Film

Endless weight

Pain & Gain

Michael Bay’s latest, Pain & Gain, has all of that Michael Bay crap that makes him one of my least favorite directors. Actually, that’s an understatement: I think Michael Bay is basically a satanic cinematic force, with most of his films sustaining an artistic level I shall equate to a sickened elephant farting in a circus tent that’s been set aflame by dangerous clowns. That said, he has actually made a few movies that I don’t hate. My favorite Bay film would be Bad Boys II, in which he seemed to be poking fun at himself. That slo-mo tracking shot of a bullet passing through Martin Lawrence’s ass is still the apex of Bay’s career. I also liked his innocuous sci-fi offering The Island, which actually featured edits more than a second long. So I reluctantly admit to sort of liking Pain & Gain, mainly because Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson are a total crackup as two bodybuilders who take part in a kidnapping/extortion plot that actually really happened. Yes, this messed-up movie is actually based on a true story, and it’s remarkable how much of this insanity is accurate. Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a fitness instructor who is no doubt one of recent American criminal history’s greatest stupid assholes. When Lugo feels like his life is in a rut, he hatches a plan to kidnap a wealthy gym member (Tony Shalhoub) and extort money from him. With two gym members (Johnson and Anthony Mackie) in tow, he goes through with it, and things quickly spiral out of control.

Bay uses the film to satirize the vapid ’90s, with his lecherous camera lingering on many bikini-clad asses and boobs. Yes, we get plenty of Bay slo-mo and, of course, the below-the-chin, looking up 360 degree tracking thing he loves so damned much. The edits are at breakneck speed, and get a little tedious. At more than two hours, the by Bob Grimm movie is a bit too long, and yet somehow too fast at the same time. bgrimm@ Its saving grace is that much of it is quite newsreview.com funny in an over-the-top, outrageous kind of way. Just the sight of Wahlberg, Johnson 3 and Mackie all swollen with extra muscle pounds put on for the shoot is funny. At one point, Bay gets Wahlberg to strip down to his Calvin Klein white boxer briefs, a nice homage to Wahlberg’s infamous advertising campaign. As he did with Bad Boys II, Bay celebrates disgusting excess entertainingly, as long as he’s shooting for laughs. No, we don’t get a car chase with corpses spilling out of a truck and getting run over (darn!), but we do get Shalhoub sloppily eating a taco while blindfolded. (This somehow manages to be funny.) We also get dogs with severed toes in their mouths, Rebel Wilson using nunchucks during a sex scene, and a dude getting his head crushed by weights. Wahlberg is too much fun when he does comedy, always playing it straight during the most outrageous of situations. Johnson plays his part as a big religious hulk who just wants to be a lover but can’t help beat the crap out of every other person he meets. This may be my favorite Johnson performance yet. Is it sloppy? Yes. Is it way too hyper at times? Yes. Does Michael Bay commit many of the usual cinematic affronts that have made him hated by those of us who sometimes like to watch a movie without having our eyes and ears violated? Oh, hell yes. But Pain & Gain is OK, and is actually some sort of movie miracle when considering the dumbass who made it. Up next for Bay would be Transformers 4, of course. I’m thinking that film will once again remind us that Bay is a scourge on the land of cinema who only gets it right on the rarest of occasions. Ω

“I like my money like I like my women: tan, with traces of cocaine.”

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excellent 3 42 Spike Lee tried to get a movie about American hero Jackie Robinson, starring Denzel Washington, off the ground for many years, but couldn’t make it happen. I get a feeling that Lee, who made one of the great biopics with Malcolm X, would’ve done something really special with the subject. This effort from director Brian Helgeland (Payback) is OK, even really good at times, but gets awfully hokey in too many moments. Chadwick Boseman is a great pick to play Robinson, as is Lucas Black as Pee Wee Reese. Harrison Ford delivers big time as Branch Rickey, the man who brought Robinson to the majors, and Christopher Meloni leaves the movie all too soon as Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, who was suspended the year Robinson made his debut. Boseman shines, even when the movie doesn’t, and it’s a lot of fun to see Ford do something this craggy and different. I’m thinking Robinson went through some major hell during his baseball times, and this movie only scratches the surface. It’s good, but it should’ve been great.

3The Company You Keep Robert Redford directs himself as an upstate New York lawyer with a past who must flee his life when a nosy journalist (Shia LaBeouf) discovers his true identity. The film gives us fictional characters that were former members of the very real Weather Underground, and they are played by the likes of Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte and Julie Christie. LaBeouf does much of the heavy lifting, and it’s some of his better work in quite some time. Redford is just OK here, as is his movie. I can’t say it blew me away, but I didn’t dislike it, either. It’s just one of those movies that gets by with semi-competent directing and acting without truly wowing you. Others in the cast include Stanley Tucci, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins and Sam Elliott.

