The rollercoaster ride that is the Transformers franchise is truly mind-boggling. It’s a series of surprising highs and aggravating lows. It’s a series that can deliver exactly what you want from big popcorn entertainment in one film and then turn around and repeat their earlier mistakes in the very next movie. Take 2014’s “Age of Extinction”, a terrific installment (despite a lot of jaded criticism) that dialed back a lot of the noise to tell a silly yet fun and action-packed story.

But then came “The Last Knight”, a box office disaster that lost over $100 million for Paramount Pictures. And it’s easy to see why. Unlike its immediate predecessor, “The Last Knight” is a confounding mess. It’s a movie plagued by so many bad choices in front of the camera but mostly behind it. The outcome was clearly unforeseen as the film ends with obvious aspirations for another sequel. As it stands Bay has stepped down from directing Transformers movies and it looks like Paramount may be abandoning this storyline and latching onto the “Bumblebee” arc instead.

The bulk of the film’s problems can be easily traced to the screenplay. Gone is Ehren Kruger who wrote the previous two films. This time writing duties are handed to the trio of Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Ken Nolan. Their biggest issue revolves around their desperate attempts at being funny. But rather than good humor, they gave us the same maddening banter that made 2009’s “Revenge of the Fallen” so hard to sit through. Here they cram in the juvenile and often potty-mouthed wisecracking which makes much of the film feel shallow, pubescent, and at times insufferable.

Even if you can wade through the mind-melting bickering and brutally bad slapstick that’s mostly prevalent in the first half, it doesn’t get much better from there. The breakneck storytelling features one narrative shortcut after another. Even worse, the movie never slows down to breathe. It never stops to let the characters have actual meaningful moments. We’re just rushed from point to point as Bay and company drown us in nonsensical mythologizing that never reaches any kind of satisfying conclusion. It’s all excess and overload that quickly devolves into a grind.

Mark Wahlberg returns as Cade Yeager, a single father and inventor who helped Optimus Prime and the few remaining Autobots save the planet in the previous film. In “The Last Knight” he owns a massive junkyard which he secretly uses to hide Transformers from the still aggressive United States government. Cade encounters and takes in a young orphaned scavenger named Izabella (Isabela Moner in a paper-thin role). He also crosses paths with a dying Transformer who gives him a mysterious talisman that immediately connects to his body.

Elsewhere yet another government special ops unit pops up – this one called the Transformer Reaction Force. The group is ran by General Morshower (played by Glenn Morshower) and is reluctantly led in the field by Colonel William Lennox (a returning Josh Duhamel). The TRF (dumbly) joins forces with Megatron and his Decepticons upon learning that Cade has the potentially powerful talisman. As you can probably guess, a clash ensues.

And even further elsewhere we meet an aging historian named Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins – how they got him onboard is still a mystery to me). He’s the last living member of a secret society who has long protected the ancient history of the Transformers and their connections to earth. Burton sends his hopelessly annoying robot butler Cogman (Jim Carter) to bring Cade to his villa in England. He also brings in Oxford professor Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock). Both are key to stopping a goddess (of sorts) from Cybertron named Quintessa (Gemma Chan) who has a convoluted master plan that involves (or course) destroying earth.

All of those things attempt to come together in the film’s draining 149 minutes but making sense of it proves to be a chore. Bay blitzes through from one exposition dump to the next at ridiculous speeds. The human characters monopolize most of the runtime with the Transformers often feeling like an afterthought. Meanwhile none of the human drama is that interesting and none of the characters earn our emotional investment. They’re never given time to. And all of it is peppered with this unfunny humor which the screenwriters eventually tone down but never fully put away.

To its credit the film does look good (as all of them do) thanks to Bay’s kinetic love-it-or-hate-it style and some top-tier digital effects. But that’s not enough to save the movie from its own self-inflicted wounds. “The Last Knight” simply tries to do too much. Some of it could’ve been interesting. Other things are just too goofy to take seriously. But all of it suffers due to the relentless attempts at humor, much of it being too crude for kids and too sophomoric for adults. It’s no wonder it underperformed at the box office.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

The relationship between humanity and robots has always been strained in the Transformers movies. The same could be said about the relationship between certain audiences and franchise director Michael Bay. Film critics have been especially brutal to the five TF features Bay has helmed. I quite enjoyed the first film from 2007. But the follow-up two years later, “Revenge of the Fallen” was hard to endure.

For that reason it took some time before I was willing to watch another Transformers movie. Yet the series kept moving forward and making a lot of money. That is until 2017’s “The Last Knight” which saw record low box office numbers for the normally profitable big budget franchise. Bay has since left the director’s chair and the series has went in a (sorta) new direction starting with 2018’s well received “Bumblebee”.

In between all of the highs and lows is 2014’s “Age of Distinction”, the fourth film of the five that Michael Bay directed. The movie performed well at the box office making over $1.1 billion. But fellow critics had a much sharper opinion of the movie and the last time I checked it was sitting at an abysmal 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. But what can I say? I had a great time with “Age of Extinction”. And many of the issues brought up by others were never a problem for me.

