Michael Bay

News, Reviews & Features

Review: 6 Underground is Michael Bay at his Michael Bayest

Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 16th December 2019

The man, the dream. The man is Michael Bay; Hollywood's eternal manchild, able to somehow tap into the mind of a prepubescent boy. The dream is to blow up as much shit as possible, sending hot sparks flying over even hotter chics in lingerie as our hero flings another zinging retort into the bad guys like nasty little comedy bullets. It's not clever. It's not classy. He thinks it is. But it's bold and tough, and you will respect the awesome might of military technology, else be visited in the night by wicked-rad army ninjas in stealth Blackhawks. Bayhem is in session, sit up and pay attention, DAD!

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We really need to talk again about Transformers: The Last Knight

Movie Feature | Matt Looker | 17th July 2017

This year has seen the first female-led superhero movie, two Apocalypse Now inspired monkey movies, a curtain call for Logan, a launch of Universal's Dark Universe, and the return of Cars, Captain Jack, Renton and Xander Cage. And yet there's only one film I can't get out of my head right now.

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Transformers: The Last Knight

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 21st June 2017

Michael Bay finally did it: he exploded history. Not content with retconning the dinosaurs in the last part of his ever-growing Transformers universe, Bay has now officially changed the course of human history. The Last Knight not only rewrites Arthurian legend (myth, history, whatever), it puts an Autobot spin on World War II, the mystery of Stonehenge and even Stephen Hawking, via scenes that stretch from the depths of outer space to the bottom of the ocean. It's a miracle there isn't a scene where we find out Jesus was a robot too: the Crucifixicon. It is, I shouldn't have to say but will, an extraordinary payload of absolute horseshit: a Buster Gonad-style wheelbarrow of bollocks that will leave you flabbergasted as to how incoherent, lazy and contemptuous it is. I should say, however, that I haven't laughed so much in a cinema in years.

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The 13 most incredible sentences from Wikipedia's plot synopsis of Transformers: Age Of Extinction

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 19th June 2017

I am just a man. I don't claim to be perfect. So even when I stun strangers with my sick film trivia knowledge and straight up dunk on the critics with my professionally-honed reviewing skills, know that there are still gaps in my viewing history. I have never seen Citizen Kane, for example, possibly due to a highly comedic mixup where, for a good few years, I thought it was a sitcom starring Robert Lindsay. I have never seen a David Lynch film, principally because I think I hate him, but still. Never have I ever seen a Kristoff Kieslowski film. I don't even know if that's how you spell his name, and I didn't even bother to check. And so, I humbly admit to you, precious reader, that I have never seen Transformers: Age Of Extinction. For shame.

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The top 13 beards in 13 Hours

Movie Feature | Ed Williamson | 4th February 2016

13 Hours, as well as being a sensitive and measured critique of America's role as an interventionist force in the Middle East, draws keenly on the theme of beardedness. What does it mean to be a bearded man shooting stuff in a bloody great war, just as the Western male is becoming culturally feminised on a scale not seen since the noblesse of 17th-century France? This thing has so many layers.

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13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Movie Review | Matt Looker | 29th January 2016

A sunset bears down on an open field. Cloth rags blow in the wind. Two children run in slow motion through the long grass. A snag of material on a twig blows in the wind again. Oh, we're back to the sunset again, ok. Now some sheep are milling around for some reason. And now those children are running again. Aaand we're back to the sunset. Jesus Christ, Michael Bay, I get that you're using these establishing shots to build tension but itâ€™s no wonder this film is 144 minutes long. This film should be 6-7 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi. 8 Hours: The Secret Soldiers Of Benghazi max.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Movie Review | Ali Gray | 12th October 2014

So I finally got old. Morning: doctor's appointment for dry skin. Afternoon: phone calls with estate agents and surveyors and mortgage advisors. Evening: still-aching limbs from a football match played 48 hours previously. I startle awake to find myself sat in a Paramount screening room ready to watch the latest iteration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a phenomenon I was probably too old to enjoy guilt-free the first time round a quarter of a century ago. "Let's see those hands in the air!" says a company spokesperson, urging attendees to don the giant green foam hands provided for a photo opportunity. I am secretly glad I didn't pick any up on the way in. Because I am old as fuck.

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The Transformers/Coen Bros Venn diagram

Movie Feature | Ali Gray | 4th July 2014

It's one of the weirdest phenomenons in modern movie history: how is it that so many Coen regulars wind up in Transformers movies? See the culprits as we attempt to figure out what possible motives the guilty parties could have.

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Transformers: Age Of Extinction

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 3rd July 2014

An age of extinction. Well, it does go on for ages, but Michael Bay's fourth Transformers movie, while offering some CGI spectacle to knock your block off, threatens the eradication of the human race but never treats the prospect with much more than an afterthought.

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Pain & Gain

Movie Review | Ed Williamson | 27th August 2013

In bringing to prominence the idea of the American Dream in his 1931 book Epic of America, James Truslow Adams wrote that it was "a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable". In doing so he likely didn't foresee that one day a film starring Marky Mark and The Rock would distort the notion with glorious excess, suggesting that it is a hollow hope when misinterpreted by the ignorant. Or that I would steal his quote from Wikipedia and pass it off as serious historical research.

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