3 Buschemis and a Connery

Quentin Tarantino vs. Michael Bay... ok so not the hardest to predict match up. We decided to include Michael Bay so that we had more action directors and popular films in the contest but needless to say it went pretty much where you would expect.

Reservoir Dogs- This film brought back some memories. Back in the good old days of the early 90s before CGI and massive budgets Tarantino managed to make a gripping, graphic, Hong Kong action film on a tiny budget for the American audience. Man what a great film this is. If your able to get past the fact that a lot of Tarantino's style is now well trodden in his later films (like mobster characters, dialog too cool for real people, and gratuitous shocking violence) then your going to be blown away the first time you see it. You can almost feel the love of Asian cinema pouring out of the film. The mastery of characters is one of Tarantino's trademarks and here it is on full display. Each of the film's main characters is identified only by a color ( Mr. Green, Mr. Blond, Mr. Pink, etc.) and each where's a nearly identical black suit with a skinny tie yet you have no trouble distinguishing between their motives and back stories. The fact that 90% of the film takes place in a warehouse and still manages to hold you attention for 2 plus hours is also amazing. The tightness of the plot felt early on unravels perfectly and ends in bloodbath that feels perfect despite the obviousness. And man I still think that dancing torture scene is perhaps one of the best scenes in all of film.
Genre- Crime Drama 9/10
Characters - 9/10
Mood, Theme, Ambiance - 9/10
Inventiveness - 8/10
Film Quality - 9/10
Total - 44/50

The Rock- OK so I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I'm not really sure how much time Bay spent making it. The plot involves a former Green Beret General conquering Alcatraz (because despite it being out of use for 50 years its still an impenetrable fortress?) so that he can threaten San Francisco with ballistic missiles and deadly chemical weapons capable of killing everyone in the city, forcing the US to pay a ransom to the families of dead soldiers in his former brigade who got no service pay after they died. The only solution to the problem is Sean Connery (the only man to escape from Alcatraz) and Nick Cage ( FBI chemical weapons expert) to break in and stop them. Then the plot gets ridiculous. That's about as far as I'm going to summarize and needless to say its filled with constant action sequences, car chases, shootouts, and smash cuts that make Bay's work the trash that it is. Each character is beyond unrealistic, the plot has the logic of a Frank Miller comic book, and unlike Tarantino nothing is ironic. One last point and I'm not sure how much time people wanna spend working on the logic of a Bay film but aren't prison's built to keep people out not prevent them from coming in?
Genre -Action 1/10
Characters 2/10
Mood, Theme, Ambiance - 1/10
Inventiveness - 1/10
Film Quality - 2/10
Total - 7/50

Pulp Fiction - This is the film that brought Tarantino to national attention as far as I can tell. It blew away audiences (me included) in the early 90s and secured itself a best picture nod in a time when far more obvious Oscar bait was winning on a consistent basis. Again as is always the case with Tarantino the strength of the film is in its characters here anchored by Samuel Jackson and a reemerging John Travolta (everything that Travolta did both decent and horribly tasteless after this film is due entirely to this casting). The film unlike Reservoir Dogs and more similar to Tarantino's future films is really a series of vignettes that string together an out of time plot of again murderous mobsters and various other underworld criminals. Once again Tarantino makes some of the strangest characters seem perfectly relatable to an average audience and the out of time nature of the plot hides perfectly what in order would be just an average film.

Genre- Crime Drama 9/10
Characters 10/10
Mood, Theme, Ambiance 9/10
Inventiveness 9/10
Film Quality 9/10
Total: 46/50

Armageddon - I remember being in high school and having this film come out at and everyone loving it. By everyone here I mean all of my ADHD Mountain Dew caffeinated jock friends and looking back on it I hope this affected my high school opinion of finding this film at all enjoyable, because this is a piece of trash. As Batgirl pointed out this is merely a series of things that would not happen if an asteroid was hurtling toward earth. First of all the idea that an asteroid coming toward earth could in fact be unnoticed by NASA would be laughed at by any college student who has taken an Intro to Astronomy course. The rag tag group of everyday heroes and giant capitalists who come together to save humanity comes across like something out of a CPAC wet dream. And every part of this story feels well trodden and almost a caricature of itself. Most of the actors were so wooden that they were out acted by the asteroid. And then of course there are the endless smash cuts, close ups, one liners, and sudo-physics that seem to be the basis of every Bay film that make the rest of the it pointless to watch. The saddest thing of all is the fact that this film has somehow managed to spawn a endless series of similar films since its release that are each in themselves somehow worse.

Genre - Apocalyptic Action - 1/10
Characters - 1/20
Mood, Theme, Ambiance 2/10
Inventiveness - 2/10
Film Quality - 0/10
Total 6/10

Tarantino just managed to squeak by Bay here with an average of 45 to Bay's 6.5. Whew that was a nail biter.