It’s been 11 years since Michael Bay took the reins of the live-action “Transformers” movies, and in that time he has infused these films with a particular, cacophonous audio-visual aesthetic that has more in common with a roller coaster at a rave in a war zone than what we would otherwise consider conventional, cinematic storytelling. His approach has its fans, but with “Bumblebee,” we can finally see what a filmmaker other than Michael Bay could do with the concept of alien machines that transform into stuff.
And it turns out they could do wonders.
“Bumblebee,” directed by Travis Knight (“Kubo and the Two Strings”), is the best “Transformers” movie so far, going all the way back to the 1986 animated film.