Pain & Gain

Are you ready to get PUMPED UP??!!

You had better be you limp-dicked troglodytes, and all you haters had better put that Hatorade away because Michael Bay is coming to town and he knows who has been naughty and who has been nice.

Welcome to 1995 Miami where the only currency is how PUMPED UP your muscles are. If you are not using your time judiciously to get Rock Hard then you need to wake up and smell the bacon and think seriously about where your life is going and how you got to be such a droopy-eyed, listless jabroni.

EXPLOSIONS ARE FOR WINNERS

 

Kidnapping is for real people with real muscles. So is money and biznatches and C-C-C-C-COCAINE BABY so you need to stack all of those up and sit atop the mound so you can look Arnold dead in the eye when he’s riding atop his BEASTFUCK MEGAHUMMER.

 

This is a movie so jacked up that its biceps have biceps and it’s Marky Marks have Marky Marks. YES YES YES this sumbitch will straight up strong-arm you into forgetting that The Happening ever happened, which sounds counterintuitive because language confusion but this movie is about using muscles, not words, so keep on rocking in the free world.

This movie has so much steroid use in it it’ll make your pecs hard and your dick soft. That’s called osmosis, whereby the movie screen is the motherfucking membrane.

ANALOGIES GALORE!!!

Pain & Gain wastes no time so neither do we. We use the screening as an exercise in getting pumped up by buying a Rock-sized bag of protein and showcasing it like the suave minstrels of jackedness that we are. Showcasing it like a pimp superfly jetski on the Price is Right. $7,995!!!1!!

MY PROTEIN!!!

Then we look at the milk/protein combination like all those bears must have looked at goldilocks all those years ago before they shredded her to pieces and put leftovers in the fridge for the next day.

 

Instead of resorting to those beginner tactics we up our game by making a protein mix drink that St. Mike himself would call the breakfast of motherfucking champions. We have in common that we both play to win, and as we all know winners go home and fuck the prom queen.

 

As you can see, I have put on my winning face

 

We make & watch movies about bodybuilding, explosions, guns, strippers, and the CIA because reading the newspaper is for fags. The only good scenes in The Room was when those guys were throwing the football around! FRISCO!

During the screening peeps next to me was all up in my business, asking me if I’d ever heard ‘Silence is golden,’ whereupon I asked this Jabberwocky-looking mofo if HE’D ever done hard time. Then I flashed my neck tattoo and took a dump on the hood of his car. You can’t spell CREATINE without CREATE fuckfaces.

Oil rules and Greenpeace does other stuff that is NOT RULING because we said so, so go have a protein shake and forget about all the seals. Paul McCartney and everybody else would forget about them if they looked like cockroaches, you can believe that one.

KUMITE!!

Our heroes/avatars fight everything in this movie, ranging from drugs to the police, to addiction, to inmates and everything in between except maybe tigers. But fuck it Van Damme has that one covered and he LIFTS BATHTUBS for a living.

No I can’t stop shouting, cause that’s how I talk!!!

I know it will worry you that there’s a lot of gay paraphenaglia (spelling catastoptrophe but I don’t core I do alright for someone who never finished high scholl) in this movie but DON’T WORRY it’s all part of the plan. Just like the Joker said it was.

I'm an agent of chaos, BRRAPP BRAP

I have to quiet all these voices in my head for the making to make sense again. Micheal bay, yeah?! Fuck man. You did it again. There are so many plum-colored cars in this movie fuckin Rod Corddry doesn’t know which one to ride in!

If your girlfriend asks you to pleasure her this month just take her to GODDAMN PAIN & GAIN so she can see what a WINNER        looks like.

Go big or go home. And that’s not a dick joke like you think it is. There are enough dick jokes in this movie already that we can’t touch it with a ten foot dildo. Pluus if we ever had a ten-footer we’d have bigger fish to fry, am I right mike?

BOOM

YEAH. Trucks, no aliens, no zombies. Wait, maybe no trucks either but this movie has a turck for a soul so git some git some git some. fUCk it; le’ts throw the camel in there too!!!

It’s PRO-tein, not CON-tein and that’s an important distinction for an important person. Nothing you can say about this movie other than “Go see it”

I swear this movie had better win all the Oscars this year: actor, director, sound, actor, and all the supporting ones they give to the hot chick or the fat chick because this movie has both of those hanging out like a big muscular pair of balls.

FUCK. YES. MUSCLES. CARS. GO JUICE JUICE JUICE ACTIVATE GO GOGOGO.

Revenge of the Selected VRROOOOOM

Iciest Coldest Motherfuckers Alive™: The List

Not that any of you were, like, upset about the fact that I hadn’t posted in about a month, but to those of you that were upset I blame it on Martyn.

