Tag Archives: Emily Blunt

Movie Review: The Smashing Machine

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The new movie “The Smashing Machine” is a true story about a former Mixed Martial Arts champion Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) . This film is essentially comprised of 3 main parts. The first part is about the ridiculous sport of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), which has no real rules and comes down to two men falling to the floor on each other and beating each other in the head or the face using their hands or, in this movie, frequently using their knees to knock a man unconscious. While this “hitting the man in the head with your knee” method was considered a rules violation, it was still allowed in several fights during this story, because in this sport, there are no rules, other than perhaps eye gouging.

The second part of this story is about the relationship and constant arguing of Mark Kerr and Dawn Staples (Emily Blunt). During almost the entire time on screen, Dawn and Mark would drift from one insane argument after another. Too many times, these non-stop arguments were over nothing. One time, they even argued over a cactus plant. While these intense arguments did show acting ability from both Johnson and Blunt, seeing so many of them got old halfway through these two hours.

The third part of this story is about Mark Kerr’s constant abuse of pain killers, which included dangerous opioids that almost took his life and led him to rehab. The worst part of a story like this is how depressing it is that any human being would choose to be devoted to a sport that is so idiotic, and should have been outlawed years ago. Why is it considered entertaining to see two men fall to the floor and hit each other in the face and head?

There has been some buzz about the impressive acting of Dwayne Johnson in this movie and there are indeed some scenes that do show that he can act. Even though this movie is average at best, I believe Johnson will be nominated for a Golden Globe award and possibly even an Oscar, but the quality of this movie will probably prohibit him from winning either award.

I agree with the moderate 73% ratings for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes, but due to the ridiculous fighting scenes of a sport that should be banned, I do not recommend this film.

Movie Review: The Fall Guy

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The new movie “The Fall Guy” is another one of those bad films where the more interesting story is how so many people, for so many months and years, can collaborate and then create something this bad. Considering how much money and time is involved with creating a big budget movie like this one, its almost impossible to believe that this movie exists.

The screenplay for this movie is so bad, it is almost as if there was no screenplay, where disjointed and idiotic scenes are slapped together thinking that because of two well-known stars, Ryan Gossling, and Emily Blunt, there is no need to spend money and time to write and then re-write a coherent script. “All we need are some special effects and two well-known actors, who cares about the screenplay or anything else”. This seems to be the mantra of too many movies in recent years, and over time the movie going public is going to get sick of of this and demand quality over numerous explosions.

There is no recognizable plot here, other than the main character, a movie stunt man Colt Seavers, played by Ryan Gosling and a stunt coordinator Jody Moreno, played by Emily Blunt are making an action movie and slowly become more than friends. Within 30 minutes of this, most of the audience will go into “what is going on black-out mode” hoping that the whole nightmare will be over soon. Then realizing that with a too-long running time of two hours and six minutes, that a decision (which I almost made about 10 times) to leave early is the number one thought on your mind – no longer the bad movie.

This film could also be another example of a production studio manipulating the critics ratings on Rotten Tomatoes to a ridiculously high 83% for a movie that should get only 50% for the stunts and special effects. My rating is 40% mainly due to the two well known actors, rating this a huge miss at the very start of the blockbuster movie season.

Netflix Movie Review: Pain Hustlers

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With outstanding series like Dopesick (Hulu) and Painkiller(Netflix) currently streaming, it is no surprise that the new movie “Pain Hustlers” the true story about the salespeople of Insys Pharmaceutical who lied, bribed doctors, and sold dangerous pain-killing drugs that killed so many people has been released on Netflix.

Pain Hustlers stars Emily Blunt as Liza Drake a down-and-out single mother with a daughter, living in the garage of her sister with her mother. Liza seems to have no chance to lift her life out of the hole it’s in until she interviews with a failing Pharmaceutical company named InSys. Even though Liza is completely unqualified and has no college degree, she is hired by her interviewer Pete Brenner, played by Chris Evans himself, adding made-up qualifications to Liza’s resume. At the beginning of this true story, nobody can blame Liza from trying to escape from her poor squalor nowhere life into trying to sell doctors a highly effective pain killing cancer drug and making commissions that eventually became 600 thousand for one year.

The problem with situations like this is greed. Within this true story, it was also the insanity and greed of the CEO of the company Dr. Neel, played by Andy Garcia. As soon as sales flattened for the pain-killing drug that was only created for cancer patients, Neel demanded that they “go off the label” and bribe doctors to prescribe the drug for all pain. Soon after this, some people started to die of overdoses. What is most amazing about this true story is the blatant disregard to the rules set by the FDA, with the desire for so much money that all involved ignored the possibility of going to jail for many years because what they were doing for so long was against the law.

The other player in this opioid pain killing disaster is the company Purdue Pharmaceutical, the subject of the great Hulu series Dopesick (reviewed in this blog). Due to the greed of this now-bankrupt company, tens of thousands of Americans died from drug overdoses caused by Purdue’s main painkilling drug OxyContin. Purdue is now bankrupt as of 2022 as is Insys in 2019 and this also included jail time for the CEO and all the executives of this company.

For reasons unknown, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are rating this very good Netflix movie only 22%. This is dead wrong, with my rating of 80% for a solid look at the reality of what people will do for money.