“Age of Extinction” may look like a reboot but it’s actually a direct sequel to 2011’s “Dark of the Moon”. But in an interesting shake-up, the story moved on to an entirely new human cast. Many of the same Transformers return, but Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger bring a new group of people into the mix. Most of the characters have pretty familiar angles but they service the movie well. And the performances are generally good and get the job done.

Despite the best efforts of the Autobots and their leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), the devastation left from the Battle of Chicago (see the last movie) has given rise to a strong anti-Transformer sentiment among many humans. This opened the door for Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), a rogue CIA official who created and oversees Cemetery Wind, a black-ops unit with a goofy name whose prime objective is to eliminate all Transformers remaining on planet earth.

Leading Attinger’s field team is the ruthless Agent James Savoy (Titus Welliver). But Attinger has another card up his sleeve – a Cybertronian bounty hunter named Lockdown who has his own reasons for hunting down and killing other Transformers. It turns out that Lockdown has been sent by a mysterious alien group called “The Creators”. We learn they have a special interest in Optimus Prime and Lockdown is to bring him to them by any means necessary.

Meanwhile a down-on-his-luck inventor named Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is struggling to make ends meet. The bank is ready to foreclose on his Texas farm. And as a single dad he’s having a hard time making enough money to send his 17-year-old daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz) to college. Cade happens upon an old broken down semi-truck which he plans on stripping down to its parts. But wouldn’t you know, he quickly discovers his junky big-rig is actually Optimus Prime who has been in hiding.

Elsewhere a pompous and ambitious entrepreneur named Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) owns a mega corporation called KSI Robotics. Due to some shady backroom dealings with Attinger, Joyce has secured a “government contract” that helps fund his own devious secret initiative to build his own Transformers. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out it’s not the best idea.

Nothing about the story will surprise you. Cemetery Wind gets tipped off that Cade is harboring Optimus. Attinger’s connections with KSI come to light. Joyce’s greed-driven plan blows up in his face. And of course Optimus Prime and the few remaining Autobots find themselves once again protecting a humanity that doesn’t appreciate them. Buildings crumble, vehicles blow up, and we’re treated to countless scenes of metal-on-metal combat. In other words just what fans of the series are hungry for.

I do get how some might find the action to be overwhelming, but it can also be exhilarating. As with every Transformer movie, it’s obvious that a ton of money went into the special effects. It’s also hard to miss the incredible detail that goes into each towering robot creation. And then you have Bay’s usual bag of visual tricks – the grainy saturated color palette, sweeping camera shots, slow motion, and explosions galore.

Occasional corny dialogue aside, Wahlberg and Tucci get the best human roles. Jack Reynor joins in as Tessa’s rally car driving boyfriend while Li Bingbing gets an utterly thankless role playing KSI’s representative in China. But the most fun performances comes through the great collection of voice work led by Cullen and including John Goodman, Ken Watanabe, John DiMaggio, Mark Ryan, Robert Foxworth, and Reno Wilson. They too sometimes find themselves handcuffed by bad dialogue yet they manage to overcome it.

But lets be honest, no one goes into a Transformers movie expecting an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. We just need the script to be functional – something that connects the dots, defines the characters, has at least some heart, and sets up the action-driven money scenes. “Age of Extinction” does that while also toning down a lot of the nonsense that can bring these movies down. It’s ultimately Bay realizing the promise that these movies have always had but didn’t always deliver. And it goes to show what a little focus and restraint (and I do emphasize “a little”) can do.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges made for a snappy pair in 1974’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”, an action comedy that blended the buddy road-trip movie with the suspenseful heist flick. At nearly 50-years-old, the movie still holds up in large part thanks to its two charismatic leads and the collection of top-form supporting characters that pop up along the way.

After reading the script Eastwood decided he wanted to direct. But he ended up handing the duties over to screenwriter Michael Cimino, giving the director his big break (Cimino’s very next film, “The Deer Hunter” won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director). But story has it Eastwood held a lot of influence over everything from shooting locations to the number of takes allowed per shot. Cimino often said he owed his career to Clint Eastwood.

The brilliantly shot opening scene remains a favorite of mine. Nestled among wheat fields and dirt roads sits the small but quaint Spirit Lake Idaho Community Church. Inside, a country preacher named John Doherty (Eastwood) is preaching a message to his congregation as a car drives up and parks outside. A man gets out, checks the church sign, and then heads inside. After the man takes a few steps down the aisle he pulls out a gun and starts firing on the preacher. As the parishioners scurry for safety the clergyman tears through a side door and across a wheat field with the gunman in pursuit.

While that was going on an easy-going drifter named Lightfoot steals a white Pontiac Trans-Am and is barreling down the road when the preacher steps out in front of him. Lightfoot swerves, missing the preacher and plowing over the gunman. The preacher hops in and the two take off. And just like that an unusual friendship is born. As they cavort around Montana it’s revealed that the preacher is actually a wanted bank robber known as The Thunderbolt. And wouldn’t you know it, there are more people after him than just the cops.

