Transformers: Age Of Extinction

(M) ★

Director: Michael Bay.

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Li Bingbing, Sophia Myles, Titus Welliver, T. J. Miller.

"Nobody shoot! I wanna see him turn into something."

It's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which Transformers movie sucks the most.

It's definitely not the first one, which was bafflingly awesome, but as the series continues the first one looks more and more like a fluke and that rarest of beasts - a truly good Michael Bay film.

Now the race for the title of Worst Transformers Movie has a new contender to rival Revenge Of The Fallen (#2) and the almost-as-bad Dark Of The Moon (#3): ladies and gentlemen, presenting Age Of Extinction.

Having dispensed with Shia LaBeouf and whoever the Megan Fox replacement was in Dark Of The Moon, Bay has taken a vaguely different tack in part four, which is set four years after the "Battle Of Chicago" that climaxed the previous film.

Since then, the CIA (led by Grammer's shifty black ops leader) has been hunting down Transformers - both good (Autobots) and bad (Decepticons) - and turning them over to tech company KSI (led by Tucci's Steve Jobs-like Joshua Joyce).

In the eyes of the CIA, all Transformers are alien terrorists, and in the eyes of KSI, Transformers are the key to the future of weaponry.

But Grammer and his stooges are having trouble finding the last few Transformers, particularly their leader Optimus Prime.

Meanwhile, near-destitute Texan inventor Cade Yeager (Wahlberg) buys a broken-down truck for $150 and, well, anyone who's seen any of the previous three movies or watched the TV show as a kid will know where this is heading.

Firstly, believing Wahlberg is a near-destitute Texan inventor is one of the toughest tasks inflicted by a casting director on an audience since John Travolta played a woman in Hairspray or Denise Richards played a nuclear physicist in The World Is Not Enough.

That's fine, we all like Wahlberg, and he's a great actor in the right film. Unfortunately, he's not the kind of lead who can elevate a bad film (like, for example, The Happening).

But that is the least of this film's worries.

There's a little thing called "the suspension of disbelief" which happens every time you walk into a cinema. For the duration of the film, you will believe the unbelievable, whether it be that men have cloned dinosaurs and put them in a theme park, or that there are secretly a bunch of wizards running around England, or even that a bunch of living robots have come to Earth in search of something called the Allspark. This allows you to buy into the film's world and enjoy it.

That's all well and good but it's when a film's own internal logic doesn't make sense that movies become truly unbelievable and this is what makes Age Of Extinction a ludicrous, mind-numbing waste of two and three-quarter hours.

So much of this film makes little sense, characters make infuriatingly dumb decisions, stupid coincidences pop up a lot, Bay wastes time with cut-able nonsense when the film is already way too damned long, and every time you think you can forgive him because something half-way intelligent or cool happens, he drags you kicking and screaming back to the stupidity basement with some kind of "what the?" moment.

By the time you get to the movie's supposed nerdgasm  - Optimus Prime unleashes the Dinobots - you will be long past bored, your mind vapourised in an endless wave of computer-generated carnage, pyrotechnics, pathetic attempts at characterisation, and a barrage of product placement.

There's one shining diamond in the manure here and it's Stanley Tucci. He is too good for this film, and what he does with his character is too good for this film, and the fact that his character is reasonably well rounded and actually has a proper arc is too good for this film. It makes you feel even sorrier for Wahlberg having to deliver line after line of "over-protective dad" schtick which stops being funny or necessary 10 minutes in.

It's a tough call as to whether this is worse than the terribly edited Revenge Of The Fallen. At least we can see the action taking place here, as repetitive and overly explosive as it is, but within a couple of hours of watching it you will be struggling to remember much of the film at all.

Which might be a good thing.

22 Jump Street

(MA15+) ★★★

Director: Phil Lord & Chris Miller.

Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Wyatt Russell, Amber Stevens, Peter Stormare, Jillian Bell.

"Oh yeah? Well at least I don't wear long sleeves."

THE unlikely box office success of TV show reboot 21 Jump Street meant a sequel was always likely, and ordinarily a sentence with the terms "TV show reboot" and "sequel" in it would have sensible people running for the hills.

Fortunately 22 Jump Street is as funny as its across-the-road predecessor, while still being smart enough not to take the whole thing seriously.

After a quick gag parodying the start of the old TV show and an introductory action sequence, the movie launches into a "meta" set-up explaining how second time around Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) will have "twice the money to do exactly the same thing", even pointing out the obligatory problems bound to upset the relationship between the pair.

