Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007)

Few directors could take a premise as potentially explosive as a giant robot war on Earth and make it boring, but Michael Bay manages with effort to spare. Overlong, woefully unfunny, and filmed like an advert for a men's razor, Transformers limps along as one-dimensional character cyphers run back and forth, chasing an increasingly ridiculous set of plot devices, while violence sporadically erupts, and is instantly rendered nigh-unwatchable thanks to Bay's dreadful shaky-cam direction.

With a bland, identikit cast that has clearly mistaken shouting for acting it is down to the Transformers themselves to provide the human interest, but apart from the platitude-spouting Optimus Prime and the silent Bumblebee, the rest of the robots look and sound too similar and do too little to be in any way memorable.

This is a terrible film, one which no amount of nostalgia or brainless summer apologism can possibly excuse. And if the rumours are true that it was only ever made because producer Don Murphy failed to get the rights to 'G.I. Joe', a film that never should have been made in the first place.

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Capcom Fighting Collection 2 [PS4, 2025]

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300 is hopefully the purest distillation of that 21st century cinema spectacle, the "CGI armies colliding" film that filmgoers will ever see. Lovingly recreating Frank Miller's not-particularly historical comic, Zack Snyder has delivered a quite hysterically over-the-top and ludicrously macho piece of celluloid gristle. Let it be said, there are no characters in this film whatsoever. There is a beard. There are a couple of hundred six-packs, some breasts and some black skin. These items roll around on screen in assorted combinations for two hours and then it's over. What have we learned at the end? God knows. That a warrior race which kills imperfect newborn babies and feeds its young to hungry wolves can champion logic, learning, female empowerment, enlightenment, free will and numerous exciting sexual positions, apparently. Even without thinking about things, 300 is a drag. The action centres upon the titanic Persian army and its repeated attempts to break the S...

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