4. Transformers
Though it doesn't boast the outstanding action of the third film, the first Transformers is for my money the best and most-focused of the three. Though I was never crazy about the film opting to focus more on the humans than the Transformers, Bay did a pretty good job with it, turning Sam Witwicky's relationship with Optimus Prime into a quirky, surprisingly funny "boy and his dog" tale that then transitioned later on into a slick action film. If there's any descriptor I would use for this film, it is "balanced". More so than most other Bay films, the mixture of comedy, drama and action really works, and though there's still some cringe-inducing gags, on the whole Bay knows when to move onto the next beat before it gets tiresome. It might not deliver as much action as its sequels, but on the whole it feels like the most streamlined and evenly-cut of the three films.