Pain & Gain
Film Review by Kam Williams
Michael Bay is a director whose name has mostly come to be associated with mindless, stunt-driven action flicks such as Armageddon, Bad Boys and the Transformers franchise. His latest offering, however, Pain & Gain, represents a relatively-cerebral departure in that it tones down the special effects and pyrotechnics in favor of credible plot and character development.
Based on a true tale that transpired in Florida back in the Nineties, the alternately comical and gruesome crime caper revolves around the felonious exploits of a trio of bodybuilders who hatched a kidnap for ransom plot that went terribly awry. The mastermind of the ill-fated scheme was Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), an ex-con employed as a personal trainer at Sun Gym in Miami.
A regular there was Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), an arrogant businessman from Colombia with an oversized ego and a temper to match. That condescending attitude makes it easy for Daniel to consider extorting cash from his client, especially given how rich the guy is.
So, he enlists the assistance of couple of equally-buff cronies, recently-paroled Paul (Dwayne Johnson) and steroid-addicted Adrian (Anthony Mackie).
But the seat-of-the-pants plan has little chance of success, despite the pea brains of the operation’s assurances that “I know what I’m doing” because “I’ve watched a lot of movies.”
One complication is Born Again Paul’s reservations, since he’s turned his life over to Jesus. Meanwhile, Adrian himself is very distracted himself by a case of juice-induced erectile dysfunction.
Nevertheless, the three still proceed with the conspiracy, abducting Victor and taking him to an abandoned warehouse where they torture him mercilessly to figure out where his fortune is hidden. The grisly goings-on are repeatedly presented as humorous onscreen, effectively masking the fact that the participants in truth landed stiff prison sentences for their evil deeds.
Credit the convincing performances by the leads, especially Dwayne Johnson (cast against type here as a fairly sensitive soul), for actually inducing the audience to empathize and laugh at the wacky antics of some despicable miscreants. Ditto Tony Shalhoub who plays such a dislikable victim that he makes it easy to roots for his captors.
A reminder ripped right out of the tabloids that while crime does not pay, it sometimes serves as fodder for lurid headlines and hilarious hijinks.
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated R for graphic nudity, bloody violence, crude sexuality, drug use and pervasive profanity
Running time: 129 minutes
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
To see a trailer for Pain & Gain, visit
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Film Review by Kam Williams
Annoying Narration Ruins Jay-Z Produced Romantic Romp
When a gangsta rapper like Jay-Z decides to dabble in filmmaking, it only makes sense that the flick might remind you more of his genre of popular music than a typical movie. That’s precisely the case with An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, an unorthodox romance drama produced by the incomparable hip-hop icon.
Written, directed, edited, scored, narrated by and animated by Terrence Nance (How Would You Feel?), the surreal adventure co-stars Renaissance Man Nance opposite Namik Minter as friends in a platonic relationship on the verge of turning venereal. The ambitious, multi-media undertaking not only mixes cartoon and live-action images, but it also walks a fine line between drama and documentary.
While the protagonists try to sort out their feelings, the picture poses some thought-provoking questions, such as, “How do you balance logic and emotions?” Unfortunately, the film is afflicted with a fatal flaw, namely, a virtually non-stop narration of the play-by-play which starts to get on your nerves after about five minutes.
Granted, this could just be an age thing, since the Hip-Hop Generation is already used to hearing incessant, mindless, staccato-style chatter in their favorite songs. So, it might not be that big a jump for them to have to listen to a non-stop voiceover for the duration of a movie. Nevertheless, the slick poetry slam approach definitely didn’t do it for this critic.
Another annoying aspect of the experience was how the audience is addressed directly by the disembodied voice, as in “You arrive at your home,” “You empty your pockets,” “You have no bed and no money,” “You possess no means of personal transportation,” and so forth. Granted, Jay McInerney effectively employed the 2nd person in his best-selling novel “Bright Lights, Big City,” but it simply fails to work here as a cinematic device.
Ghetto psychobabble strictly for the attention-deficit, Jay-Z demographic.
Fair (1 star)
Unrated
Running time: 93 minutes
Distributor: Variance Films
To see a trailer for An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, visit:
Norwegian Anthropologist Replicates Polynesia Settlers’ Migration in Oscar-Nominated Seafaring Epic Kon-Tiki
Film Review by Kam Williams
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the conventional wisdom was that Polynesia had been settled by Asians arriving from the Far East. But it’s one thing for a pompous professor to simply sit in an ivory tower and speculate about who might have discovered the island group some 1,500 years ago, and quite another to go about proving a theory correct by attempting to replicate the putative pioneers’ perilous feat.
While doing research in the Marquesas on the Isle of Fatu Hiva in the mid-Thirties, a Norwegian anthropologist named Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) came up with a novel idea about the roots of the natives. After studying the local fauna and flora, watching the flow of the tides, and listening to aborigine folklore about their ancestors’ arduous trek towards the setting sun, he reasoned that the region must have been settled by tribes migrating there from South America.
