Author: Charles Schaefer

Every Michael Bay Movie, Part 2: Kerri Kendall, Miss September (1990)

Every Michael Bay Movie, Part 2: Kerri Kendall, Miss September (1990)

It’s difficult to chart the early career of a film director. Bay’s early 1990s are full of music video and even some television commercial examples. However most of these don’t show up on IMDB because Bay is only credited on a compiled collection of videos that were released in a special record release, or through different means than feature or even short films usually are. However, he is credited in this Playboy video.

Yes, Michael Bay, directed it. Isn’t that weird? I watched it purely out of scientific curiosity. I AM COMMITTED TO MY CRAFT, PEOPLE.

The video features several interviews with Kendall mixed in with music-video style set-pieces featuring Michael Bay’s favorite things – soldiers, muscles, muscle cars, hot weather, and babes. Well, just one babe.

It is not particularly tasteful.

One of the things Michael Bay does really well is balancing close-ups with wide shots to convey place, action, and emotion all at the same time. This makes him an excellent director of action pieces. Everything is always changing. The camera angle, the zoom, and distance. This also would make Bay a pretty bad documentarian. And porn is, in a lot of ways, a documentary form. Or depending on who you talk to, maybe a dramatic re-enactment form.

I felt awkward watching this, and I feel awkward writing about it. But here’s the thing: The movie is 50 minutes long. This is Michael Bay’s first and only foray into feature film length directing prior to his first Hollywood release, Bad Boys (1995).

Isn’t that ridiculous? The guy was running around shooting 4 minute music videos and 30 second commercials and at some point someone had to sell Jerry Bruckheimer on using an unknown filmmaker in a production starring Will Smith and a selling point had to have been that Bay directed a softcore porn in 1990. Hollywood is weird.

Every Michael Bay Movie, Part 1: Vanilla Ice, I Love You (1990)

Every Michael Bay Movie, Part 1: Vanilla Ice, I Love You (1990)

“Girl, when I first saw you it was love at first sight.”

If you’re a fan of movies, you probably respond to the name “Michael Bay” with some combination of an eyeroll and the shouted exclamation “EXPLOSIONS!” This combination of reactions sufficiently describes Bay’s current place in our cultural consciousness.

It is extremely fitting, then, that Bay’s start as a director, before explosion-filled epics such as Armageddon and Transformers into popular culture, was as the director of music videos. Music videos and porn.

Music videos are not an unusual place for film directors to get their start. The short form allows for bold, truncated statements, and the nature of music allows for maximum creativity within an already-formed story. Hollywood Directors Brett Ratner and Antoine Fuqua as well as auteurs Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze all got their start in music videos. David Fincher might be the most famous example.

Music videos are, in many ways, pure spectacle – promotional pieces meant to generate excitement and advertise an underlying work of art created without the video in mind. And Bay, ever the man to buy-in on overblown pop-culture artifacts, got his start with none other than Vanilla Ice, compiling a video compilation of Vanilla Ice’s 1989 and 1990 music videos in a VHS collection called “Play that Funky Music.”

Take a look at this wonderful example:

I don’t want to overinterpret this, but here we have a great example of Bay’s tendencies in compact form. Crash cuts. Flashes of light. Weird camera angles. Overt Patriotic imagery. The smooth-jazzy ballad is a complete mismatch for Bay’s hectic, arrhythmic cutting which would be a better fit for a Bran flashback sequence on Game of Thrones.

This is as fitting an introduction as any to the Every Michael Bay Movie project. Enjoy.

Every Tom Cruise Movie: Epilogue

I watched Going Clear this past weekend and I thought it was a fitting wrap-up to the Tom Cruise movie-watching saga I’ve been on for several months. Going Clear, for those of you unfamiliar, is a movie adaptation of a book of the same name which chronicles the lives of members of the Church of Scientology, told mostly through stories from ex-church members.

It plays out both horrifyingly and not-at-all as a surprise. The religion was invented by a severely troubled man who was both looking for an answer to his problems and also for a way to swindle people out of their money without paying taxes. It has evolved into a hugely wealthy mega-church that does no social good at all but is so horrifying to deal with that even the IRS is afraid to take them on. It asks the question, “what constitutes a religion?” but doesn’t answer it. It just tells a compelling and difficult story.

I have a lot of thoughts on the above topic but for the purposes of this post I want to talk about how the movie describes Tom Cruise. Cruise has been involved in Scientology for quite a long time – the documentary doesn’t say when he joined specifically but it does mention that he became friends with Church Head David Miscavige around the time that he was filming Days of Thunder. Miscavige didn’t particularly like Nicole Kidman because she wasn’t a Scientologist and because her dad was vocally against their relationship because of Cruise’s affiliation with Scientology. It describes the role that the organization played in the couple’s breakup, and their involvement in his other romantic relationships.

