Ranking all 13 Michael Bay movies

Yes, I viewed them all. And I actually liked some of them. You can read my Variety countdown here. (Spoiler: No. 1 is not a Transformers movie.)

Script Girl bares the truth

Script Girl knows how Michael Bay got into showbiz, and she's spilling the beans. Sort of.

Independence Day

In honor of the holiday, I give you the ridiculously corny yet tremendously affecting speech given by a beleaguered U.S. President (played by Bill Pullman) to rally a final push against invading extraterrestrials in Independence Day. Seeing this clip again reminds me that, as recently as 1999, you could portray the Commander in Chief as the take-charge hero of a summer blockbuster without inviting derisive jeers from mainstream moviegoers. Flash forward to today, and you have Michael Bay's Transformers, an even bigger blockbuster that depicts the U.S. President only fleetingly, as a mostly unseen doofus with bright red socks and a taste for Ho-Hos, while a grimly determined Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight, who played the heroic FDR in Bay's Pearl Harbor) does the heavy lifting. Gee, do you think this says something about how the makers of Transformers view -- and how they assume mainstream audiences view -- the current resident of the White House?

First word on 'Transformers'

From Variety: "If it's true that there's an 8-year-old boy inside every man, Transformers is just the ticket to bring the kid out. Big, loud and full of testosterone-fueled car fantasies, Michael Bay's actioner hits a new peak for CGI work, showcasing spectacular chases and animated transformation sequences seamlessly blended into live-action surroundings. There's no longer any question whether special effects can be made more realistic: The issue is whether disposable actors can be trained to play better with bluescreens."

Film of infamy?

To commemorate this historic day, I'm going to come out of the closet and admit that I rather liked the near-universally panned Pearl Harbor. Indeed, the more I go back and review Hollywood war dramas that were produced just before and during WWII, the more I appreciate what director Michael Bay (and, yes, producer Jerry Bruckheimer) accomplished with what I described in 2001 as "an unabashedly old-fashioned and irony-free wartime romance infused with gee-whiz pyrotechnics and rah-rah patriotism." (A random thought: I wonder how much more -- or less – Pearl Harbor might have scored at the box-office had it opened a few months later, after 9/11.)

In the spirit of openness and honesty, I ask readers and fellow bloggers: Do you have a similarly guilty pleasure in your closet? Do you secretly (or not-so-secretly) embrace a movie scorned by all but you?