Rochester, NY- Eastman Kodak’s Auteur series of screenings is well underway, with a last minute addition it seems. The entire catalogue of films made by director Michael Bay will be counted among the other greats being shown through this month and into June.
Michael Bay, director of such cinematic triumphs as The Rock and Bad Boys 2, as well as cinematic dumpster fires Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Pearl Harbor, has seen great financial success since the early 2000’s. reliably putting out summer blockbuster after summer blockbuster.
“This is pure Bay,” critic Michele Chantrum says from her theater seat, Armageddon being projected onto the silver screen, “…His trademarks as a filmmaker are all here! In every sense of the word Auteur, you can immediately tell a Michael Bay movie from any other. His is a view all his own; a destructive view of machismo and one liners-Oh! SHHH!” Chantrum holds a finger up and sits, transfixed at the visage of Bruce Willis shooting at Ben Affleck with a shotgun on an oil drilling platform.
Many have cited outrage that Bay would be counted among the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Michel Gondry, Wong Kar-Wai, Darren Aronofsky, Park Chan-Wook and Andrei Tarkovsky, in almost unison saying “Come on, really?”
“Well, if you look at it from an artistic sense,” started film historian David Agatao, “He has all the characteristics of an auteur filmmaker: A distinctive style, a clear narrative voice, almost full authorship over the process’ of his films, a spark from a source material that has spoken to a wide audience- Really it’s surprising that nobody else has recognized him as such.”
Eastman Kodak declined to comment, saying that the screening will speak for itself. The films will be shown through this weekend into early next week.