Pain & Gain

                                         
                                                           

       The lure of America to most people who immigrate to this country is the “American Dream”. The thought that you can achieve anything you set your mind to makes coming here very desirable. Making the “American Dream” come true takes hard work, luck and time. What if though you didn’t want to do all that hard work? What would you be willing to do? Well here is a story of a few guys in Miami who wanted it all, but wanted to take the easy rout.

      Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) believes he is a doer. Working at a local gym, he helps people achieve their dream to have the perfect body. Daniel is all about fitness, while his friend Adrian (Anthony Mackie) is about just getting buffed. Daniel is tired of seeing people he deems unworthy having everything they want, while he struggles to make ends meet. He wants to change that and talks Adrian into going along with him. Everything comes together when they recruit an ex convict named Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson). Now all they have to do is find their target and Daniel knows just the guy. The three bodybuilders kidnap Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) and force him to sign over all that he owns. What follows is one error after another and an example of what greed can do to you.

     Let’s all be honest here, Michael Bay has become pretty predictable. After busting on the scene with “Bad Boys” with his stylish direction, he has become a prisoner to his own success. Bay has had a steady diet of big budget end of the world/robot movies, and no longer has done less with more. In fact you can argue he has done the opposite and has taken more and done less with it. Then “Pain & Gain” comes along, a little twenty five million movie that could maybe help Bay find his magic again. Well the good news is that the Michael Bay we first saw is alive and well within this film. Not many people can make Miami look any better than Bay does, and once you see this movie you will know what I mean. Based on a true story that took place in the nineties, it is one of the stories you see and think, man that would make a good movie. Well “good”, I don’t know if I would say that, but for sure it is entertaining. You will have fun watching this movie and that is all you want when you go to the movies. That said we all know, “no pain no gain” can apply to a lot if things in life. The thing about this movie is you while you don’t gain much, there is a whole lot less pain than watching Bay’s version of “Pearl Harbor”.

Brian Taylor

Do you want a Man of Steel, or do you want a man that's real?

          I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stop watching the latest “Man of Steel” trailer.  Maybe it’s the look and tone of the film, maybe it’s the cast, and maybe it’s the fact that good or bad Zack Snyder has always made entertaining films.  Or maybe it’s the desire to see a really good Superman movie, because we haven’t really had one since 1979.  But in the end I think I just enjoy a really good trailer.  The ones that pull you in with interesting visuals and great snippets of scenes that make you want, or need to see them in their entirety.

In this particular case this film pushes the nostalgia buttons with a character that is about to turn 75 years old.  Think about that for a moment.  Besides the ones in novels, can you think of a fictional character that has had that kind of lasting power?  The only time a trailer has rocked me to the core is the one for “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace”.  When I first saw a young Obi-Wan spinning a lightsaber, I was transported to 1983 watching what I thought was going to be the last adventure in a galaxy far, far away.  I didn’t know how much I missed it.  Now this is not exactly the same thing, the last Superman movie was only seven years ago.  And while it was not the best version Superman that Bryan Singer brought to the screen.  I still enjoy watching it.

Back to the trailer, it feels amazing, and not only hits the nostalgia with the re-telling of the origin of the man of steel, but you also get the great line readings with the images of a school bus going into a river, and the woman saying “My son was in the bus…he saw what Clark did.”  And what is my favorite moment in the trailer where Kevin Costner as Pa Kent cracks when he utters the line “You are my son.”  I still get goose bumps thinking about it.  I’m reminded of my favorite scene in the ’79 “Superman” where young Clark tells Ma Kent that he has to go away, “North.”  The dialogue, the fear of Clark’s future, the beautiful sweeping shot of the field, to the embrace at the end as the John Williams score ramps up.  Goose bumps again.

  When I was a kid I used to love a different scene, where Superman catches Lois Lane, then a helicopter as his theme plays.  Which leads me to the action in the latest Superman.  Zack Snyder style.  Some of it looks to move a little too fast, but if he sticks to his signature slo-mo shots, it will be balanced enough.  We also finally have someone and something (that big octopus looking thing) that Superman gets to fight.  Not a bald human billionaire, the nuclear race, or nuclear man for that matter, and not Richard Pryor.  Superman gets to get unleashed, as the shot of him punching someone, over and over in mi-air.  This may very well be what we were missing all these years, not to mention the fact that Christopher Nolan is in the mix as well.

