DVD Reviews

Time to get caught up with the movies from 2013 that I missed in theaters earlier this year. Well, "missed" is a relative term, I guess.

Parker
Starring: Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez
Plot: A con man / thief done wrong by a group he went in on a job with goes after said group to get revenge.
Thoughts: This is a pretty basic Jason Statham movie. That being said, if the script had been tighter or the direction a little more aspiring, it would have been a much better, cooler movie. I watch whatever movies I can from any given year so I have a well-rounded opinion of the best and worst at the end of the year. This was quite a bit better than I was expecting.
Grade: C-

Snitch
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jon Bernthal, Susan Sarandon, Barry Pepper
Plot: A business man becomes a crusader for the DEA when his son gets arrested for drug possession. In order to get him out of prison, he must deliver a much bigger fish.
Thoughts: Listen, I don't know if it's because I miss Bernthal (Shane) on The Walking Dead, or if The Rock is sort of my guilty plesaure (I find him mind-boggingly sexy and charming), but I actually sort of enjoyed this movie. It's not good, per se, but it is, at the very least, fun.
Grade: C+

Broken City
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Kyle Chandler, Barry Pepper, James Ransone
Plot: An ex-cop turned private eye is hired by the mayor to prove his wife is cheating on him a few weeks before the re-election that he's losing.
Thoughts: The second movie in a row that I watched at home starring Barry Pepper in which he was the best thing in the cast. With all these heavy hitters in the cast (and actors I genuinely love - Chandler, Pepper, Ransone, Alona Tal), I thought that perhaps this movie fell through the cracks on my radar. How can all these people go so wrong?? (Confession: I watched this soley for James Ransone who was in it for approximately 4 minutes. Don't make the same mistake).
Grade: D+

Beautiful Creatures
Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum
Plot: A witch, who has about three months before it is decided whether she will be a good witch or a bad witch, falls for a mortal before against the wishes of her cray-cray family.
Thoughts: Boy was this movie fun!! It's not good but at least it doesn't take itself as seriously as those Twilight movies. It sort of reminded me of Obsessed from a few years ago, a movie with which I was obsessed. (A character in this movie utters the line, "Stay away from my boyfriend, WITCH!"). Oh, it's so bad, it's good! But on a serious note, Ehrenreich makes the whole thing worth watching. He is going to be a star. He reminds me of a young Jack Nicholson, which his big grin and endless charm.
Grade: C+

Gangster Squad
Starring: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Mackie, Michael Pena, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte
Plot: In 1949 Los Angeles, a group of vigilante cops band together to take down mob kingpin Mickey Cohen.
Thoughts: Here is how I think this movie got such an enviable cast. Sean Penn gets the script and he reads the first five pages, right up until he says that he gets to say a line like, "I'm God so you might as well swear to me." He's pretty excited about this and fails to read the next hundred pages. Josh Brolin hears that Sean Penn signed on so he does as well. Ryan Gosling hears both Penn and Brolin are in this movie, and signs on as well. I'm convinced none of them actually read the script. This is a great role for Penn, who knocks it out of the park, but he's the only reason to watch this mess.
Grade: D+

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-