Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

I Think We Just Found a Transformer!

One could ask why they keep making these Transformers movies.  If one were to ask that, one would also have to ask why I never miss one.  But neither of these questions are without answers.  They keep making these movies because they make bank, and I keep watching them because they’re fun.  Really stupid fun, but fun nonetheless.  Let’s see if they can keep that streak alive as I review Transformers: Age of Extinction, written by Ehren Kruger, directed by Michael Bay, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Peter Cullen, Kelsey Grammer, Mark Ryan, Frank Welker, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, John Goodman, John DiMaggio, Ken Watanabe, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing, Titus Welliver, and T.J. Miller.

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is a ridiculously-named struggling inventor/single parent out of Texas that comes across a beaten up old diesel truck that turns out to be the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen).  Having a Transformer in your midst has become quite a dangerous proposition as the head of an elite CIA unit named Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) has been tasked with hunting down the remaining Decepticons, but ever the over-achiever he has decided to hunt down Autobots while he’s at it, with the help of a Transformer bounty hunter named Lockdown (Mark Ryan).  Helping Optimus escape puts Cade, his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), and her boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor) on the lam as they work with Optimus to uncover a joint effort between the CIA and a robotics corporation called KSI to build their own Transformers.

They did it again!  They made another Transformers movie that is completely stupid and poorly-written, but fun enough to make me look forward to the next stupid mess.  Let us not fool ourselves into thinking these movies are anything they’re not.  They’re so dumb, but they jingle their explosive keys in front of your face enough that you might not even notice that most of the people in the movie can barely string a sentence together.  But I noticed!  I notice when people say things like, “My face is my warrant.”  I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I heard them say it, and if they’re going to continue making people say things like that, I’m going to revoke their ability to make their characters say words in their movies.  It’s not like they need them, or use them correctly for that matter.  When they’re allowed to use words, they’ll sometimes even create their own words to equally stupid effect.  Like “Transformium.”  Not since I heard a person utter the word “Unobtainium” in a movie had a word caused my nose to bleed in a movie theater.

And that’s just the dialogue!  Don’t think that the plot itself was seamless.  I mean, we can all get behind the fact that it was Transformers that brought about the end of the dinosaurs.  Except those stupid scientists that think it was an ice age or a meteor, but we all know what’s up.  One thing I didn’t understand is how Tessa’s boyfriend Shane knew that he was needed at the Yeager farm when the CIA showed up.  And if Optimus could repair himself completely by just driving by a clean diesel, then why would he be in such bad shape when Cade found him?  I can’t be on the freeway more than about a minute without seeing a diesel but Optimus couldn’t have repaired himself on his way up from Mexico?

But like I said, I don’t see these movies for the words attributed to it.  The only words that would interest me in looking through a script for this movie would be while looking through the pages to see “explodes.”  This movie won’t let you down for that.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll still get a rush out of watching Optimus Prime bust out a sword and go to town on some bad guys, and you won’t be let down watching Bumblebee throw a boat at some baddies either.  The only real problem I took with the action in the movie was with the Dinobots.  When they showed up, they were awesome, but they took so long to get to them!  They didn’t really show up until the last 20 minutes of the movie.  They were the main reason I was excited to see this movie!  I appreciate that they made good with them when they got around to them, but it was so much two and a half hours of foreplay is a little extreme.  Oh wait, I had one other problem.  It was the part where the rally car jumped out of the window of that building with the most ridiculously convenient ramp in history.  Two I-beams pointing out a window, conveniently the same distance apart as the wheels on said rally car and, the exact same distance from the window as a rally car can jump, an inexplicably created half-pipe for it to land in.

