Alcatraz. Only one man has ever broken out. Now five million lives depend on two men breaking in.

Michael Bay's best picture.

The sophomore effort from director Michael Bay, this $75 million dollar action film was released nationwide on June 7, 1996 - eventually earning $335 million. The particularly great R-rated premise sees a mild-mannered chemist teaming up with a resourceful ex-con who must infiltrate Alcatraz prison after a rogue group of military men, led by a renegade general, threaten a nerve-gas attack.

Constantly in over his head, and never one to use profane language, Nicho... read the rest.

Welcome to The Rock.

The Rock is directed by Michael Bay and written by David Weisberg, Douglas Cook & Mark Rosner. It stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, David Morse, William Forsythe & Michael Biehn.

When a highly decorated army general (Harris) decides that he's had enough of his men dying and not getting the credit they deserve, he commandeers Alcatraz prison with a crack unit of Mercs. The plan is to hold the government to ransom or he will unleash from the prison biological rockets to bring Armageddon down upon America. Enter chemical weapons expert Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (C... read the rest.

The two lead characters' impact on the events of the move are pretty negligible, everyone and everything in it is laughably stupid, and you can see here begin to blossom the stereotypes that Michael Bay would go on you ruin everything he ever touched with, but I still kind of like The Rock. Maybe it's just in comparison to all of Bay's other films, or maybe it's because it's the only one of his works I saw when I was still single-digit aged, but I do enjoy it. I'm not willing to defend it, just to re-watch it once a decade or so.

_Final rating:★★★ - I liked it. Would personally recommend... read the rest.

Right, first things first - turn your brain down to simmer for a couple of hours before you watch this and just remember it is meant to be a far-fetched action film. Once in that gear, it's not actually that bad once it eventually gets going. Rogue general "Hummel" (Ed Harris) steals some highly potent chemical weapons, takes some hostages on Alcatraz and points his weapons at San Francisco. It falls to FBI biochemist "Goodspeed" (Nicolas Cage) and the even more rogue prisoner "Mason" (Sean Connery) to take some marines and thwart this lethal attack. None of the acting here is any good - they a... read the rest.