Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the gym

PAIN & GAIN

Admit it: if the Coens made this, you'd masturbate to it.  Okay, since Michael Bay made it, it is probably technically easier to actually masturbate to parts than it would be otherwise.

2013
Directed by Michael Bay
Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (based on the articles by Pete Collins)
With Mark Wahlberg (Daniel Lugo), Dwayne Johnson (Paul Doyle), Anthony Mackie (Adrian Doorbal), Tony Shaloub (Victor Pepe Kershaw), Bar Paly (Sorina Luminita), Rebel Wilson (Robin Peck), Ed Harris (Ed DuBois), Rob Corddry (John Mese), and Ken Jeong (Johnny Wu)

Spoiler alert: severe

Anybody in the mood for strawberry daquiris?

YOU'RE NEXT

Class warrior classic.

2013
Directed by Adam Wingard
Written by Simon Barrett
With Sharni Vinson (Erin), AJ Bowen (Crispian), Nicholas Tucci (Felix), Wendy Glenn (Zee), Joe Swanberg (Drake), Margaret Laney (Kelly), Amy Seimetz (Aimee), Ti West (Tariq), Rob Moran (Paul), Barbara Cramton (Aubrey), Simon Barrett (Tiger Mask), Lane Hughes (Fox Mask) Steve Buscemi L.C. Holt (Lamb Mask)

Spoiler alert: moderate

You win, you revengeful son of a bitch, you win

BLACKFISH

Designed to make you sad and mad, but it's the real shit.

2013
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Written by Eli B. Despres and Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Spoiler warning: N/A

Everybody wants to [destroy] the world, part 3

ELYSIUM

Roughly equivalent in tone, quality, action content, scientific fidelity, and thematic subtlety to the average late-run Gundam Wing episode, and slightly less good at framing, editing, and voice acting.

2013
Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp
With Matt Damon (Max), Jodie Foster (Delacourt), Sharlto Copley (Kruger), Alice Braga (Frey), William Fichtner (Carlyle), Wagner Moura (Spider)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Everybody wants to [destroy] the world, part 1

OBLIVION

Seeing Oblivion for the first time is a lot like seeing a great movie for the second time. 

2013

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Written by Karl Gajdusek, Michael Arndt, and Joseph Kosinski

With Tom Cruise (Jack Harper), Andrea Riseborough (Victoria), Olga Kurylenko (Julia Rusakova), Melissa Leo (Sally), Morgan Freeman (Beech), Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (some useless character who got all of Zoe Bell's lines), Zoe Bell (criminally wasted)

Spoiler alert: severe

@ Guns

2 GUNS

Without condoning or condemning, 2 Guns is certainly in theaters and you can buy tickets and everything.  It's a free country.

2013
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur
Written by Blake Masters (based on the comic by Steven Grant)
With Denzel Washington (Bobby Trench), Mark Wahlberg (Michael Stigman), Earl (Bill Paxton), Deb (Laura Patton), Edward James Olmos (Papi Greco), James Marsden (Quince)

Spoiler alert: mild

Everything you wanted to know about Japan but were too lazy to look up

THE WOLVERINE

It needed more grit and less plot but for a while there, an iconic character is taken back to his early comic roots and I was reminded why I cared in the first place.

2013
Directed by James Mangold
Written by Mark Bomback and Scott Frank
With Hugh Jackman (Logan), Rila Fukushima (Yukio), Tao Okamoto (Mariko), Harahiko Yamanouchi (Yashida), Famke Janssen (Jean Grey)

Spoiler alert: mild

Cowboy Bebop at his computer

SUMMER WARS

Credibly brings to life the sheer oppression of being trapped with a large, tightly-knit family on account of a girl you like but who you are not sure actually likes you—however, as an Internet apocalypse movie, Summer Wars only marginally succeeds as science fiction, or science fantasy, or fiction, or fantasy.

2009
Directed by Hasoda Mamoru
Written by and Okudera Satoko and Hasoda Mamoru
With holy shit, you're Dean fucking Venture! Michael Sinterniklaas (Koiso Kenji), Brina Palencia (Shinohara Natsuki), Pam Dougherty (Jinnouchi Sakae), God knows how many other voice actors, and there's a Japanese seiyu cast too but I watched it dubbed like a philistine—a philistine like a fox

Spoiler alert: moderate

There are a lot of ways you can go with a destructive AI let loose upon the Internet.  There's The Terminator approach, which is to give it access to your killer robots and nuclear arsenal.  There's the Ghost in the Shell approach, which is to allow your characters to talk to it and reason with it, and also giving it access to your killer robots as well as your killer sex robots.  There's The Matrix approach, which is to create an entire virtual world within which your characters' minds are wholly immersed, so that fighting software is not dissimilar to a kung fu battle.  There's the Serial Experiments Lain approach, which is to mysticize it so that it becomes a Lovecraftian horror capable of emerging into the real world (I think).  Back on the other end of the realism spectrum, there's the WarGames approach, which involves a Broderickesque nerd, if not an actual Matthew Broderick, typing on a keyboard for hours on end.  Using the WarGames method, you would be well-advised to involve some chase scenes and military guys with guns.

Then there's the Summer Wars approach, which is to have an ancillary character try to beat up all the AI's pixels with his custom M.U.G.E.N. character.

