Pain & Gain (2013)

Genre : Comedy/Action
Country : USA

Cast :
Mark Wahlberg : Daniel Lugo
Dwayne Johnson : Paul Doyle
Anthony Mackie : Adrian Doorbal
Tony Shalhoub : Victor Kershaw
Ed Harris : Ed Dubois

Director :
Michael Bay

Summary
Based on the true story of Daniel Lugo a Miami bodybuilder who wants to live the American dream. He would like to have the money that other people have. So he enlists the help of fellow bodybuilder Adrian Doorbal and ex-convict, Christian bodybuilder Paul Doyle. Their kidnapping and extortion scheme goes terribly wrong since they have muscles for brains and they're left to haphazardly try to hold onto the elusive American dream.

My opinion


You know why habit rhymes with rabbit? Because your life goes down a rabbit hole.
(Irrelevant quote from Lugo and an indication what to expect from this movie)

Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie and especially Dwayne Johnson in a movie about three body-builders who are involved in a kidnapping which they screw up completely.
A great action picture that can provide some distraction on a Saturday night. That's what I imagined since that was the only thing I knew about this movie. And judging the poster it could be an entertaining movie with three mindless hulks (Wahlberg in a lesser degree, but that's compensated by Johnson).

After fifteen minutes I actually began to wonder what I was watching and it seemed to me as if those 3 guys wanted to make an absurd comedy. With the emphasis on "seemed" because I really had to look hard to find the so called humor in this movie. It's nothing but three steroid inflated balloon heads experiencing slightly absurd situations. The situations and acts were more and more retarded as the movie progressed. The only positive was the excellent caricature of an arrogant businessman played by Tony Shalhoub. Even when his situation looked dire and hopeless, he still retained a big mouth.

The rest was bland, incomprehensible and totally unbelievable. Those three guys better just stick to decent hard-hitting action movies and as soon as they read the word comedy in a script, run it through the paper shredder. It was as unbelievable as a movie with Pee Wee Herman as an unbeatable action hero who defeats a complete horde of ferocious warriors. Apparently it should be an ironic satire. Apparently there's something wrong with my taste and interpretation, because I didn't see it like that at all. The fact that it was based on a true story puzzled me more. Was it really so or just an ironic untruth ?

Towards the end, I fell asleep for 5 minutes and eventually watched it till the end. I had nothing else to do.

Biggest plus in this corny movie was Bar Paly, Keili Lefkovitz and Vivi Pineda along with a battery of beautiful women sitting in sharply cut bikinis and swimsuits so you were repeatedly treated by dry-trained appetizing looking rosy bums. More of that and I certainly had watched the whole movie.
 
More or less funny : the whole problem of impotence and penis-problem of Anthony Mackie with those snappy one-liners regarding that.

Most boring item : Johnson shooting his big toe of his foot and the dog eventually nibbling on it.

My rating 1/10
Links : IMDB

Disconnect (2012)

Genre : Drama/Thriller
Country : USA

Cast :
Jason Bateman : Rich Boyd
Hope Davis : Lydia Boyd
Paula Patton : Cindy Hull
Alexander Skarsgard : Derek Hull
Andrea Riseborough : Nina Dunham
Jonah Bobo : Ben Boyd
Haley Ramm : Abby Boyd

Director : Henry Alex Rubin
Summary
 A hard-working lawyer, attached to his cell phone, can't find the time to communicate with his family. A couple is drawn into a dangerous situation when their secrets are exposed online. A widowed ex-cop struggles to raise a mischievous son who cyber-bullies a classmate. An ambitious journalist sees a career-making story in a teen that performs on an adult-only site. They are strangers, neighbors and colleagues and their stories collide in this riveting dramatic thriller about ordinary people struggling to connect in today's wired world.

My opinion

Quote Paul Carvel
Internet : absolute communication, absolute isolation.

A great movie with a subject that fits a modern society nowadays and really fascinated me. Because of my professional life I'm closely connected with the used themes and technologies, making it more enjoyable for me. At first I was expecting a boring movie about the contemporary information society with a lot of posturing and dialogues, so the entertainment value of this film would drop to absolute zero.