It's disarming and also kind of charming that the film immediately points out its own shortcomings and turns them into gags - yes, the plot about two mismatched undercover cops trying to bust a college drug ring (it was high school last time) is the same as before but so what, here, have a joke or two at our own expense.

However, the plot is not why you're here. You're here (or should be here) for The Hill & Tatum Show, which worked so well first time around and is just as good this time, taking the bromance to hilarious new levels with an added "jealous lover" character arc for Schmidt, and a humourous side serve of closet homoeroticism between Jenko and his new football-playing soul mate Zook (Russell).

Tatum's knack for comedy and playing dumb is dangerously good and Hill has been doing these roles since his break-out in Superbad, but Cube goes perilously close to stealing the show in places as the Captain of the Jump Street division, as does Bell as the room-mate of Hill's love interest and Rob Riggle in a returning cameo.

22 Jump Street knows the strengths of the previous film and unashamedly rolls them out again - the meta sequel gags, action movie tropes as jokes, the odd-couple pairing of its stars. The college setting means we get the usual American college movie bits, like spring break, frat parties, and initiations, but there are some more unlikely laughs to be found here as well, such as in a slam poetry session, public art, and the walk of shame after a big night.

Lord & Miller (Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, The Lego Movie) aren't afraid to be a bit daring with their choices either, whether it be using on-screen graphics during a weird equipment checklist scene or a sight gag referencing Benny Hill or a crazy hallucination sequence or even a tiny 'ding' that can be heard just before Jenko finally catches up on what's going on just prior to the film's funniest sequence (which had the audience in stitches).

22 Jump Street isn't perfect or ground-breaking or even especially memorable, but it's fantastic dumb fun and actually kind of clever in its own post-modern way.

It's unlikely Lord & Miller and Hill & Tatum could sustain this three-star level for another film, but this is something they've already taken into consideration - the end credits are full of an entertaining list of sequels and spin-offs that not even they would be game enough to make.

But then again, Hollywood is not one to leave a cash cow alone for long, so who knows - 23 Jump Street, anyone?

Blended

(PG) ★★

Director: Frank Coraci.

Cast: Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Bella Thorne, Emma Fuhrmann, Braxton Beckham, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Kyle Red Silverstein.

The screening of Grown Ups was not going well.

DREW Barrymore tends to bring out the best in Adam Sandler - so much so that their re-teaming almost saves Blended, Sandler's latest effort.

Undoubtedly, this is Sandler's best movie since 2009's Funny People, but that's not saying much because he's starred in nothing but crap since then: Grown Ups 1 & 2, Just Go With It, Jack & Jill, That's My Boy ... that's a pretty craptacular list of movies right there.

Maybe Sandler knows he's overdue for something that's, if not a hit, at least watchable. Maybe that's why he called up Barrymore, his co-star in two of his best efforts, 1998's The Wedding Singer and 2004's 50 First Dates. Surely lightning can strike the same place three times, right?

Buried somewhere in this overlong and largely unfunny film is a sweet family comedy that only clocks in at 90 minutes instead of 117 minutes.

It features Barrymore as Lauren, who is left to raise her two sons by herself after she kicks her douchebag philandering husband to the kerb, and Sandler as Jim, who is left to raise his three daughters after his wife dies.

Having shared a disastrous first date, Jim and Lauren then coincidentally end up with their families at a resort in South Africa, where everyone learns, grows, and becomes better people.

Unfortunately, this is not that potentially innocuous but amiable "sweet family comedy". Instead its an innocuous but amiable "sweet family comedy" lost amid the usual Sandler crap - dozens of joke misfires, a couple of unfunny comedic relief cameos (Shaquille O'Neal and Terry Crews), dodgy running gags, cliché after cliché, a seemingly inevitable dance sequence, trained monkeys - which merely drags out the realisation that this is not really worth your time.

It's a shame. While this is an improvement on almost everything Sandler's made since 50 First Dates, it could have been better.

There are nice heart-filled themes at the core of the film - the travails of single parenting, the struggle to find love again, kids dealing with loss/inadequacy/change - and these lead to some genuinely touching moments.

But amid the bad jokes and some clunky pacing, they become tokenistic, leaving you with the feeling its only the star wattage of Barrymore and Sandler that saved this from being a Disney Channel straight-to-TV production.