The performances were all what they needed to be in this movie, and you couldn’t really expect or need much more than what they offered.  I still resent the silliness of the name Cade Yeager.  And, as if the name Cade Yeager wasn’t silly enough, he constantly tried to prove he deserved that name with equally silly things to say.  My personal favorite was his plea to a fellow inventor played by Stanley Tucci.  He says, “I know you have a conscience because you’re an inventor, like me?”  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Are inventors notoriously conscientious?  Sure, some inventors gave us great things like the car and internet porn, but someone also invented terrible things like the atomic bomb and Kristen Stewart.  The fact that he was an inventor didn’t really work out that well either.  The movie expects me to believe that he’s up to the task of aiding in the repair of an alien robot but all he’s ever been able to do on his own is make a robot that can shoot a basketball into a hoop and a robot that can transport a beer 4 feet in 20 minutes.  They also never really bothered to explain how an inventor (a job typically reserved for people that look like the cast of Revenge of the Nerds) turned out to be ripped like Marky Mark Wahlberg.  Nicola Peltz was kind of a twat as his teenaged daughter, but she was probably only there as the occasional eye candy.  Her boyfriend was a piece of shit too.  What kind of boyfriend would say, “I like to be fresh when I’m making out with your daughter,” to his girlfriend’s dad?  Even a dad that was not overprotective would beat your ass for that.  I had a couple problems with the Transformers as well.  I enjoy that Bumblebee typically only speaks in movie quotes, but when he says, “Hey you guys,” at one point in the movie how could you not have chosen the clip of Sloth from Goonies to say that?  Fail, movie!  I also didn’t understand the character Drift at all.  Why does the Bugatti Veyron turn into a Japanese Samurai?  I don’t know much about cars, but the name Bugatti Veyron doesn’t sound Japanese to me.

No logical individual could go into Transformers: Age of Extinction expecting much more out of it than what the movie delivers.  Fairly pointless story and terrible dialogue, but with plenty enough things exploding to make you forget how stupid the movie is because you’re having fun.  Shut off your brain and enjoy.  An active brain won’t help you enjoy this movie at all.  Transformers: Age of Extinction gets “You gotta have faith, Prime.  Maybe not in who we are, but who we can be” out of “Sweetie, get my alien gun!”

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Ted (2012)

I Hear the Fat Kid Running.  I Bet It’s Hilarious.

Though I wasn’t able to get the triple feature I was hoping to when I went to see Spider-Man, a double feature was within my abilities.  It required that I first wait outside in the scorching Las Vegas summer temperatures for an hour, but it had the potential to be worth it.  If nothing else, it would make for a review.  And a request, as this movie was requested by my cousin Jeremy.  This movie caused many strange feelings for me, mainly because I didn’t feel like I wanted to see it.  This was strange because I love the guy that wrote and directed it and I’ve been a fan of his TV show for quite some time.  Yet, when he brought out a movie, I looked at the trailer and turned my nose up at it.  When it came out, I had been told by numerous people that it was worth seeing, but I could not be swayed.  Apparently, they all forgot that I review movies and take requests, and that requesting it might actually make me go see it.  Well my cousin didn’t forget as stupidity does not run in our bloodline … at least not on the male side.  And so I bring my review of Ted, written, directed by, and starring Seth MacFarlane, and also starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Giovanni Ribisi, Aedin Mincks, Patrick Stewart, Joel McHale, Matt Walsh, Patrick Warburton, Ralph Garman, Alex Borstein, Jessica Barth, Norah Jones, Sam J. Jones, Ryan Reynolds, and Tom Skerritt.

Young John Bennett has no friends.  For Christmas, he gets a large teddy bear that he cleverly names Ted.  But its limited vocabulary is not enough for John, so he wishes that Ted would learn how to talk.  Miraculously, his wish comes true and Ted comes to life.  After his parents (Alex Borstein and Ralph Garman) get over their initial shock, they take part in making Ted a brief celebrity.  In 2012, Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) has lost his celebrity and now lives with John (Mark Wahlberg) and his girlfriend of four years, Lori (Mila Kunis).  Over their anniversary dinner, John comes to realize that Lori was hoping he would propose, but doesn’t want to marry a 35-year-old who hangs out and smokes weed with his teddy bear.  Lori doesn’t want to lay down a him-or-me ultimatum, but it may come to that anyway.  Also in the mix is Lori’s boss, Rex (Joel McHale), who really wants to bang her and a crazed stalker named Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) and his son Robert (Aedin Mincks) who want to kidnap Ted.

