Michael Bay is a good director. I have always had this opinion and its a controversial one but when has anything I said been a popular opinion but Bay is a good director who chooses bad scripts. In this piece I will be discuss what it is about Michael Bay that sets him apart from the rest and why I can look past the awful scripts.
Has Bay made good movies? Yeah I would have to say that Michael Bay has made good films, for example I would put 13 Hours as one of the best films of 2016 but the same film maker made Transformers Age of Extinction which is a steaming mess. So lets go through the filmography and see what film work and the ones that don't.
Bad Boys is a good film and a strong debut from Bay, this is a great action comedy where the action really stands head and shoulders above the rest, I am going to be saying this a lot during this piece but Michael Bay knows how to craft an action scene. The humour is fine with some parts being actually funny but for me this is more about the action and being thrown into this police thriller. It also helps that Bad Boys has a very strong opening scene. Not Bay's best but nowhere near his worst, this is a solid film that should be watched or re-watched.
The Rock is the best film Michael Bay has made, not the most visceral nor the biggest but the best and is a must in any action film fan's collection. The film just works and its just so fun to watch, of course it has its dumb moments but nearly every film has a silly moment, but in action films a little bit of dumb can mean a hell of a lot of fun. This is where Bay started to really develop his visual style and making every shot look a million dollars. Bay has a great way of making his films feel expensive, from the visual effects down to the score everything is grande which is funny seeing how "small" the plot is. Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery make an excellent team and they play off each other very well. Objectively this is the best Michael Bay film and I don't think I am alone in that school of thought, is it my favourite? probably but it has been some time since I have seen it so a second viewing is imminent.
Armageddon is where Bay starts to deteriorate and sowed the seeds for the hatred towards Michael Bay, for me this film is fun but I do understand that it is a bad film, but not the worst film ever made but compared to his first two films this one feels different. I think Bay wanted to make Titanic in space and to his credit it sort of worked but not in a good way, Titanic is a brilliant film whereas Armageddon is an average film that clearly has taken elements from Titanic and forced them into a strange thriller/action/romance comedy its a strange blend with an even stranger cast. I have no idea where to start with the cast. I'm not talking about Bruce Willis or Ben Affleck but Steve Buscemi and Owen Wilson and this all ties in with the problem of too many characters, its so hard to talk about this film because honestly it just has to be seen to be believed. Overall a fun film but has many problems and it drags.
Is Pearl Harbor a bad film? Yes. Does Pearl Harbor have a solid film buried within? Yes. If Armageddon was an attempt to copy Titanic then this is is Bay taking the blueprint shredding it up and attempting to piece it back together. This is a hard one to talk about because I do think that buried deep within this film is a solid action film that runs around 120 mins. Its a shame because this film does have some really engaging action scenes and a decent cast but its shrouded in this poor attempt at a love story that just slows the film down and running at 183 mins its just too long. I think my thoughts on Pearl Harbor could make its own post which would come later down the line. In short this was the first big problem people had with Michael Bay on a quality level.
Next up is Bad Boys II which to be perfectly honest is one of the dumbest big budget action film to grace our screens and I love every minute of it. This is an example of why Bay is one of the best at directing action scenes, this film is just excessive in the best way possible. Running at just under two and a half hours this film has fun with itself and my god does it just work. Of course if you were to look at the film objectively it is a bad movie, not as bad as Pearl Harbor or Armageddon but its ridiculous but for some reason it just works. Its seriously fun and dumb which makes it amazing for me because if a film is fun enough to distract me from poor writing then its doing its job well. The film starts with a KKK meeting in which Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are undercover as klan members, and a musical score supervised by Dr Dre I don't understand how people cant enjoy this film for what it is, if this screenplay was directing by anyone else it would be one of the worst, unbearable films ever made but Bay is so adept at directing action scenes and keeping the energy levels up that you are along for the ride. Is it better than the first one? No but on the other hand they are two separate films, the only thing that relates the movies are the characters, name and director. Bad Boys II is certainly worth watching for any action fan and is the perfect example for this argument that Bay is a good director but just has dreadful scripts. Defiantly worth watching at least once to experience it.