This was in retrospect a huge judgmental error. This was an intriguing movie with three story lines that eventually were subtly interwoven. The thread is a socially critical message with three examples of what dangers lurk in today's information technology : exploitation, internet fraud and cyber bullying. Today it's reported regularly on the news and that makes this film more realistic. It can happen to anyone what these people go through. The three stories were very realistic, and I didn't think it was over dramatized or corny on an emotion scale.

There is a double message in this film in my opinion. On the one hand there's the warning that not everything has to be taken for granted. There is indeed a risk that your financial information is suppressed and your bank account or credit card could be plundered. Cyber-bullying can go that far that it could drive a person to perform an act of desperation. And there are an awful lot of people/youth on the worldwide web who are abused/used by individuals with the sole purpose to enrich themselves.

On the other hand, I think the real message behind this cinematographic gem is the fact that people never been so connected to each other by means of technology (email, facebook, twitter, blogs, iPhone, iPad, Internet TV. ..) as today, but in real life we have never lived past each other more and alienated from one another.

The acting was superb. Each character was well-chosen and fitted perfectly into the storyline: the schoolmates who went from mischievous to compassionate, an outsider in his friendless isolated world, the lawyer who is more involved in his work than his immediate family, a freelance cyber detective who did not notice the feeling of guilt his son was struggling with, a couple that stopped communicating with each other and try to deal with emotional problems on their own without engaging the partner, the young man whose life takes place in front of a webcam and not in real life and the journalist who eventually wants to play the role of Mother Teresa. At times brilliant performances and poignant self discoveries of the characters. The slow motion scenes at the end were visually strong.

The movie has a happy end so everything turns out just fine : the couple finds each other again despite the financial turmoil, the lawyer realizes that his son became a stranger and that his family eventually is the most important thing in his life, the policeman renewed his relationship with his son. Only the journalist comes out pretty shitty. And we can only guess what's going to happen to Kyle. The cyber bullying victim remains in a soothing coma. For a moment I had the feeling that he would open his eyes in the last minute.But fortunately that didn't happen so that the realism of this film was even of a higher level.

So it's a strong movie with deep realistic situations and pure convincing acting with a sad message. However, it ends ultimately with a glimmer of hope.

My rating 8/10
Links :  IMDB

The dark Knight rises (2012)

Genre : Action/Crime/Fantasy
Land : USA

Cast :
Christian Bale : Bruce Wayne
Gary Oldman : Commissioner Gordon
Tom Hardy : Bane
Anne Hathaway : Selina
Morgan Freeman : Fox
Michael Caine : Alfred
Haley Ramm : Abby Boyd

Director :
Christopher Nolan

Summary
Eight years on, a new evil rises from where the Batman and Commissioner Gordon tried to bury it, causing the Batman to resurface and fight to protect Gotham City... the very city which brands him an enemy.

My opinion
Our bat-friend has never really captivated me. I've seen both "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight". I can barely remember anything from the first movie. I guess I wasn't really impressed by that one. "The Dark Knight" on the other hand did, and that because of the charismatic figure "The Joker". A figure without rancor and with a phenomenal crazy look.

That's something I really missed a little bit here. Bane was the personification of intense hatred and had a very menacing look, but the feeling I got was not more then "Oh-ok-again-another-bad-guy"....  And then they started with names like Ra's al Ghul. I don't have the faintest idea who that person is.

There was once in the 80's a broadcast a whole day of American Television on Dutch Television, which ended with the movie "Klute". They also programmed an episode of Batman and Robin from that time, where they used fake text balloons during every fight. Batman and Robin also were running around in such gay-looking costumes. Actually I thought that was really hilarious.

Batman's current costume obviously looks much more slick and tough. But besides the fact that the text-balloons are gone, the action scenes still follow the same pattern. Something that nerves me always. It's like everyone neatly awaits his turn to get sucker-punched during a fistfight. It looks a bit ridiculous in the nature of "Wow yeah now it's my turn because the last one got his ass kicked and lies on the floor knocked out."

I'm really positive about the action part. That's something to lick your chops. The SFX is mostly top notch and the settings of Gotham City look very impressive. But the overall tempo of the movie is quite slow with lots of dialogues and things I couldn't place since I'm not a real Batman adept. So the only thing I could do was wait until the action broke loose.

Of course there's also a bit of female beauty to admire and that in the form of Catwoman (I presume) played by Anne Hathaway, who looked immensely appetizing in that leather, latex suit. The scene where she bends over on the Batpod with her perky butt stretched up in the air, is etched in my memory. This image alone was worth a point !