Then, when his iconoclastic notion was roundly ridiculed by scholarly colleagues back in academia, Thor decided to prove his detractors wrong by mounting a 5,000-mile expedition from Peru to Polynesia. And although he knew nothing about sailing and couldn’t even swim, he did have the sense to assemble a team capable of assisting him in the dangerous endeavor.
The plan was to build a balsa wood raft identical to the type used by indigenous people in pre-Columbian times, painstakingly following their methods of construction down to the smallest detail. And since they would not be able to steer this vessel christened the Kon-Tiki, Thor estimated it would take about three months for the currents and winds to take them to their destination.
His intrepid crew was comprised of four fellow Norwegians and a Swede, including childhood friend, Erik Hesselberg (Odd Magnus Williamson), the navigator; radioman Knut Haugland (Tobias Santelmann), a decorated World War II veteran; Torstein Raaby (Jakob Oftebro), another radio expert; Herman Watzinger (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), an engineer; and Bengt Danielsson (Gustaf Skarsgard), the Swedish steward.
Co-directed by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, Kon-Tiki faithfully chronicles their historic, transoceanic voyage. Despite the fact that most of the picture’s dialogue is English, it somehow earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category earlier this year.
The men set sail in the spring of 1947, encountering storms, shark attacks, ship rot, insubordination and a host of other challenges en route. The deliberately-paced production repeatedly harks back to a bygone era when much of the Earth’s surface was yet to be explored.
Replete with breathtaking Pacific panoramas shot on location, Kon-Tiki is worth watching for the captivating visuals alone. However, the storytelling is solid, too, with all adding up to a fitting tribute to the enviable exploits of the legendary Thor Heyerdahl.
Excellent (4 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence
In English, Norwegian, Swedish and French with subtitles
Running time: 118 minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Kon-Tiki, visit
Ken Burns
“The Central Park Five” Interview
with Kam Williams
Ken Burns has been making films for more than thirty years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and to produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.
The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.” A December 2002 poll conducted by Real Screen Magazine listed The Civil War as second only to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North as “the most influential documentary of all time,” and named Ken Burns and Robert Flaherty as the “most influential documentary makers” of all time.
In March, 2009, David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said, “… Burns is not only the greatest documentarian of the day, but also the most influential filmmaker period. That includes feature filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I say that because Burns not only turned millions of persons onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past and ourselves.”
Ken’s films have won ten Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Here, he talks about his latest film, The Central Park Five, co-directed by his daughter, Sarah, and her husband, David McMahon, which premieres on PBS on April 16th.
Scary Movie 5
Film Review by Kam Williams
What do Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Mike Tyson, Katt Williams and Snoop Dogg have in common? They’re all celebrities whose names have been splashed across the tabloids in connection with controversy. But in a macabre gesture ostensibly intended to exploit their notoriety, this motley collection of the craziest people currently in the public eye was tapped to make cameo appearances in Scary Movie 5.
The picture was directed by Malcolm Lee (Undercover Brother) who opted for an overhaul of the series with a fresh set of characters rather than a sequel. That shouldn’t be a problem for purists, since each of the earlier installments has basically been a string of disconnected skits spoofing the latest horror movies.
Among the fright flicks lampooned here are Paranormal Activity, The Black Swan, Evil Dead, Sinister and Mama. However, this equal opportunity offender also takes potshots at offerings from other genres like The Help, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection, Planet of the Apes and 127 Hours.
Unfortunately, the disappointing production is little more than a crummy appeal to the lowest common denominator employing generous helpings of scatological humor. Worse, none of the sketches elicited even a perfunctory pity laugh from the audience I watched the movie with.
The point of departure is a sex scene in which Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan are joined in bed by a colorful menagerie of oddballs, animals and objects. The kinky copulating is sped-up in corny fashion ala a typical Benny Hill episode, and the action’s even underscored by the familiar strains of that frenetic melody routinely employed on the classic British comedy show.
But Charlie fails to survive the session, leaving his three orphaned children to be raised by his brother (Simon Rex) and girlfriend (Ashley Tisdale), and their hairy-armed housekeeper (Lidia Porto). The bodily function fare that ensues around the premises includes sight gags involving farting, projectile vomiting, poop disguised as a banana, a monkey tossing feces at a mirror, a woman putting a urine-soaked cell phone to her face, a dog with a toothbrush stuck in its tush, a child playing with a vibrator, a dog licking his own gonads, and a gay man with the hots for a fifth grader.
This vapid, vulgar insult to the intelligence couldn’t possibly have been tested on any focus groups. Can we all now agree that we’ve reached the cinematic saturation point with this rapidly-expiring franchise?
Poor (0 stars)
Rated PG-13 for profanity, sexuality, gore, drug use, nudity, ethnic slurs, cartoon violence and crude humor
Running time: 85 minutes
Distributor: Dimension Films
To see a trailer for Scary Movie 5, visit