It’s captivating. But to be brief, it left me wondering if the church of Scientology is responsible for the general public perception that Tom Cruise is arrogant and quite crazy.

The Tom Cruise of the 1980s was a young actor humbly trying to become a movie star by taking roles in any project that would cast him. He starred in multiple movies per year, sometimes in tiny roles. In the 1990s, Tom starred in projects created by the most talented names in cinema. He was clearly motivated by being showcased in front of diverse audiences and being seen doing quality work. He also appeared in 3 movies with his wife, Kidman, with whom he was clearly infatuated.

The Tom Cruise of the 2000s and now the 2010s is clearly a person who has everything. He knows that he is famous and that people will watch anything that he appears in. He also clearly is aware of his image, but as he has aged he has become less relatable and I would imagine that if you spent all of your time in the company of people who gave you anything you wanted and encouraged your every decision that you’d end up being kind of a dick.

I suppose anybody who was as famous as Cruise was in 2000 might have gone off the deep-end a little, and maybe his public perception today tells us more about how our society treats famous people than about Scientologists. But Going Clear made me wonder about that.

Anyway, here are my Top 5 Cruise movies:

1. Eyes Wide Shut – a truly haunting movie and a unique Cruise performance.
2. A Few Good Men – Cruise’s alternate-universe career of only starring in Aaron Sorkin movies would have been epic.
3. Jerry Maguire – The quintessential Cruise, uninhibited and at the high of his powers.
4. Risky Business – Cheesy, youthful, and fun to see Cruise before he was big.
5. Edge of Tomorrow – This is how I hope Cruise ages: playing a bit of a dope and letting other stars share his limelight.
*Honorable Mention: Cruise is great in Magnolia and it’s my favorite movie of all time, but in my opinion it’s not a “Tom Cruise” movie.

And here are my Bottom 5. In case you really want to punish yourself:

1. Far and Away – ugh
2. Born on the Fourth of July – puke
3. Knight and Day – blergh
4. Rock of Ages – He’s miscast and the movie makes me physically ill.
5. Cocktail – he’s actually not terrible in this but the movie is quite bad.

Thank you for reading.

Every Tom Cruise Movie, Part 38: Mission: Impossible – ROGUE NATION

I don’t have much to add to my thoughts about Mission: Impossible since reviewing the last edition in the series. It’s a TV series disguised as a movie franchise with little continuity outside of familiar characters. Each story from here on out, I believe, will have a similar structure, and that will allow the franchise to be flashy without being risky.

One thing that kind of bothered me was that Tom Cruise was back, and Simon Pegg was back, and Jeremy Renner was back, and Ving Rhames was back, but the series featured a new female character, and they didn’t include the female character from the last episode. Is it a problem to put more than two prominent female characters in the same action movie? Was it super important that they show Jeremy Renner being marginally important by appearing in 4 or 5 scenes and argue with Tom Cruise about some stuff but not important enough that Paula Patton’s character (who was characterized as flawed and emotionally compromised in the previous movie because she was grief-stricken over the loss of her boyfriend, another secret agent) have a chance to reappear as a badass female secret agent? 

Or did Paula Patton just not want to do another movie in the series? Maybe I could find these things out if I had some sort of massive network of all human knowledge that was accessible at a moment’s notice, but since no such technology exists, I suppose I’ll move on.

Tom Cruise’s last 8 movies, dating back to 2008, include 7 action movies (two mission impossible, two sci-fi, an action rom-com, a sort of noir type, and a historical thriller) and Rock of Ages. This is a far cry from the rest of his career which is full of variety. It’s weird because I remember always thinking of him as an action star but truly there isn’t another 8 year period in his career with out at least a role in a drama, an oscar-bait actor-showcase, or a lighthearted movie. He’s also pretty much stopped working with famous directors. His next 4 movies are a remake of The Mummy, another M:I sequel, a Jack Reacher sequel, a Top Gun sequel, and two movies directed by Doug Liman.

Maybe Doug Liman can save Tom Cruise. He directed the only truly enjoyable movie Tom Cruise has been in during the last 10 years (Edge of Tomorrow) and the only movies he’s planning on being in that aren’t remakes, sequels, or spin-offs.