As a result, it's almost surprising when the film finds the funny bone. There are a couple of good laughs, especially early on in the film, mainly courtesy of Barrymore or the youngest kid Alyvia Alyn Lind, and Sandler is refreshingly sympathetic and unannoying for once (having his character's wife die of cancer certainly helps elicit empathy and keeps him pleasantly subdued).

But Blended never reaches its potential. It was probably always destined to be the lesser of the Barrymore-Sandler trilogy with its generic-feeling Brady Bunch Goes To Africa plot, but there was hope that the re-pairing of the stars could elevate this above the usual dross Sandler has been dishing up lately.

How To Train Your Dragon 2

(PG) ★★★★

Director: Dean DeBlois.

Cast: (voices) Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Djimon Hounsou, Craig Ferguson.

They're like dogs, but uglier. A lot uglier.

IN How To Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks Animation hit a home run, unleashing one of their finest films to date.

With its smart script, strong themes, and a delivery that was never dumbed-down, writer/director Dean DeBlois delivered the studio their best-reviewed CG film to date - better even than Shrek and Kung Fu Panda.

Following up such a success can be hard to do, but DeBlois' powers haven't diminished. In fact, he dares to go deeper, smarter and even darker, honing in on the elements that made the first film work while expanding the world it's set in.

Once again focusing on our differently abled heroes, Hiccup and his dragon Toothless (both are missing body parts), the sequel picks up five years on from the original to find the Viking villagers of Berk living in perfect harmony with their dragons.

Everything is idyllic, except Hiccup (Baruchel) is not enamoured with the idea of succeeding his father Stoick (Butler) as chief of Berk. Hiccup would rather be out exploring the world with Toothless and mapping new territories.

But a chance encounter with dragon trappers leads Hiccup to the realisation not all the world is at peace with dragons, putting him in further conflict with his father and leading him to the film's big bad, the scar-faced Drago Bloodfist (Hounsou).

DeBlois has been touting this movie in interviews as the Empire Strikes Back of his planned trilogy and for once it's not hyperbole or over-ambition - this is indeed the darker film, complete with the bittersweet end-note (Hiccup also brandishes something not unlike a lightsaber and we are introduced to a "light side" and "dark side" of dragoneering).

While its bloodless violence and dragon-on-dragon warfare still keeps things to a family-friendly level, the sequel is not afraid to push things with some moments - the emotional peak at the end of the second act is genuinely surprising and affecting. On top of that Bloodfist is probably the most terrifying CG film villain seen for a while (and sure to be the impetus for some questioning along the lines of "why is the movie's lone black character the bad guy?").

The sequel is far from perfect but, as with its predecessor, the flaws get overwhelmed by the heart and the smarts. DeBlois is happy to spend time building up certain characters and their relationships, but the editing is good enough to pick things up again when it feels like the quiet moments have dragged on too long.

There are some good laughs along the way, but this is an intriguingly serious affair (aside from the odd flying sheep) that should prove rewarding and engaging for all ages.

A Million Ways To Die In The West

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Seth MacFarlane.

Cast: Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Liam Neeson.

"But, my good sir, you don't own a moustache!"

IN his directorial debut Ted, Seth MacFarlane showed a fair amount of promise.

Despite it being an often puerile comedy about a bong-smoking anthropomorphic teddy bear, Ted managed to mix some solid gags with a good dose of heart and even a decent amount of tension and drama.

Less successful is this attempt at a comedy western, in which MacFarlane's biggest shortcoming is his abilities as a leading man.

There are still plenty of good laughs - if you're a fan of Family Guy, American Dad, or Ted, the humour will be right up your alley - but a lot of film misses the mark, whether it be thanks to annoying characters, frustrating segues, or the plot struggling to find direction amid the comedy.

MacFarlane stars as Albert, a sheep farmer born in the wrong place at the wrong time - his nerdish pacifism and sense of self-preservation doesn't fit in with life in the Wild West circa 1882.

His thoroughly modern attitude to life has also worn down his girlfriend Louise (Seyfried), who dumps Albert for the town's moustache shop manager Foy (Harris).

But during a chance meeting amid a saloon brawl, Albert meets the equally anachronistic Anna (Theron), who decides to help Albert win back Louise's affections.

Unfortunately for Albert, Anna is the wife of Clinch Leatherwood (Neeson) - the meanest, nastiest gunslinger in the west and the type of guy who doesn't take too kindly to strange men spending time with his woman.

There's ample opportunity for humour and MacFarlane and co's script starts strong, diving into bits about diplomatic attempts to resolve gunfights, the troubles with dating a saloon prostitute, and a lengthy rant on the titular mortality rate of those on the frontier.