My rating 5/10
Links : IMDB

Mama (2013)

Genre : Horror
Country : Spain

Cast :
Javier Botet : Mama
Jessica Chastain : Annabel
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau : Lucas / Jeffrey
Megan Carpentier : Victoria
Isabelle Nélisse : Lilly
Daniel Kash : Dr. Dreyfuss

Director :
Andrés Muschietti

Summary

The senior partner of an investment brokerage, Jeffrey Desange, has a breakdown due to a financial collapse and kills several co-workers and his estranged wife. He then kidnaps his two young daughters. He drives his car recklessly through a winding snow covered road. He loses control of his car and drives off an embankment. He finds an abandoned and isolated cabin where he plans to kill his daughters, but the children are saved by a dark ghostly image. After five years of searching and depleting his savings, Jeffrey's twin brother, Lucas, finds the children that were raised without social interaction and claim that they have been raised by 'Mama'.

My opinion

"Daddy,look! There's a woman outside the window.And she's not touching the floor."

"Mama" has all the elements to make it a great, creepy horror movie. It starts very strong with a somewhat hazy situation with a desperate father who killed his wife and abducts his children to an unknown destination. I suppose it's a family tragedy in the making caused by an economic crisis. However, the plan to kill the two sisters Victoria and Lilly goes awry after an accident in which they end up in a remote cabin in the woods. Here, the father ultimately can't carry out his act of desperation by the intervention of a blurred (as seen through the eyes of Victoria who is visually impaired) being who appears to be "Mama" afterwards. What follows is for me one of the most impressive forbearing scenes of this movie, namely when the two girls are found after 5 years. The image of the two swinging, smeared with mud, humming sisters on the refrigerator where they moved to with high speed in an arachnid way. Succeeded by the images in the psychiatric institution where the sisters are in observation and where it's shown how they have evolved into the skittish underdeveloped beings through their prolonged isolation. The moment when Victoria suddenly appears in the viewing window is an impetus for similar horror elements and it made ​​me think of Samara from "The Ring".

When Luke, the brother of the missing father who has custody of the two sisters, moves into a house, which is offered by the institution where the accompanying psychiatrist works, together with Annabel his girlfriend, it appears that something else has nested itself there too. Luke ends up in the hospital because of "Mama", so Annabel is all alone to take care of the two sisters and that's when the trouble starts.The story on its own has been told countless times in other haunted-house movies. Although it is not really a haunted-house movie in the purest sense of the word. A bundle of cliches from other horror movies pass in review including the soundtrack. Ok, it's cheap but I have to admit that most horror movies depend on it, and without it, it seems rather that you have seen a fairy tale instead of an unnerving horror/scary movie. In other words, it has to be like this.

The acting of the two girls was a top performance. Especially Lilly looked sometimes terrifying and demonic. Suddenly emerging from the darkness with the expressionless gaze and then disappearing lightning fast while giggling. She was also the only one of the pair who unconditionally accepted "Mama" as her natural mother and couldn't or wouldn't say goodbye to this entity. Victoria wasn't such a strong and convincing person, but that was more in line with the character. She quickly made ​​the transition to the more human world and accepted Lucas and Annabel as surrogate parents. That's why she rejected the request of Lilly to go outside and play with "Mama". Lucas quickly disappeared out of the picture, and therefore played a minor role. Annabel on the other other hand was also a strong interpretation. An alternative rock chick, with absolutely no maternal instinct (I thought she was pleased that the pregnancy test was negative in the beginning of the movie). She evolves into a mother figure after a while who really cares about the sisters.

But the strongest character turned out to be the creature "Mama". I read here and there about the bad CGI or irritating SFX, but I haven't noticed any of this.. I found it a compelling and terrifying spectacle. To my surprise I saw the name Javier Botet between the other actors on IMDB. The interpreter of "Mama" ... duhuh .... This person was told at the age of 5 that he's suffering from the symptoms of Marfan. A deviation that causes a person to grow to an unusual height with long, skinny arms,legs and fingers. He has this natural anomaly used to play personages like "Mama" and "Medeiros" in the [REC] movies. The CGI is subsequently projected on it. This gave the figure "Mama" a more realistic figure. The only laughable thing was the wig shuffling over the floor. They could have worked that out in a different way.
 

