Pain & Gain – Michael Bay and The United States of Awesome

If you’re looking for an easy way to get movie fans riled up, simply bring up the work of Michael Bay. Even as you read this sentence, it’s likely that his name alone has evoked a visceral reaction. Depending on your mentality he’s either the unlikely auteur of high-octane classics (The Rock, Bad Boys), a hack responsible for headache-inducing disasters (Pearl Harbor, Transformers 2), or a strange hybrid of the two (Armageddon).

In any case, no other director comes close to capturing America at its gaudiest and most excessive. In the world of Michael Bay, strip clubs and Ferraris are as patriotic as baseball and apple pie; if he’s not lovingly depicting the American flag blowing in the wind, he’s capturing the finer details of a Humvee driving through an explosion. There isn’t a hint of irony in a Bay production – if there’s a slow-motion shot set to an Aerosmith song, you’re meant to feel it.

This is what makes his new film, Pain & Gain, a difficult movie to cipher. Based on the true story of a kidnapping and extortion plot gone horribly wrong, it can easily be seen as the biggest, dumbest, most debaucherous portrait ever of big, dumb debauchery. What’s unclear is just how deep Bay is in on his own joke.

The plot involves Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a trio of Miami bodybuilders who devise a plan to rob a wealthy entrepreneur (Tony Shaloub). Naturally, things begin to go haywire from the very beginning. What follows is an epic of bad-taste involving murder, materialism, cocaine, pornographers, speed boats, sexism, steroids, chainsaws, and just about every instance of amoral behavior imaginable.

It’s difficult to say whether this tasteless display of excess is intended to mirror the themes of the story or if it’s just the director pushing his natural instincts to farcical extremes.  Screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely clearly intend this to be a caustic portrait of the delusion behind the American dream. Wahlberg and co. have no qualms about resorting to increasingly perverse methods to obtain their goals; so long as a nice house and a fast car are your rewards, you are justified. Under the lens of The Coen Brothers or David Fincher, this could have been a biting piece of satire. What Bay gives us, however, might actually be more compelling – an authentic manifestation of the mentality behind its characters.

If there’s one clear predecessor to Pain & Gain, it’s Brian DePalma’s Scarface. In addition to the Miami setting and common traits of fast cars, cocaine, and chainsaws, both are technically proficient films about the rise and fall of deluded people in pursuit of tawdry dreams; both teeter between high-energy entertainment and being stimulating to the point of tedium; both may or may not be intentionally funny; both may come to be embraced by the people they’re intended to criticize. Most importantly, when both are being shown back-to-back on Spike TV in the future, they’ll serve as valuable time-capsules to the eras in which they were made.

Evil Dead (2013)

It was an uphill battle from the beginning for Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013). Its namesake alone always meant that it would be invite scrutiny from fans of Sam Raimi’s beloved original series. In this case, however, it has the unfortunate fate of following the trail led by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods. So thoroughly and creatively did that film satirize its genre that anyone attempting a straight take on the material would really have to make it stick.

Fede Alvarez’ remake isn’t going to usurp the original’s reputation anytime soon, but as a blood-soaked, irony free rollercoaster it delivers the goods. If, like me, you can enjoy the finer points of movies where good-looking young actors with limited acting abilities are killed off in increasingly gruesome ways, you’ll likely appreciate it.

The film jettisons the original’s standard “spring break at a cabin” setup for a clunky plot involving a young heroin addict (Jane Levy) trying to get sober-up with the help of her friends, led by blank slate Shiloh Fernandez as her brother. All of this is just an excuse for them to find an ancient Book of the Dead, read the scripture, and endure the vengeful wrath of evil spirits for the next 75 minutes.

Alvarez’ biggest struggle is in staging all of this believably; even by the lax standards of horror movie logic, the characters’ actions are pretty hard to swallow. Where he more than makes up for this is pure atmosphere. The film is a technical marvel, seemingly determined to make each shot more detailed and unnerving than the last. Alvarez clearly revels in setting up hints at the madness to come – ominous close ups of creaking floorboards, big needles, and a turkey carver. In the aftermath, I couldn’t help but laugh – partly because of how infectious the mayhem is, partly to deal with how disturbing it gets.

All of this is windup for the climax – the strange, disgusting, over the top, climax. These last 15 minutes are what make Evil Dead a must see, and the only stretch of the film that reaches the giddy heights of something like Dead by Dawn. Like the final drop of a rollercoaster, it’s an adrenaline rush that made the wait in line worth it.

The Balcony is Closed

At the age of 10 I began watching Siskel and Ebert At the Movies. All of my other, more active friends spent their summers playing sports or going to camp; I spent it wondering how these two clowns couldn’t recognize the genius inherent in Independence Day. Even as a kid I could see the chemistry these guys had, and got a kick out of watching them if they were on a rant. I never fully warmed to Siskel in those years, though I’ve warmed to his inherent arrogance over the years – like that old friend you keep around despite the fact that he’s kind of a dick.

All I knew about Ebert is that he gave thumbs up to Escape from L.A. To 10-year old me, that proved he was an okay guy.

Every Sunday I watched At the Movies, absorbing info on films I knew nothing of an immediately wanted to see afterwards. Fargo, Breaking the Waves, The Ice Storm, L.A. Confidential, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Bound – all films I heard about first though watching Siskel and Ebert on my days off. The other kids in my class were amped for Titanic and Men in Black – I was the only one seeking out a copy of Cronenberg’s Crash.