Now The Island is a strange one to talk about because it has been a long time since I seen this one and from what I remember I liked it but in recent years I have started to notice a lot of hatred towards this film which I can neither confirm or deny. This is a slight departure from Bad Boys II in the fact that it was attempting more of a Minority Report feel than a typical Bay film. So I can't really talk about this film in detail but this is not the worst Bay film but certainly not the best its fine. I would recommend watch it but don't expect anything too special.
2007 is where the modern reception towards Michael Bay began and Transformers is the film that brought about this opinion. I will be talking about the four Transformers in one segment because to be honest they are all the same but with varying degrees of quality. The first Transformers is a decent film and in terms of big budget blockbusters it was fantastic and to be fair in terms of direction and visuals, the Transformers films are the better blockbusters in recent times. The Transformers series has gone too far into silly territory but in terms of action spectacle they have not been topped. With The Last Knight coming out rather soon and looking like a hot mess I am excited to see how Michael Bay can use this franchise to top himself.
Lastly we have to talk about Pain and Gain and 13 Hours, these two films are really good and they should be seen, especially Pain and Gain which is one of the most energetic films from Bay and completely caught me off guard by how engaging it is. 13 Hours is a solid action film, enough said, but seriously both of these films should be watched and are closer to The Rock and as far away from the Transformer movies as possible, which goes to show that Bay will do a fantastic directing job whether the script is good or bad. The man loves spectacle and in recent times we have lost that.
Michael Bay is never going down in history as one of the greats, but I feel as if more people should acknowledge that as a director he is very good at what he does, its only the guys writing the scripts that are letting him down. Please watch his good films to see that the same director is there using all the same methods but using a far better script. I will always love Michael Bay, he knows what he likes and he knows how to get me excited to watch a film. Most filmmakers these days all blur into one but Bay stands out.
Written By
Ashley Harvey
Wednesday 24 May 2017
Friday 19 May 2017
Alien: Covenant - Review
Before March 2017 I had a feeling that Alien: Covenant was going to be a solid film, people had been high on The Martian which I still have yet to see. The trailer made it look like a back to basics horror film in space, sure some of the cinematography was a little wonky but I could forgive that if we were to get a decent Alien film. Then March came and I noticed something, the advertising for Alien: Covenant started popping up everywhere, I would see busses with Alien on the side, before and during every Youtube video would be the trailer or a teaser for Alien. This was when I started to worry for the film, I knew that a film like this being advertised everywhere was a big warning sign and it turns out that I was correct. Alien: Covenant is not a good film in fact I would say its actually a poor one, don't get me wrong there are decent parts within the film but as a whole and as a prequel/sequel it just does not work within the franchise.
Before I go any further there will be spoilers throughout this review. Lets start with some positives although there are only a few. Michael Fassbender's performance as the android Walter was very good and much better than his performance as David in both this and Prometheus also the character of Walter was better, I like how emotionless Fassbender played it and it worked, its just a shame they hardly do anything with his character. Speaking of hardly doing anything with an interesting character, Billy Crudup plays the acting captain Christopher Oram which is a very interesting character for me but is unfulfilled and just seems wasted. Other than those two actors and their characters there is little else in this film that I thought was good.
I would say one of the biggest problems with Alien: Covenant is the characters, not the characters themselves but the amount of characters. Its a problem we see a lot now where a film has too many characters which in turn means that the more interesting and important characters can get lost in the shuffle. Covenant has too many "main" characters and only a few get decent development when I say a few I really mean David because the other characters don't really do anything you could argue that Danny McBride's Tennessee does develop during the film but its ever so slight. This is the part of the review where I start comparing it to the original Alien. The original Alien was far more effective with characters because the film developed them, even the smaller roles all had something that developed and over the first act of the film we knew a little about all the characters because was slower and had fewer characters. When Kane dies it has an impact because we know the character we have spent time with the character and we know everyone else's relationship with him. In Alien: Covenant the first person to birth an "alien" is a no name grunt, how are we supposed to feel any connection to the events when such a pointless character dies, and then five minutes later another "alien" is born from another no name grunt, all tension is lost and the scenes have no punch on an emotional level, sure they are filled with gore and blood but that is not a good substitute for build-up. If Covenant had half the characters it would be far more effective when someone dies and the film does have a good example of being effective when a main character dies. When Billy Crudup is tricked by David to be a host for a facehugger it means something because this character has had some establishment, there is more weight behind his death but then it is ruined by a CGI chest-burster opening its arms out for David. Of course I have to talk about the Ripley clone for this film, she is not as bad as I was expecting but the character of Daniels, played by Katherine Waterson, was just so bland and to be honest she had barely anything to do in the film until we needed to parallel the end of Alien. Alien: Covenant needed far less characters and needed to beef up the character of those that were important to the story.
