An informative video by Tony Zhou that outlines the techniques director Michael Bay resorts to again and again throughout his filmography. As Zhou illustrates, it’s distinctive, at times visually impressive, but overblown and overused to the point of exhaustion for the audience.
Grantland’s Wesley Morris on the 1994 summer movie season:
A couple of weeks after the release of Gump, James Cameron would deliver a more alarming battery of effects with True Lies, as well as a woman who’s treated almost as badly as Jenny. But Zemeckis’s movie was speaking to a generation of people out of both sides of its mouth. Baby Boomers needed their history and nostalgia served to them like baby food. Gump’s centrism could please everybody.
Peter Frase, writing for Jacobin on Bong Joon-Ho’s leftist political critique embedded within his Snowpiercer screenplay:
But the story Bong tells goes beyond that. It’s about the limitations of a revolution which merely takes over the existing social machinery rather than attempting to transcend it. And it’s all the more effective because the heart of that critique comes as a late surprise, from a character we might not expect.
The allegory is perhaps too general to root in any specific theory. But it evokes a tradition of critiques that grappled with the limitations of both reformist social democracy and Soviet Communism, which attempted to seize power and to ameliorate exploitation without really challenging capitalist labor as a system of alienation and domination.
Tasha Robinson at The Dissolve:
So maybe all the questions can boil down to this: Looking at a so-called Strong Female Character, would you—the writer, the director, the actor, the viewer—want to be her? Not want to prove you’re better than her, or to have her praise you or acknowledge your superiority. Action movies are all about wish-fulfillment. Does she fulfill any wishes for herself, rather than for other characters? When female characters are routinely “strong” enough to manage that, maybe they’ll make the “Strong Female Characters” term meaningful enough that it isn’t so often said sarcastically.
The prolific, brainy director has been profiled and interviewed in countless magazines. He’s a good subject, but the quality, usually due to the publication and questions asked, has run all over the place. That’s why I was a bit surprised that Esquire, of all magazines, had a knockout of a a Soderbergh interview. Smart, profane and frank. One example:
Esquire: After you won an Academy Award for Traffic, did you wrestle to keep your ego in check?
Soderbergh: No… What’s hilarious about it, ironically, and nobody will ever believe this… I was in the middle of shooting Ocean’s Eleven, which for me, as a director, was much harder. I just had to laugh. Best door prize ever. But I was literally set up to work the next morning. Sunday night was the Oscars. I flew to Vegas that night and I’m on set first thing Monday morning confronting a scene that I couldn’t figure out how to shoot. At the end of the day, the quote I use is “In the land of ideas, you are always renting.” The landlord can always go “Bye!” If you’re not humbled by that then you’re an idiot and you will fail. You will fail. The process of discovery or coming up with an idea is so resistant to formula.
Nathan Rabin, The Dissolve:
It is a testament to how low standards for Seagal movies have fallen, even among his fans, that he gets high marks for the following:
Actually appearing in the film he’s starring in.
Not using a stunt double for walking scenes.
Being on set.
Acting opposite the other actors in the film.
Appearing to do at least some of his own fighting.
Dubbing his own lines.That might seem like the bare minimum, but Seagal has shimmied under that low, low bar before.
We’re technically two months past the exact anniversary, but it’s worth a look back at a few images from what remains a groundbreaking, highly influential film.
Lucy O’ Brien for IGN:
Ultimately, it was Burton’s faithfulness to the spirit of the comic book material that proved to be ’89 Batman’s most endearing legacy. While it didn’t immediately lift comic book movies to the lofty position they enjoy today – there were a couple of devastating fumbles before Bryan Singer caught the ball with X-Men in 2000 and ran with it – Burton was the first to prove that digging into pre-existing comic book properties in earnest could prove incredibly fruitful.
It’s an influence that can be felt today more than ever.
More on Michael Bay and Transformers 4, this time from the great Film Crit Hulk (and for those new to his writing, the all caps isn’t a mistake, it’s an editorial choice on Hulk’s part):
EVERY TIME HULK SEES A MICHAEL BAY MOVIE HULK IS REMINDED THAT HE DOES THESE KINDS OF THINGS. WHICH, PERHAPS IN A SAD WAY, CONSTANTLY REMINDS HULK THAT HE IS ONE OF THE MOST WEIRDLY FASCINATING FILMMAKERS ON THE PLANET. PLEASE DON’T MISTAKE THAT FOR A STATEMENT IMPLYING HIS FILMS ARE WORTH SEEING OR ARE ACTIVELY FASCINATING TO WATCH. NO, THEY ARE OVERLONG, BORING SLOGFESTS THAT SPEW SO MUCH HATEFUL, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBIC AND RACIST GARBAGE ALL UNDER THE PRETENSE OF THAT WINKING “THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE” BRAND OF HUMOR THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO GO OUT INTO THE LOBBY AND RECONCILE YOUR HUMANITY FOR A WHILE.
Slashfilm’s David Chen:
If there is such a thing as cinema as Soderbergh describes it, then Age of Extinction is a perfect distillation of anti-cinema. It posits that films no longer need a coherent plot, character development, or action scenes that have tension and stakes in order to be successful. That economic considerations no longer need to be hidden or subtle — they can be brazen and attention-grabbing. That excess in every respect (runtime, municipal destruction, manchild behavior) is not a vice, but a virtue.