Pain & Gain - One of the Year's Biggest Surprises.

Pain & Gain is the send off film that Tony Scott deserved. It takes the aesthetic that Tony Scott was working towards with Man on Fire, Deja Vu and Unstoppable and elevates it to the next level. Pain & Gain is also quite simply Michael Bay's finest film.

Throughout Bay's career he's pushed his style to the extreme, unfortunately culminating in some of the worst cinema around - the Transformers series. No matter what you think of Michael Bay's work, they've always appeared to be more style than substance. Whether it's the over the top slow motion shots of people getting out of cars, or illogical lens flares, Bay makes his case for the auteur theory pretty strong. His films are the origin of the orange and teal palette in Hollywood.

With Pain & Gain though, Bay's intense style fits perfectly. Where his style has always superseded any semblance of substance, Pain & Gain combines style and substance perfectly. It feels like the film that Bay has been working towards all along. The over the top characters of Bad Boys and the stylistic violence of The Rock come together perfectly in Pain & Gain. 

Mark Wahlberg has always been an actor who is only as good as the director he's being directed by. For every Boogie Nights and The Fighter, there is a Rock Star or The Happening. 
Wahlberg's Danny Lugo is an enjoyable character, one that wants to live in a world of excess. He is a personal trainer who wants the American Dream and the only way he knows how is to take it. After meeting up with Tony Shalhoub's Victor Kershaw, Lugo devises a plan to take Kershaw's money. The rest of the film continues with the plan Lugo has devised and does so brilliantly. 

Fortunately with Pain & Gain, both Wahlberg and Bay are working with a script (written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely - The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Captain America) which actually works to tell a proper story rather than the usual Bay affair which is simply a set piece followed by narrative exposition followed by random set piece. Pain & Gain has its fair share of set pieces, but they actually further the plot along rather than delay it. 

The sequence where the trio of idiots attempt to kill Kershaw and make it look like a suicide is hilarious and over the top, but it shows character and furthers the plot brilliantly. It's hard to tell whether this is because of the writers having written the scene properly, or an actual development in Bay's directing style, but regardless it's a great display of Bay doing violence properly - the slow reversal over Kershaw's face is cringe inducing and impactful.

There's a deep dark sense of humour with this film. It knows how to be fun and over the top whilst almost appearing to approve of the trio's actions - Danny Lugo, Dwayne Johnson's Paul Doyle and Anthony Mackie's Adrian Doorbal. Bay loves these characters, even with all their imperfections and stupid moves. He loves the madness of the situation and revels in the ripped bodies of the men, and even in the obese characters he litters around the place. For a story which is so mean spirited at times, it's great to see that Bay shoots all of his characters with respect and never actually look down on them - no matter how stupid their actions may be. 

It's also great to see the mean spirited aspects being taken seriously and to their full extent. Some people may have problems with this, and these are probably the same people who had problems with the dead body chase scene in Bad Boys 2, but for others these are the things that made the film. Pain & Gain's use of Shalhoub's Kershaw as a punching bag is over the top, violent and without a doubt mean spirited, but it works perfectly. 

The refreshing thing about Pain & Gain is the coherent action and coherent story - two things desperately lacking in previous Michael Bay films. Whether we'll see this continue on in future Bay films is questionable though as it appears his continuing on with the Transformers films means a continuation with incoherent action and plot. The comparison to late Tony Scott films is unmistakable - with the appearance of dialogue on the screen being one of the most prominent traits, as well as the reliance on that orange and teal look that Hollywood is gravitating to.

If every ten years Michael Bay pumps out a film like Pain & Gain or Bad Boys 2, then there'll be no arguments from this camp. For a year that has included such brilliant films as Zero Dark Thirty, Blue Jasmine and Rust & Bone, it's amazing to see a film like Pain & Gain come along and be right up there in quality.

1/2

Dickhead of the Day.

I'd been toying with the idea of giving up eating any kind of seafood again. It's a pretty easy idea to have since I'm not a big seafood eater as it is. Don't get me wrong, I like prawns and I like scallops just like any other guy, but after reading enough about the destruction of the worlds oceans and the extremely rapid loss of marine life, I just don't feel right about eating seafood again. 

That's partially why articles like this get my knickers in a twist. The mere fact that I don't even own knickers means that logically I'd have to go out and buy a pair of knickers and then twist them. That's a lot of effort just for a small action. 

