Michael Bay

[7] Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery headline this amped-up action thriller from reliable hit-makers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (producers of Crimson Tide, Days of Thunder, and Top Gun). Cage plays an elite chemist who is paired with Connery’s ex-con escape artist to infiltrate the abandoned prison island of Alcatraz to stop a disgruntled marine general (Ed Harris) from releasing a deadly nerve gas into …

[3] I dislike remakes in general, but Michael Bay can kiss a special place on my ass for remaking and homogenizing every horror classic from my childhood. His Platinum Dunes company is a shit factory, and A Nightmare on Elm Street doesn’t buck the trend. Bay’s director of choice here (miscellaneous hack so-and-so) can’t resist but tinker with Freddy’s backstory, putting too fine a point …

[5] I loathe Michael Bay, but to be fair, this movie wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The script pays little attention to logic and prays that you forget about certain plot elements until its convenient to resolve them, but the entire siege of Chicago sequence (really more of an entire act) is pretty nifty. Shia LaBeouf gives a bewildering, manic …