Cindy Prascik’s Review of Pain & Gain

Dearest Blog, hot on the heels of a great concert, the movies seemed like a poor substitute for the thing I really love. Still, it's Saturday, so off to the cinema I went to see Pain & Gain.

Three muscle-bound meatheads hatch a risky plot to relieve a Miami mogul of his considerable wealth.
Spoiler level here will be mild.

There's really no reason Pain & Gain should be a funny story. Three idiots ruin their own lives and several others, just because they think life owes them more than they've got. However, the sheer stupidity of our terrible trio--brilliantly played by Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne Johnson--makes this the funniest movie I've seen in at least a year.

I've never held with people who believe dramatic acting is more credible than comedy. Wahlberg, Mackie, and Johnson are absolutely fantastic in Pain & Gain, and Ed Harris nearly steals the show when he turns up to take on the bumbling criminals. It's to both writers' and actors' credit that the leads are enjoyable, yet it's
always clear they're bad guys, and you won't feel sorry for them if things go sideways.

Pain & Gain is loaded with brutal violence, bad language, and drug use, with some boobies thrown in for good measure...pretty much offensive across the board. If you're sensitive about such things, this isn't the movie for you. If, for whatever reason, you can get a laugh out of some horrible and inappropriate scenarios, well...you're in the right place! My only complaint is that the movie's somewhat longer than it needs to be.

Pain & Gain clocks in at 130 minutes and is rated R for "bloody violence, crude sexual content, nudity, language throughout, and drug use." I thoroughly enjoyed it, laughing out loud for most of the two hours. Of a possible nine Weaselys, Pain & Gain gets seven and a half.
Until next


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Time….

Uhhh...get well soon?

MOVIE REVIEW: PAIN & GAIN

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is a regular bodybuilder who works at the Sun Gym along with his friend Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie). Sick of living the poor life, Lugo concocts a plan to kidnap Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), a regular at the gym and a rich, spoiled businessman, and extort money from him by means of torture. With the help of recently released criminal Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), the "Sun Gym Gang" successfully gets Kershaw to sign over all his finances. But when Kershaw survives an attempted murder by the gang, he hires private investigator Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris) to catch the criminals after the Miami Police Department fails to do so.

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris

Release Date: Apr 26, 2013

Rated R for crude Sexual Content, Bloody Violence, Drug Use, Language Throughout and Nudity

Runtime: 2 hr. 9 min.

Genres: Action/Adventure, Comedy

Review:

I’ve been a bit of a Michael Bay apologist over the years. Not because I believe he’s a mad genius but because I think he’s actually a solid action director whose becoming a whipping boy admittedly due to some of his really bad films. He creates the type of bombastic popcorn movies that are easily digestible and would rot your teeth if you consumed them regularly. Like all indulgences it should be done in moderation which is ironic since Bay doesn’t know anything about moderation. Pain & Gain is a bulging muscle flexing with veins popping out everywhere. Its first act is the type of caffeinated movie going experience that feels like somebody’s poured cocaine into your eyeballs. A bulging Mark Wahlberg is focused and dedicated to his role. He’s clearly enjoying himself throughout and keeps a bug eyed energy alive through the better part of the film. Equally game Dwayne Johnson, looking bigger than I’ve ever seen him, and Anthony Mackie match him throughout. Their interplay is great comedy especially as things get more ridiculous and out of control. Having the story change from point of during the story allows us to get into these morons minds and see what’s leading them down the incredibly slippery slope towards disaster. Tony Shalhoub delivers an extra salty performance in a limited role. Sadly Ed Harris and Rebel Wilson are mostly marginalized in thankless roles. Pain and Gain’s major faults are really a reflection of Bay’s. The characters, all of them, are caricatures of people; none of them feel real in anyway. They’re Bay mutated version of what real people are. Additionally, Bay never knows too much of a good thing. The first 2 acts are crisp and energetic but the last act drags on. It’s not terrible but it could have been streamlined. Bay would have been better served if he remembered its ok not to flex all the time.

B

[Trailer] Thor 2: The Dark World

[Trailer] Thor 2: The Dark World

Iron Man 3 is getting ready to screen in a little under a week and a half and with it Marvel’s Phase 2 of their cinematic universe. The trailer for the 2nd Thor film has been released and it looks like it’ll take the action off world instead of keeping it focused on Earth which I consider a good thing.