The story of Alien: Covenant is unnecessary, most of the scenes and motivation in this film is unnecessary. Within the first ten minutes we are introduced to David speaking to Weyland with some philosophical dialogue that felt really out of place then cut to the ship Covenant where Walter is doing routine checks while the crew are in hyper-sleep and then an action scene happens out of nowhere which kills James Franco. I don't understand why there needed to be this scene, the scene is only there to kill Franco and to wake everyone up, it felt like padding and I feel the film would have benefited from a slower start. The rest of the basic plot is essentially the same as Alien, a strange signal from an unknown planet, the crew go to investigate. Where the film loses me is with the backstory of the Aliens themselves, Alien: Covenant just does not make sense. It feels like Ridley Scott was torn between two films he wanted to make, a return to the first Alien with an atmospheric horror film and the sequel to Prometheus and what we got was the result of trying to merge those two ideas. If we had to chose one I would have gone with the Prometheus sequel, because Ridley Scott does not need to make the Alien film, but if he had continued with the Prometheus story I feel as if we would have got a far more polished film. There is nothing else to really say without breaking each scene down and explaining why it does not work so I will spare you the in-depth analysis and just say that the plot and script is a mess.
Now the cinematography and film making itself I have massive issues with in this film. People often say how much of a "visual" director Ridley Scott is and I would agree but it depends on which Ridley Scott you are talking about, because anything pre Gladiator is visually stunning and engaging but after that he became more "gritty" especially with the use of higher shutter speeds. Alien Covenant is an ugly movie, its shot poorly and just has the wrong look and feel, with some scenes looking like they belong in 28 Days Later. The first Alien is a beautiful film, and from frame one you feel as if you are in this situation, the lighting was perfect everything felt dirty and real. Covenant everything is too bland and at points it feels as if it is trying to be Alien, hell even Alien Isolation looks better than this. No scene has tension and the action/horror scenes loose any impact due to the high shutter speeds and handheld nature of the camera. This film feels like an imitation of an Alien film rather than the big budget prequel. The CGI in this film is damn right insulting, even Prometheus has practical effects but this made all the versions of the Alien look fake and silly, It baffles me that the same man who allowed this made Alien and Blade Runner.
Lastly the soundtrack has to be addressed, why do we have to rely on the previous film to get brownie points. To say the score is a straight up copy of the original is an understatement, the exact same cues and stings are ripped straight from the original and to be honest it does not work. Other than that the rest of the score is just generic and dull. Nothing else to really say about it.
Overall I would not recommend watching Alien: Covenant, you are better of doing a double bill of Alien and Aliens. This film is a mess and not even an interesting mess, I would stay away from this film and wait for it to be on TV to check it out. Like Alien Resurrection this film should only be watched to see how wrong the film makers got it. Its a shame because this film had potential and could have been at least decent but instead what we have is a mess of a film.
5/10
Written By
Ashley Harvey
Before I go any further there will be spoilers throughout this review. Lets start with some positives although there are only a few. Michael Fassbender's performance as the android Walter was very good and much better than his performance as David in both this and Prometheus also the character of Walter was better, I like how emotionless Fassbender played it and it worked, its just a shame they hardly do anything with his character. Speaking of hardly doing anything with an interesting character, Billy Crudup plays the acting captain Christopher Oram which is a very interesting character for me but is unfulfilled and just seems wasted. Other than those two actors and their characters there is little else in this film that I thought was good.