If you remember, Episode I did not go well for the Star Wars franchise.  But I still have that trailer and now I have the “Man of Steel” trailer.  Will the film live up to the trailer?  I’ll just remember what I learned this year a mere 10 years after Episode III.  There is going to be another Star Wars.

Superman is older than the computer, McDonalds, hula hoops, color television, and jet airplanes.  He is not just a man of steel, he is a man of forever.

--Robert L. Castillo      

Everyone's a superhero, everyone's a Captain Kirk...

          This summer the movie theaters will be bombarded with geek-fare filled films, from space-trekking stories, to superhero cape-flapping stories to giant robots fighting giant monsters (thank you in advance Guillermo del Toro).  There will be films based on popular novels like World War Z, and The Great Gatsby and over a dozen sequels including Kick Ass 2, Red 2, The Hangover Part III, and Iron Man 3.

There have been articles written and blogs that claim that the ‘geeks have inherited the earth’, or at least in the realm of Hollywood.  This is true to a certain extent, mostly it’s just people who grew up in the eighties and have a sense of nostalgia for what blew their hair back like Saturday morning cartoons and the epic blockbusters of that decade.  We had Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader, Muppet Babies, and classic game-changing comic books like “The Dark Knight Returns”, “Watchmen”, “The X-Men” and “G.I. Joe” and “Transformers”.  Trying to re-create anything close to those kinds of big characters and big stories is what it’s all about.  Now that Blockbusters are no longer a video store, it’s what we should get every summer.

 

What I’m looking forward to most is the big superhero movies, Superman the Man of Steel and Tony Stark the man of iron.  Both show a darker more serious tone, which I hope equals success as it did for the Dark Knight.  The same goes for the latest incarnation of everyone’s favorite X-Man “The Wolverive”.  The trailer shows us a film that is nothing like the abomination that was “Origins”.  This looks like a tough hard-hitting story with enough “snikt” to keep us entertained.

 

And like everyone in America, I’m looking forward to “Star Trek Into Darkness” I got to see the first 9 minutes before last years “The Hobbit” and it was amazing.  It was like a mini-episode of the Original Series with that J.J. Abrams touch with the beginning introducing the villain of the piece with a mystery and leading to a fun and funny adventure with the crew from the ’09 “Star Trek” that leaves you with a cliffhanger ending.  That’s how you sell a movie to a geek six months in advance.

 

The other films that look great on paper and in trailer format are “Before Midnight” Richard Liklater’s trilogy where all three film may be classics.  “Fast & Furious 6” didn’t you see the last one?  Amazing.  “Much Ado About Nothing” a Joss Whedon version of Shakespeare?  Absolutely.  “This is the End” all those funny guys, and Hermione with an axe?  It’s gotta be a little funny.  “Pacific Rim”  I said it already, “Giant Robots!!!”  “2 Guns” the buddy comedy rises.  “Elysium”  Neill Blomkamp’s follow up to “District 9”.  And lastly (appropriately enough) “The World’s End” the reuniting of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright.  They ‘killed’ in their zombie movie, were ‘arresting’ in the cop movie, now they are going sci-fi?  “Reach for the stars boys!”

So come back and check out reviews of these and other films this summer.  We will be here.

 

--Robert L. Castillo   

Oblivion

                                     
                                                                   

If movies have taught us anything it’s that the world will end at some time and a lone celebrity will be only survivor. The cause of our end could be one of many things, God, the weather, aliens, or as most sci-fi, it will be humans. The stories are all the same, we get destroyed and discover who we really are and in the end we survive. I know in my last sentence I just summed up every disaster movie, but we still like to watch them. “Oblivion” is the disaster movie of the year, a story about destruction, discovery and of course that lone celebrity, it’s Tom Cruise.

     Jack (Cruise) is part of the “mop up crew” on Earth. He and his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are all that is left on Earth after it was attacked. We won the war, but the planet is unlivable, so mankind has moved to another planet to live. Jack and Victoria are there to repair drones that protect devices that are extracting the Earth’s sea water. Jack is the maintenance guy, while Victoria is his mission control, so to speak.  Life is pretty simple, everyday Jack and Victoria wake up, Jack goes and fixes drones and reminisces what life was like before the war. Everything changes when a vehicle crashes into Earth and Jack starts to see the real truth to what happened.