When I take one for the team, I take one for the team hard. Clocking 8/10 damage on a weeknight is regular practice here at BMC and I bring it like there’s never going to be another movie in the history of ever. Some of you may think you have the edge but I met Hunter S. Thompson once on a Tuesday and after the perfunctory getta knowya jibber-jabber he told me I reeked of booze, ass, and sex. In that order of pungency. So when I go to the movies rest assured, dear readers, I take it to the next fucking level.

Martyn, on the other hand, decided to have an unwaveringly sober January, and hence we’ve been seeing only serious movies, which on principle I seldom review. This is largely why the blog has been inert for so long (also because that last posting about MIGP was the dog’s bollocks and I was hungover from that night until last week). This glaring absence of content and a reticent acknowledgement that I am (yet again) hungover as balls and will accomplish nothing today has prompted me to deliver an interim posting to keep y’alls appetites nice and whetted.

A recurring theme in my blog has been to travel gradually down a vague, nebulous list of men who I consider to be the Iciest Coldest Motherfuckers Alive™. They come in different shapes, sizes, and exist for different reasons but I thank Almighty Jesus for the fact that they exist at all, because it would be a bleak and sober world if things were otherwise.

Now before reading you must divorce yourselves from the notion that this is going to be a formulaic, facile enumeration of the biggest, baddest shitkickers of all time, because let’s face it the list would look like

1. The Rock

2. The Rock

3. The Rock

and we would all go home early. Sure, some of these guys below are bona fide destroyers, but most of them are doing more illin’ than killin’, if you catch my drift. Maybe you don’t. But whatever, here’s the list and some descriptive stuff. If you think you can come up with a more better one I double dawg dare you to, peasant.

1. Vin Diesel

The guy has to be number one for a variety of reasons. Foremost, motherfucker is HUGE. No, he is beyond huge. He is his own unit size that everyone will from now on refer to as “size Vin Diesel.” From now on everyone will go to H&M or Gap and find items in sizes: small, medium, large, extra-large, Vin Diesel.

Second, his delivery of lines in movies is the most blasé, “I could give a shit” affair in the history of line delivery. He interacts with dozens of people in each of his movies and clearly does not give a toss about a single one of them. This guy just got bored in between segments of ownage and decided to say something to pass the time. The only reasons why people exist in Vin Diesel movies is to a) get owned by Vin Diesel; or b) keep Vin Diesel occupied while the narrative is resupplying with guys for him to own. And he knows it.

Third, he is an avid, lifelong Dungeons & Dragons player. In an age when actors lose their merit or bankability for stuff like following Scientology (which, when you think about it, is no more preposterous in its core tenets or assumptions than any of the Desert Religions), Vinny is putting his shit right out there for everyone to smell. As if to say “Sure, call me geek if you like, but we both know that were we in a jail cell together you would become my PROPERTY.”

Which brings me to my next point. I’m not going to straight up say that Vin Diesel is gay, merely that he gets spotted in gay bars. Like, often. And hey, to be fair, maybe it’s just because he knows that’s where all the cool straight girls are (it’s true) and gays can decorate a property and throw a party better than just about anyone. Maybe that’s alls there is to it. Okay, benefit of the doubt given… but the idea of Vin being out there actually, legit sodomizing dudes ON THE FUCKING REGULAR not only cements him #1 on the list but just about smashes everyone else thereupon.

2. Justin Timberlake

I could ramble on ad nauseam (which I have in the past), but essentially he makes the list because his M.O. is

a) Find a girl that everyone wants to bang

b) Bang her

c) Leave her by the side of the road

In fact, this guy’s general level of I-do-what-I-want-ness is straight off the fucking charts. His career turns and artistic output are erratic at best, he goes on dates with servicewomen who proposition him on YouTube, invests in dotcoms that no one has ever heard of, and probably has Jack Daniel’s in his cereal for breakfast.

Oh, and did I mention he tore Britney Spears’ hymen?

 

3. Goat

On a separate list of ways to off yourself like a champ, this guys places right above Elliott Smith and just below Ernest Hemingway. Plus he’s just generally hard as fuck.

4. Kiefer Sutherland

When it is insufficient to merely pop a cap in a guy’s ass, when it is paramount that you first torture, maim, and humiliate him, Jack Bauer could write the goddamn how-to handbook.

If he didn’t start out as enough of a hardass, the fact that everyone this cat has ever cared about was assassinated propelled his level of icy coldness into interstellar overdrive. For the last seven seasons of 24 it was like motherfuckers in L.A. was just doing massive lines of cocaine and in their coke-addled stupor having conversations like

“Hey, Ahmed! You know what I think I can do today?!”

“What??”

