FINALLY, a movie that is simply, an exceptional piece of film-making, through and through. ...FINALLY!! I've been waiting all season, no, all year for this.
Everything that you've heard, is true. This movie ABSOLUTELY lives up to the hype.
They need to just give Mickey Rourke that little golden naked man, right now. He is seriously, THAT. GOOD. Just pitch perfect in every scene. The movie itself is gut-wrenching, thoroughly real, and just soul-rending. I LOVED IT.
Now, I must warn you, this movie is about as far from "movie-as-escape" as one can get. This is the anti-fantasy film. It's just real people dealing with real problems as best they can, but not in the melodramatic "movie" way where you can safely distance yourself. No. You feel like a voyeur, an interloper in these people's lives.
You will get caught up. At least I did. I'm haunted by this movie, y'all. I had to go home and watch a cartoon to shake it off, before I started to type this.
Mickey took every last scrape life's put him through and put all of that into the playing of this part. Now, ordinarily, I would think of that as cheating, but wow....Mickey just opened himself up and laid it all out there for the world to see, so it's the exact opposite of cheating.
This is just...hard-core pornography of the soul, people.
Here's what speaks to this movie's success. It never feels like Oscar bait. It doesn't feel like they were playing for the awards. It just felt like they wanted to do damn good work. And MY GOD, they succeeded. They succeeded. Everybody. Marissa Tomei and even Evan-Rachel Wood, whom I usually don't care for.
Just...
GET YOUR ASS TO THE MOVIES AND WATCH THIS MAN WORK.
It really is that good, people. Now, I loved Requiem for a Dream, (Ellen Burstyn was robbed, robbed, ROBBED, that year) but Aronofsky just topped it easily with this.
It is a travesty, that this movie isn't more widely available.
PARENTS: Adults only. Leave the kids home.
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8 comments:
Yeah my friends and I wanted to see it but they aren't showing it in my town. We are not happy about this.
Saw it a few weeks ago(got to meet Aronofsky and Tomei, too, which was awesome), and it quite simply is the best movie of the year with the single most amazing performance of the year. This is Aronosky's best directing performance: simple in the quiet moments, almost documentary-esque in the way it follows Ram. But the in-ring stuff is simply perfect. I remember getting swept up in Ram's brutal hardcore match even more than I do when watching WWE or TNA wrestling every single week. It's that damn good. If Rourke doesn't win the Oscar this year it'll be highway robbery.
@neo
That does suck. :-/
Hollywood producers, if you know you have a quality piece of film-making on your hands, MAKE SURE PEOPLE CAN SEE IT, DAMMIT.
@trav
I hate wrestling. And I loved this movie. For me, the matches were moot. ...Just Mickey, man.
Let's just say, as the theater darkened and the credits rolled, I would have done the "ugly cry" publicly had I not had a moment to recover myself.
I'm glad to hear this lives up to the hype, been looking forward to it for awhile. I will probably go see it next weekend.
@rick
Yes. Please, do. :)
We've gotta encourage more film-making like this.
No doubt, it got a little dusty in the theater for me, too. I'm not ashamed to admit it!
I love your enthusiasm for this film, I feel the exact same way. What a shame that Mickey didn't win the Oscar, he was miles ahead of Penn and the other nominees.
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