Over the past couple of years, my interest in shark conservation has grown. The little that we know about these great beasts and the irrational fear that is instilled in human culture, goes to show how deliberately ignorant we are about sharks. So when I read an article about a man who has caught a shark, gutted it and then uses it as a onesie, it's enough to make me sick. It's enough to make me say, no, I can't eat seafood anymore. 

This is the equivalent of running over a snake crossing the road just because it's there. There was no need to have killed this shark whatsoever, yet here it is, dead. The death of the shark is one thing - a terrible action - but the media reaction is another. The amount of people who responded to the photo as if it were a joke is just atrocious. The people who thought it was a great thing to see have no soul. 

I know that Australia is a country where fishing is a part of our culture - almost as much as hunting is in American culture. But when it comes to this kind of treatment of animals like sharks - an species which is already nearing critical status - that is disturbing. This is not the action of someone who respects the ocean they fish in, this is the action of someone who has complete disregard for the environment they pillage. 

I'd wish that sharks as a species would become a respected species the same way that whales are in Australia. But I feel that we're still at the stage in our culture where sharks will still appear in Chinese restaurants in shark fin soup and you can still get a deep fried slab of shark from your local fish and chips shop for five bucks. 

Reviews from the Edge

Hello cruel world.

 I am again spending my Sunday, completing tasks for work. As it is too early to bring my bottle of wine into my office (when you have a husband who rarely drinks and a judgmental one-eyed rabbit in your midst), I will sedate myself from my boiling rage by stringing together some poorly written reviews for the interweb to ignore. 

The Magdalene Sisters (2002) 

The Magdalene Sisters is the story of four teenage girls sent to the Magdalene Asylum, a home for "fallen" women", condemned by their families for flirting with boys, getting pregnant, or being raped by your cousin. It is the type of film that as a semi-decent human being of the female variety, fills me with rage at the way women/human beings have been treated (and continue to be treated) in our history. I was raised in a roman catholic household and attended catholic school, I was also an altar server for many years at my local church, and I'm not ashamed to say I loved it. I loved it indeed until I was old enough to understand how we, as people, ruin religion through the very organisational structures and twisted perceptions we come to worship.

The reason I finally watched the film was thanks to my partner in crime, Mark and the necessary fulfillment of one of our many traditions  The tradition I speak of is watching torturous/painful movies together at his aunty's holiday home, lovingly referred to as "Utopia". It all began back in the early 00's when we watched The Accused and Requiem for a Dream. What had been a carefree night of dancing to La Bouche and wearing homemade "Papa Giuseppe  hates we cut out of the back of the cardboard pizza box, quickly turned into a night of screaming "trauma" in varying accents at the television screen.

While this particular viewing may have been influenced by the humour of our tradition and Mr "leave me out of this" Mark's disappointment that the film wasn't a documentary and then subsequent shock that filmmakers could find actresses which such awful teeth to fill the roles, it was nonetheless a much needed and heartbreaking reminder of our recent history.        
****1/2

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Lets be straight here, Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald's novel is not for everyone. Most of the reviews, particularly coming from American critics were extremely harsh, citing a fundamental lack of 'understanding' of the story, replaced with a bombastic orgy of excess, CGI party scenes and the musical stylings of Jay Z and Lana Del Ray. If the thought of such treatment bestowed upon what many regard as a literary masterpiece sends a shiver down your spine, then I suggest you avoid this film like the plague.  If you're a Baz Luhrmann enthusiast (and I am one of them), sit back and prepare to embrace the spectacle of one of the few Australian auteur directors still making films in Australia with excellent actors. Leo DiCaprio may be the brightest star of the bunch, and he is extremely  charismatic as Gatsby, however I found the likes of Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher and Jason Clark, brought the most Luhrmannesque spark to their small roles. Much has been said about the performance of Tobey Maguire, most of it very unflattering and in my humble opinion unwarranted. The performance of Maguire as the wide-eyed narrator Nick Carraway is a solid one from a solid actor, sure it's not a great performance by a great actor, but he manages to convey the vulnerability and naivety required for the role well, and his longtime friendship with DiCaprio gives the two an instant chemistry on screen which anchors the film within the spectacle.
****