“Cross Jack Bauer… and live!!!!”

“HOLY SHIT YOUR PENIS IS HUUUUUGE!!”

and then of course Jack Bauer has to show them what’s up. When Jack Bauer is not busy showing these people what’s up, his hobbies include.

• Telling people he will execute them if they do not reveal a key piece of information and executing them anyway once they do;
• Executing people who do not have key information to reveal (just cuz, really);
• Doing horse at work;
• Playing Russian Roulette with hardened drug barons;
• Attempting to assassinate former Presidents because he’s in a bad mood;
• Handing out ultimatums like they’re leaflets for that new nail shop around the corner;
• Being the best dad ever (well… second only to Liam Neeson);
• Torturing and killing, or through inaction allowing HIS OWN KIN to die; and
• Saving the fucking day.

Back in reality Kiefer drinks and smokes like it’s a race and guess what: he’s winning. In terms of convictions and jail time served he wipes the floor with Charlie Sheen. In terms of everything, come to think of it.

5. Tom Cruise

Was there ever a doubt in your mind? On screen, sure, he’s the good guy, but offscreen this dude dedicates 100% of his time to ruining people’s shit.

The moment that someone decides they’re gonna try to out him, Cruise swoops in with the mother-of-all-legal-teams and basically sues them straight into bankruptcy. When he wins a lawsuit I’ll bet he burns the money or gives it to the Church of Scientology just to rub their noses in it.

He essentially cockblocks the entirety of mankind by taking the most bangable women alive (separate list) off the market and… fuck… I don’t know what he does with them. Plays Parcheesi? What a waste of a Holmes.

And then there are my two personal favourites. The first was when he sued Jeff Burgar into oblivion for owning TomCruise.com before he thought to purchase it (the Internet had been around for a decade!), and the second when he sought out Brooke Shields (who at the time was suffering from postpartum depression) and told her there was no such thing as a chemical imbalance. Fucking patently, scientifically wrong but he does it anyway just to undermine and further destabilise her.

I’m telling you, this cat only derives pleasure from salting wounds and kicking people who are already down. Cruise is Legend.

(Ha! See what I did there?!)

6. Tie: Kurt Russell and Liam Neeson

Two very different actors but their respective merit for inclusion in the ICMA™ list is predicated on strikingly similar paradigms.

In essence, when things are not going their way, their default solution is to kill EVERYONE.

On top of which Kurt Russell sees stuff he doesn’t like just about everywhere.

“Oh, so you think you can kidnap my wife and hold her to ransom? Looks like imma hafta park an 18-wheeler right on top of you.”

“Oh, so you think you can mosey into town, kill the Marshall, defile the justice system, and start calling shots? Looks like me and my buddies are going to have to gear up with matching black dusters and ‘taches and light you up like a fucking birthday cake. Son.”

“Oh, so you think you and your girlfriends can dress sexy have a fun night out on the town while I’m trying to eat nachos? Hmmmmmm, lemme get my souped-up, bitchin ‘71 Chevy Nova and respond to that by driving clean through you.”

“Oh, so you think you can be Chinese and hang out underground for a coupla centuries? Well guess what, Dave. Ya can’t.”

And then of course there’s Soldier. To say this film is the pinnacle of cinematic achievement is being waaaay generous to cinematic achievement. Watching Soldier is like being hit the face with a bag of awesome for 99 straight minutes. It culminates with pretty much the most steely-eyed, brass-balled exchange in the history of badassery (again, being generous to badassery), compounded by the fact that Kurt Russell says about 36 words in this movie and 26 of them are right here:

Not to mention Kurt is fucking HUGE.

Liam Neeson is pretty much on the same wavelength. Things that cause him to lose patience and open up a can of Zidane include (but are not exclusive to):

• Albanians
• His daughter being abducted or sold
• His hot wife being diddled by men who are shorter and have less hair
• Wolves
• Sith
• Batman
• People who mess with his hands
• Any kind of criminal
• Pretty much anyone who isn’t Liam Neeson

Oh, and when he’s not busy cleaving motherfuckers in half with a broadsword, stabbing guys to death with a CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE, bedding Claudia Schiffer, or shooting sheiks between the eyes he teaches Batman and Obi-Wan how not to be such huge pussies.

Word to you mother, Liam. Word to your mother.

DOOM -- stay-at-home boozy Hannukah edition

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

Starring Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Raz Adoti, Ben Daniels, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

*** WARNING: VERY MINOR SPOILERS *** (as if you’re going to watch this trash, right?)

Oscar season is probably my least favourite time of year. Sure, the holidays are great, but the preponderance of films released tactically in November/December, ushered shamelessly into theatres to drive a Hollywood lobby around them, drives me fairly batshit. The audacity of studios – contemptuous enough towards audiences that they feel comfortable telling us what a “good movie” is or should be – is an annual affront that only becomes more offensive as the movies become more shittier. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Please. I’ve seen better film form atop hollandaise sauce.

