Something to watch tonight: Thursday 9 January
Pain & Gain (Bay, 2013)
On the surface, there is nothing about this film that should merit inclusion in this newsletter.
It’s directed by Michael Bay for a start, and stars Mark Wahlberg, two protagonists that I am not often fond of.
But I recall enjoying it immensely and reviewed it thusly at the old Funerals & Snakes in September 2013:
Exercise is not always good for you, though, as the protagonists of Michael Bay’s under-rated satire Pain & Gain might confirm. Based on the true story of a gang of 1980s Miami bodybuilders who shortcut their way to the American Dream by kidnapping a local businessman and forcing him to sign over all his assets. Mark Wahlberg is the brains of the outfit – if that’s not an entirely incorrect characterisation of the situation – and Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie get dragged along with it. Johnson in particular has a ball playing a born-again, sober, ex-con confronting his demons in hilarious fashion.
It’s not without some terrible missteps but the script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is so good I’m tempted to pin the blame for everything that doesn’t work squarely on Mr. Bay. Deliciously misanthropic in ways that normally turn me right off, Pain & Gain is my guiltiest pleasure of the year so far.
That column also featured two for the oldies: Canadian drama Still Mine and over-80s table tennis documentary Ping Pong, as well as Ryan Gosling in Nicholas Winding Refn’s violent thriller Only God Forgives, coming-of-age charmer The Way Way Back, the first film in The Conjuring horror franchise, Neil Jordan’s seaside vampire flick Byzantium, forgotten body horror Errors of the Human Body and an almost equally forgotten superhero film, The Wolverine, which I described this way:
Barely justifying a first viewing, Hugh Jackman’s sixth (so far) outing as the moody mutant Logan, The Wolverine can’t even bring itself to find an original title – you might recall the last one was called X‑Men Origins: Wolverine. Like Gosling in Only God Forgives, he is a white dude getting up to mischief in some kind of Asian fantasy land, in this case a Japan constructed from references in that children’s version of Wikipedia.
Somehow, I managed to fall asleep during the loudest section of the film – an extended digitally-constructed battle between Logan and some ninjas on the top of the famous bullet train – and the rest of the very stupid film could barely maintain what little attention I had left. It does make a nice change though for a blockbuster movie to not be about saving us from the end of the world, though, just another existential crisis for the biggest wuss in the Marvel or DC universes.
Where to watch Pain & Gain
Aotearoa: Streaming on TVNZ+ (free with ads)
Australia: Digital rental
Canada & USA: Streaming on Paramount+
Ireland & UK: Streaming on Sky
India: Digital rental from Amazon
Further listening
RNZ have solved their podcast upload problems and all three episodes of At the Summer Movies are now available online.
This week’s segments are Conclave, Nosferatu, The Room Next Door and Juror #2. Or listen to the whole thing at your 24 minutes of leisure.