Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) - Michael Bay

Taking place several years after the events of the last film, Transformers 4 is the story of Cade Yaeger, an inventor, who is struggling to raise his teenage daughter on his own with little money coming in from his work.  With humanity still attempting to pick up the pieces after the horrific events in Chicago, a deep secret group of mercenaries attempt to ensure our future by hunting down and eradicating the remaining transformers in hiding.  Cade purchases an old semi-truck that turns out to be Optimus Prime in hiding, setting off a series of events where he and his daughter find themselves in the middle of a war between the autobots, a corrupt government agency, and an ancient, powerful new menace intent on hunting down Optimus.  Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction is more of an endurance test than anything else; a bombastic, tedious meshing of poor characters, computer generated effects, and nauseating action.  Mark Whalberg feels very out of place in this film as Cade Yaeger, a man in which the audience is given very little reason to care.  His main arch revolves around his inability to be successful as an inventor, with an incredibly cheesy and eye-roll inducing over-protective father storyline that's painful to watch.  Every character in this film is uninteresting both on the human side and the transformers side, almost as if Bay is just creating filler in-between the computer generated carnage.  Transformers 4 is certainly a pretty film to look at, with a few impressive moments of computer generated carnage but at roughly 160 minutes it overstays its welcome with a story that seems to become more and more dumb the longer it goes. 

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