More Tom Cruise analysis to come…

Next: Going Clear

Every Tom Cruise Movie, part 37: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

So a few months ago I met a girl in New York whose brother worked on the set of Edge of Tomorrow and she said that in the scene where Tom Cruise is strapped to a gurney and trying to wriggle away her brother’s job was to strap Tom Cruise to the gurney, and Tom Cruise kept yelling at her brother that the straps weren’t tight enough because he wanted to make it look real, like he was really strapped to that gurney. And that totally fits my perception of what it’s like to be around Tom Cruise.

Anyway, I liked Edge of Tomorrow! It’s basically Groundhog Day, with violent aliens. I think I like the fact that the movie doesn’t try to explain all of the crazy shit it throws at you outside of giving a really brief, vague explanation. When Tom Cruise dies, he always wakes up at the same point of the previous day? It’s because of alien blood! There’s a fine line between being way too vague about key plot points and just having fun and not taking yourself too seriously, and I think Edge of Tomorrow kind of nails it which is a good contrast from Oblivion.

Also I just like the parable of Edge of Tomorrow, which is about how to be truly amazing at something you have to be terrible at it for a very very long time and fail so horribly that it feels like you will never get it, and it’s ok if you feel like giving up because as long as you keep trying you will eventually succeed.

I think the reason Edge of Tomorrow works is because most of the movie is just Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt talking. Yes the circumstance of the movie is extreme but it focuses on a relationship and lets the plot develop within the context of that rather than create a complicated plot line with lots of dips and dives and then shoehorn characters in to explain what’s going on. Tom Cruise does what he does at first not because he wants to save the world which is an abstract concept that it would make sense that his character (not to mention the audience) would have a hard time grasping, instead he does it because he likes Emily Blunt and he doesn’t want her to die. The audience has seen that relationship and they can relate.

The other thing that happens when you establish a meaningful and powerful relationship between two characters in a film is that it doesn’t matter how the plot ends. The ending of Edge of Tomorrow makes no sense but you are rooting for the people so it’s satisfying.

I’m going to write up ROGUE NATION (which can only be referred to in all caps) today and then I have some final Tom Cruise thoughts. I’m also going to review Going Clear in some capacity. Hooray!

Every Tom Cruise Movie, Part 36: Oblivion (2013) 

Oblivion is a tough movie to review without spoiling, and I think it’s worth not spoiling because I don’t think it was widely watched and it wasn’t bad. It is a post apocalyptic sci-fi movie that has a little in common with the Matrix and a little in common with Independence Day. It has a some cool sci-fi stuff going on. Space travel, aliens, nuclear war, radiation, etc.

It suffers because it has too much going on. There are a ton of twists, and the twists are sort of fun and compelling but there are just so many! It’s like if Darth Vader is Luke’s father, Luke & Leia are sisters, Palpatine is Sidious, Natalie Portman is the queen, Yoda is Yoda, Jar Jar is a Sith Lord, and Kylo Ren is secretly a member of the Harlem Globetrotters were all in the same movie and instead of having 7 films of lore and character development setting it up you had 2 minutes of voiceover from Tom Cruise.

I feel like each of these big reveal moments were supposed to make me say “WHOOOAAA” but really I had a hard time caring.

Something I noticed about Tom Cruise that seems to have become especially common in the last few years of his career is that he always tries to work something in to make you think he’s just a normal guy. It’s such an odd thing for a leading man to do because usually they can just show us that they’re regular people or that they are whoever they are supposed to be in the movie, but in Cruise’s roles it seems like he or the scriptwriters have to work in a special part of the script to get you to relate to him. It’s like something a politician would do. For example, in Oblivion there is a scene where Tom Cruise’s character is investigating a barren wasteland and he discovers an old, ruined football stadium, where he lands and promptly says, “This was the site of the last Super Bowl. Classic Game. The Clock was running down and the football Quarterback fumbled the football! Then he ran to grab the football and grabbed it and threw a Hail Mary football pass! The Rookie Wide Receiver caught it in his human hands and it was a touchdown!” Ok that’s not an exact quote but you get the picture.

I think it’s entirely possible that Tom Cruise actually is an alien, but more on that when I review Going Clear.

Next: Edge of Tomorrow

Every Tom Cruise Movie, Part 35: Jack Reacher (2012)

I like things about this movie. I like Rosamund Pike, and how she speaks in a vaguely southern accent, and how she wears all of her emotions right on her face. I like David Oyelowo’s stoic certainty. I like Werner Herzog even though it doesn’t seem like he can act. I like how there is very little music. I like how the movie tells us what people are doing and thinking, not by having them speak but by having the camera focus on what they are doing or how they are reacting to situations. The movie also contains one of the few great car chase / escape sequences I’ve seen. Jack Reacher is sparse and concise in a way that makes it stylish.

