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]

This is the third of Capcom's in-house "fighting collection" releases. It focuses on the late '90s - early 2000s, when development had moved to the NAOMI arcade board. This was a time when general public interest was moving away from the oversaturated fighting game market and into the new and expansive three-dimensional space. Eight titles comprise the collection; Capcom vs SNK Pro (2000) Capcom vs SNK 2 (2001) Capcom Fighting Jam (2004) Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper (2001) Power Stone (1999) Power Stone 2 (2000) Plasma Sword (1998) Project Justice (2000) The Capcom vs SNK games are the undoubted highlight; the experimental, flawed first game and the massive follow-up still look great and both feature huge rosters of characters, expansive, complex battle systems and hidden secrets. As with the rest of the CFC run, archive material, training modes, display filters, extra options, modern control considerations and rollback netcode are all great benefits. Also returnin...

Phone Me If You're Bored (Aidan Smith and his Indulgent Friends, 2014)

Aidan Smith is back, Indulgent Friends in tow, for another slipshod, ramshackle excursion into love, loss and absurdity.

Die Hard 2 (Renny Harlin, 1990)

Spirited if misguided attempt at improving the original by ramping up the action, threat and scope of the story, destroying in the process much of what made the first one great. A film clearly far too ambitious for the writers and directors who worked on it, Die Hard 2 is sprawling, aimless and full of hundreds of screeching unsympathetic minor characters. This time we find Detective John McClane battling a confused mix of military, mercanery and drug lord against the admittedly atmospheric background of a Christmas-time Dulles International Airport. The tense stand-offs of the first film are replaced with countless nonsensical overlong gun battles, the unique locations with huts and tunnels and the charasmatic villains with silly action figures. A few clever moments and pretty snowscapes raise the film now and then, but it's never more than a minute or two away from its noisy, clumsy roots.

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