Magic Mike

It's Raining Men

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Rated: R  Language, brief graphic nudity, pervasive sexual content and some drug use.
Release Date: June 29, 2012
Runtime:  1 hour 50 minutes

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Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writers: Reid Carolin
Cast:  Matthew McConaughey, Channing Tatum, Olivia Munn. Alex Pettyfer, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer

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SYNOPSIS: An experienced male stripper takes a younger dancer named The Kid under his wing, teaching him the ways of dancing, partying, picking up women, and making easy money.

REVIEW: Steven Soderbergh, director of films such as Contagion, The Ocean's trilogy, and the recent Haywire, takes a turn on the stage with a group of male strippers. With a story written by scribe Reid Carolin (Earth Made of Glass), who also makes an appearance in the film, Soderbergh and a buff cast try to make the most they can for tips.

Thirty-year-old Mike (Channing Tatum, The Vow) spends his days as a roof tiler, running a mobile custom detailing service, and creating one of a kind furniture concepts. At night, he rules the stage as Magic Mike in a all-male revue. When down-and-outer Adam (Alex Pettyfer, I Am Number Four) misses the mark on the construction site, Mike takes pity on him at a nightclub then at the stripper show. When muscle head Tarzan (Kevin Nash, Rock of Ages) can't perform, Adam, nicknamed 'The Kid' by Mike, takes the stage and delights the female audience. Learning the stripping basics from owner and former stripper Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, Bernie) and hanging out with Mike in their spare time, Adam quickly becomes accustomed to the lifestyle of easy money, drugs, alcohol, and adoring women. Adam's sister Brooke (Cody Horn, Occupant) worries that the lifestyle will corrupt her little brother but charges Mike with the task of keeping him safe and on the straight. But while Mike tries to find solid footing in his own life and to create a solid financial future for himself, he looses sight of how deep the young Adam is falling into the trappings of the trade.

In 2000, Steven Soderbergh was nominated for directing Erin Brockovich and took home the directing Oscar for the dramatic drug-laced Traffic. From the clinical, slowly gestating work of Contagion to the dry stoic charm of The Informant!, Soderbergh's directing career is both prolific and varied. With Magic Mike, the director trades in the grainy hot sepia of Traffic for the bright lights and neon reds and blues of Tampa pursuing the more desirable location of Miami. He balances the glitz and the sweat of the stage and clubs with the reality of what lives backstage.

Rumored to be partially based on Channing Tatum's own experiences as a male dancer, Magic Mike delivers the seedy to go to with the staged sweat. A peek behind the velvet curtains and through all of the props reveals chiseled men who sew their own costumes, come up with their own themed acts, and pump up before their time on stage, both with bar bells and with other contraptions. Women scream with ecstacy with dollar bills in their hands around the stage while Adam 'The Kid' starts dealing the drug of the same name to enhance his already bulging wallet.

Channing Tatum pops and locks his way around the stage with ease, while his character struggles to move to the next stage of his life. McConaughey's chiseled Dallas runs the show as owner, banging on bongos and shouting 'alright, alright, alright' as a homage to his own real life. Pettyfer's Adam goes from rundown to runway. The rest of the ab-packed chracters includes Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello, What to Expect When You're Expecting), Ken (Matt Bomer, In Time), and Tito (Adam Rodriguez, CSI). The women in Mike's life include good-timer Joanna (Olivia Munn, I Don't Know How She Does It) and the more permanent Joanna.

Magic Mike is much more than the rock hard abs and pumped up biceps portrayed in the commercials and trailers. Where the staged dancing and piped-in music stop, an inkling of something more real starts. Proving that earning easy money does not equate to an easy life, even the accolades of ovulating women may not be enough for a fulfilled life.

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WORTH: Matinee or Rental

In Time

Don't Give It A Second Thought

Director: Andrew Niccol

Writers: Andrew Niccol
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Johnny Galecki, Matt Bomer

SYNOPSIS: In the future, men and women stop aging at 25, but are granted only one more year of life. If one has the money or the means, they can extend their one-year clock indefinitely, closing in on immortality.

