10 Great Films You Can't Admit You Love (And Why)
6. The Rock
These days, Michael Bay's name is tantamount to proclaiming "this film is mindless trash". And it's true - the vast majority of projects that Bay touches these days are total garbage. But there's a reason why Bay managed to work his way upwards to becoming one of Hollywood's most trusted blockbuster film-makers. He wasn't always bad.
In fact, 1996's The Rock - which stars Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery - is everything that a Michael Bay movie should be. That is, full of ridiculous dialogue and action set pieces, but fully aware of that ridiculousness. It's the po-faced melodrama of Bay's recent projects that makes them so impossible to enjoy even on a surface level. Self-awareness is a quality the director seems to have lost.
Admitting you love The Rock, then, is saying "I like a Michael Bay film". Most film fans regard such a statement as utter sacrilege, assuming the person speaking is a mindless, drooling idiot.
But the fact is, Bay used to have a knack for making cheesy action films that revelled in their own cheesiness.