chevrolet Camaro (later on transforms into a 2008 Chevrolet Camaro). After getting his car, Sam was of course, in pursue of girls, which led us to Mikaela (Megan Fox).

That’s all the story I will reveal as I am quite a bit worried that the FBI will track me down as the US-release is only July 3. LoL!

The movie has a lot of elements which include the Internet age, i.e. eBay, illegal music downloads, etc. which was quite humorous in a way. Somewhat, this movie is highly commercialized with GM’s Chevrolet, Nokia, eBay, etc. If you haven’t watched the Burger King’s ad, watch it here.

Overall, the movie is just freaking awesome. Definitely, “more than meets the eye!” I will watch it in the cinema the second time, the third time and will get the DVD version and watch it on iMax. Anyone wants to watch it with me? I promise I won’t tell. LoL!