The day Ebert named Dark City the best movie of 1998 was the day I started reading his print reviews religiously. It was a mini-ritual every Friday to pick up our local paper, eat a bowl of cereal, and pour over his reviews of the week’s new releases. I always admired his ability to impart deep knowledge and insight about cinema in such light, conversational language. This acted as my film school before I ever considered film school.

People always loved when Ebert wrote a truly harsh review, as his inventiveness and wit as a writer was always on full display (his epic takedown of North being the prime example). I always loved when he wrote a glowing one. Unlike many of his peers, he wasn’t afraid to make things personal; other would take a more distanced, analytical approach, but Ebert loved the form so much that it was impossible for him not to respond with a visceral, emotional reaction. This often mean he gave a few too many passes to some questionable work, but in an internet age too often marked by curt dismissal and cynicism, one couldn’t argue too hard with someone this passionate about his work.

The internet was where Ebert shined late in his life. After losing his voice (and most of his jaw) to cancer in 2006, he embraced writing on the web with a fierce intensity that yielded some of his best writing ever. No longer restricted to just movies, he expressed deeply felt views on politics, science, spirituality, death, and his own memories. A 4-star review of Watchmen could inspire a discussion on metaphysics via his fascination with Dr. Manhattan. Initially skeptical of Twitter, he became a remarkably active user. regarding it as a window to the world as a whole and a way of opening real discussion with followers. Despite what legions of bitter gamers will tel you, Ebert was no fogey.

As Ebert’s health weakened, his ambition and verve didn’t. For every step along the way, he was open about his struggles, his fears, and his realizations. Through his writing, he managed to convey real grace and humility up until the day he died.

And of course, he named Dark City the best movie of 1998. That’s what I liked about him most of all.

Room 237

“I’m sorry to differ with you sir, but YOU are the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker. I should know sir.: I’ve always been here.” – Delbert Grady, The Shining

On the short list of my favorite movies of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ranks somewhere near the top. I can think of other films that I’ve seen as often, have as much entertainment value, or bridge the gap between high and low-art as deftly. What makes the The Shining endure is not just that it has all three of these qualities, but that it does it all in such a remarkably offbeat manner. Like the best movies, there’s an aura of mystery that makes any definitive interpretation feel out of grasp. It isn’t just the hallways drenched in the blood of the twin girls; anyone who’s ever seen the film will tell you, from the very first moment, something just feels… off.

This is the jumping point for Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s clever, absorbing, and often hilarious look at the hidden (or possibly nonexistent) symbolism of Kubrick’s classic. Breaking the mold of current documentaries by featuring minimal original footage and no talking-head cutaways, the film consists solely of five Kubrick obsessives delivering hard-thought and half-baked theories on the true meaning of The Shining.

To say that some of these ideas don’t hold water might be a bit of an understatement. There’s some intricate (if well-traveled) analysis of Kubrick’s use of foreshadowing and incongruous spatial continuity that actually counts as well-observed criticism; a take on the film as a metaphor for the genocide of Native Americans grows more convincing as it goes on; the belief that Kubrick meant the film to be a de-facto confession for faking the Apollo 11 moon-landing comes off as particularly unhinged; and no, the man on the Ski Monarch poster does not represent a minotaur.

Ascher’s first gained notoriety for the online short The S From Hell, a look at the shared childhood trauma caused by the jarring 1960s Screen Gems logo. Beneath that film’s cheeky sense of humor is a real sense of vivid recollection, how the thought of simple corporate logo can turn you into a child, cowering behind your couch in fear. It’s this playful spirit and sharp insight that keeps Room 237 from devolving into pure gobbledigook. He never wants to judge his subjects, and he is always willing to follow his subjects down the rabbit hole, illustrating their theories in great detail. This includes re-creating one subject’s experiment of simultaneously playing The Shining backward and forward (this is actually pretty mind-blowing) and a frame-by-frame breakdown of the opening interview that leads to the film’s biggest laugh.

At its most stirring, Room 237 plays almost like the movie version of a Girl Talk album – less of a documentary than a collage, The Shining remixed through the prism of pop-culture analysis. It’s film theory for the age of memes and mash-ups. This is to say that it’s only partly a film about Shining fandom; it’s mostly a film about the way we’ve come to process culture as a way of understanding our past – how seemingly minor cultural artifacts have a direct and tangible way of connecting us to a particular emotional state. At some point the intent of the creator becomes irrelevant, and what matters is the part of ourselves that we imprint.

The most powerful and persuasive argument in Room 237 comes from one fan who believes that The Shining is not a metaphor for a single event but for the past as a whole. “That’s the essence of great art,” he says, “It’s like a dream. It’s boiled everything down to an emblematic symbol that’s got all of life in it… The way Kubrick made movies was not unlike the way our brains create memories and for that matter dreams.”

I didn’t finish Room 237 convinced of any of The Shining’s hidden symbolism; the only thing I’m certain of is that it actually has symbolism. I did, however, come to an idea of why I tend to rank it so high on my list of favorite movies. To watch it is to draw a clear line through my moviegoing life – from seeing it digitally projected at age 27, back through college-dorm viewings and my high-school horror-movie obsession, all the way back to my childhood, watching a shoddy VHS copy taped off of late-night HBO. Watching it over, and over, and over…