Guy killed me, Mal

ONLY GOD FORGIVES

An overly insistent cartoon about the Thai underworld featuring mainly white people that is better shot than Street Fighter but maybe not quite as entertaining.

Busting makes me feel good, but probably displeases the Lord

THE CONJURING

"The end result?  The Conjuring is fine, but like Insidious, while it may have its terrifying turns, it won't stick with you forever—or even overnight."

2013
Directed by James Wan
Written by Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes
With Vera Farmiga (Lorraine Warren), Patrick Wilson (Ed Warren),  Lily Taylor (Carolyn Perron), Ron Livingston (Roger Perron), approximately four hundred and ten pounds worth of interchangably good child actors (the five Perron and one Warren daughter[s], respectively)

Spoiler warning: moderate (but goes to high with a heads-up)

Finally, a movie about pop Catholic mythology that attempts to explain the theodicy behind a nominally omnipotent, nominally omnibenevolent God, that nonetheless lets other supernatural entities venture onto the material plane, manifest greater power within this world than I Am has been witnessed to wield since Old Testament days, and eat innocent people's souls, fundamentally contradicting basic Catholic soteriology: yeah, so I saw Prince of Darkness for the first time last year, and it was amazing.

With Sean Astin as Leatherface

MANIAC

"Despite some pretty novel and highly competent filmmaking, Maniac adroitly eludes greatness.  And I'm relieved."

2012 by technicality/2013 for peons

Directed by Franck Kalfoun
Written by Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur, and Joseph Spinell
With Elijah Wood (Frank), Nora Amezeder (Anna), Megan Duffy (Lucie), Jan Broberg (Rita)

Spoiler alert: mild

Elijah Wood is the titular villain protagonist, the male gaze made manifest in its most abhorrent form, a sexually motivated killer of women.  In theory.  I guess.

Too close for missiles, switching to giant robots

PACIFIC RIM

"These kaiju, if you insist on calling them that, suck."

2013
 Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Written by Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham

With Charlie Hunnam (Shinji Ikari), Rinko Kikuchi (Rei Ayanami), Idris Elba (Gendo Ikari), Robert Kazinsky (Asuka Soryu), Ron Perlman (Lilith), Max Marti

With Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh Becket), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori), Rinko Kamuchi's shockingly beautiful bob haircut with bangs (itself), Idris Elba (Stacker Pentecost), Robert Kazinsky (Chuck Hansen), Max Martini (Herc Hansen), Charlie Day (Newton Geiszler), Burn Gorman (Gottleib), Ron Perlman (Hannibal Chau)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Go home, white coward. We don't need you.

THE LONE RANGER

2013

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Justin Haithe, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, and, one suspects, at least fifty others

With Johnny Depp (Tonto), Armie Hammer (John Reid, arguably some kind of Ranger), William Fichtner (Butch Cavendish), James Badge Dale (Dan Reid), Tom Wilkinson (Latham Cole)

When I sat down to write this review I accidentally typed The Long Ranger, and I’m tempted to just leave it at that.

Well, I wanted to believe

DARK SKIES

2013

Written and directed by Scott Stewart

With Keri Russell (Lacy Barrett), Josh Hamilton (Daniel Barrett), Dakota Goyo (Jesse Barrett), Kaden Rockett (Sam Barrett)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Jason Blum is a rare bird, a producer who is not only commercially marketable, but whose marketability is totally justifiable. He's not marketable by name (yet), but by reputation: what you actually see on the poster is “from the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious [and/or Sinister],” but it does get people interested. This kind of marketing is hardly novel, but ordinarily the actual "producer of" credit is etched onto the poster using IBM’s atomic data storage technology, and almost always these other movies bear the most tenuous of relationships to the movie being sold, that relationship being merely that the same salesman managed to sell each product. This isn't the case with Blum: he could be an even rarer bird, the producer who could almost be considered an auteur in his own right.

They forgot to binge first

 The Mad Max retrospective continues soon, and as part of an effort to get reviews of newer movies out quickly, Man of Steel early tomorrow.

For now, catching up on last week's technical hit:

THE PURGE

 2013

Written and directed by James DeMonaco

With Ethan Hawke (James Sandin), Lena Headey (Mary Sandin), Lena Headey’s extremely lovely asymmetrical bob haircut (itself), Max Burkholder (Charlie Sandin), Adelaide Kane (Zoey Sandin), Rhys Wakefield (Polite Stranger), and a plot device with four lines (Plot Device With Four Lines)

Spoiler alert: mild

In the year 2022, control of the United States government has been seized by a group of radicals, whose philosophy combines elements of intense religiosity, fascism, and anarchism. At some point, they changed their name to the New Founding Fathers.

Why walk away, when you can ride in style?

THE ROAD WARRIOR

1981

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Terry Hayes, and Brian Hannant

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Bruce Spence (The Gyro Captain), Kjell Nilsson (Lord Humungus), Vernon Wells (Wez), Emil Minty (The Feral Kid), and Harold Baigent (The Narrator)

Only two years out from the phenomenal domestic financial success and worldwide impress that was his (in retrospect) artistically disappointing first film, a new George Miller joint arrived in theaters, first in Australia, and four months afterward in America. For reasons that probably have more to do with history and geography than quality, Mad Max had spawned a sequel. And in the annals of film follow-ups, Mad Max 2, or The Road Warrior, or Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior—whatever you wish to call it—rules the wasteland.