Things look grittier and less glossy this time around which could be a good thing. The original Thor was a big question mark for me originally, mainly because I thought it looked silly, but it made me a fan. Here’s to hoping the 2nd film continues to deliver the goods….

Release Date: Nov 08, 2013

Cindy Prascik’s Review of Oblivion

Dearest Blog, yesterday my dear cuz and I headed out to the cinema to check out Tom Cruise's latest flick, Oblivion.

Spoiler level here will be mild.

Future Earth is a wasteland, its few remaining inhabitants charged with safeguarding those resources needed by survivors living off-planet.
Ima be straight with ya, dear Blog, I thought I was gonna love Oblivion. I've been comparing it with Will Smith's upcoming post-Apocalyptic blockbuster, After Earth, and was sure this one would be the winner of the two. Though it's not really a loser, terming Oblivion a winner might be over-reaching.

As you'd expect, Tom Cruise is solid in the lead, Morgan Freeman and my best gal Melissa Leo equally so in lesser roles. Cruise's leading ladies, Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough, are ho-hum and painfully annoying, respectively. Of the remaining supporting cast, all that's worth mentioning is that Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau looks really good.

Oblivion is smart, but slow, sci-fi, and I'll cop to dozing off at least once. I can give full marks for production design, but the other tech was sometimes so laughably awful I wondered how it slipped into such a high-profile blockbuster. For the most part, I think Oblivion is a pretty well done film, but just not one I found all that enjoyable. Or, to sum it up, as we exited the cinema, my cuz' first words were, "Well...I didn't hate it......."

Oblivion clocks in at an excessive 126 minutes and is rated PG13 for "sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity." I'm so "meh" about it that I fear it may do to After Earth what Cloud Atlas did to Life of Pi, that is, I won't be able to force myself to see the second, the first left me with such a sour taste.

Of a possible nine Weasleys, Oblivion gets five.

Until next time...





...still more technically advanced than Oblivion...

MOVIE REVIEW: OBLIVION

A solitary drone repairman working on a war-ravaged planet Earth becomes humanity's last hope for survival in this ambitious sci-fi epic from Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes producer Peter Chernin. Olga Kurylenko and Morgan Freeman co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Release Date: Apr 19, 2013

Rated PG-13 for nudity, Brief Strong Language, Sci-Fi Action Violence and Some Sensuality

Runtime: 2 hr. 5 min.

Genres: Action/Adventure, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Review:

You’d be hard pressed to argue that Joseph Kosinski can’t direct a beautiful movie with loads of cool visuals. Both Tron: Legacy and Oblivion are incredibly pretty films but both lack any semblance of emotion or originality. Oblivion takes liberal doses of “inspirations” from a variety of sci-fi classics from the past and even more recent fare. There are moments were the film is nearly in danger of becoming more than the sum of its parts but it just never gets there. There’s plenty to keep you busy and the eye candy on display is occasionally thrilling if terribly familiar. There are plenty of twists and turns in the overly complicated plot. The film would have been better served if the plot were streamlined and avoided some of the more obvious “surprise” turns, some of which are telegraphed as early as the first 10 minutes of the film. Tom Cruise does his usual reliable work but, through no fault of his own, we never feel a connection with his character. Instead it feels like he’s simply driving us through the terrain. Olga Kurylenko, who looks like she’s just had a very sour lemon most of the time and Andrea Riseborough aren’t asked to do much. As a result, the audience is always kept at arms length leaving us thinking about the films that touched on the same subject matter in much better fashion.

C

[Trailer] Man of Steel

The first few trailers for Zach Snyder reboot of Superman were pretty lackluster to say the least. While I don’t quite have the vitriol that some do with Snyder, I was letdown with first glimpse but this trailer is rather rousing and exciting, give it a look below….

Cindy Prascik’s review of 42

Dearest Blog, having survived a bout with the Death Flu on Friday, today I rewarded myself with a trip to the cinema. On the docket was my much anticipated baseball drama 42.

Spoiler level here will be as mild as possible for a story about a super-famous person who's been dead for four decades.
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson becomes the first man to break Major League Baseball's color barrier.

Well, dear Blog, there's no sense denying it: I'm stupidly sentimental about baseball, and therefore stupidly sentimental about baseball movies. Not once did I get through the 42 trailer sans tears, so needless to say I expected the film to be the emotional equivalent of a 15-car freeway pileup.