I would say one of the biggest problems with Alien: Covenant is the characters, not the characters themselves but the amount of characters. Its a problem we see a lot now where a film has too many characters which in turn means that the more interesting and important characters can get lost in the shuffle. Covenant has too many "main" characters and only a few get decent development when I say a few I really mean David because the other characters don't really do anything you could argue that Danny McBride's Tennessee does develop during the film but its ever so slight. This is the part of the review where I start comparing it to the original Alien. The original Alien was far more effective with characters because the film developed them, even the smaller roles all had something that developed and over the first act of the film we knew a little about all the characters because was slower and had fewer characters. When Kane dies it has an impact because we know the character we have spent time with the character and we know everyone else's relationship with him. In Alien: Covenant the first person to birth an "alien" is a no name grunt, how are we supposed to feel any connection to the events when such a pointless character dies, and then five minutes later another "alien" is born from another no name grunt, all tension is lost and the scenes have no punch on an emotional level, sure they are filled with gore and blood but that is not a good substitute for build-up. If Covenant had half the characters it would be far more effective when someone dies and the film does have a good example of being effective when a main character dies. When Billy Crudup is tricked by David to be a host for a facehugger it means something because this character has had some establishment, there is more weight behind his death but then it is ruined by a CGI chest-burster opening its arms out for David. Of course I have to talk about the Ripley clone for this film, she is not as bad as I was expecting but the character of Daniels, played by Katherine Waterson, was just so bland and to be honest she had barely anything to do in the film until we needed to parallel the end of Alien. Alien: Covenant needed far less characters and needed to beef up the character of those that were important to the story.
The story of Alien: Covenant is unnecessary, most of the scenes and motivation in this film is unnecessary. Within the first ten minutes we are introduced to David speaking to Weyland with some philosophical dialogue that felt really out of place then cut to the ship Covenant where Walter is doing routine checks while the crew are in hyper-sleep and then an action scene happens out of nowhere which kills James Franco. I don't understand why there needed to be this scene, the scene is only there to kill Franco and to wake everyone up, it felt like padding and I feel the film would have benefited from a slower start. The rest of the basic plot is essentially the same as Alien, a strange signal from an unknown planet, the crew go to investigate. Where the film loses me is with the backstory of the Aliens themselves, Alien: Covenant just does not make sense. It feels like Ridley Scott was torn between two films he wanted to make, a return to the first Alien with an atmospheric horror film and the sequel to Prometheus and what we got was the result of trying to merge those two ideas. If we had to chose one I would have gone with the Prometheus sequel, because Ridley Scott does not need to make the Alien film, but if he had continued with the Prometheus story I feel as if we would have got a far more polished film. There is nothing else to really say without breaking each scene down and explaining why it does not work so I will spare you the in-depth analysis and just say that the plot and script is a mess.
Now the cinematography and film making itself I have massive issues with in this film. People often say how much of a "visual" director Ridley Scott is and I would agree but it depends on which Ridley Scott you are talking about, because anything pre Gladiator is visually stunning and engaging but after that he became more "gritty" especially with the use of higher shutter speeds. Alien Covenant is an ugly movie, its shot poorly and just has the wrong look and feel, with some scenes looking like they belong in 28 Days Later. The first Alien is a beautiful film, and from frame one you feel as if you are in this situation, the lighting was perfect everything felt dirty and real. Covenant everything is too bland and at points it feels as if it is trying to be Alien, hell even Alien Isolation looks better than this. No scene has tension and the action/horror scenes loose any impact due to the high shutter speeds and handheld nature of the camera. This film feels like an imitation of an Alien film rather than the big budget prequel. The CGI in this film is damn right insulting, even Prometheus has practical effects but this made all the versions of the Alien look fake and silly, It baffles me that the same man who allowed this made Alien and Blade Runner.
Lastly the soundtrack has to be addressed, why do we have to rely on the previous film to get brownie points. To say the score is a straight up copy of the original is an understatement, the exact same cues and stings are ripped straight from the original and to be honest it does not work. Other than that the rest of the score is just generic and dull. Nothing else to really say about it.