But the gags run out of steam, dwindling to a barrage of poo, fart and wee jokes as the film wears out its welcome and struggles to pull together a satisfying third act.

It's a good thing the comedy is so strong at the start because it helps compensate for MacFarlane's so-so performance. The audience will warm to him as he goes on but he struggles to maintain a chemistry with Theron, and given much of the film finds the pair firmly in rom-com territory, it's a definite downside to A Million Ways. The strong supporting cast - Ribisi, Theron, Neeson and Harris in particular - helps prop MacFarlane up, but also inadvertently highlights his wobbly turn.

As co-writer, co-producer, director and star, there's no doubt this is MacFarlane's baby, but some guidance and outside influence wouldn't have gone astray. A lengthy CG-heavy drug hallucination scene towards the film's end is distractingly redundant and there are more than a few jokes that could have made way for a more streamlined film.

On the plus side, there are some cool cameos from Christopher Lloyd, Gilbert Gottfried, Bill Maher, Ryan Reynolds and Jamie Foxx, and some genuinely funny and clever moments.

If MacFarlane had hoped to join the short list of classic comedy-westerns (which contains the likes of Blazing Saddles and Back To The Future III), he's fallen short, but if you like the idea of Brian Griffin from Family Guy as a sheep farmer in the wild west, then this film is for you.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past

(M) ★★★★

Director: Bryan Singer.

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Peter Dinklage, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page.

"Are you not entertained .... by my incredible cosplay?"

Time travel is a notoriously tricky device to use in movies.

Adding more characters with every increasing sequel (especially in comic book movies) is also fraught with danger.

With this in mind, the seventh movie to be based on the comic book mutants known as the X-Men isn't just playing with fire, it's juggling lit dynamite.

Returning director Bryan Singer has taken the cast of the original X-Men trilogy and combined them with the stars of the prequel X-Men: First Class in a decade-jumping story set both in 1973 and 2023.

In spite of the difficulties, or perhaps because of the way the film embraces these elements, Days Of Future Past is one of those increasingly rare things - a genuinely excellent X-Men film (alongside the 2000 original, 2003's X2 and 2011's First Class in case you're wondering how long that list is).

In 2023, the few surviving mutants fight running battles against the Sentinels, a bunch of murderous robots that ran rampant and ushered in a dystopia for mutant-kind and human-kind.

Among the last of the X-Men are Professor X (Stewart), Magneto (McKellan), Kitty Pryde (Page) and Wolverine (Jackman), who figure the best way to end the war with the Sentinels is to use Kitty's powers to send Wolverine back in time and stop the madness before it begins.

That will involve Wolverine visiting 1973 and convincing younger versions of Professor X (McAvoy) and Magneto (Fassbender) to work together to prevent shape-shifting mutant Mystique (Lawrence) from kick-starting anti-mutant sentiment when she shoots Sentinels inventor Bolivar Trask (Dinklage).

It sounds complex and weird when you lay it out like that, but Days Of Future Past feels surprisingly linear and straightforward while it's happening. Deftly edited so as to keep events focused, the film rockets along at a solid pace, and while comic book movie fans of the future will surely poke holes in its time travel structure, for the present it seems to work.

As for that other potential problem of having too many comic book characters - otherwise known as Batman & Robin Disorder or Spider-Man 3 Syndrome (depending on whether you prefer DC or Marvel) - Days Of Future Past deals with it in the best possible: by simply ignoring the problem.

Rather than worrying about ensuring every character has an arc, it uses its multitude of mutants as either plot devices, weapons or key players.

For example, Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Kitty Pryde and even Wolverine don't get much in the way of development but their powers mean the plot couldn't happen without them (and Quicksilver's main sequence is as awesome as Nightcrawler's White House break-in in X2).

As for the majority of cool-looking mutants with neat names - Toad, Spike, Ink, Havok, Blink, Sunspot, Warpath, Colossus, Bishop - they're here to fight, preferably while demonstrating their special abilities. Most of them are only here as fan-bait and thankfully the film doesn't bother overloading its story with lesser unnecessary character subplots.

The key players, as with First Class, are Professor X, Magneto and Mystique, and Simon Kinberg's screenplay doesn't short-change their fascinating relationship triangle. It's a shame Wolverine and Beast (Hoult) don't get much more to do than quip, fight and give pointed looks, but it's a relief in a way because it means Days Of Future Past can strike a balance between its stunning action sequences, its central three-way character interaction, the continuing discrimination themes of the series, and its fan-baiting and in-jokes.