Chadwick Boseman, who isn't quite a newcomer but certainly is new to headlining a project of this caliber, carries 42 with flair. A weaker performance easily might have been overcome by Harrison Ford's strong turn as Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager (then titled "business manager") Branch Rickey; depending on how strong the field is, I won't be surprised if voters remember his performance come awards season. Supporting players include a few of my faves: Brett Cullen (too briefly...again), Christopher Meloni, Hamish Linklater, and Steve the Pirate Alan Tudyk as the bigoted jerk manager of my beloved Philadelphia Phillies. The cast is almost uniformly strong, with only Nicole Beharie coming off a bit too dewey-eyed and perfect as Robinson's wife Rachel. (In fairness, writing may be to blame there; more on that later.)

Though I loved it overall, 42 does have a few faults worth mentioning, the first being that it is, at times, too earnest with its message. There are two kid scenes at the ballpark (which I won't spoil here) that are played way too hard for tugging the heartstrings, and it was absolutely unnecessary; the film speaks for itself and needn't have hit viewers over the head. Secondly, the movie portrays Robinson's wife (now widow) Rachel, and therefore their relationship, as just a bit too perfect. Remember a few years back when VH1 did that Temptations biopic? At my house, we call it "The World According to Otis." The only surviving Temptation at the time was Otis Williams, and the mini-series went out of its way to make sure viewers knew Otis was the good guy in...well...everything. I'm not sure how much of a hand Mrs. Robinson had in this film, but it definitely skews towards making her look brave, flawless, and pretty much responsible for Major League Baseball not being an all-white sport to this day.

Finally, my two favorite teams, the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates, are portrayed as dicks and laughingstocks, respectively, a view many hold of both teams to this day. History is what it is, but they didn't have to keep saying, "Pittsburgh??" like it was some big damn joke. (Though I did laugh anyway.)

While 42 successfully tells what's ultimately an uplifting story, the racism that was the norm for the time is more than uncomfortable to watch...all the more so for knowing we aren't entirely past it a half-century later. Still, the fact that we keep telling the story leads me to believe we'll get there someday, and that the movie earned a houseful of applause in my not-necessarily-progressive little town lets me hope we're closer than I think. Oh, and to the staff and management at the Highlands' Marquee Cinemas, that flood in room 12 was just my tears. Sorry about that.

42 clocks in at 128 minutes that’s as deliberately-paced as the game of baseball itself, though it doesn't feel long. It's rated PG13 for "thematic elements, including language." (At one point, dialogue prompted a little boy at the back of my cinema to ask, "Dad, what's adultery?" to which his father hastily replied, "NOTHING!")

42 is a great movie about the great sport of baseball. If it comes on a bit strong with its message, well, that's easily forgiven when the message is this important.

Of a possible nine Weasleys, 42 earns seven and a half.

Now, dear Blog, if you'll excuse me, my flu-decimated self needs a nap. Until next time...




Thank you.

MOVIE REVIEW: TRANCE

A thieving art auctioneer seeks the help of an alluring hypnotherapist in order to repair his damaged memory and recover the treasured Goya painting that he stashed following a brazen heist in this kinetic thriller reteaming Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle with Trainspotting and Shallow Grave screenwriter John Hodge.. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson, Danny Sapani, Tuppence Middleton.

Release Date: Apr 05, 2013

Rated R for language, Graphic Nudity, Sexual Content, Some Grisly Images and Violence

Runtime: 1 hr. 41 min.

Genres: Suspense/Thriller

Review:

Danny Boyle’s pulse pounding techno noir film Trance is a mind bending assault on the senses. It starts off with a wonderfully shot heist that provides the mcguffin for the plot. Once Rosario Dawson’s character is introduced it’s easy to wonder what’s real and what’s not. It’s a film that’s best during the journey down the rabbit hole. It’s a bendy journey which borders on directorial excess but it’s never boring. The film and performances are all incredibly engaging even if the actual plot is a poorly built match stick castle which relies a little too much on chance. James McAvoy gives a wonderfully frazzled sweaty performance as the sort of lead. Rosario Dawson, sporting an impressive hair bun, is just luminous as the hypnotherapist. Dawson just commands the screen every time she’s on it regardless of how ludicrous the situation. Vincent Cassel character is underwritten but he’s always dependable. Boyle’s film would have faired better if it’d been left open ended since it’s so intent on playing games with our senses. Still it’s the type of film that’s probably worth revisiting.