     It is easy to want to enjoy this movie, it looks good, has a great soundtrack, and has Tom in it, but the thing that it is missing is everything else. Written by Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek, and Michael Arndt the story never really takes off. The concept probably sounded really good on paper, but like everything life or in this case like everything in Hollywood, sometimes things sound better than they actually are. Cruise is actually pretty good as Jack Harper, so he does not add to the problem. I for one like Cruise in most of the movies he does. The issues lie in the story, which is slow and tedious. With a runtime of just over two hours, everything that needed to be said could have been said in an hour and a half. The film has a few twists, but some of them are easy to figure out before they happen. I was really pushing to enjoy this movie, it seemed to have it all from what I had read or saw before watching the movie. Instead what I see is another typical movie about the destruction of our planet, and of course New York, which never seems to survive anything, according to Hollywood. The good thing is “Oblivion” is not in 3D, so it has that going for it at least. My advice, wait until this comes out on video, or just watch “Wall-E” again if you want to see a good movie about a sanitation worker in the post-apocalyptic future.

 Brian Taylor

What's on Redbox?--The Bay

The found footage film has pretty much become its own genre.  Now with directors finding new ways to present them in a clever way on film, even the veterans are getting in on the action.  In the case of “The Bay” Barry Levinson who had a great run in the 80’s with “Diner”, “The Natural”, “Good Morning, Vietnam”, and his winner for best picture in 1988’s “Rain Man” tries his hand at this sub-genre of horror.  His films in the 90’s all the way to the present never quite caught on, except for the underrated “Sleepers” in 1996.  Now he’s dipping his foot in the latest craze of films that all seem to be shot on Best Buy cameras and iphones.

“The Bay” is a faux documentary that plays as “What the government doesn’t want you to see” that also severs as a “We are destroying our environment” statement.  In the film a rookie news reporter played by Kether Donohue his an apparent survivor of an ecological horror that took out a Chesapeake Bay town in a single day.  Something in the water starts to infect the townspeople on 4th of July in 2009.  What follows is a series of clips pulled together showing the aftermath of this outbreak as it affects cops, reporters, the C.D.C. and locals who are unaware of this mutated parasite that’s using humans as hosts.

Over all its pretty good, there are some good scares, and some decent gross-out moments.  Though there are times where it takes a bit too long to get to the point of a scene, I get it’s supposed to feel real, but it doesn’t, as most of these found footage films, when you see something unbelievable while it doesn’t automatically pull you out, but it does remind you that you are watching a movie.  There are clever bits, with police dash-cams and the horrifying images of a town that could be yours with dead bodies just strewn about, it gives a creepiness vibe that it’s going for.  In the end what it did make me wish I was watching was a Barry Levinson drama, but I can deal with an ok horror on late night TV.

 

--Robert L. Castillo        

Trance

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                Much like Forrest Gump’s chocolates, when it comes to Danny Boyle films you never know what are you’re going to get. Could be a cult classic like “Trainspotting” or “28 Days Later” or almost masterpieces like “Millions” and “Sunshine” then there’s the movie you can’t quite figure out like “The Beach”. The thing you can always count is a very stylistic film with an amazing soundtrack. Boyle has been on a good roll lately with his films, so where will his latest “Trance” fall in line, when it comes to his diverse filmography?

                Boyle has reteamed with writer John Hodge, who wrote many of Boyle’s early films, like “Shallow Grave” and “Trainspotting”. Hodge based his script on a 2001 TV movie by the same name written by Joe Ahearne. The story is about an art auctioneer named Simon (James McAvoy), who may or may not have had a hand in a crime involving a valuable piece of art. Simon does not know because he can’t remember what happened after receiving a blow to the head. The robbery is lead by Frank (Vincent Cassel), who with the help of his crew, try and steal a twenty seven million dollar painting. Frank tries to make Simon remember where the painting is, but to no avail. The idea though is to use hypnotism to help him recall his memory. Simon picks a hypnotist randomly and selects Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) who devises a plan that would help everyone get what they want.

          “Trance” is one of those movies where things don’t seem what they are always. It is not a confusing movie, but it likes to keep you confused as its main character on what is going on. The film uses time as a tool to tell you an interesting story of love, hate, and greed. What Boyle does best is what makes the tale even better; combining his visual style with a great music, “Trance” always looks and sounds good as it weaves its tale. McAvoy and Cassel both do a good job of masking what they are, but Dawson steals the show, as a very seductive hypnotist, who you could listen to talk for hours.  “Trance” is one of those movies that will have you talking afterwards with your friends, comparing notes on what they saw and what they think they saw. This film will fit nicely next to Boyle’s better films and may be better appreciated as the years go by. With so many films coming out every year, you should enjoy the ones that try to be different, this is one of those films and in the end, and this one is sure to en-trance you.

