After Transformers: Dark of the Moon hit a franchise high for box office, Michael Bay announced that he’d be leaving the series on a high note to go make smaller, personal films. He did exactly one of those (2013’s Pain & Gain, which underperformed) before crawling right back to the safe haven of the robots… Read More I’m All About Bad Ideas | Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) 3D Blu-ray
In most respects, Michael Bay’s third Transformers movie is just a lot more of what we already saw in the first two. Giant robots smash and bash one another for two-and-a-half hours of mayhem, destroying another major U.S. metropolis in the process, while Shia LaBeouf gets in the way and makes a nuisance of himself.… Read More It’s Hostile Takeover Time | Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) 3D Blu-ray
A huge blockbuster smash like the 2007 Transformers requires a sequel, and Michael Bay got to work cranking one out as fast as he could. Ready for release just two summers later, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is even bigger, longer, louder, and dumber than the first film. Consequently, it was another massive hit, despite… Read More Bad Robots Suck | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) IMAX VAR Blu-ray
Even though the first attempt to make a theatrical feature film (in animated form) based on Hasbro’s popular Transformers toy line resulted in a big box office bust back in 1986, the property remained too valuable over the years to resist trying again. By 2007, visual effects technology had evolved and improved to the point… Read More Car Picks the Driver | Transformers (2007) Blu-ray
The extended Nintendo commercial known as The Wizard has no business working at all, on any level, much less surviving for 30+ years with a modest audience of fans willing to revisit it from time to time. Unlike other notable cult films (such as the 1993 Super Mario Bros., which this pairs well with), I… Read More Sure Plays a Mean Super Mario Bros. 3 | The Wizard (1989) Blu-ray
A notorious flop in its day, the 1993 live-action movie version of Super Mario Bros. is a fascinating disaster. The film feels like it was made by people who knew nothing about video games and, specifically, never had any interest in Nintendo’s smash hit Super Mario Bros. in the first place. In a strange way,… Read More Vote Koopa | Super Mario Bros. (1993) Blu-ray
Although the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon petered out in the mid-1990s after the disaster of its third live-action movie and the end of its original TV cartoon, plans for another film that would circle back to animation were discussed throughout the early 2000s. At one point, John Woo was even supposed to direct it.… Read More Man, I Love Being a Turtle! | TMNT (2007) Blu-ray
Movies are an inherently sensationalized medium, and haunted house movies in particular often rely heavily upon cheap scare tactics to startle viewers into spilling their popcorn and clutching the hand of the date they brought to the theater. Subtlety is not generally a defining trait of the genre. Produced in 1961, director Jack Clayton’s The… Read More A Haunted Mansion and a Turned Screw | The Innocents (1961) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
By this point, I’m sure most people understand that the first Godzilla movie (or Gojira as originally known in Japan) from 1954 was, for all its inherent absurdity and cheese, designed and intended as something a little more thoughtful and introspective than just a schlocky giant monster fright flick. This is hardly a new observation.… Read More The Destroyer of Worlds | Godzilla (1954) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Before he became a brand unto himself with a rabid cult fandom slavering to see his latest three-hour-long, bombastic IMAX spectacle, Christopher Nolan started his filmmaking career with a very modest, small art film called Following that was little seen by anyone until the Criterion Collection picked it up on home video. To be honest… Read More Nolan’s Inception | Following (1999) Criterion Collection Blu-ray
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