(CLICK HERE to read my full review in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

Huel Taylor makes his directorial debut in the ambitious yet uneven “They Cloned Tyrone”. At its best this wild genre mashup feels like what we would get if the Coen brothers made a 1970s blaxploitation movie. At its shakiest the film has a hard time maintaining any kind of consistent tone. Written by Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier, the film is constantly bouncing back and forth between super seriousness to over-the-top absurdity. It ends up impacting everything from the story, the characters, and even the sometimes clever yet sometimes on-the-nose messaging.

Something that doesn’t miss the mark is the cracking chemistry between the film’s three stars, John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx. All three embody their characters with a streetwise panache. Yet it’s the distinctions between them that make them an interesting trio. The writing doesn’t always help them, at times relying so much on petty profanity-laced bickering and babbling that they almost become caricatures. But Boyega. Parris, and Foxx are crafty talents and they’re often elevating the material.

The movie begins on a pretty serious note by introducing us to Fontaine (Boyega), a small-time drug dealer who has his hands full fending off rival neighborhood gangs and collecting money from his non-paying customers. One such customer is a hilariously decked-out pimp named Slick Charles (played by Foxx who looks like he stepped right out of a certain flashback sequence in “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” – fans to that hilarious 1988 film will know what I mean).

Slick Charles runs his sleazy operation out of a dirt-cheap motel called The Royal. There he’s constantly clashing with his strong-willed worker Yo-Yo (Parris) who claims she’s ready to retire so she can go to Memphis and find her “a real man”. Fontaine goes to Slick Charles’ motel room to squeeze out some money owed. But as he’s leaving he’s brutally gunned down by a rival gang member.

So Fontaine is dead right? Well not so fast. Suddenly we see him wake up in bed and once again start his daily routine (ala “Groundhog Day”). But when he shows up to collect his money from Slick Charles, he scares the self-proclaimed “1995 Players Ball Pimp of the Year” who witnessed Fontaine’s murder the night before. Slick Charles tries to explain what happened but Fontaine doesn’t buy it. He finally convinces Fontaine to go find Yo-Yo who can corroborate his story.

Without giving too much away, the three become neighborhood gumshoes, eventually uncovering a nefarious (and utterly ludicrous) plot against their predominantly Black inner-city community being carried out by an evil white extension of the US government. At least that’s the best way I can describe the film’s baddies. It’s hard to say for sure because the secret “scientific” agency is never explained all that well. Regardless, it sets up a pretty zany story that attempts to mix serious emotion and messaging with an utterly preposterous scenario that goes well beyond the cloning in the title.

To its credit, the movie does have its funny moments that work well in large part thanks to Jamie Foxx. The comedy really ramps up the very moment he hits the screen. Over time the humor does take a backseat as Taylor tries to turn his potty-mouthed Three Stooges into characters with a (somewhat) serious side. But even then we still get some inherently funny bits that flow naturally out of the story.

Yet blending and managing tone is a tricky task and frankly “They Cloned Tyrone” is all over the map. The movie clearly wants to bring together a number of obvious influences and it’s that love for genre and style that gives the movie a certain allure. But it jumps around too much and doesn’t always seem to know what to do with its characters (take Kiefer Sutherland’s paper-thin villain who’s only purpose is to dump some exposition and shoot a few bullets). It turns out to be a nagging thorn in the film’s side that keeps it from being all that it could be. “They Cloned Tyrone” premieres today on Netflix.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

One of my biggest regrets from this year’s Sundance Film Festival was missing out on the quirky indie comedy “Theater Camp”. There was a lot of audience buzz following its festival premiere and I was even more intrigued after Searchlight dropped around $8 million to acquire it with the promise of a theater release.

“Theater Camp” is based on a pandemic era short film of the same name created by Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Nick Lieberman. The 18-minute parody quickly earned the admiration of performing arts types and self-proclaimed theater geeks. As a result the four friends begin putting the pieces together for a feature film adaptation which sounds like a good idea considering their genuinely funny premise.

Unfortunately “Theater Camp” feels like a short film’s worth of material stretched out to feature film length. Written by Gordon, Galvin, Platt, and Lieberman (Gordon and Lieberman also directed), the film is a kind of self-gratifying exercise that can’t really justify its existence. Sure, it’ll click with certain audiences who have a high tolerance for the in-jokes and shaky improv. But squeezing much more out of this promising turned lackluster comedy proves to be a chore.

Admittedly I was all-in with the film early on – its wacky introduction, its mockumentary style (tired I know, but they can be funny), its gleeful embrace of self-parody. But the wackiness quickly begins to dry up, the mockumentary style all but vanishes, and the self-parody grows redundant as the filmmakers milk their one-note premise dry. It leaves the movie feeling like a Saturday Night Live skit stuck on repeat.

