Director: Darren Aronofsky
I fell in love with this movie back before I even started this blog, so I never did a review of it. I recently rewatched it with my wife, who hadn't seen it. She was impressed, and I was reminded of why I saw it twice in the theaters ten years ago.
The movie is a documentary-style following of fictional professional wrestler Robin Ramzinski, whose wrestling moniker is Randy "The Ram" Robinson, played by Mickey Rourke. Set roughly around the late '00s, Randy is a wrestler well past his prime. In the late 1980's, he was on top of the wrestling world, watched and adored by hundreds of thousands of pro wrestling fans. Now, however, he is struggling mightily. Working as a mover in a grocery store and barely able to afford rent for his broken down mobile home, Randy still puts his meager disposable income into staying in shape and wrestling in small, local events. Though still respected by the younger generation of wrestlers and old-school fans of the medium, Randy is only hanging on thanks to his legacy and a steady dose of steroids and other risky supplements. After he suffers heart attack, he begins to rethink the wrestling life. He decides to hang up his bright green tights and try to rebuild his broken life. He begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), starts working a steadier job at the deli counter in the grocery store, and seeks to deepen his relationship with a stripper (Marisa Tomei) who is, herself, questioning her line of work. But just as Randy seems to be getting his emotional life back in order, old, self-involved habits rear their heads and send him spiraling back to isolation. He ultimately retreats back to the one place he felt comfortable - the ring, even though it will likely cost him his life.
When one hasn't watched a movie in a decade, it is easy to wonder if it will be as entertaining or engaging as the original viewing. Despite being a devoted fan of Darren Aronofsky, this same question ran through my mind before this recent viewing. But it was just as good as I remembered. Even more surprisingly, my wife really liked it, and she has very little interest in pro wrestling. This is due to the movie's dual focuses: the fascinating and often hidden culture and world around pro wrestling, and the brilliant character study of Randy "The Ram."
Shot in documentary style, the feel of the movie wonderfully authentic, and thanks to an Academy Award-winning performance by the battered Mickey Rourke, it is easy to see what exactly makes the Randy character tick. He is not an overly complex man - his love of wrestling and the glory that being in the ring provides supersedes everything else - but within about 100 minutes of movie time, you get to understand this through his various relationships, moments of triumph, and his mistakes.
This has thus far been easily the most accessible film by Aronofsky, whose other films have taken on grand, cerebral, spiritual themes (sometimes all three). From his first movie Pi to his most recent mother!, the Brooklyn-born filmmaker loves going big, thematically, and sometimes even visually, such as with films like The Fountain or Noah. With The Wrestler, he showed that he is equally skilled with small-scale, personal stories grounded very much in the real world. Even if that "real world" involves grown men wearing fluorescent spandex and pretending to fight in a boxing ring.
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| The ever-outspoken Larry Flynt, being gagged and bound in court after repeated outbursts and (often successful) attempts to show up the judge. |
Director: Milos Foreman
This movie still holds up phenomenally well, these twenty-plus years after its release.
The People vs. Larry Flint is a fictionalized biopic that chronicles key moments in the life of Larry Flint (Woody Harrelson), the founder and CEO of Hustler magazine - a periodical that started in the 1970s and depicted women in various states of undress and in compromising positions of variously scandalous natures. Flint was a self-made multi-millionaire who started in the strip club business but saw his wealth expand exponentially when his Hustler magazine very quickly became a publishing hit. He also became a target of the newly-emerging "Moral Majority" group founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell and like-minded preachers and their followers. These groups often sued Flint and tried everything they could to shut down his publishing operation, which they saw as corrupting the country. Flint became a rather unlikely and thoroughly uncouth champion of free speech, often taking the government and various powerful groups to court over his right to publish his magazine. He was also paralyzed from the waist down after a failed assassination attempt, and his wife Althea (Courtney Love) suffered a slow and fatal spiral into drug overdose.
I hadn't watched this movie for probably over twenty years, and I was pleasantly surprised at how the quality still shines through on every level. No, I don't find Larry Flint a particularly admirable person for his systematic profiteering off of the blatant sexualization of women in his magazines. But this is the very type of contradiction that the movie addresses - simply because you don't admire a person should not be a reason to silence their right to say and publish what they wish, provided that all involved are consenting adults. It's easy for most people to generally agree on the right to free speech when it comes to political views (though that's taken a hit lately) or general opinions about fairly innocuous topics. But what about when it comes to something that more than a few people find highly objectionable, like pornography? The U.S., as progressive as it is in many ways, has long had a strong Puritanical streak running through it, and sexual prudishness is one of the ways that it has manifested itself. The story of Larry Flint, his legal disputes, and the uproar that they caused is a fascinating case study in what, exactly, free speech represents and protects. These themes are where the real meat and depth of this movie come from.
Even beyond the more meaningful tale of Flint's battles, which actually went all the way to the Supreme Court, the movie is highly entertaining. Larry Flint always cut a very colorful, if crass, character, and he is written and played with great verve by the oft-underrated Woody Harrelson. When you add in the excellent supporting performances by Courtney Love and Ed Norton, you get top notch acting to go along with the other strengths of the film.
I probably won't need to watch this movie again any time soon, but I still highly recommend it to any who have never seen it, or haven't seen it in many years.
And now, from a biopic about a smut-monger to a family-friendly movie about an amnesiac fish...
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| The folks at Pixar have "cute" down to a science, as evidenced by the young, large-eyed Dory and her doting parents. |
Directors: Andrew Stanton and Angus McLane
The wife and I finally got around to checking this one out, and we enjoyed it.
The story follows Dory, the blue tang fish from Finding Nemo, as she sets off on a quest for her long-lost parents. Along the way, we viewers learn that Dory's famous forgetfulness is a condition that she was born with, and is the reason that she first wandered off from her parents years before she met Nemo and his father Marlon.
Dory's quest takes her back to a massive public aquarium, where she rediscovers several old friends from her time there - a near-sighted whale shark, a beluga whale with damaged echo location, and a few others - who try to help Dory find the trail back to her parents. One of the greatest helpers is a new friend, Hank, a clever, camouflaging octopus with a missing limb.
If you sense a pattern here, you're right. Finding Dory is very much about how those with disabilities can overcome them and succeed at something. It's a welcome message, and one that is handled well, if not always in the subtlest of ways. What impressed me most about this movie is how it truly does stand on its own, without relying on the tremendous success and impact of its predecessor, the early Pixar hit, Finding Nemo. Although several characters from that instant classic animated film appear in the picture, this movie has its own themes, primary characters, and unique plot. And it does bear plenty of the trademark Pixar visual creativity, with some great gags and use of the brilliant color palates at their disposal.
Finding Dory is a very satisfying sequel, even if there is a touch of the saccharine to its ending. It continues the tradition of Pixar movies that have displayed wonderful humor with themes relevant to everyone from age five through a hundred.
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