Up in the Air (****)
Jason Reitman's two previous movies, Thank You For Smoking and Juno, are both very good movies--In the case of Juno, I liked it enough to call it my favorite movie of '07 here--but pretty different ones. Smoking was a bitingly cynical look at the tobacco debate and the lobbying industry, while Juno was a warmer movie about growing up. According to IMDB, Reitman has actually been working on Up in the Air, based on a novel of the same name, since before either of the other two movies were made. I think he was well advised to wait before making this movie, firstly because there are elements from both of his previous two movies that can be seen at work in Up in the Air, and secondly because the movie is especially prescient during a time when the country is still trying to get out of the worst recession since the great depression. My initial impression is that it's a better movie than Juno, and it might be my favorite movie of 2009, which would make two Reitman movies at #1 on my list in a three year span.
Our protagonist is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who is a "transitional specialist" which, when you translate that, means his job is to travel around the country firing people when they don't want to deal with the unpleasantness of firings themselves. The job is dressed up somewhat. He's equipped with handy informational packets and he lets every soon to be ex-employee that he'll be in touch in the future (except he really won't), but when you strip down the corporate veneer of it, ultimately the reality is that he spends his time telling people that they have to pack up their stuff and get the hell out. The character of Ryan Bingham has some elements of Aaron Eckhart's character from Thank Your for Smoking in that he seems to be flourishing in a job in which he's routinely hated because of it, as well as the title character in Michael Clayton, not a Reitman movie but also a George Clooney role, in that he's sort of the corporate go-to guy for dirty work (in this case, it's really more just "unpleasant work", whereas in Clayton it was more like trying to make crimes go away). Being farmed out to whatever company happens to be laying people off at the time means Bingham spends most of his time flying around the country--up in the air. Many would find such a life stressful, but not Bingham. He fetishises his stockpile of frequent flyer miles--one of the biggest ever accumulated--and all of his preferred customer cards from every airline, rental car company, and hotel he's ever used, always made out of some very important looking material. He's not bothered by not being able to spend more time with his family because he doesn't have one, and doesn't plan on it. In his spare time he even gives motivation speeches selling this lifestyle on the basis that people are meant to be "movers." He calls it "What's in Your Backpack?" and asks his audience to imagine all the people and things in their lives weighing them down as they try and walk.
Things are going pretty well for Bingham at the outset of the movie. With the country mired in recession, his boss (Jason Bateman) excitedly declares "this is our time!" He even meets Alex (Vera Fermiga), a woman with a similar lifestyle of near-permanent travel and, seemingly, an apathy for anything more serious than a casual relationship. Bingham runs into a bit of an issue, though, when his company hires Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), an energetic and determined young woman fresh out of college, who tries to prove her worth by introducing the concept of firing people via webcam to eliminate travel costs. With his attachment-free, never-stand-still lifestyle threatened, Bingham tries to convince his boss that this is a bad idea and that the nature of their job necessitates face-to-face interaction. His boss is unconvinced, but to try and appease
Bingham, he tells him that while the new system is being set up, he can take Natalie to jobs across the country to show her the ropes of the job. Natalie is a quick study, and knows inside and out what psychology textbooks say people want to hear when they get fired. When things get heated, Bingham gently explains to her that when someone is fighting back tears opining that they're not going to have money for their house payments, pointing out that studies show that "career transitions" can have a positive mental effect probably isn't going to put them at ease. Reitman filmed a whole bunch of scenes of people reacting to the news that they've been fired. Some of them are shown in little clips in montages, others extend out a bit, including one with Reitman movie mainstay J.K. Simmons, who initially is an especially hard sell
Most of the middle part of the movie is Ryan and Natalie bouncing around the country, with Ryan stopping to hook up with Alex whenever possible. The end of the movie has two important scenes: one where Ryan shows up in the middle of Wisconsin for his sisters wedding and has to confront the rest of his family that he's ignored over the years in favor of work, and another where Ryan discovers something that creates a major obstacle to his ultra-casual, carefree relationship with Alex. The movie runs the gamut of emotions, from laugh-out-loud funny, to very somber. All of it feels is not only compelling but feels very genuine, which was one of the biggest strengths of Reitman's Juno. It never goes out of it's way to pull on your emotions one way or another, it flows naturally from the story. Up in the Air works on a lot of levels. It's a timely piece documenting the effects of a struggling economy, and also a character study of a man trying to live as a nomad in a society where most people tie themselves down. Jason Reitman has been three for three thus far in making his movies interesting and thought provoking. Hopefully he stays hot. This is one of the best movies of '09.
