Pain and Gain

Every once in a while, the perfect movie comes along for the perfect person. It happens with actors all the time. There are certain actors that you don't really think are particularly good until you see them in a certain role in a certain movie, and then you think, well, ok, now I get it. This can be said of just about any action star, but more specifically, an example that comes to mind is Ryan Phillippe. No one is convinced that he is the next Brando or DeNiro. But if you watch him in a movie like Cruel Intentions, you sort of understand. That role, that movie was perfect for him and his specific talents. If it can work like that for actors, then surely it can work like that for directors as well. Case in point - Michael Bay. Bay has long been one of my favorite punching bags. I think he makes a lot of big, stupid movies, all of which are getting less and less enjoyable to me as the years go by. But then came Pain and Gain, and with its over the top plot, shoot em out action sequences, and bevy of beautiful women, it's sort of the perfect movie for Bay. And somehow, maybe even accidentally, Bay managed to make a good movie, or at the very least, three-fourths of a good movie. Someone on Twitter managed to call this movie Michael Bay's Pulp Fiction, and while I don't quite think this is THAT good, I can admit that Pain and Gain is highly enjoyable.

Pain and Gain follows the outrageous true story of the Sun Gym Gang from the mid 90's in Miami, Florida. The main characters Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), Adrian (Anthony Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson)are a group of body builders / personal trainers who work at Miami's Sun Gym and decide to kidnap one of their super rich douche bag clients (Tony Shalhoub) and torture him until he just decides to sign over his entire fortune to them. Somehow, said victim manages to survive being tortured, run over, set on fire and, while the cops don't believe his outlandish story, a private investigator (Ed Harris) does and eventually begins to investigate the now living large gym rats.

So, Pain and Gain is a super dark comedy, very bleak with no happy ending in sight (i.e. my kinda movie). All sorts of things work really well with this movie. The first being that the story, no matter how outlandish it gets (and it does get pretty freaking crazy) is all true. So, when the movie gets a little nutty, the fact that it is indeed a true story keeps in grounded in reality. Then there are the great performances. The three leading men - Wahlberg, Mackie and Johnson - are perfectly cast. No one is going to argue that The Rock is a great actor, but this is the perfect example of this being the perfect role for him. Wahlberg is one of the very few actors who can oscilate between comedy, action and drama with infinite ease and this is the perfect movie for his talents because its sort of all three in one. Mackie is one of the most underrated actors out there and it's great to see him shine. But Johnson is sort of the scene stealer. He is hilarious and terrifying as a born again coke head who shares a special connection with the kidnapping victim but also is a terrifying brute. And the fact that it is sort of a shoot 'em up movie works in Michael Bay's favor. Again, I'm not saying he has suddenly turned into Martin Scorsese, but this movie is good because of, or maybe even in spite of him. Perhaps the movie loses some of its charm near the end, when it becomes more of a cliche than anything and perhaps it would have worked better if it had been a little bit quicker. If Bay is going to become a serious filmmaker, then he needs to hire an editor who can rein him in. Still, for the most part, Pain and Gain is a fun movie, dark and outlandish, but all of the craziness somehow works. I suspect this was a one and done for Bay since his next movie is a remake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but at the very least, we've gotten one good movie out of him.

Grade: B-

42

42 is the true story of baseball great Jackie Robinson. Robinson (played beautifully by Chadwick Boseman) was the very first African American baseball player in the MLB in 1947. This film follows two years of his life / career. The first is the year he makes the transition from star of the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs to lowly and abused on the Dodgers farm team in Montreal. The second year is his Rookie of the Year year with the Brooklyn Dodgers where he paves the way for so many things to come.

The abuse Robinson had to endure - both physically and mentally - are nearly unthinkable. He had to deal with everything from initially a team that signed a petition to have him kicked off the team, to pitchers throwing at his head, umpires making very bad calls in the other teams favor, and the fans booing him every time he came to the plate. But the worst of the abuse also made for the movies very best scene. It starts during a game with the Philadelphia Phillies in which their manager (played with particular vile by the great, underappreciated Alan Tudyk) hurls such obscenities at Robinson that it nearly made me cringe. Any and every racially negative, terrible thing that you could say to a person, Tudyk's Ben Chapman says, and then some. The scene is excrutiatingly long and intense and it makes the viewer completely uncomfortable. In other words, it is effective. The scene begins with this and continues during three Robinson at bats. We watch as Robinson tries to ignore it but his face shows such rage, anger, hatred. The scene culminates in Robinson storming off the field, through the dugout, and into the hall that connects it to the locker rooms where he screams and beats a bat against the wall. His back is to the camera and all we see is number 42, backlighted by the sunlight pouring intot he tunnel. It is a powerful scene in every possible way, from the writing to the acting to the filming. If only the entire movie were like this.

Unfornately, it isn't. The movie veers more into Lifetime movie territory. And if it were a Lifetime movie, it would be a very good one. But mostly it's cheesy and heavy handed. I know you've got to be to a certain extent but they could drive home the unspeakable abuse Robinson had to endure a little more subtlety. Yes, we all know he inspired hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions, but the parts with the little black boy following him around like a puppy (and then finding out at the end that this kid grew up to win the World Series himself) was a bit much. And then there is Harrison Ford...

