Saturday, December 28, 2013

Three sentence movie reviews: Pain and Gain

I've discovered Filmspotting, a podcast where they have long (long, long) conversations about movies and I find this podcast enjoyable.  Recently, there was controversy when one host picked this film to be in their top five while the other host was incredulous that it was liked at all.  Having now watched the film, I can say it was NOT an enjoyable example of the dumb criminal film* as what was amusing at the beginning turned quickly into the movie equivalent of the criminal's "stupid" repeatedly banging me on the head with a chair.**

Cost:  $2.00 from Videorama
Where watched: at home with Matt.



*Good "dumb criminals" movies: Fargo, To Die For.
**Matt rather enjoyed it, though.

4 comments:

  1. It is interesting to me when you post current movies (I looked up the imdb to see this was released in 2013) that I have never heard of. I wonder if it is partially because most of my TV viewing is done on DVR and I fast-forward through the ads or if I just don't see that many previews anymore. Cool podcast information.

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  2. I read a lot of reviews (fewer now that the paper doesn't carry as many) and I have two good podcasts I listen to: Movies 101 and Filmspotting. So that's how I find out about movies. Back before my mom started fast-forwarding through commercials as you do, I was sometimes surprised when she knew about a film. And it was usually because of the commercials, which are not at all a part of my world anymore.

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  3. I've been reluctant to watch this film because it's based on a true story where the criminals actually ended up killing two people. So it made me uncomfortable that they would play that story for laughs. I suspect that I'm not missing anything.

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  4. Yeah, I had some of the same discomfort with the killing people being made into entertainment, but the film does a good job of portraying the tragic results of the police's slowness to act by having the PI say "I told you so."
    The kidnapping victim didn't like the way he was portrayed and the judge didn't think the kidnapping victim was as slimy as he was portrayed so there are other qualms to have about the movie.

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