So instead of spending a small fortune to see a useless piece of art that will vanish from institutional memory faster than Shakespeare in Love (although, to be fair, Gwyneth Paltrows funbags are permanently seared into my brain), guest movieboozer Patrick and I combined class and crass by making some delectable Chase vodka martinis and watching a 1½-star movie about Martian beasties. Mondays get the boozy treatment FOR SERIOUS.

This is what credibility looks like. Fuckers.

Shore leave is cancelled for a small team of tougher-than-tough, futuristic Marines when Sarge (The Rock) receives orders to respond to a distress call on Mars. Scientists are apparently missing, there’s talk of an emergency quarantine, and things at the Olduvai research facility seem to have gone altogether tits-up.

There’s a bunch of talk, a bunch of “let’s split up, you two guys search this area, you two guys search this other area, find the civilians, and kill everything else so we can all go back home and get some PROTEIN,” and then beasties introduced through some very loose scientific justification.

*** NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION EXTRA ***: See back there how I used the words “very loose” without drawing a parallel to or making a joke about Lindsay Lohan? Bam. New Year shizzle. I’m becoming a less belligerent person. Resolved.

You’ve played the video game. You know what’s up. A movie of this nature and at best tenuous quality can only truly hit the mark if everyone it in dies. No. Not merely dies, but gets pwned in thorough fashion. Like do y’all remember how hard Benicio del Toro gets pwned in Sin City when he flies off the handle at Brittany Murphy and a bunch of hookers? That level. That’s the level this movie needs.

The movie never reaches this level.

Worse still is that your main guys aren’t dealing nearly enough damage either. Doom is basically a 90-minute invitation to get drunk and watch a group of juice-monkeys fire senseless amounts of bullets and then get their shit ruined by aliens. It’s not complicated. Jim Cameron had no problem accomplishing this and that guy made Titanic, which I take as testimony that he’s borderline retarded. To spend $200 million on a sinking ship and a Céline Dion showcase is strong evidence (although, to be fair, Kate Winslet’s funbags are permanently seared into my brain).

Karl Urban is a satisfying action hero but essentially has no reason to exist in this movie. No one has any reason to exist in any movie The Rock is in. This guy takes keeping it real to the next level. A former boozy Tuesday excursion to Faster is a fine example. The Rock was released from jail and went on a grudge-killing spree while I went on a Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking spree. Me and The Rock we’re bonded deep.

True enough. What they don't do, however, is PWNAGE.

Which brings me to my next point: The Rock seriously does nothing in this movie. I stayed in a had, like, six vodka martinis to escape movies that treat me with contempt and at the apex of my drunk I realize that the most that Rock will ever do in this movie is yell at people. Don’t get me wrong, his freakouts and one-liners in this movie are totally epic; they are in fact pretty much the only reason to watch it. But when you cast The Rock as a special ops Marine in a movie about Martian beasties, I want to smell what he’s fucking cookin’. I want to see him do 20+ neck-breaks and connect Hell Knights anus to mouth (like a centipede). I paid £5 for this DVD so I feel I am entitled.

Possibly WORSEST is the under-use of Ben Daniels as Corporal Eric "Goat" Fantom. For starters, and I don’t think a great many would disagree with me here, but a special forces dude nicknamed Goat makes my nipples erect. It’s badass.

Second, this particular special forces dude is revealed to be a bit of a Godbag and at first you’re like “whatever, so was Britney Spears and we all know how that turned out.” Okay, right, I know, but then this cat knocks over an oxygen tank while patrolling and takes the Lord’s name in vain and as penance for his sin he CARVES A FUCKING CROSS INTO HIS ARM WITH A BUCKNIFE! He’s got a collection of Jesus scars! I know, right? Iciest coldest motherfucker alive (after Vin Diesel and Justin Timberlake, of course).

Full kit, no cleave. Thanks.

Third point: once he gets infected with this strain of zombie monster disease he commits suicide by bludgeoning himself to death against a plate-glass window. Dude bites the dust a third of the way into the film having fired less than a magazine of ammo and clocks zero kills. This all upset my drunk to such a point that I had to strangle a hobo on my way home just so that my evening would break even.

Plus Rosamund Pike doesn’t even take her gear off. I paid £5.

Damage: 5/10 (6 x Chase vodka martinis, probably around 2.5 oz of booze and 4 olives to each)

Boozy rating: 2/10 (I gave it a point above utter failure because there are two classic one-liners and it was Hannukah so I was feeling generous)