3Evil Dead The low-budget classic horror film gets a slick new remake and loses the iconic character of Ash in favor of a girl trying to kick heroin. Mia (Jane Levy) is trying to sober up, so friends and family take her out to a secluded cabin. They find a mysterious book in the basement, somebody reads it out loud, Mia goes for a walk in the woods, the woods treat her badly, and gore aplenty ensues. While Levy is fine in the central role, and Lou Taylor Pucci is good as one of the guys who should’ve gone to a hotel instead, the film has a few too many uninteresting characters. Shiloh Fernandez is a dud as Mia’s brother, and Elizabeth Blackmore is only there so somebody can cut her own arm off. Let it be said that moments such as the arm-cutting are well done. The film is a true gore fest. While it is OK, and doesn’t slander Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, it’s not a horror classic by any means. Like most good horror these days, it’s just good, and that is all.

4Jurassic Park 3D Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur fantasy is still one of the best adventure films ever made, but the new 3-D retrofit winds up muting the presentation rather than expanding it. Unlike, say, James Cameron’s Titanic, which looked and felt like it was meant to be shot in 3-D, the presentation here feels forced. The color is diminished, and the scope seems “squished.” It’s not awful, and I’ve seen worse 3-D, but it fails to enhance the film much. Some theaters are offering the movie in its original 2-D presentation, and I would recommend revisiting it in one of those theaters for sure. The combination of practical and computer effects to create the dinosaurs has easily stood the test of time. The dinosaurs continue to look amazing. Watching the 3-D version, I did notice that Jeff Goldblum sticks his tongue out a lot when he speaks. It’s creepy.

5Mud It’s official: Jeff Nichols, who gave us the brilliant Take Shelter, is a writer/ director who stands among the best of them. Matthew McConaughey plays the title character, a chipped-tooth, wild-haired drifter living in a boat in a tree along the Mississippi. Two kids, Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan of The Tree of Life, and Jacob Lofland) stumble upon him, and find themselves part of his strange and dangerous world. McConaughey is just catching wave after wave lately, and this is his best one yet. He makes Mud a little scary, yet charming and cunning. Sheridan and Lofland are terrific as the young friends who should probably stay away from guys living in boats in trees. The cast also boasts Reese Witherspoon, Michael Shannon and Sam Shepard, all of them equally great. Ladies and gentleman, we have the year’s first “excellent” movie. Jesus, it took long enough.

2Oblivion Tom Cruise gives it his all, but his all isn’t enough to save this sci-fi effort from feeling like a bunch of movies you’ve seen before. He plays Jack, a man on a sweep-up mission of Earth 60 years after it was beat up by aliens. He has a lot of dreams featuring a dream woman (Olga Kurylenko) and the Empire State Building, and seems to feel right at home when visiting the planet. Thing is, he’s far too young to have been around when the Empire State Building stood tall—or is he? The movie wants to be clever, but you’ll see the big twist a mile away. As for the visuals, some work (the Empire State Building in ruins is cool) and some don’t (most of the other effects). Morgan Freeman shows up as a survivor dude who smokes cigars, which means he’s smoking cigars that are over 60 years old. He must’ve grabbed a thousand of them and the world’s greatest humidor as the apocalypse unfolded.

2Olympus Has Fallen Gerard Butler stars in one of the more ridiculous action films you will see this year. He’s a Secret Service agent on duty the night something very bad happens to the president (Aaron Eckhart), and he winds up with a desk job. When some nasty North Koreans hilariously infiltrate the White House and hold the president and his cabinet hostage, it’s time for Gerard to dispense with the paper clips and pick up an automatic weapon! This movie has some tragic flaws, including terrible CGI and mawkish patriotic crap that distracts rather than making the heart swell (Melissa Leo screaming the Pledge of Allegiance as she is dragged to certain death comes to mind). You aren’t going to catch me calling this a good movie, but I won’t fault you for enjoying it to some degree if you choose to see it.

2Oz the Great and Powerful James Franco is in over his head for Sam Raimi’s mostly lame prequel to The Wizard of Oz. The title character calls for somebody with that old school Hollywood charm like Robert Downey, Jr., or Johnny Depp. Franco looks like a kid playing dress up here, and he’s not even the worst thing about the movie. That would be Mila Kunis looking completely lost as the witch who will become that witch we all know from the original Oz. I’m sorry—that witch isn’t supposed to be all corseted and hot. As for Rachel Weisz, she fares best as yet another witch, while Michelle Williams is just serviceable as Glinda the Good Witch. Raimi relies heavily on CGI effects—big surprise—and they look pretty crappy for the most part. This is an underwhelming movie in much the same way his Spider-Man 3 missed the mark. It’s overblown, misguided and odd.

4The Place Beyond the Pines Derek Cianfrance follows up his brilliant Blue Valentine with a film bigger in scope but still starring Ryan Gosling. Gosling plays Luke, a motorcycle stunt guy who finds out he has a kid and wants to be a part of his life. Problem is, the kid is the product of a one-night stand, and the mom (Eva Mendes) has moved on. Luke resorts to robbing banks, which culminates in a meeting with a rookie cop played by Bradley Cooper. The film then focuses on Cooper’s character for a segment before dealing with Luke and Avery’s kids (played by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen) when they are teens. The movie is long, but never boring, and it crackles most when Gosling is on screen. It’s all about the sins of the fathers, and Cianfrance presents it in a way that resonates. Also stars Ray Liotta and Ben Mendelsohn.