Overall I would not recommend watching Alien: Covenant, you are better of doing a double bill of Alien and Aliens. This film is a mess and not even an interesting mess, I would stay away from this film and wait for it to be on TV to check it out. Like Alien Resurrection this film should only be watched to see how wrong the film makers got it. Its a shame because this film had potential and could have been at least decent but instead what we have is a mess of a film.
5/10
Written By
Ashley Harvey
Thursday 4 May 2017
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - Review
I want to start this off by saying I did not hate this film, I am just disappointed. This trend of 4th wall breaking and references needs to stop and I understand that the first Guardians kicked this off but not to the extent that Vol. 2 does.
One thing I have noticed with my reviews is that I do not discuss plot that much and this review will be the first to rectify this problem so lets discuss the plot. The film revolves around StarLord finding his father played by Kurt Russell while being hunted by a race of aliens after Rocket Raccoon stole something from their home-world. Early on in the film the Guardians are split up and we have three storylines that all come together at the end. Now the story itself is rather decent and I found myself rather engaged in the story, but I found myself wanting a little more from this sequel, it feels rather disjointed from the previous film. The story is decent enough to keep me engaged and is rather interesting. The biggest problem with the characters and dialogue is the references which honestly does stop the film and take me out of the film even more than in the first film. Not to say the music takes me out, in fact the soundtrack did not annoy me and it works rather decent for the most part on the other hand the score is rather lacking which is a common theme in the Marvel movies.
All the performances are fine with Kurt Russell fitting perfectly into the Marvel Universe as Ego and everyone else is comfortable in their roles with Dave Bautista having lots of fun with the role. My biggest issue is with the character of StarLord and how he is mainly used as a way of having references in the film, he does have some character but the ratio is heavily on the reference side.
In terms of direction the film is fine, the slow motion does become rather distracting and the film does follow the same basic pattern as the first one. The costumes and makeup are rather good but this is contrasted with some distracting CG at points with some parts looking a little too cartoony in a major motion picture. I was surprised with how Baby Groot was used in sparing fashion which was nice because the advertising made it look like this movie's equivalent of the Minions.
Overall I would recommend seeing this film because when its good and engaging its really good and worth a watch but it does have problems that can suck you out of the experience and the references do let this film down.
7/10
Written By
Ashley Harvey
One thing I have noticed with my reviews is that I do not discuss plot that much and this review will be the first to rectify this problem so lets discuss the plot. The film revolves around StarLord finding his father played by Kurt Russell while being hunted by a race of aliens after Rocket Raccoon stole something from their home-world. Early on in the film the Guardians are split up and we have three storylines that all come together at the end. Now the story itself is rather decent and I found myself rather engaged in the story, but I found myself wanting a little more from this sequel, it feels rather disjointed from the previous film. The story is decent enough to keep me engaged and is rather interesting. The biggest problem with the characters and dialogue is the references which honestly does stop the film and take me out of the film even more than in the first film. Not to say the music takes me out, in fact the soundtrack did not annoy me and it works rather decent for the most part on the other hand the score is rather lacking which is a common theme in the Marvel movies.
All the performances are fine with Kurt Russell fitting perfectly into the Marvel Universe as Ego and everyone else is comfortable in their roles with Dave Bautista having lots of fun with the role. My biggest issue is with the character of StarLord and how he is mainly used as a way of having references in the film, he does have some character but the ratio is heavily on the reference side.
In terms of direction the film is fine, the slow motion does become rather distracting and the film does follow the same basic pattern as the first one. The costumes and makeup are rather good but this is contrasted with some distracting CG at points with some parts looking a little too cartoony in a major motion picture. I was surprised with how Baby Groot was used in sparing fashion which was nice because the advertising made it look like this movie's equivalent of the Minions.
Overall I would recommend seeing this film because when its good and engaging its really good and worth a watch but it does have problems that can suck you out of the experience and the references do let this film down.
7/10
Written By
Ashley Harvey
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