The end product is suitably lean, while managing to be a perfect blend of all-audience sci-fi actioner and fans-only nerd-out (there are some great cameos at the end for the true X-fans).

But when you consider much of the cast has either won or been nominated for an Oscar and that Singer was responsible for two of the best X-movies (X-Men and X2) perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising that Days Of Future Past works so well.

Godzilla (2014)

(M) ★★★★

Director: Gareth Edwards.

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathairn, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche.

They were going to need a bigger boat.

Over 60 years and roughly 30 films, Godzilla has gained a reputation as the most fearsome of the kaiju (a Japanese word that means "monster" and which has become a genre of movies unto itself).

The reality is that Godzilla hasn't been the "king of monsters" for a long time. The last Japanese Godzilla film was made 10 years ago and it flopped, while America's last attempt resulted in Roland Emmerich's 1998 Razzie-winning disaster which did well at the box office but copped such a critical hiding that the studio gave up on making sequels.

It must be said that even the original films from the '50s, while influential, are, at best, pieces of schlocky fun that don't hold up terribly well today. Born of nuclear fears in a post-Hiroshima Japan, they served a purpose and are great party movies, but they don't stand as cinematic classics, like say the 1933 original of King Kong.

With all that in mind, why would anyone try to make another Godzilla movie and how could anyone possibly make one that's any good?

I have no idea about the "why" but Gareth Edwards found a way to make Godzilla awesome again. This version is everything Emmerich hoped his 1998 version would be, and everything Guillermo del Toro was wishing his kaiju dud Pacific Rim would be, but Edwards sidesteps all the dumb mistakes those directors made to deliver something weirdly relevant, sporadically jaw-dropping, and that lets us care about its characters, including the big building-smasher himself.

Even the opening credits are riveting, tantalising us with nuclear testing imagery, glimpses of Godzilla, and hints of a mysterious cover-up, all dating back to 1954. Then it opens proper in 1999, where Joe Brody (Cranston) and his wife Sandy (Binoche) endure the worst day of their lives at the nuclear plant where they work in Japan.

It leaves Joe a broken man struggling to connect with his son Ford (Taylor-Johnson) and in the present day they are estranged - Ford having joined the navy and started a family, while Joe still lives in Japan where he tries to uncover the truth about what happened on that fateful day in 1999.

This is the point where the film proclaims "Here be monsters!" but it does so in unexpected ways. It never scrimps on the action but relentlessly teases and hints at its big reveals to make them all the more impressive when they finally arrive. When you finally see Godzilla about halfway into proceedings, you realise you've been on the edge of your seat waiting for this moment for an hour. Edwards deals out his big moments sparingly, building to its mega-kaiju climax.

The best part is you really care about the climax because you care about Godzilla. The trick of King Kong was that we cared about the monster, and Edwards is aware of this and realises it's part of what made that film work.

But on a human level, this reboot also ticks boxes because we have humans with real concerns and fears and emotions for us to empathise with, unlike the caricatures that ran around screaming in Emmerich's Godzilla or the collections of bad clichés that populated Pacific Rim.

Taylor-Johnson does a great job in a role that is a mix of rejected son, desperate father, and action hero, while Cranston gets to walk the fine line between madman and genius in his brief moments. Olsen also does well, but it's a shame Watanabe doesn't have more to do than looked stunned for the entire film and that Strathairn is reduced to Token Military Man. Thankfully the emotions of the film revolve around Taylor-Johnson and Olsen.

As such, their parts bring Godzilla back to being a disaster film instead of a straight-out rock-'em-sock-'em kaiju battle. Edwards spends a long time focusing on the fallout and the ground level struggles happening as a result of the monster mash that's going on (something del Toro also largely forgot to do). It gives the film context and another reason to care about the characters and what's going on.

On a broader level, the script acknowledges the nuclear age fears that powered the original films in the '50s - fears that seem particularly relevant given the Fukushima meltdown of 2011. There are also ideas about man being powerless in the face of nature - a theme that never goes out of fashion.

Of course, there are holes and plot points and silly things along the way (Watanabe's character is apparently at least 70 years old, and typically the military have no idea what the hell they are doing), but they are merely mild annoyances rather than deal-breakers in the face of some genuinely exciting and cheer-worthy spectacle.

Edwards has made both an enjoyable modern kaiju film and an impressive disaster movie at the same time. Surely this is a feat of Godzilla-sized proportions.