Platt and Gordon play lifelong codependent best friends Amos and Rebecca-Diane who teach at AdirondACTS, a struggling summer drama camp for kids in upstate New York. During the off-season, camp founder Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris) and camp manager Rita Cohen (Caroline Aaron) scramble to raise money and recruit young students in order to keep the camp afloat. But things go south after Joan has a seizure that puts her in a coma (we barely see Sedaris again which is a shame. The film could have really used her). As a result it falls to her dimwitted and theater illiterate son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) to run the camp in her absence.

That sets the film’s paper-thin plot in motion. Amos and Rebecca-Diane along with the other staff (most woefully shallow and always cranked up to 10) welcome a new group of kids and begin preparing for their summer production. Meanwhile with the bank only weeks away from foreclosing, the ill-equipped Troy tries to fend off the advances of a well-to-do neighboring camp who have long wanted to gobble up Adirond ACTS for their property.

While there are stray gags that land throughout the movie, it doesn’t take long before it runs out of steam. The high-strung theater sessions, ludicrous acting exercises, and the utter lack of camp cohesion will have you believing you’re watching a disaster. Yet it all culminates in an ending you’ll see coming a mile away – an absurdly picture-perfect stage production that’s so implausible due to the absolute chaos that has preceded it. But to be honest, I’m not sure the film is all that worried about stuff like that. It’s much too busy laughing at its own jokes and wearing out its welcome. “Theater Camp” opens in theaters July 21st.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

It seemed like the once lucrative Transformers franchise had reached its end after 2017’s abysmal “The Last Knight”. It was the fifth film in the series and easily the most expensive. But it flopped at the box office, losing the studio over $100 million. Not long after director Michael Bay would step away and the future of the Transformers on the big screen was in doubt.

But then came “Bumblebee”, an unexpected hit with fans and critics. The film was a spin-off prequel that didn’t come close to cracking the $1 billion mark reached by the Transformers films during their heyday. But it also didn’t cost nearly as much. Even better, it told a smaller scaled and more intimate story that revolves around human characters that audiences could genuinely invest in. The results were pretty great.

Now five years later we have a new Transformers movie called “Rise of the Beasts”. The film is a standalone sequel to 2018’s “Bumblebee”; one that continues the prequel storyline which leads up to the original 2007 film. The film is directed by Steven Caple Jr. (“Creed II”) and is written by a team of five screenwriters. That’s not always a good sign but the script is actually pretty good and their story definitely follows closer to “Bumblebee” than the final Bay film.

Set in 1994, Anthony Ramos takes the lead human role playing an ex-military electronics expert named Noah Diaz. He lives in Brooklyn where he struggles to help support his hard-working mother, Breanna (Lauren Vélez) and his 11-year-old brother, Kris (Dean Scott Vazquez). Making things tougher, Kris is fighting sickle cell disease and he risks losing his access to much needed healthcare because of mounting hospital bills.

Elsewhere in the city, Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) works at a museum as a researcher of newly discovered artifacts. She’s good at her job. Unfortunately she works for a boss who is always taking credit for her hard work. Elena begins studying a falcon statue, taking a special interest in the unknown insignia engraved on its chest. In doing so she accidentally cracks it open revealing a mysterious glowing shard.

After Kris is turned down for treatment, Noah turns to his streetwise friend Reek (Tobe Nwigwe) who convinces him to steal a shiny silver Porsche for some quick and much-needed cash. It goes about as well as you’d expect. The Porsche is actually a Transformer named Mirage (voiced by a hit-or-miss Pete Davidson) and he’s answering the call of his leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). We learn Optimus has summoned his fellow Autobots after picking up the signature of the Transwarp Key – yep, the very shard Elena has discovered inside the Falcon.

We learn the Transwarp Key can open a portal between time and space. The few Autobots hiding themselves on earth want to use it to get back to their home planet of Cybertron. But a planet-devouring entity named Unicron (Colman Domingo) also wants it as it would give him access to an unlimited number of worlds to consume. So Unicron sends his ruthless henchman Scourge (Peter Dinklage) to earth to retrieve it.

Of course that leads to a series of battles between Scourge and the Autobots. We’re also introduced to an ancient group of Transformers long hidden on earth called Maximals. And then there’s Noah and Elena who find themselves thrust into the middle of a war with their planet’s survival on the line. All fit nicely into the story and there are some surprisingly interesting storylines that play out. Better yet, the human characters have some emotional weight. Solid performances from Ramos and Fishback are a big help.

Of course you also have the action sequences, most of them well staged and with just enough restraint to keep from boiling over into mind-melting excess. And even though everything culminates in a sprawling king-sized CGI showdown, the action as a whole has a smaller and more focused feel to it – again, more like “Bumblebee” and less like the five Bay films.

I doubt “Rise of the Beasts” will win over the franchise’s more hardened detractors. And to be fair it’s not without its flaws. Davidson’s comic routine wears thin after a while. Some of needle-drops are laughably bad. And the movie does something with Ramos’ character during its big climax that is beyond goofy. Still Caple Jr. proves to be a sharp and capable filmmaker who does a good job balancing humanity with that big robot entertainment many audiences want from a Transformers movie.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

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