Transformers: Age of Extinction review

The fourth installment of the Transformers is the most Transformers-esque Transformers movie ever made. 

The newest Transformers film takes place after the catastrophic events of the last film. The supposedly good Autobots are now being hunted by the government, apparently no longer being welcome here on planet Earth. Inventor and single father Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) just wants to make some money to put his daughter (Nicola Peltz) through college, but he's having some trouble with it. That is, until he finds a huge beat up truck in a decrepit movie theater. Said truck turns out to be the head Autobot, Optimus Prime. After the CIA raids Cade's barn and threatens the life of his daughter, Cade escapes with Optimus Prime to go fight some alien threat or something. Many explosions and slow motion robot fights ensue. Michael Bay is a director with a penchant for big action films with bigger pyrotechnics. His movies are a violent barrage of actual explosives and expensive CGI. In some ways, I respect the man. People have almost always given him guff about his films. "Too many explosions!" shouts the irritated moviegoers. "I don't care." replies Michael Bay. No matter how much critics have berated his pictures, no matter what people have said, Mr. Bay has still made his big explosive movies the way he wants to make them. Are the movies any good? In my personal opinion, they aren't most of the time. Yet they all fulfill the insane creative vision of one Michael Bay. He makes these convuluted set pieces, massive explosions, and slow motion shots of attractive females. The guy has his own style, and I applaud him for that much. Despite all that, the new Transformers movie is still really bad. So bad it actually made me yearn for the older Transformers films. The film was so atrocious that I actually started to enjoy it's blatant awfulness after a while. At one point, Mark Wahlberg's character crashes a spaceship into a truck carrying Bud Light beer. The driver angrily asks him "Do you have insurance for that?" Wahlberg responds by picking up one of the prominently placed Bud Light bottles and taking a swig from it. It's such obvious product placement I couldn't respond in any other way than confused laughter. The dialogue here is quite awful. Some of it is just plain expository, bland, and boring. Yet, at times it's unintentionally genius. Lines like "My face is a warrant." will go down in cinema history as some of the most befuddling and genuine lines to ever be spoken in a movie. One cannot react in any other way than shock and awe. This film is loaded with problems. They're all just so obvious and consistent that after a while I started not to mind. My biggest problem with this movie was probably it's pacing. People have been complaining about this film's running time, but a long movie isn't a bad thing. I wouldn't mind the film's 165 minutes if it was more enjoyable at times. The robot fights often run several minutes too long and the story is much too confusing and half-baked to really follow. This caused me to slump back in my seat with my eyes glazed over just sort of staring at the images flashing in front of me. What irritates me most about this is that it actually could be good. Imagine if Bay hired a decent writer to do something awesome and creative with this material? Think  of The Lego Movie. On first glance it seems like a mediocre kids film designed only to make money. Yet, it's actually a wonderfully creative film that all ages can enjoy and it has plenty to say. What if they did that with the Transformers films? What if instead of a two-plus hour spectacle of constant explosions it was used to convey messages and emotions and a raw human story? Maybe I'm just a romantic, but I imagine a Transformers film where the CGI and pyromania take a backseat to an engaging story with sharp dialogue and memorable characters. A film where the female characters were there for more e than just eye candy. All this technical wonder could pair perfectly with a terrific screenplay. Bay isn't an awful director. If he really applied himself to the right material, he could create something beautiful. But hey, that's just me. For now we'll all have to deal with this unintentionally hilarious explosion fest. At least it's not as bad as The Amazing Spider-Man 2, right? I give Transformers: Age of Extinction 2.5 out of 5 stars. 

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Duck, You Sucker review

Never heard of or seen this movie? You better fix that.

I hadn't heard of Duck, You Sucker (which is sometimes known as A Fistful of Dynamite) at all until I got a box set of Sergio Leone films for my birthday. It came with the obligatory Dollars Trilogy with Clint Eastwood (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), but it also came with this movie called Duck, You Sucker that I hadn't ever heard of. Well, last night I popped it in and watched it. What followed was one of the most wonderful, thoughtful, and awesome westerns I had ever seen. The film is about a low class bank robber named Juan (Rod Steiger) who teams up with a charismatic I.R.A explosives expert named John Mallory (James Coburn) to heist a large bank in Mexico. Yet, instead of that they get thrown head over heels into the Mexican revolution. One of the reasons I was so blown away by Duck, You Sucker was the fact that it was so different then most of Leone's other westerns. It had some similar parts to it, but it really felt completely different than his Dollars Trilogy or Once Upon a Time in The West. It dealt with much more political subjects and seemed to go a lot deeper into character than most of his other films. Don't get me wrong, I love his other movies to death. Yet, this one was different in such a good way. It starts out with Juan boarding a stagecoach filled with rich white people, all of them looking at him in disgust and being generally racist and elitist. This was when I started to see Leone grappling with issues like class discrepancy and stuff like that. I thought he was just touching on a subject like that. No, about halfway through the film it starts really dealing with the Mexican revolution and how it affected the Mexicans. One shot shows soldiers just massacring rebels in pits, and not just the adult men. Women and children are not spared. The film isn't all horrifying war stuff like that though. It somehow manages to take comedic scenes, exciting western action, and very emotional and in depth scenes and marry them in a beautiful way. There are certain parts that are very cool classic Leone western scenes. Then there are these very touching exchanges between Juan and John that are just beautiful. There's also a series of flashbacks that give John's character some background. They all take place in what we think is Ireland and are all done incredibly well. The amount of range this film has is fantastic. I honestly can't recommend it enough. Another great thing here are the explosions. Nowadays we have CGI explosions in our movies. It's amazing to see that when stuff gets blown up in this movie, it's for real. The explosions look so raw and real, because they are. It's better than CGI could ever do. There's one scene in particular where a bridge is blown up. It's one of the most incredible things I've seen on film. One trademark of Sergio Leone films are the musical scores done by Ennio Morricone. You probably have heard The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly one, or maybe some of the others. They all have a very distinct sound. They remind me of a warrior marching into battle, or two men facing off in a gunfight. The score for Duck, You Sucker is one of Morricone's best. It started off kind of slow and I was quite skeptical, then it get's better and it really grows on you. To tell you the truth, I'm listening to it right now. When the movie started out it seemed like any other Leone film. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. But it seemed like it could be a For a Few Dollars More-esque bank heist western. I really liked that movie so I was excited. Instead, I got a politically charged and very emotional film with a lot more thematic weight than any western I've seen in a while. I haven't seen all of his movies so I can't say for sure, and I'd want to watch this again before I made any judgements, but Duck, You Sucker may be my favorite Sergio Leone film. And this is coming from someone who genuinely loves The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Again, I'm not too sure about that yet. Duck, You Sucker is different then most classic westerns I've seen because it mixes great western style and tropes with heartfelt messages and serious character development. If you haven't noticed by now, I really loved the film. I'm surprised this hasn't reached the level of notoriety that many western (particular Leone) movies have gained. It's better than many, like High Noon, that have become quite famous. With Duck, You Sucker, Sergio Leone proves yet again that he is a master of the genre. If you haven't seen it, I urge you to do so as soon as you can. Duck, You Sucker is funny, epic, exciting, and really damn terrific. Thanks for reading! You can always follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies! Happy Viewing!