Welcome to Michael Bay’s American dream.The world of the thoroughly batshit insane and coal black comedy Pain & Gain is one of dreamers who are willing to cause abject nightmares to those around them to achieve their ends, and there’s no better vulgar auteurist capable of bringing this South Florida sleaze-fest to the big screen than Bay.
Marred by a pretty lacking script, Broken City isn't so much awful as it is wholly predictable and almost instantly forgettable.
For Seth MacFarlane fans, the foul mouthed fantasy comedy Ted will hold a great deal of amusement, but it’s hard to think that even his most die hard supporters won’t start to get a little antsy with the Family Guy creator’s awkwardly conceived first feature.
This week, action and misery seem to be the themes as takes on Shame and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, while Noah Taylor looks at The Divide, and Phil Brown watches Contraband
We take a look back at the winners and losers of the first quarter of 2012 in the world of film.
While there’s much to praise and little to deride about Contraband, there are only so many ways to say that the movie holds very few surprises and everything happens in exactly the way one expects it would happen. This smuggling thriller does pretty much everything right, not a heck of a lot wrong, and viewers will be engaged enough to keep from checking their watches every few minutes. It’s a very competently made piece of Hollywood machinery, but it’s also the kind of a movie one would watch with a laptop open or while doing chores because of how little an impression it leaves.
The trailer for this movie is too simple. It makes the film look like every other sports movie: a guy can’t make a living at this sport; his family life is troubled; in the end he wins the big match. However, the movie doesn’t succeed on its plot but on its characters. The Fighter is like Rocky meets The Trailer Park Boys; this family is all kinds of messed up.