I still can’t really put into words why I didn’t find myself interested in this movie, but I’m very happy that I finally relented to seeing it.  It’s not the greatest comedy ever (but it does reference the greatest comedy ever, in my opinion), but it’s a solid movie with lots of laughs throughout.  I don’t know why I didn’t expect it, being such a fan of the Family Guy and American Dad as I am, but it’s always nice to be surprised.  A lot of the humor is not far removed from what you’d see in a typical episode of Family Guy or American Dad, but they never do any of the flashback or cutaway jokes that people have complained about in Family Guy.  It’s just straight up funniness.  And a lot of it is nerdy jokes, which I always appreciate.  They recreate the dance scene from Airplane! for crying out loud!  Any movie that does that is alright in my book.  I got confused by one nerdy joke in the movie though, when it was revealed that Lori’s ringtone on John’s phone was the Imperial Death March.  What’s wrong with that?  That’s the ringtone I use for my mom on my phone.  (That is not a joke).  There’s also a scene where Ted and John do coke at a party, and that scene is all the way hilarious.  How does that count as a nerdy joke?  ‘Cause fuckin’ Flash Gordon (the real one!) is in that whole scene.  There may have been jokes that were lost on me in this scene as I have never seen Flash Gordon, but I think I got the gist of it.  I didn’t understand how this party was the straw that broke the camels back for Lori in their relationship though.  How are you going to get mad at your guy for going to that party?  Does he often get to hang out with his childhood heroes?  I understand you were reaching the end of your rope with the guy, but you have to let that one go.  There were some pretty sweet fights in the movie as well.  There was one near the end of the movie that reminded me of the fight from the third Bourne movie, but slightly different because one half of it was a teddy bear and not a big black guy.  There’s also a point where a kid gets punched in the face, and that’s just delicious.

The performances in this movie are all alright by me.  I’ve never really been too big of a fan of Mark Wahlberg, but I liked him in this movie.  He was funny in the movie, and there were even parts where he was downright cute, like when he was cowering in the kitchen yelling at Lori as she tried to clean up hooker poop.  Mila Kunis was very cute in the movie, and you felt for her very frequently in the movie.  But she’s always cute.  She probably can’t help it.  And at least she wasn’t Meg, am I right?  Seth MacFarlane brought a great deal of the comedy to the movie as Ted, and he brought even more to it as the writer of the movie.  You could expect that when looking at the trailers for the movie, but MacFarlane does share the funny pretty evenly with the rest of the cast.  I had gotten myself all smug and self-satisfied to say that Ted’s voice occasionally goes into Peter Griffin territory, but then they made the joke and made me look like a real dick-hole.  One of my favorite parts for Ted was a smaller moment in the movie, but it was when he was interviewing for his job, or pretty much all of his interactions with his boss.  Giovanni Ribisi was also in this movie, and he was as creepy as he was funny.  Norah Jones is also in the movie, but all I can say about her is that a Norah Jones concert looks like a boring time.  Not because of the music, but because the audience just seems to stand there and sway back and forth.  Where’s the mosh pit?  I had also heard that Ryan Reynolds was in this movie in a small part, but even that feels like an understatement.  He might as well have just wondered by in the background and waved.

I had inexplicably low expectations for Ted going in, but it blew them out of the water.  Turns out Seth MacFarlane can make funny in various different scenarios.  The movie is often laugh out loud funny, amusing the rest of the time, and even manages a good deal of emotional scenes.  Though I’d say the ending was not unexpected, it was the enjoyable way to end the movie.  The performances all help the movie along to their inevitable goal of being a fun and enjoyable movie.  This movie is definitely worth a watch in the theaters, so go do it.  Ted gets “Look what Jesus did!” out of “Somewhere out there are four terrible fathers I wish I could thank for this great night.”