 Brian Taylor

Jurassic Park 3D

                                           

 In 1993 I saw something that would forever change movies. Gone were the days of limitations, if you could see it in your mind, you could now make it real. I felt the same way when the tag line “You will believe a man can fly” came true in 1978’s “Superman”. Before 1993 you saw things on a movie screen that looked good, but you always knew it wasn't real. You could see the strings maybe, or you knew they were models, but one movie changed that forever.

      I remember going to the theater that faithful day and walking out believing that dinosaurs would really walk the earth again. I mean all we needed to do was find a mosquito in some tree sap from that time and ‘bam!’ We have Dino blood. I just knew that, that park existed on some island off the coast of Costa Rica and there were actually dinosaurs roaming around it. When John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) uttered those famous words “Welcome to Jurassic Park” he was welcoming the millions of people who would be transfixed by what they saw on the screen. Movies are suppose to take you to places that you have never been to, and show you things you have never seen before. “Jurassic Park” did both of those and set us on a path to make everything more real in movies. I am a big believer that some movies are made to only be seen on the big screen, and it is no truer than with this film. To be able to introduce a whole new generation to this film the way it was meant to be seen, so they too can feel the magic we felt watching it the first time twenty years ago. The only thing it really didn't need was the transformation to 3D, because it did nothing for the film.  

      This movie made me feel just like I did when I watched it the first time.  Watching dinosaurs come to life again reminded me of the magic that movies possess. How they can make you feel and believe anything is possible. Everyone who saw this movie when it came out in 1993 should take their kids to see this movie on the big screen. Let them experience the feeling you had when you first saw that T-Rex or and the raptors. “Jurassic Park” holds up after 20 years, and above all the magic is still there, so you can share it with someone new and show them a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

 Brian Taylor 

Evil Dead

          It seems as long as Hollywood has intellectual properties of both classic and cult films alike, the re-make machine will never stop cranking ‘em out.  The cheapest of which to make are horror films, where in the past few years we’ve been subjected to lesser versions of “Halloween”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street”.  In the case of “Evil Dead” a re-make/re-imagining of the 1981 Sam Raimi cult classic “The Evil Dead” will the die-hard fans of the original be pleased more than the casual weekend horror movie fan, or will either one for that matter?  The answer is: yes…and sorta.

The film begins pretty much as the original did; five students get together in a cabin in the woods.  Unlike the original though, the reason for the getaway is to help one of them (Mia) go through detox, thinking that in the middle of nowhere, nothing could go wrong.  This was a clever original idea, seeing as how she will be the one that eventually becomes possessed, however they didn’t fully take advantage of this new slant.  Instead the implausible and not-so-bright young adults let things get out of hand pretty quickly.  Once the possession happens, in a moment that’s almost as terrifying as the original the film turns into your basic jump-scare, creepy eye, gorefest.  There are things you have seen before and a few others you may not have (a scene with a box-cutter comes to mind), and of course when you introduce a nail-gun in the first act, it really needs to go off by the third, and boy does it ever.  If you’ve seen the original you will see most things coming, if you haven’t then you can probably venture a guess based on other horror films of this type.

  Which is not to say it’s all bad and predictable, but when you tout your film in the poster as “The most terrifying film you will ever experience.” They better be able to deliver on some level.  I didn’t find it particularly scary, but as far as the bloodshed goes, there is some pretty horrendous images, and they rely very little on CGI, which helps with the more cringe worthy moments.  I give a lot of credit to director Fede Alvarez for his choice of camera angles, and some of the shot compositions, they were fantastic, and Jane Levy as Mia and Lou Taylor Pucci as Eric were the standouts as far as the acting goes.

When it comes to remakes, they’re typically only seems to be one of two directions they can go in.  They can be completely different, like Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” or shot-for-shot like Van Sant’s “Psycho” neither of which do a good job.  Or there is the rare film, that takes the essence of the original while still making it feel that it was made with a modern audience in mind.  I wouldn’t put “Evil Dead” in a category with the bad remakes, and whereas it’s not as good as something like the ‘80’s remade versions of “The Thing” and “The Fly” it is a true love letter to the original film and still manages to be a really enjoyable horror film.  (Final note to hardcore fans:  Stay to the end of the credits)

 

--Robert L. Castillo