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (1985)
Helen Hunt is a badass  I never thought I'd make such a statement but that was my exact thought after the first 15 minutes of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, the tale of Janey (Sarah Jessica Parker) a new girl at school who befriends Lynne (Hunt) an 'out there' girl who shares her passion for dancing. The two girls compete for a spot on the hit television show "Dance TV" and along the way must tackle Janey's disapproving military dad, a classic 80's bitch and a blossoming romance with a feather haired fellow dancer. You might be asking, so why is this called "Girls just wanna have fun"? Well I presume it was just an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the song, it's not all fun and games, but the girls do dance and shop in a montage featuring the Cindi Lauper song that can best be described as the kind of clip that a talk show host would drag out of the vault to make the future "Carrie Bradshaw" cringe. OK so now that we have the title out of the way, you may also be asking, what am I doing watching this film? Well this is what happens when two best friends since primary school get together to watch a movie, eat pizza and slide on a polished floor with our socks on. It was great. 
**
Side note-The film is awarded an extra half star for this hat.....



and for featuring the only woman I would ever consider sleeping with....Shannen Doherty, 



But not in 1985, I'm talking circa 90's 



Documentary Sunday 

Over the last few years I have aimed to watch a documentary once a week, usually on a Sunday. Most of my doco Sunday's consist of watching slightly dodgy conspiracy theory films and/or  true crime stories (that's right....line up boys). I promise I will try and keep my review of such films to a minimum and focus on documentaries people might actually be watching. 

The Invisible War (2012)

An example of a good doco Sunday, I was so devastated by Kirby Dicks's 2012 film exploring the epidemic of sexual assault against women and men in the U.S military, that I did what any sane person would do, immediately force someone else to watch it. The film features interviews with veterans from all branches of the military and in some cases their loved ones. These interviews are inter-cut with talking heads from the military and "experts", as well as one family's journey to receive medical compensation for an injury obtained during a sexual assault and the lead up to a civil suit against the department of defense. While hearing the women and one man tell their stories is heartbreaking, an edited in a manner that creates a tension to the story without being overly manipulative, the real blows come from the film's exploration of the department of defense's "prevention program", as if pulled from our blame the victim headlines, the experts in charge of this program have long titles and no clue. When asked if they spend any of their time and sizable budget on addressing and preventing the behaviour of the perpetrators of sexual assaults, they simply stare vacantly at the screen and repeat their scripted description of "prevention methods". The final gut punch comes in the form the outcome of the civil suit, dismissed because 'rape is an occupational hazard of military service'. This is a film everyone should watch and discuss. 
*****


Exporting Raymond

An example of a not so good doco Sunday is my purchase of the DVD Exporting Raymond, which chronicles Raymond creator, Philip Rosenthal as he travels to Russia to help create a Russian version of his hit show. 

Right off the bat, I am not a fan of Everybody Loves Raymond, I won;t deny i have chuckled at it in passing, probably due to fever but that's about it. I actually find it mildly offensive. I mean Debra seems miserable all the time because Ray and his family are horrible yet she stays... why???????  Either shit or get off the pot. Not to mention his parents are meant to be Italian? I mean no offence to Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle, but my chihuahua comes across more Italian than they do. That always got on my nerves.  

The story of how I stumbled across this documentary is more insightful than the documentary itself. You see when I;m feeling like depression and negative I enter a shameful youtube spiral, spending hours upon hours alternating between searches for "animals attacking humans", tsunamis and other miscellaneous natural disasters, Oscar acceptance speeches, DIY "smokey eye" make up tutorials and any new interviews featuring Joshua Jackson.  On the way down one such spiral I stumbled across some clips of the Russian version of The Nanny, which I of course watched. The whole episode can be found here for those also suffering from mental health issues :

What I had hoped would be an insightful and humorous look at the challenges facing a well known producer translating his work for a different cultural audience, quickly became an uncomfortable 86 minutes with Raymond (I mean he is pretty much the character he created) as he makes fun of Russia and  tackles most of the films challenges from a typical American attitude that my way is the only way. This is particularly prevalent in the first of 3/4 of the film, only easing off slightly near the end to wrap the whole adventure up in a nice little 30 minute sitcom bow.  
*1/2 

Next time on Reviews from the Edge...

• Pacific Rim
• Before Midnight
• Spring Breakers
• This is the end 

From the Vault - Badbladderitis and Gottogopeealotta.

I feel the need to write a new blog post, but to be honest, I can't be bothered. So, here's something that I'm sure all writers do sometimes - look at me, calling myself a writer like I am a Golden God or something - and I'm going to recycle old material. It's nothing exciting, just a bunch of old blogs that I've raised from the dead from thescientistmrj's blog on LiveJournal: The Human Equivalent of Penicillin. 

