Android #4: worst director

Quick history lesson on director Michael Bay: he is the man who has given us crimes against cinema such as Bad Boys, The Rock, Pearl Harbor and oh yeah, don't forget Bad Boys 2. This year saw Bay unleashing the wretched film The Island on us. For The Island and his miserable body of work I give Bay the ANDROID for worst director of 2005.

The true star of a Michael Bay film isn’t the actors or script—it’s the person who sets up all the various explosions or destruction that is going to ensue. That person needs a vacation after working on a movie like The Island (or any Bay film) because they will have pushed the “explode” button so much their finger will be sprained. I’m not kidding. Bay will blow or shoot anything up—cars, buildings, helicopters, more cars, train-stations, streets, people. Anything. It becomes exhausting at a certain point and not at all thrilling or exciting, as Bay believes it might.

Bay just has to be himself. And showing us sweeping helicopter zooms, cheesy slow motions of explosions, cars flipping over again and again, machine-guns and rockets blowing even more stuff up is just Bay letting us see how macho he can be. Bay is as subtle as a jackhammer to the skull and it’s dull, soulless and insulting cinema to anyone who loves movies.

Michael Bay is at very best a hack director and at worst a pyromaniac who could use therapy he loves fire and explosions so much. I just wish he’d go away forever and take the rest of the directors from the Jerry Bruckheimer school of filmmaking with him.