Did you know that there are professionals out there in the world tasked with causing you pain? Seriously. You willingly go in there, contort yourself in all kinds of wild positions while partially disrobed, have someone climb all over you, and then lay there and grunt as they just jack your body in all kinds of directions and do things that your body wouldn't normally do. Oh, and did I mention that the first time you go in there, they take semi-naked pictures of you??
And we pay them to do this to us!
I'm in shock. I really am.
What's worse is that Katie and I have signed up to go along with this.
What's even worse than that is that Katie and I enjoy it and feel great afterward and want even more!
Oh, we're such dirty birdies.
I never thought I would ever go along with such physical abuse. It's unnatural. It's cruel and unusual. And I would think the Geneva Convention has some regulation against it. But alas, they seem to have circumvented the rules and get away with these barbaric practices on a daily basis.
It's inhumane!
Freakin' chiropractors.
(I guess it does soften the blow a bit knowing that the physical therapist there looks like a pre-arrest Yasmine Bleeth)
[NO SPOILERS, I SWEAR] Don't you hate when a movie lets you down? Especially one you were looking forward to seeing? That was the case with me and the newly released Public Enemies. Katie and I saw it with my parents on Sunday and I was thoroughly disappointed.
A disjointed and difficult-to-follow timeline of events, odd camerawork (they used digital cameras when traditional film would have worked out so much better for a period piece such as this), uninspired action sequences, a bad script, and completely unsympathetic and wholly unenjoyable characters on the part of everyone involved... yeah, this movie had it all in spades.
That last part is what I don't get the most about this film. Director Michael Mann is known for making his characters, even the worst of them, somewhat sympathetic. In Collateral, even though we're supposed to like Jamie Foxx's put-upon cab driver, I also really enjoyed Tom Cruise's dark assassin. In Heat (one of the most brilliant cops-n-robbers flicks EVER), I couldn't tell you if I liked Al Pacino's cop or Robert DeNiro's robber more because they were both fantastic and well written and brilliantly performed. That diner confrontation between the two remains one of the greatest pieces of filmed dialogue ever, IMHO.
Then comes Public Enemies with the supposed good guy being BI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) who is tasked with bringing in public enemy numero uno John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). With a story such as this, it would be easy to show either of them as the good guy or the bad guy based on their actions and intentions. Dillinger is bad because he robs banks and shoots people, but he's got that Robin Hood quality in that he never takes money from the people struggling their way through the Great Depression, just the bank's money. Oh, and he's brutally loyal to the people who remain loyal to him. Purvis is good because he's trying to do the right thing by fighting crime in a lawless era, but he could also be just the opposite because he and his team use all kinds of questionable methods to achieve their end result.
What would make us as viewers waffle in our perception of each character would be their backstory or some key bit of information about their lives that we could take to heart to make them either loved or loathed.
And Mann gave us none of that. Both characters were just plain boring. We got little story on them whatsoever. We were just inserted into the middle of the action as it played out (much was the same, in my opinion, of Mann's Ali; although the fantastic acting by Will Smith saved it somewhat for me). And that made this movie no fun for me at all. I really just wanted it to end.
I would ask for my money back on the ticket, but my dad paid for it. Oh well.
