Reel Critics:

All the mind-numbing noise and fury a big budget can buy is amplified to painful extremes in the latest “Transformers” episode.

The first entry in this franchise had some real romance, humor and emotion to offset the mangled steel combat scenes. This time around, Director Michael Bay has ordered a full frontal assault on the eyes and eardrums of the audience in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

The endless action and bone crunching madness rattle the senses. It’s all done with very high quality special effects that are also very loud. But the mayhem of the heavy-metal battles goes on and on for two and a half hours. The whole enterprise will exhaust any adult with a modicum of sensitivity. But the huge target audience of teenage video gamers and head bangers will surely fill the coffers of the box office and insure another sequel.

With a full complement of sexual innuendo and nasty words, the producers join the Hollywood players who are pushing the PG-13 label further into R-rated territory. The underage kids will love it as their brains are pulverized into commercial mush with a touch of lust. But the parents of younger kids might take to heart the warning in the movie’s newspaper ads: “Parents Strongly Cautioned.”

Michelle Pfeiffer shines in love story ‘Cheri’

Michelle Pfeiffer is radiant in “Cheri,” a dreamily elegant tale of love among the very rich in Belle Epoque Paris. Based upon Colette’s novel, it was created by the same team who gave us “Dangerous Liaisons.” In that film, Pfeiffer was a young innocent in danger of being corrupted; in “Cheri,” she is world-weary courtesan Léa de Lonval.

The movie’s title is a nickname Léa long ago bestowed upon the son of a long-retired courtesan, played with gusto by Kathy Bates. Now a beautiful and decadently bored young man, Cherí (Rupert Friend) and Léa become lovers, and their May-December liaison lasts a surprising six years.

Then Cherí’s mother decides she wants grandchildren, and arranges for her son to marry a rich but pouty beauty, Edmée (Felicity Jones).

The ensuing drama plays out like another Pfeiffer vehicle, “The Age of Innocence” where the husband, his bride and his ex-lover pine and sulk over each other while looking gorgeously bored. Pfeiffer is wonderful portraying a still- beautiful woman in love who’s been turned aside for youth and money.

The pace is as languid as the smoke-filled opium den Cherí visits, and while he extracts our sympathy, his inability to suck it up like a man is most annoying. It’s not until the closing minute that we are casually given real tragedy — blink and you’ll miss it.

JOHN DEPKO is a Costa Mesa resident and a senior investigator for the Orange County public defender’s office. SUSANNE PEREZ lives in Costa Mesa and is an executive assistant for a financial services company.