by Blender Dumbass Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
From 1 years ago. Information or opinions might not be up to date.
3 Minute Read
In my review of Alien Romulus I briefly mentioned Isabela Merced and said that you might have known her from Michael Bay's Transformers 5. So let's talk about Transformers 5.
↩ Reply There is this satisfaction when it comes to animation, that I know from personal experience where the longer you work on a shot, or a sequence, the more details there is in the animation, the more satisfying it is to later just watch this insane level of effort simply wash over you one frame after another.
↩ Reply This is why I think Avatar movies are so good. And this is most definitely a quality of Michael Bay's Transformers movies. And perhaps the most insane feeling of grandiose work I felt from any Transformers film, was strangely enough from Transformers 5 specifically.
↩ Reply Don't get me wrong, this movie is not a masterpiece. It is probably one of the stupidest blockbusters out there. I guess Patric H Willems puts it best:
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It feels like he just filmed two and a half hours of stuff he thought would be fun, including a lengthy prologue about King Arthur and Merlin. And then a team of editors attempted to assemble it into something resembling a movie.
↩ Reply But boy how much dopamine Michael Bay can induce in a person. The film is so stupid, but it assaults your senses so much with so much cool shit, that the movie becomes so good it's too good to be good.
↩ Reply I ( probably ) have ADHD. And this kind of over-bombardment of intense details everywhere makes my brain very happy. A lot of people tend to see Bay's movies as visual noise. And I get why. But I really really dig this kind of stuff.
↩ Reply The only serious problem I see with the film is the lack of the two new characters played by Jerrod Carmichael and Isabela Merced. We have stupid amount of Mark Wahlberg who is not trying to act because he understands what kind of movie it is. Laura Haddock tries to act and is surprisingly good, despite the stupidity. There is almost enough of Anthony Hopkins, though more would not hurt. And there is a good amount of this new robot butler character, voiced by Jim Carter who is just really fun to watch.
↩ Reply I know that the writers probably didn't intend it to be the case, but Bay made out of Isabela Merced a fucking star. He doesn't let his camera to be ageist. He frames her the same way he would have framed an adult actress. And that gives her so much oomph I just really wish there was a spinoff movie just about her. Or like if Wahlberg could be replaced by her. Like there is not enough of her. And I want more. But there isn't. How dare you, Michael Bay? It doesn't help that there is not enough of her in Alien Romulus either.
↩ Reply Does that mean I have a new movie marathon? ... Hm...
↩ Reply Anyway...
↩ Reply Happy Hacking!!!↩ Reply
Quentin Tarantino told numerous times that the two places which gave the strongest reactions to his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds were Berlin and Tel Aviv. Why? Why reactions? Well... prior to Inglourious Basterds films about the subject of conflict between Jews and Nazis in World War II were largely serious pieces of cinema. Think Schindler's List. But as I pointed out in my review of Schindler's List, there was a considerable amount of effort on the part of Steven Spielberg to make the movie actually watchable. Tarantino with Inglourious Basterds made a movie that is not merely watchable, but outright enjoyable. He made a movie about this conflict where the audience are allowed to laugh. Taika Waititi's 2019 film Jojo Rabbit takes this premise and dials it to 11.
The Rock by Michael Bay is about an FBI chemist agent ( Nicolas Cage ) who calls for help from an old retired British Intelligence Agent played by Sean Connery himself. No wander there are theories that this agent character could be James Bond, making this film a kind of unofficial Bayhem!ed sequel to Connery Bond films. It's not like he didn't play James Bond outside of the main franchise. He did play James Bond in Never Say Never Again which is a real James Bond film, which is not a part of the main franchise. So maybe, possibly, he did that again here too. We will never know.