ASIDE - Harrison Ford's eyebrows are so entirely distracting that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. They are the craziest eyebrows that I have ever seen on someone who wasn't a cartoon villain. All I could do at certain times was to sit there quietly and imagine getting a tiny pair of scissors and trimming them into something that looks more like an eyebrow and less like an overgrown bush. They are sort of the thickness of Martin Scorsese's eyebrows but he is a well groomed man so its as if he had a run in with a hedge, or something. Seriously, way out of control. I can't even describe it in words. END OF ASIDE.

Ford plays Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey with the sort of over the top haminess that is so often reserved for men his age. Plus, for every actually inspirational thing he says (He once tells Jackie that he wants a player who has the guts not to fight back rather than not having the guts to fight), he says five things that are intended to be inspiration but are instead hokey (i.e. Dollars are not black or white. They are green.). The older people in the audience seemed to love Ford's over the top performance, but I was just flabbergasted that he could get away with this at times near ridiculous performance.

Ford aside, the performances are pretty great. Boseman especially is amazing. He looks just like Robinson and he manages to evoke the bravery and honor of the man, as well as the anger, rage and disappointment that is simmering just beneath the surface. Tudyk is great in a small scene as well. I love Tudyk as an actor, but, boy, did he make me hate him in this movie, and that's the sign of a great actor. There are a slew of other solid performances by a ton of character actors, including Christopher Meloni, T.R. Knight and Lucas Black as the great Pee Wee Reese.

As a baseball lover, I really, really enjoyed this film. It was great to see such an influential time in baseball's history. However, as a film lover, it was sort of a disappointment. When the movie is good, it's really great. At its worse, it is nevery quite bad, although it does err on the side of mediocre quite a bit. A man who is as iconic as Jackie Robinson deserves a much better film.

Grade: B-

Oblivion / The Lords of Salem

I'm not going to sit here and try to convince anyone that Oblivion is some sort of revolutionary movie going experience. However, on Saturday, I did a double feature, and compared to the movie that I saw after, it made Oblivion look like The Godfather.

First things first, Oblivion takes place well into the future after America defeated an alien race hell bent on wiping the planet of our resources. As Tom Cruise's Jack says in narration, we won the war but lost the planet. So, now planet Earth is pretty much a wasteland and all of the human race lives on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Everyone except Jack and his partner Victoria, that is. Victoria mans the control tower (and talks to Melissa Leo's Sally who is on a space station named Tet) while Jack zips around on a dandy little space ship and mostly fixes drones who fight off the savages still on the planet during the night. Eventually, Jack learns that he and Victoria are not alone and instead the group of savages are actually human and led by Morgan Freeman.

So, plot wise, Oblivion is mediocre. I actually enjoyed the film a lot more until the plot began to thicken and thicken. It sort of felt like the filmmakers just wanted to get in every single sci fi cliche that they possibly could. And the movie really didn't need all of that, because what works for the movie - and it works well - are the breathtaking special effects and the high octane action scenes. I sort of feel about this movie the way I felt about Wanted a few years ago (also co-starring Morgan Freeman!!) - the less plot, the better. The plot in that movie just got in the way of Angelina Jolie throwing cars at buses. And while there's nothing quite that awesome in Oblivion, it still is a pretty decent popcorn movie.

And compared to the movie I saw immediately afterwards, well, damn...

Because next came The Lords of Salem. Here is a sort of diagram about the trajectory of Rob Zombie's directing career:

House of 1000 Corpses - Awesome!!!
The Devil's Rejects - Damn Good!
Halloween - Bad
Halloween 2 - Worse
The Lords of Salem - QUITE POSSIBLY THE WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE

Directors careers are supposed to go opposite. You are supposed to get your shitty movies out of the way first. I mean, geez, David Fincher's first movie was Alien 3 and now he's a goddamn rock star. But, no, Rob Zombie went in the wrong direction real quick. And it's a shame because there were moments in his first two films that really showed that he actually has potential.

But I digress. The Lords of Salem is actually the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. It's so bad that the city of Salem should probably ask to have its name removed from the title. In fact, the only thing I didn't hate about the movie was the fact that it was shot in Salem and I enjoyed noticing places that I had been. The plot of the movie follows Sherri Moon Zombie's Heidi who works the night shift at a radio station and gets a special delivery of a crappy album by a band called The Lords which turns the women of Salem into homicidal maniacs. Of course, Zombie tries to tie all of this to the Salem witch trials. Of course, the movie is offensive, disgusting, ridiculous, and above all, stupid. I almost think that maybe he was just messing with us. Maybe he wanted to see just how bad of a movie he could make? I don't know. I guess he was going for a Rosemary's Baby kind of vibe but, if so, he failed miserably. The Lords of Salem have absolutely no redeeming qualities and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - not even my worst enemy (i.e. that bitch Amanda Clark).