I have two problems. One is with the Jack Reacher character. I don’t know anything about the book series upon which this movie is based but at least in the movie he is kind of a dick. I think as an audience member I am supposed to interpret this as intelligent yet practical, but really he’s just a dick. He is patronizing and pretty rude. Maybe there’s supposed to be charm in that. I didn’t get that from Tom Cruise’s performance.

The other problem is that the story doesn’t make any sense. The movie disguises this for the first 90 minutes or so by creating a pretty compelling mystery. But the pieces just don’t add up and the storywriters are forced to try and wrap everything up with a pretty disappointing action set piece.

Anyway, I think it’s ok. There’s a sequel being made, which seems weird, because I don’t think I’ve met anyone who saw this movie. But it doesn’t really seem like I’m the intended audience (the movie’s worldview is unabashedly libertarian) so the fact that I found it enjoyable at all probably means something.

Man, the movies Tom Cruise has starred in over the last 10 years are underwhelming. I’ve noticed something else: the “A Tom Cruise Production” tag at the beginning of most of his recent films. I don’t know that that’s related, but I don’t know that it isn’t.

Next: Oblivion

Every Tom Cruise Movie, Part 34: Rock of Ages (2012)

A young, naive blonde bombshell moves to L.A. to become a singer in the height of the hair metal era. She gets a job at a bar where people rock out constantly and she promptly falls in love with a dorky child who also wants to be singer. They are played by the only two actors in the movie who aren’t particularly famous and the only two who can sing.

Meanwhile a mayoral candidate and his wife plan to shut down the rock out bar because it’s dangerous and because people thinking rock & roll was dangerous was apparently still at thing in 1987.

Also, a super popular rock band headlined by Tom Cruise is planning on playing their final concert at the bar. I’m not sure why anyone felt that 40-year-old Tom Cruise was the appropriate person to play a rock star/sex god, but that’s who he plays.

There’s also a gay love story that seems like it’s being presented to make fun of Alec Baldwin and Russel Brand’s characters, because two male characters can’t be friends and enjoy music together without being homosexual.

It’s more of a musical revue than anything else because the songs that take up most of the movie’s running time don’t have anything to do with the plot. It’s kind of like listening to a “best of the late 80s” Spotify playlist when you don’t pay for Spotify Premium, except instead of ads you get webisodes of a cliched soap opera.

So, if you’re interested in a 2 hr, 80s-themed episode of Glee…well, whatever. My favorite part was that I didn’t have to pay very close attention.

Next: Jack Reacher

Every Tom Cruise Movie, part 33: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

Right now television is replacing film as the predominant medium for storytelling. There is so much variety, creativity and talent on television without the requirement that content must make hundreds of millions of dollars to be deemed successful. Networks measure success, and their audiences, by a variety of standards. Television has also overcome the restriction of content needing to fit into 30 or 60 minute time windows because stories can be told in many-episode segments. 

A story on television can be as short as a few minutes and as long 50 or more hours. Many of us consume television now they way we have often consumed movies – on demand and at home. But with big-budget movies, we tend to consume them the way we have traditionally consumed television – as appointment viewing.

I realized as I was watching Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol that film is likewise replacing television. As the number of options on TV expands, its familiarity disappears. 125 million people watched the M.A.S.H. finale. 50 million watched the final Johnny Carson Tonight Show. TV shows don’t draw ratings in those numbers anymore. The only media objects that traverse our culture to that degree are movies.

Hollywood studios now focus their production primarily on franchises – movies with built-in audiences, or purely “artful” movies that they hope will win awards and increase their credibility and clout. A lot of people decry this as a bad thing – I know I was disappointed when I went to see Star Wars Episode VII last week and saw 6 trailers for franchise blockbusters all featuring the end of the world in some capacity. But maybe familiar cultural artifacts are necessary in our society – we need something that everyone is interested in to be able to relate to one another as a people.

Maybe if movies were as creative and diverse in content as they were 20 years ago our society would be flooded with so much art we wouldn’t be able to communicate as a people, we’d just hang out in coffee shops and stare at each other, or talk in grunts. Maybe human evolution is tied to inane, mass-appealing content. Maybe we should stone Terrence Malick, Lars Von Trier, and all Indie Pop singers.

Anyway, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol isn’t that good, but who cares? Tom Cruise does a crazy-ass stunt, Simon Pegg says some funny things, and there are a bunch of explosions.

Next: Rock of Ages