Eventually I thought it was a frightening movie with a very intense atmosphere and  properly placed scare moment (and I'm not easily scared). Again this shows that a good horror doesn't always require the necessary gore elements to make it oppressive. Personally I thought the end was a bit far-fetched with a baby corpse kept in an archive  and the in a huge swarm of moths bursting cocoon. Just like in "The Woman in Black" the found remedy doesn't eliminate the curse.
 

My rating 7/10
Link : IMDB

The heat (2013)

Genre : Comedy/Action
Country : USA

Cast :
Sandra Bullock : Sarah Ashburn
Melissa McCarthy : Shannon Mullins
Kaitlin Olson : Tatiana

Director :
Paul Feig

Summary
Sarah Ashburn, an FBI agent, is extremely ambitious and has her eye on a promotion, but she doesn't get along with her co-workers. She is sent to Boston to uncover the identity of an elusive drug lord, Mr. Larkin, by tracking down his proxy, Rojas, and is told that she'll have a good shot at the promotion if she finds Larkin. When she arrives in Boston, she learns that Larkin has been eliminating his competition and taking over their operations. She learns that Rojas is in Boston PD custody and goes to see him to ask him what he knows about Larkin, but is warned that the cop who arrested Rojas, Shannon Mullins, is very territorial, and she is not exactly sociable. When the two meet they don't get along.

My opinion

Female 48 Hours

First we have the clumsy FBI agent Sarah Ashburn. I was wondering how the hell she achieved to get in the FBI in the first place.She's a human walking encyclopedia who isn't capable of speaking one obscene word, but in a glance at a crime scene she magically reveals illegal weapons hidden behind a panel and some drugs under the table. David Copperfield is a loser compared to her.
And then we have the street-cop Shannon Mullins who rumbles around foaming with rage and swearing like a heretic while swinging around ferociously. The only positive thing you can say about her is her practical knowledge of the street.

These two opposites are (of course) forced to work together. And after the known obstacles and mistakes, the hate and antipathy disappear by itself as the film progresses. Eventually they form the unsurpassed and formidable team called "The Heat".

The profound content of this movie is hereby succinctly summarized. In terms of humor this movie is a complete miss. The scene in the bar where they both get drunk is the only hilarious part (The polonaise with seniors was exquisite), but the rest is woeful corny slap-stick comedy. It actually started to annoy me at outset. The clumsy hassle of Bullock with her miraculous solutions, and the constant swearing McCarthy. There will be a wide audience for this kind of humor, but for me it was a complete waste of time.

My rating 2/10 
Links : IMDB

The Divide (2011)

Genre : SF/Thriller
Country : USA/Germany

Cast :
Lauren German : Eva
Michael Biehn : Mickey
Rosanna Arquette : Marilyn
Milo Ventimiglia : Josh

Director :
Xavier Gens

Summary
After a nuclear attack, seven dwellers of an apartment building seek refugee in a bunker in the basement of the building where the super, Mickey, lives. He rations water and supplies among the group formed by Eva and her boyfriend Sam; the gays Bobby and Josh and his brother Adrien; Marilyn and her daughter Wendi; and Delvin. When five invaders break into their shelter wearing protective clothing and breathing apparatuses, they abduct Wendi but the survivors succeed in killing two of the men. Josh wears the only clothing that was not damaged and discovers a strange research center where he finds Wendi contained in some kind of stasis device along with other children apparently collected by the unknown men in suits. He is discovered and ends up shoots at three men and returns to the shelter. Soon the group learns that the invaders have welded their access door from outside and they are trapped inside the bunker.

My opinion

"The Day After" in a sealed bunker.

I thought this was an excellent psychological thriller. It was scary at times, but not as scary as a top horror movie. The way people react in a hopeless situation was scary. A survival of the fittest. The dominant individuals taking the reins. The weaker individuals crawling in a submissive position so that they see a chance to survive. Arquette played this behavior properly in this film. Beyond that, her contribution is simply nil. Formerly her joining a movie was a guarantee for some functionally nice nudity. In this movie she was usually strategically covered and so there remains, besides a few hysterical mood-swings, in terms of performances not much left.

