The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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Pain & Gain

, 129 m., 2013

Mark Wahlberg (Daniel Lugo), Dwayne Johnson (Paul Doyle), Anthony Mackie (Adrian Doorbal), Tony Shalhoub (Victor Kershaw), Ed Harris (Ed DuBois), Rob Corddry (John Mese), Bar Paly (Sorina Luminita), Rebel Wilson (Robin Peck), Ken Jeong (Johnny Wu), Michael Rispoli (Frank Griga), Keili Lefkovitz (Krisztina Furton), Emily Rutherfurd (Carolyn ‘Cissy’ DuBois), Larry Hankin (Pastor Randy), Tony Plana (Captain Lopez), Peter Stormare (Dr. Bjornson). Directed by Michael Bay and produced by Bay, Ian Bryce, Donald De Line. Screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, based on the magazine articles by Pete Collins.

Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain is something like the Thin Red Line of crime comedies (or would that be Martin Scorsese’s Casino?), with the attention span of someone going through Riddlin withdrawal. With its multiple perspective narration and hyperkinetic style, I’m reminded of that description of Christopher Walken’s character in Tony Scott’s Domino (2005): “like a ferret on crystal meth.” Still, this is the most coherently-filmed Bay film since…I dunno, Bad Boys (1995)?

Midnight’s Children

The Company You Keep

The Big Wedding

Arthur Newman

, 101 m., 2012

Emily Blunt (Mike), Colin Firth (Arthur Newman), Anne Heche (Mina Crawley), Kristin Lehman (Mary Alice Wells), Sterling Beaumon (Grant Wells), M. Emmet Walsh (Zazek), Nicole LaLiberte (Hipster Sarah), Autumn Dial (Charyl), David Andrews (Chuck Willoughby), Sharon Conley (Unemployment Official (as Sharon Morris)), Peter Jurasik (Bus Driver), Lucas Hedges (Kevin Avery), Steve Coulter (Owen Hadley), Michael Beasley (Detective #2), L. Warren Young (Deputy). Directed by Dante Ariola and produced by Mac Cappuccino, Becky Johnston, Brian Oliver, and Alisa Tager. Screenplay by Johnston.

This is one boring movie! If watching paint dry ever becomes an Olympic sport, I should win a frickin’ Gold Medal for enduring it. To call it dull as dishwater would be an insult to both dishes and their cleansing liquid. You know a film isn’t going well when the most exciting part is your getting a nosebleed halfway through and having to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes to clean it up. When I got back, nothing much had changed. So what could be so boring, you ask? I give you Arthur Newman – a drably filmed, mind-numbingly plotted, blandly acted American road movie starring those two shining stars of British cinema, Colin Firth and Emily Blunt. Take it. Please.

At Any Price

Genre – The Weird Western: Ravenous (1999) v. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

April 23, 2013–

“He that fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Eat me.” – Anonymous

(Opening quotations from Antonia Bird’s Ravenous [1999])

The Western genre has long been representative of the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. Fittingly then, the “Weird Western” is so named for any “fantastical” genre blend (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.), including a mixture of Western tropes with those of the horror genre. Indeed, one wonders if the so-called Weird Western is “Weird” at all. Two of the weirdest genre blends fitting the supernatural horror genre in the 1990’s are Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Antonia Bird’s Ravenous (1999). Both films use horror and Western tropes and a healthy dose of gory, gruesome black comedy in concert with siege/raid narratives to tell increasingly horrific tales of the Western frontier at its most base and vile.

The Place Beyond the Pines

Oblivion

The Lords of Salem

Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay

To the Wonder

It’s a Disaster

42

, 128 m., 2013

Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson), Harrison Ford (Branch Rickey), Nicole Beharie (Rachel Robinson), Christopher Meloni (Leo Durocher), Ryan Merriman (Dixie Walker), Lucas Black (Pee Wee Reese), Andre Holland (Wendell Smith), Alan Tudyk (Ben Chapman), Hamish Linklater (Ralph Branca), T.R. Knight (Harold Parrott), John C. McGinley (Red Barber), Toby Huss (Clyde Sukeforth), Max Gail (Burt Shotton), Brad Beyer (Kirby Higbe), James Pickens Jr. (Mr. Brock). Written and directed by Brian Helgeland. Produced by Thomas Tull.

Disconnect

Trance

Thale

Evil Dead