REVIEW: Andrew Niccol, writer and director of Lord of War, S1m0me and Gattaca, returns to double duty as writer and director of his new high-concept sci-fi thriller In Time. Following in the footsteps of his sci-fi efforts for Gattaca, where society favored the genetically superior, Niccol now broaches a new twist on the same futuristic utopian concept - genetically altered humanity and society's effects on it longevity.

In the film In Time, people have been genetically engineered to age until 25, then have a remaining year of time that displays as a digital readout on the forearm. Set in a future where the currency is measured in time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months or years, people work to have time added to their lifeline, and pay for rent, food, and goods in the same manner. Once the lifeline counts down to zeros, the person will drop dead. In this future, which looks suspiciously like our recent past, people live in 'time zones', effectively separating the idle rich with their mansions and extravagance from the working poor with their time lending banks and ghettos.

Will Salas (Justin Timberlake - Alpha Dog) is a 25 plus 3 year old who works all day just to have enough time on his lifeline to wring out a living day to day for rent and to add time to his mother Rachael's (Olivia Wilde - Cowboys & Aliens) lifeline. Long time friend Borel (Johnny Galecki - The Big Bang Theory) works with Will at the factory, trying to churning out assembly line time cartridge sleeves fast enough to meet their weekly quota. One day, a man named Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer - White Collar) appears in the bar with over a century of time on his arm, bringing the notice of local ghetto thugs led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer - I Am Number Four) who look to steal his time away. Will intervenes and Henry gifts his century of time to Will before timing himself out in a suicide. With all of the extra time, Will agonizes when he still cannot reach his mother in time to keep her from timing out herself. With the notable death of a rich citizen, Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy - Inception) is called to investigate his death. Now accused of murder, Will runs. Using years of time, he crosses several 'time zones' to escape the ghetto and enter the world of the rich. Eventually, Leon catches up with Will, setting off a chain of events that involves car chases, hostage taking, time bank stealing, and social and political intrigue.

Timberlake puts his best foot forward, but falls short of his performance as Frankie in Alpha Dog. Seyfried as Sylvia looks gorgeous and almost unrecognizable as the young heiress to the Weis banking and stock empire, walking the fine line between disdain, boredom, and regret. Murphy, his chiseled face and sharp blue eyes convey more than any of his dialogue. Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men) as the elder Weis controlling more than just a stock portfolio brings his Mad Men sensibility to the role with a wisp of wisdom thrown in. Pettyfer's ghetto thug and enforcer Fortis adds a new dimension of drama as Salas runs from the Timekeepers, Weis, and the endless countdown of seconds.

Reminiscent of William F. Nolan's novel Logan's Run, subsequent Michael York 1976 film and television series of the same name, people live in a dystopic ageist future society where their lives are forcibly cut short at 30 years of age. When a person's palm flower crystal turns black on their 'Lastday', they are required to submit themselves to extermination. If they try to run, a Sandman is tasked with their return to the Sleepshop or with their immediate execution. 35 years after the original film and 44 years after the book's release, Niccol tries his hand at a slick new approach similar to Logan's Run's dystopic ageist future society theme.

In Time makes Logan's Sandmen obsolete by making people drop dead when their timeline zero out. But the fact that time can be gifted, inherited, or stolen between people provides new dynamics to explore. Instead of an forced utopian society based on a limit of age, In Time is based on time. While the poor can barely scrap together enough hours to survive another day, the rich barter and save their years and decades. And when the ghetto class may verge on moving up in the world, the cost of goods and interest rates controlled by the rich rise to knock the poor back down.

A wonderful high concept sci-fi film in theory, a satisfying first act ends and is replaced by strange humming vehicles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, overly sparse landscapes, and lots of running. Many elements are cool and well-thought out, but the overall story and tension falls flat. The worry of running out of time like sand running through an hourglass seem to come to a standstill when you can swap seconds and minutes as easily as gum.

WORTH: Netflix