Best Music Videos: “I Touch Myself”, Divinyls (1991); “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”, Meatloaf (1993)

Best Movies: Bad Boys (1995), The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), Bad Boys II (2003), Transformers (2007), Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (2011)



Haters have to admit this about Michael Bay: The man has always been obsessed with overboard spectacle. Just look back at his breakthrough, pre-Hollywood music video, Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”; nearly long enough to be considered a short film, the clip is a highly ambitious Beauty And The Beast/Phantom Of The Opera mash-up that appears to have the budget of a reasonably priced motion picture, not an overzealous music clip.



Bay is nothing if not consistent, and it’s that lasting desire to blow budgets that has defined his financially massive film career, kicked off by the Martin Lawrence/Will Smith buddy cop smash Bad Boys and recently signified by the dumb yet entertaining Transformers movies.



Many purists—you know, folks who harp on little details such as story, acting, and coherence—love to ridicule Bay’s films for their soullessness, but to do so is missing the point: Oddly enough, the game’s biggest purveyor of pricey eye candy is also one of Hollywood’s most reliable filmmakers. He promises spectacle, and, as Meatloaf first learned some 18 years ago, he delivers spectacle.