It turns out that two of Thunderbolt’s former partners, the intense Red Leary (played by the great George Kennedy) and the easy-going Eddie Goody (Geoffrey Lewis) are on the hunt. They’re convinced Thunderbolt double-crossed them during a heist and they want some payback. It takes a pretty lengthy car chase, a little gunfire, and some fisticuffs before they iron out their differences and set their sites on a brand new heist.

From there the road movie gives way to a straight-up heist film as Thunderbolt, Lightfoot, Red, and Eddie stake out a bank, organize the robbery, and plan their escape. Through it all Cimino hones in on and has a lot of fun with the group’s off-beat camaraderie. It helps to have four terrific actors working to bring out their characters’ very different personalities. And along the way we’re treated to some fun young faces. Catherine Bach (“The Dukes of Hazard”) has a quick scene as an alluring young woman named Melody. And Gary Busey makes a ‘blink or you’ll miss it’ appearance.

“Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” has a number of strengths. But it lives and breathes off the charisma and chemistry of Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges. They’re funny, relatable, and all-around entertaining whenever they’re sharing the screen. Despite its action-packed opening and a banger of a finish (involving a giant cannon no less), the story moves at a relatively leisurely pace. It has some good humor and a surprising amount of subtext about the shifting America of its day. It all comes together in one satisfying package that’s still a lot of fun today.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

(With a new Transformers movie looming I thought it would be good to watch and review some of the franchise’s films I have yet to review.)

The third installment of the (mostly) lucrative Transformers film series had a tough hill to climb. The first film from 2007 was a fun, nostalgic, and action-packed blockbuster. But its 2009 sequel, “Revenge of the Fallen” was an abysmal disappointment which saw the series take shoddy writing and big screen excess to some annoying levels. That gets to “Dark of the Moon”, a nice turn back in the right direction yet one still hampered by some of the same nagging issues.

The first right move for “Dark of the Moon” was with its writer. Ehren Kruger is given solo screenwriter duties and the movie benefits from it. The story is still overstuffed; it goes on for way too long; and it can’t shake the annoying urge to be crude. Yet Kruger devises a fairly easy to follow story – one that may not develop as thoroughly as it needs to but that has clearly defined stakes and comes together more cohesively than you might think.

Bay opens the film with a fun play on history. War continues to rage on the far-away planet of Cybertron between the oppressive Decepticons and the noble Autobots. A spacecraft called the Ark flees carrying a piece of Autobot technology that would have won them the war and saved their planet. But it’s heavily damaged, eventually crashing on earth’s moon circa 1962.

A U.S. government satellite picks up the crash and they immediately begin planning man’s first trip to the moon. Through a cool mix of real-life historical footage and newly shot scenes we learn the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was actually a covert operation to investigate the alien wreckage. Even the real Buzz Aldren shows up playing himself. It’s a silly but undeniably fun table-setting intro.

From there the story moves to present day where we once again meet Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf’s final turn as the lead character of the first three films). Still temperamental and insecure, Sam lives in Washington DC with his new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) whose supermodel good looks clearly impresses her ludicrously wealthy boss, Dylan Gould (Patrick Dempsey). Sam on the other hand is three weeks out of college and still doesn’t have a job. That is until he gets hired by the boss of Accuretta Systems, Bruce Brazos (John Malkovich in an utterly frivolous role).

Meanwhile the Autobots led by Optimus Prime (again wonderfully voiced by the great Peter Cullen) have allied with humanity in solving human conflicts around the world. All the while they have their eyes open for the return of their arch enemies the Decepticons. One of their operations takes them to the Ukraine where Optimus learns about the Ark crash-landing on earth’s moon. He also learns that the long believed lost technology has been retrieved. The Autobots visit the moon to see what’s left of the Ark only to find a powered-down Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy), Optimus’ predecessor as leader of the Autobots.

And of course the United States government is involved led by the Director of National Intelligence, Charlotte Mearing (Frances McDormand). She oversees a super-secret international task-force known as NEST which is commanded by Colonel William Lennox (Josh Duhamel). Chief Master Sergeant Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson) also pops back up, now working for NASA but forced back into military duty once it is revealed that the Decpticons have been orchestrating an elaborate ruse aimed at draining the earth of its resources in order to rebuild Cybertron.

As you can see there’s a ton going on which would become the norm for the franchise. Bay loved the epic-sized stories as much as he loved the epic-scaled action. It didn’t always work but he managed to pull it off here. “Dark of the Moon” takes a lot of wild turns, ultimately ending with all the parties coming together (and with Sam once again caught in the middle) for a huge battle in the city of Chicago. It’s a massive sequence that highlights many of Bay’s strengths and weaknesses as an action filmmaker. But it’s an ending custom-made for fans and it place proves to have lasting repercussions.

Though a significant step up from the previous film, “Dark of the Moon” still repeats some of the problems many people have had with the franchise. It’s way too ambitious and it’s stuffed with too much story and too many characters (I haven’t even mentioned the roles played by John Turturro, Alan Tudyk, Ken Jeong, Glenn Morshower, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, etc.). Yet I enjoyed many of the crazy swings it takes. And it’s just cohesive enough to hold our interest until the next big set piece comes along. And in these movies that’s often all some people want.

VERDICT – 3 STARS