Back then, it was Andy - Boy of Destiny writing. He was a fan of American Psycho, just like current day Andy is, so therefore, the comments section had 'Go Return Some Videotapes' for the ability to leave a comment, and 'X Problems In Sri Lanka' for the amount of comments. The X in the equation is the amount of comments left on that particular blog. I routinely think about reviving that old beaten up blog, but then I remember that's a fools errand and nobody uses LiveJournal anymore except people who still use MySpace and make jokes about Tom. 

For example, what would happen if Tom from MySpace got into a fight with Mark Zuckerberg? 

I don't have an answer to that, but that's the hypothetical build up somebody would use if they were still making jokes about MySpace's Tom. I'm not very good at making jokes, just like I'm not very good at creating legible sentences, but alas, I still keep trying. 

Anyhow, I digress. You're currently sitting at your computer wondering two things: A) When was the last time I watched Almost Famous and why do I have Tiny Dancer in my head and how did Kate Hudson get an Oscar nomination and why did people think she was going to win that year when it was obvious she wasn't going to win because getting sold for a case of beer isn't as sad as an abused partner of Jackson Pollock and will Kate Hudson ever get another Oscar nomination, and B) where is this remnant of an old blog post that Andrew was talking about, and is he just making me read all of this crap because he wants to talk about crap, in fact, I don't have to take this crap from him because I'm not getting paid to read this blog, I'm not even getting a spiritual enlightenment like I thought I would from reading this blog, I don't know what I'm doing and I really need to get out more and stay away from the internet, I mean, really, I won't have anything to do on the internet now that the UK is requesting people to mark down whether they are going to look at porn or not, how do I live without porn, I want to know, why I have the theme from Con Air, in my head right now, and I also want to know how Con Air is a two time Oscar nominated film? 

So, whilst you're thinking those things, I've busily gone across to my old blog and copied the following text. I'd say enjoy, but I know you have probably skipped to the end to see if there was a gif of Alison Brie or not. (Spoiler: There isn't.)

November 21st 2006

It wasn't too long ago - I'm thinking, about four or five months - that Bernadette warned me of the pangs of badbladderitis, or otherwise known as gottopeealotta. It's currently something that doesn't have a cure, only prevention - in the form of Tena Lady and a catheter. Today on my way to Vet Nursing, I picked up two iced coffee's - harking back to the days where my car was littered with iced coffee cartons, some dating back a year ago - and drank both in the car. Flash forward forty five minutes and my bladder was screaming at me. 

Flash forward another two hours after relieving myself and my bladder started screaming at me again. This time I responded, hey! I haven't even drunk anything yet! How can you need to go again? What have I done wrong to deserve this? 

So, I relieved myself. Flash forward another two hours. Still not having drunk anything, my bladder exclaims, excuse me, please, may I be excused? 

I excuse it. 

Scratch my head. 

A few hours after that I leave, I arrive home. Still no additional drinks, just food. I sit down after changing the cat water, putting biscuits out for her, and I think, time to relax for a second. Then it screams, you aint fuckin' doin' that buddy! And off it goes again.

Why didn't I fully listen to Bernadette's warnings before and ask for it to be surgically removed before all this trouble started? Why? Why have bladders in the first place? 

Who knows. That, for me, is a greater mystery than what is the meaning of life or which road did Tom Hanks take at the end of Cast Away.

3 Problems in Sri Lanka:

Leadingdog - So true, I swear my bladder became bad overnight, one day I was bragging to myself about how I could hold it for ages, and mocked those who braved the cold nights to wake up and pee, and now I am one of them and there is nothing I can do to get my old bladder back. 

signed..no more forghorn.

threedimensions - 42 andy...

and the road to unequivocal millions (in americano dollars)

Anonymous - It's probably the caffeine. The frequent need to urinate is also a sympton of diabetes.

One time I held my urine in for two days, I swear. I don't want to explain why, just that I did it. It amazes me today, I probably did some horrible damage that I will only know of later.

Six days later I reviewed the following films: 

Borat - ****
Slums Of Beverley Hills - ***1/2
8 Below - *****
The Prestige - ****
Shaun Of The Dead (Edgar Wright & Shaun Pegg Commentary) - *****

And I'd say that's that mattress man. 

Hotline Miami - In Which Andrew Jumps the Gun and Calls it Game of the Year.

Hotline Miami is one of the best examples of telling a story through gameplay. The main character - nameless in the game, but fans have dubbed him Jacket - is speechless, and besides the masks used for perks in the game, you never see his face. There's no glorious shot of him on the front cover of the game with the American flag behind him holding guns ala Bioshock Infinite. It's just a man with a pig mask on and a girl in his arms. It's sinister, it's haunting, it's the cover of one of the best games of this generation. 