Grades: Oblivion - C+; The Lords of Salem - F

The Place Beyond the Pines

This isn't going to be a very long review. I feel like the less you know about The Place Beyond the Pines, the better. I read a review in Entertainment Weekly before seeing the film and I wish I hadn't. It sort of ruined a few plot points for me and I wouldn't want to do the same. I will say that I think The Place Beyond the Pines is a flawed masterpiece. It's fearless filmmaking, although, at times, it is on the frustrating side. Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance reteams with his star Ryan Gosling for this film about a carnival stunt man who takes to robbing banks in order to support a son he was unaware of until very recently. And that's all I'm going to say about the plot. Like I said, the less you know, the better.

One thing I will talk about are the great performances. Ryan Gosling is electrifying. He is raw and intense and it is an absolute joy to watch him command the screen in this gritty drama. Dane DeHaan, who is one of my very favorite new actors, shares Gosling's electricity, although his role is more moody and angsty. Even Eva Mendes, who I don't think is the greatest actress, shines as Gosling's baby mama. The real scene stealer, for me, was Ben Mendelsohn, who all but stole the whole movie away from Gosling and DeHaan. Is it too early to start a Best Supporting Actor Oscar campaign for him? Because he is that good. He is all weird ticks and subtle emotions. As someone who pretty much worships the ground he walks on since discovering him in Animal Kingdom, I love seeing him making interesting decisions and stealing movies from more famous co-stars (see also: Killing Me Softly). Unfortunately, then there is Bradley Cooper. I think Cooper is a good actor (although, like Jude Law, I never fully trust him in any thing, even if he is playing the nicest guy ever), but unfortunately he is stuck with the most bland story line in the film. I'm not saying his scenes are bad or terrible. It's just that compared to his co-stars who light up the screen, he sort of fades into the background.

And thus concludes my second shortest review of all time. (The shortest went a little something like, "My mama always said if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all." It was about the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie). The Place Beyond the Pines is definitely a great movie, and more than worth checking out. It's the first truly good movie of 2013. Thank God. I was getting worried.

Grade: A-

Evil Dead

Maybe it's because I haven't seen many 2013 movies yet this year. Or maybe it's because those that I have seen were a bit underwhelming / disappointing. Either way, Evil Dead is the first solidly good movie of the year, and the best I've seen so far.

Evil Dead is more a reimagining or continuence, even, than it is a remake. The fact that Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell produced this go around was very encouraging. Evil Dead was their baby, the movie that put them on the map. And if they are approving this version, then it gave me hope. Much like the first film, this version features the book of the dead, the same flesh covered book filled with potions and maybe witchcraft, as the first film. Also like the first film, it follows five friends who get together at a creepy abandoned cabin in the woods. However, this time around, they are not there for a booze and party filled weekend. Refreshingly, they are at the cabin to help Mia (Jane Levy) overcome her drug addiction. With the help of her hometown friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), as well as her old brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) who left home and abandoned her with a sick mother as soon as possible. Also there? David's bland blonde girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), who barely has any dialogue at all and doesn't even speak until about halfway into the movie. So, of course, the group finds the book of the dead. Of course, the brainy teacher Eric is entrigued by it and accidentally says a few words which awakens the evil. And of course, gory, scary craziness ensues. And it's all so damn fun.

I'm not saying Evil Dead is a perfect movie experience. There was one main thing I didn't love about the movie. But there also were quite a few things I really loved about it. First of all, I loved the concept. I thoroughly enjoyed the reason the group was at the cabin. It was a change of pace from every other horror movie where a bunch of hot kids just want to drink and hook up and party the weekend away. You immediately get the sense that these characters are people you should root for. After all, they aren't here to get drunk and high, they are here to help their friend, who is struggling to overcome her dependence to drugs (which they hint may stem from the fact that she watched her mother go through things her brother can only imagine). The second thing I loved about Evil Dead was the fact that they cast a group of actors who were actually good actors. Blackmore was the weakest link but also had the weakest character, someone we knew nothing about. Lucas and Fernandez were solid with Fernandez getting better and better as the movie went along. But the MVP's, for sure, were Levy and Pucci. Pucci was great as the character you thought might be the biggest coward, but who managed to be the hero of the story. And Levy gave a truly great horror movie performance, one of the best I've seen recently. The third thing I loved about the movie was the fact that it was A HORROR MOVIE. None of this PG-13 crap. None of this "Oh, your house is being haunted by a ghost" crap. Evil Dead is a balls to the wall, bad ass, gory, greusome, disgusting, terrifying, bad ass horror movie. And I loved nearly every deranged gross minute.

Of course, like I said, the movie isn't perfect. In fact, the major problem I had was with the ending. In general terms, I think there were at least two better places where the film could have ended, and in specific terms, without giving too much away, I didn't love the treatment given to Pucci's Eric in the final moments, but maybe that was only because he was my favorite character. I think there was definiely a better ending than the one we were given, but overall, Evil Dead is a fun, gory old school horror film. It's the kind of movie I grew up watching and the kind of horror movie I absolutely love.

Grade: B