Part One: Less Than Meets the Eye
Part Two: Puny Humans
Part Three: Car Commercials in Disguise
Category Archives: Movies
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): Part III – Car Commercials In Disguise
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): Part II – Puny Humans
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009): Part I – Less than Meets the Eye
The Island (2005)
I expected to hate The Island. But 2005 was a real bi-polar year. We all learned what it means to miss New Orleans, but look on the bright side: Batman came back to unexpectedly-viable life, I was enjoying all the benefits of dating a Reed College student, and Michael Bay directed a film that doesn’t totally suck. It’s not good…but it fits in with the general tone of this site a whole hell of a lot better than, say, The Rock. I’m a Sci-Fi geek through and through. Gave up making apologies for that sometime in the early-90s, around the time Star Trek started rocking my world.
As such, I could care less about frat boy circle jerks, like the Bad Boys duology or Pearl Harbor. This film faced longer odds then a sailor on the U.S.S. Arizona on December 7, 1941. And yet it…kinda…sorta…beat them. Continue reading The Island (2005)
Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VIII
Episode 9 – Hive
On the vaguely-Pacific island of Santa Marta, a species of enormous, animate plant disturbs a band of youthful-looking looters come to scavenge the island’s hastily-evacuated luxury resort. So, in five seconds we have a deserted island, a grumbling volcano, and plants trying to build up their Hentai street-cred. Just another day in Godzilla: The Series.
And, like any other day, H.E.A.T. arrives after the credits, and team lead Nick Tatopolus is quick to claim the moral high ground. “We’re not just here on their word,” meaning the word of those damned looters. “The resort company also asked us to check it out.” The increasingly-annoying Randy, for once, delivers some useful information with his follow-up quip. “And he asked in the universal language: moolah.”
So there’s one groovy mystery solved. We know now that H.E.A.T., like the Ghostbusters before them, works on spec. Probably offering “professional megafauna investigation and elimination.” Or, in the managerial argot of the late-90s, “innovative, giant monster relocation services and solutions.” Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part VIII
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Or, The One Everyone Hates. And I mean really, really, really hates. That’d be Part V for me, but I understand why everyone pretends that false start of A New Beginning never happened. And I understand the hatred of this…thing.
Seriously, this is Friday the 13th Lite, a cringing, half-hearted attempt to shift the series toward (of all things) respectability. It ended up disappointing everyone from casual movie watchers to the stuffed suits at the top of Paramount’s food chain by exceeding even the most cynical critic’s lowest expectations. Bucking a trend for the series, turned out to be derivative and dull. How did this happen? How did one of the most iconic horror franchises in history sink so low? Continue reading Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Bad Boys II (2003)
Instead of doing my normal thing, I thought I’d summarize this film from the perspective of an actual Michael Bay fan. So I went and kidnapped one: Mr. Daniel Ichluguer. After a few days of torturous medical experimentation by my Mad Scientist alter-ego (some of us had one back in ’99, before it was cool) I think I’ve finally got him to the point where he’ll do pretty much whatever I want, so long as I use his control phrase. So, Daniel…would you kindly summarize the film for my reading audience?
Dude! So there’s like, this guy, right? And he’s all like, tryin’ to be all that in the Miami drug scene, know what I mean, playah? He’s like, smuggling ecstasy outta Amsterdam (cuz that’s where drugs come from) in like, coffins and shit, cuz he own this funeral home as a front, right? Like those queers on Six Feet Under. But it ain’t like, a gay thing: it’s a man thing. Martin Lawrence even says so. Continue reading Bad Boys II (2003)
The Rock (1996)
Michael Bay didn’t know it at the time, but he made this movie for my mother. She’s an actor junkie who came of age in a time when movie stars were movie stars and the mainstream culture still surrounded them with auras of “respectability.” As such, she prefers her leading men play flawed-but-noble heroes…though she’s not opposed to the occasional flight of hyper-masculine fantasy (after all, she married my dad). So putting Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery in the same film was like ringing her personal dinner bell. And since I was thirteen at the time, I had no choice but to suffer through this at her side.
This was my – and a lot of people’s – real introduction to Michael Bay. Sure, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence might’ve headlined their own TV shows, but neither boasted the box office draw of the original James Bond…or the original Ben Sanderson. Continue reading The Rock (1996)
Bad Boys (1995)
You know, Inner Circle’s song “Bad Boys” is probably responsible for more crap than the rest of reggae combined. And I say that as a man who has never and will probably never be able to get into reggae, no matter how many stoners I may or may not hang out with. Apart from that great commercial for the coming Police State, COPS, we can also thank Inner Circle for Michael Bay’s career as a feature film director.
No, not entirely. But they aren’t exactly blameless. If not for that bad song, this bad film wouldn’t exist. At the very least, it wouldn’t have such a readily marketable title. By the time this premiered, COPS had drilled this song into America’s head with a rusty bit and a slow grind, like something out of…I don’t know…Driller Killer. Is that even real or did I just make it up…? Holy shit, it’s real and I didn’t. The more you know. Add that to the list of films we could all be watching right now…or could’ve been at the time. Continue reading Bad Boys (1995)