TheRetroCritic

Back in the day, The X-Files was my late night show: I would sit and watch it secretly super late, waiting for that gross moment where Scully performs a full-on autopsy on someone, that ridiculous twist/open ending or that one snide Mulder comment I would pretend to get. Good times. Unfortunately I never got the chance to watch the show properly, from the beginning. Now, after finally catching up with the whole of Season 1, I can confirm that The X-Files still holds up well enough. This being the very first season, I'm sure there are much better things to come, and I remember much better things, but this is a solid start to an iconic monster-of-the-week, Twilight Zone -style show. In case you've never heard of The X-Files, the series follow Fox "spooky" Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), two FBI agents in charge of investigating the weirdest cases around. Mulder believes in all sorts of weird shit from aliens to telekinesis to whatever

Well well well... Who knew that Michael Bay still had one ok film in him?! Based on a true story, Pain & Gain sees Mark Wahlberg's Daniel Lugo come up with a plan to kidnap some obnoxious rich dude and steal all his dough with the help of a couple of other bodybuilders (played by Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie) and soon finding himself trying to desperately contain the damage he's caused. The film is big, dumb, bloated and completely over the top. And, you know what? That's exactly what it needed to be. After all, most of it is seen through the eyes of our main characters, slightly unhinged, not very smart fellas, so the film's overblown style does make sense. Unlike with the Transformers movies, you've got context that makes sense here. Plus Bay captures the goofy nature of 90's action movies really well. The result is basically Scarface meets Pumping Iron crossed with a little The Whole Nine Yards . I say that because the film really does pla