It wasn't exactly a SF either. Although the so-called North Koreans with futuristic bio-suits gave it a SF touch. The only implausible fact I could find was the speed in which the arrogant, sadistic and degrading behavior evolved in some characters. The movie doesn't give any indication of the time frame that it evolved. Are they only a few days, some weeks or months locked up? The 2nd part is a claustrophobic spiral of senseless violence and a model of how individuals can grow into an over-dominant and dictatorial role within a closed community. The scenes are sometimes brutal and aggressive, but nothing is explicitly portrayed f.e. chopping the bodies into pieces. The two dominant bald heads really are a creepy display of two totally freaky guys.

However, the way Sam responded was beyond my comprehension. Would I witness how those two are terrorizing the whole group, use torture techniques in order to get a combination and abuse a woman until she drops dead, I surely would ensure that their brains were splashed against a wall if I could lay my hand on a weapon. Merciless.

My conclusion : an impressive and oppressive futuristic look at a chaotic struggle for survival.

My rating 6/10
Links : IMDB

Shutter Island (2010)

Genre : Mystery/Thriller
Country : USA

Cast :
Leonardo DiCaprio : Teddy Daniels
Mark Ruffalo : Chuck Aule
Ben Kingsley : Dr. Cawley

Director :
Martin Scorsese

Summary
It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

My opnion

A cuckoo's nest on an island

A brilliant psychological thriller where nothing seems like it should be. You'll be mislead the whole movie. The denouement is extremely surprising and plausible, but then turns right back to an open end which raises the same question : Is Ted still living in his unreal delusional world or is he really aware of his ultimate identity and thus voluntarily commits suicide to get rid of the agonizing trauma that chases him for years? Indeed, a true "mind fuck " in this movie.

Scorsese placed the whole story on a remote island. Superbly portrayed as an isolated, desolate, rough rock where escaping is impossible. Using the ferry is a possibility but it's in the hands of the institute. The movie begins as the ferry arrives on the island with Ted (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) on board . I'm not a huge fan of Leonardo, but I must admit that I could appreciate his performances in "Django" and "Inception" and I don't look at him as the youthful Jack from "Titanic", but more like a chameleon-like actor who has gradually found its place among the other big boys.

The other actors are not the least. Mark Ruffalo plays a decent role as partner annex personal psychiatrist Ted. Personally I thought he's more convincing in this role then as Bruce Banner in "The Avengers" and recently as Dylan Rhodes in "Now you see it".
Ben Kingsley is a class act who plays the head psychiatrist with bravado and suppleness . The has a unique view on the treatment of psychiatric "patients". It's masterfully to see how his deadpan expression can change from compassionate to chiding. Max von Sydow is a well established value with a finicky small contribution. In that split second, he shows how psychiatrists feel superior over other human beings.

What begins as an apparently simple detective story with a search for an escaped patient, turns into a whirlwind of claustrophobic proportions. The threat and insane atmosphere accumulates systematically. The interior of Block C was soaring and fits well with the idea that the most dangerous individuals are imprisoned there. Far off from the outside world. The lighthouse is a gloomy edifice that stands out against the dark ocean and could indeed turn out to be a place to perform true inhuman experiments.

Gradually the question arises whether Ted is indeed insane or that he's involved in a grand conspiracy to cover it all up. His flashbacks of Dachau and dreams about the alleged dramatic death of his wife, the delusions of rats on the rocks, the trembling of his hands and sometimes psychotic manners, point out to the first. The story of the hiding female psychologist Rachel, surely makes you doubt again. The story of the mark that you get after internment is credible. Whatever you do to prove the opposite, it will always be reduced to the fact that you're insane.
Fifty years from now, people will look back and say, "Here, at this place, is where it all began The Nazis used the Jews, Soviets used prisoners in Their Own Gulags And we -.., We tested patients on Shutter Island."

The final revelation was also a surprise for me and explained everything that preceded. The turnaround to total awareness and to admit that he lived all those years in a delusional world, proved the successful outcome of the whole set-up. I only doubt that you can apply this technique in reality.

The final sentence then puts everything in an entirely different context : "Which would be worse - to live as a monster or to die as a good man?" Is Ted still that monster or is he the cured repented patient who deliberately commits euthanasia by using lobotomy ?

Excellent movie !!!

My rating 9/10

Links : IMDB