Spec Ops: The Line tried to show the disconnect of first person shooters with its dire and dark trudge through a sand filled Dubai. It's a fine game, and an interesting example of how to question the implications of the violence on screen. Hotline Miami takes this one step further and presents you with a throbbing score which provides the soundtrack to your violent detached murders. 

Each episode begins with a dark phone call to Jacket in his apartment. A voice appears and tells you to go somewhere - the reason changes each time, but never overtly suggesting that you're going off to kill someone. Off you trundle to your Delorean - the vehicle of choice which shows exactly how eighties the game wants to be - and a short loading screen later, you're at your soon to be crime scene. 

Where Hotline Miami excels perfectly is its ability to give you the dizzy feeling of having killed someone. Or a room full of people. (Full disclosure, I have not actually killed someone so I have no idea how it feels to actually kill someone.) Deaths come quick - yours and your enemies. If Jacket dies, a quick button press and he's back in going through it all over again. Dying is a natural process in the game and how quickly it happens is at first frustrating and annoying, then you learn the layout of the room and the feeling of being in control and clinically taking down Jacket's enemies becomes the norm. 

Because death is so quick for Jacket, you are at first very cautious - your first few kills actually cause Jacket to vomit and the screen goes a little hazy - then as Jacket progresses the killing becomes easier. The twitch style gameplay - similar to Super Meat Boy's insta-start-again - is perfect at giving you a dizzy feeling. The desire to get it right and get it perfect is there - getting that oh so vital A+ at the end of each level requires you to be quick, to be as brutal as possible, and to have as much variety as possible as well. It's a strange feeling, but eventually you become cold and disconnected from the deaths, it's all about taking the meat down and taking them down quickly. 

That is, until you walk out and past your carnage. The stark reminder of what Jacket has done - you have done - appears on the screen with a throbbing bass beat. It's nauseating, it's disturbing. Half of a man that you took down with a samurai sword may be lying on the other side of the room - blood and brains sprayed all over the floor and wall. The top down aspect of Hotline Miami shows how brutal and vast the carnage is. It's the first time that I've seen a game actually show how much blood there can be after a death. The first to show the brutality of death. No bodies disappear after ten seconds. They remain in pools of blood until the level is over. 

The deaths themselves are surprisingly realistic. If Jacket manages to knock someone down with a baseball bat hit to the head, they'll crawl away with blood pouring out of their head. Or there's the beheading's with swords where the victims head rolls away, them grasping at their neck and blood spurting out. It's gruesome, but not gratuitously so. Where you'd think that the level of gore on hand would border on gore porn levels, there is a meaning behind it all. The cold reminder at the end of each level followed by the (at first questionable) score tally of who you have killed is the heart that pumps Hotline Miami along. 

Spoiler Territory

The game ends with the people behind the voices on the phone being revealed. They're just two janitors who are controlling everything. They talk about taking down Russian gangsters and taking back America - a minor comment on the eighties recovering from the Cold War. But it amplifies what you've just taken Jacket through. It condones the violence. It says, this is ok as long as someone else is telling you to do it. You have a choice to say whether you - as a player - agree with what has happened, or to question the violence you've just perpetuated. 

Hotline Miami excels at making you feel what it must feel like to kill - a trait which in a lesser game would have caused to be brought up as a game that agrees with violence in video games encouraging violence in the real world - and it makes you realise that this is not right. It makes you question what you're doing in video games. It makes you question your characters motivations. And that's why I bring the Bioshock Infinite comparison back. 

Bioshock Infinite is a gruesome, slightly over the top, ridiculously gory game. Booker DeWitt is a great character, as is Elizabeth. But the disconnect with the narrative and the players actions takes away from the heart of the game. The narrative happens around you, rather than you as the player having an effect on the narrative. Where the violence in Hotline Miami progresses the narrative, the violence in Bioshock Infinite (and many other games in fact) works as a way to titillate. You want to jump off the zip lines and nail that guy in the face with your sky-hook. There's no connection between what DeWitt is intending to do as a character and what you intend to make DeWitt do with his weapons. 

Roll Credits

And that's where Hotline Miami excels - and for me, is my current game of the year. It explains the violence on the screen. It gives your actions meanings rather than telling a story around the actions you take. This is twitch gameplay at its finest. Bite sized brilliance with a great punch, or crowbar to the head, or silenced pistol through a window, or a boiling pot of water... to the face. 

10 dismembered bodies out of 10.