Pain & Gain (2013)

Pain & Gain (2013) review

When the average movie reviewer hears the name Michael Bay it will immediately bring up words like “lots of explosions”, “empty” or even “bad filmmaker” and looking at the scores that were given to the Transformers movies, The Island and Pearl Harbor you might even be able to write a piece to support that. Still I do think he has made some very entertaining movies like Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon. All those movies have a huge feel to them and for Pain & Gain I was expecting something similar. It turns out that this is a Michael Bay movie (it has the specific look), but in comparison to his other films it actually is different, somewhat smaller. It is also based on real events (ok, I’m already hearing you say “so was Pearl Harbor and we know how that turned out”) and turns out to be quite an entertaining film. Continue reading

The Many Faces of… Anthony Mackie

Overview of the roles of actor Anthony Mackie movies

Anthony Mackie was born on born September 23, 1978 in New Orleans, Louisiana. When growing up he initially wanted to become an engineer, but soon became interested in the performance arts and attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) where he graduated after following the high school drama program. At the Juilliard School he was part of the drama division, he graduated in 2001. He first was Don Cheadle’s understudy in a play, but quickly made the move to movies. His first movie was immediately a big role as the rapper Papa Doc in 8 Mile. He has since been in a number of big movies, including The Manchurian Candidate, Million Dollar Baby, We Are Marshall, Half Nelson, The Hurt Locker and The Adjustment Bureau. Continue reading

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Determinism and free will are two concepts that are complete opposites. Is your path through life already fixed or is it you who makes all the choices? These are the ideas that The Adjustment Bureau takes to build its story on. Matt Damon is politician David Norris, a very succesful and driven man who is about to make it big in politics and could even go as far as the White House. When he meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) his life changes when he finds out that there is no such thing as coincidence. Continue reading