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The Fighter (2010)

White People Do This to Other White People

The award nominations that today’s movie received piqued my interest in it.  But, generally speaking, I get turned off by these types of movies.  Drama movies tend to be quite the journey to make it through, having their ups and downs and usually the downs are a lot heavier than the ups.  But I’m also a fan of boxing movies.  I would never call myself a boxing fan, but boxing movies tend to be more interesting.  They’re usually fairly uplifting stories about facing adversity and rising above it.  And there’s some face punching to keep me interested.  I put today’s movie on my Netflix queue when I started doing reviews and even noticed that it was streaming instantly, but I never felt like I was in the mood to watch it.  It took so long that it actually got sent to me even though I could’ve watched it without having to wait on shipping, but it sat on my desk unwatched for a while longer.  I finally reached a point where I couldn’t think of anything else to watch, so I decided it was time to watch this movie.  Let’s see how that went in my review of The Fighter, based on the life of Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson, directed by David O. Russell, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Jack McGee, Mickey O’Keefe, Frank Renzulli, and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts, managed by his mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) and trained by his half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale).  Micky is not doing well as a boxer, considered mainly a stepping stone for better boxers, but he’s looking to change that.  Dicky is being filmed by a documentary crew about his comeback.  Micky gets left in a bad situation – fighting a boxer he shouldn’t be fighting – by his mother and brother, which leaves him wondering if he’s in the best situation for him.  His brother’s addiction to crack is not really helping matters.  He meets and starts a relationship with a bartender named Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), but she’s not really accepted by his family.  Dicky’s trouble eventually leads to his incarceration, and Micky gets his hand broken in the process.  While in jail, Dicky and his family are embarrassed to find that the documentary was actually called High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell, and actually about Dicky’s crack addiction.  With Charlene at his side, Micky cuts his mother loose, gets a new manager, starts training with Micky O’Keefe (Himself), and starts actually winning fights.

At first, I found myself a little let down by this movie.  Not because it wasn’t good or anything, but because I somehow went in expecting a different movie.  I don’t know how I got those expectations, knowing that this movie actually got award consideration, but I was kind of expecting a movie about boxing.  Boxing is actually fairly secondary in this movie to the family drama.  Once I had gotten that through my mind and I realized what I was watching, it made the movie much better.  I don’t think I’d say the story was what deserved to be applauded as it was just the life of Micky and Dicky.  They were interesting lives and made for an interesting watch, but I don’t feel comfortable giving the writers too much credit.  The action of the movie was decent too, when it happened.  The fights were few and far between and I would’ve appreciated more of them, but that wasn’t really what this movie was going for.  I probably would’ve appreciated more action-packed, Rocky-esque fights, but that also wasn’t really what they were going for.  They wanted realistic boxing, but since I’ve never been that big of a fan of actual boxing, that never really excited me.  Of course, my favorite part of boxing is always just watching the knockout compilations on YouTube.  Real boxing is often too slow for me, but if you’re a boxing fan you’ll probably really enjoy the realism of the fight.

I think the greater majority of the praise this movie received came from the performances.  And these performances certainly did not disappoint.  The greater majority of the cast not only put on a great performance, but they became the character.  I don’t know that I’d call the greater majority of them likeable, but they seemed like the real people they were trying to be (at least as best as I can tell from the limited time I’ve spent with them on the making of featurette).  I wasn’t entirely impressed with Mark Wahlberg in this one … or any one I can think of.  He was probably a lot like Micky Ward, but I don’t know Micky Ward.  I’ve seen Mark Wahlberg before, and he acted a lot like him.  He wasn’t bad, but everyone else being really good makes him fall short.  Christian Bale was almost unrecognizable.  He lost a lot of weight, wore fake teeth, and acted exactly like a crackhead.  I didn’t want to have to spend any time around that guy.  Same goes for Melissa Leo as their mother.  She was a controlling annoying bitch, who would rather defend her crackhead son than give Micky the credit he deserves.  Amy Adams was also really good in this movie, and was hot and wore a bra you could see her nipples through.  YAY!  And she’s the one that punches one of Micky’s asshole family members in the face, which was very satisfying to me.  Micky’s baby mamma was also a dirty bitch.  Basically, none of these characters were likeable, but the actors deserve props for acting like them.

The Fighter was a good movie, but not entirely what I expected when I went in.  The story was good, the boxing was very realistic, and the performances were mostly superb.  Being not a fan of dramas or boxing, it’s not really the movie for me, but there are definitely lots of people that would love this movie, and nobody can take anything away from the performances.  I recommend this movie for a watch.  Especially since it’s available to stream on Netflix.  The Fighter gets “I told everybody I was gonna win that fight and get back on track” out of “I heard she’s into threeways!”

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