B-

MOVIE REVIEW: EVIL DEAD

The Deadites return in this revamp of the Evil Dead franchise from newcomer director Fede Alvarez. The action centers on a group of friends who head out to an isolated cabin in order to clean up their drug-addicted friend (Jane Levy).. The helmer wrote the script with Rodo Sayagues. Film series veterans Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and Bruce Campbell handle producing duties on the Ghost House Pictures production for Sony Pictures Entertainment. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Director Fede Alvarez

Cast: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Jim McLarty

Release Date: Apr 05, 2013

Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, some sexual content and language

Runtime: 1 hr. 31 min.

Genres: Horror

Review:

Stilted acting, outrageous gore and inventive camera work made the original Evil Dead a horror camp classic. A remake of that film is terribly unnecessary just like all the other unnecessary remakes but it’s a trend that won’t stop so I will. This re-imagining focuses on the same cabin with a group of pretty 20 somethings expect one of them is trying to get clean this go around. When the action starts it engages in a full throttle assault on the senses. Fede Alvarez gives the original it due with a ton of winks and nods but while delivering an over the top gross out that’s as campy as the original. The trailers suggested a more serious tone but the film is just as stupid as the original. The characters are intentionally idiotic and moronic. The FX are notch though, delivering some of the best gross out gore I’ve seen in a long while. Jane Levy, in heavy make up for the better part of the film, does her best to add a little something to her character but it’s not really required for carnival of carnage that borrows heavily from all kinds of horror sources even recalling The Exorcist on occasion. It all builds to a rather thrilling 3rd act that’s rather insane but satisfying at the same time.

B+

MOVIE REVIEW: ROOM 237

Filmmaker Rodney Ascher examines the many conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick's controversial 1980 horror classic The Shining by speaking with fans of the film, and scholars who claim the director had a hidden agenda in adapting Stephen King's bestselling novel to the big screen. In-depth conversations with Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, and Jay Weidner (Kubrick's Odyssey) reveal a wide spectrum of theories pertaining to Kubrick's film, including speculation that it was a cinematic allegory for the slaughter of Native Americans, the Holocaust, or perhaps a cleverly-constructed confession that he was in fact the filmmaker responsible for faking the 1969 moon landing that placed the U.S. at the cutting-edge of the international space race against the former Soviet Union. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director: Rodney Ascher

Cast: Bill Blakemore, Geoffrey Cocks, Juli Kearns, John Fell Ryan, and Jay Weidner

Release Date: Mar 29, 2013

Rated: Not Rated

Runtime: 1 hr. 42 min.

Genres: Documentary

Review:

Room 237 is like a speaking tour into a conspiracy theorist slightly insane mind. Connections are made from the slightest misinterpreted detail and extrapolated into infinity. The funny thing is that after a bit of listening to some of these people it starts making sense until reality seeps in. It’s a fascinating adventure into these people’s minds. At its center is Kubrick’s The Shining. I’m personally a massive Kubrick fanboy who just adores everything the man ever did. His style and attention to detail are something that’s always left an impression on me. His films are just masterworks, at least in my humble opinion. That being said The Shining, as a straight up horror movie, really never did anything for me. It never terrified me or sent me home weeping like The Exorcist did. That not to say I didn’t enjoy it, I still do, but it’s a totally different animal than a standard issue horror flick. Listening to the variety of theories set forth on this documentary kind of speaks to that. Having read the King book, I can tell you the movie bears little relation to the book outside of major plot points. Kubrick’s creation was something more of a cipher leaving the door open to all kind of crackpot theories, some slightly more sensible than others. As a film fan and Kubrick diehard I enjoyed listening to even the craziest connections, Moon landing and Minotaur being my favorite. Rodney Ascher stays as neutral as possible with only a few condescending displays thrown in here or there. We never see any of these people, only stock footage or clips from Kubrick’s catalogue repurposed along with a lot of clips from The Shining, sometimes played backward, in super slow mo and well you get the idea. It’s all great fun for movie lovers and when it starts to drag a tad it wraps up and lets you come back to reality.

B+