*****
A couple of other quickies:
District 9 (***1/2)
An interesting sci-fi movie from newcomer Neill Blomkamp, who got the gig from producer Peter Jackson after working with him on the Halo movie that never materialized. Filmed in the style of a documentary, the beginning of the movie sets up the premise of aliens living in a slum in South Africa after their ship traveled to earth, but then seems to run out of juice while some sort of a virus kills much of its crew, leaving it hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa. The slum, bearing the titular name of "District 9", is controlled by an international corporation and guarded by PMCs, although at ground level, much of the influence within the slum is actually in the hands of Nigerian gangs, who make money off of scamming the aliens in various ways, and who are convinced they can gain the aliens' power through magical rituals. Our hero and protagonist, Wikus Van Der Merwe, generally wants to help the stranded "prawns", as they're nicknamed, but his higer-ups have ulterior motives, like trying to learn how humans can use the alien weapons, which is synchronized with their genetic structure and thus can't be fired by human hands.
When trying to lead a team sent in to relocate the aliens out of the slums to a new camp set up by the corporation, Wikus stumbles upon a vial of black fluid and when he gets exposed to it, it begins to transform him into a hybrid between human and prawn, turning him into a fugitive from his former employers, who want to use him as a medical experiment to try and unlock the prawns' bio-tech. There's a lot of big action set pieces at the end of the movie with the prawns and the PMCs, but it never feels gratuitous and doesn't overshadow the larger story. Because it takes place in South Africa, many see the movie as a metaphor for apartheid. It's certainly easy to see why, though there are many more movies who deal with issues of prejudice in a much more heavy-handed and forced way as District 9, and the smart writing and the knowledge of South African culture and demographics that the filmmakers show gives it a lot of credibility. Even if you don't care about any of the moral issues in it, it's a fun sci-fi movie.
Extract (**1/2)
An entertaining, but somewhat disappointing movie from Mike Judge, (of Bevis and Butthead and Office Space fame) starring Jason Bateman as Joel, the owner of an extract factory. Concerned that the passion has gone out of his marriage, and trying to deal with a lawsuit brought on by an employee who was injured in a region that you really don't want to be injured in, Joel takes a lot of bad advice from his bartender (Ben Affleck), who fancies himself as something of a wise shaman, but who is basically just an odd dude in possession of a lot of drugs. It has it's moments, but doesn't have anything anywhere near as the best scenes in Office Space and doesn't have any characters as memorable as Lumburgh or Milton. The funniest scenes are probably those involving David Koechner (Champ from Anchorman) as the quintessential neighbor who won't go away, in the proud tradition of Flanders from "Simpsons." Creating characters like him is what Judge is best at, he just does a lot more of it in Office Space than in Extract.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Can Has Huge Materia?
Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime: 21:26-27:23
Yeah, it's been a good chunk of time since I've posted. In the meantime, I've done the Corel, Ft. Condor, and Underwater Reactor huge materia quests, as well as the Wutai sidequest where Yuffie steals your materia (what a bitch). Wutai is a fun little distraction. I kind of wish there was more of it. I can go back later of course to do the quest to get the Leviathan materia. Running into the Turks on vacation is amusing, as is the confrontation with Don Coreno when he does his little bit where he asks you a question and then gets it turned around on him as he's hanging off a cliff.
Fort Condor is just completely obnoxious, another mini-game that I could completely do without. I've never actually won it without having to fight the boss, and I don't really care enough to try. The sub minigame after the underwater reactor is less annoying, but it's really damn easy. You don't really have to do much sub hunting. The red sub spawns right in front of you and usually you can catch up to it in a couple seconds and start mashing square. I actually got killed by the Carry Armor boss in the Underwater Reactor. That goofy-ass looking lanky robot is one of the tougher boss fights in the game. His lapis laser attack does something like 1500 damage to everybody, and he can keep a party member held in each arm to take them out of battle. So you have to destroy the arms fast. I managed to use Morph on the ghost ship enemy (and by the way, why are you fighting a floating pirate ship with a skeleton on it in a hallway anyway), so I have the Guide Book for the Underwater Materia later on.
On a related note, last weekend I went to the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert at the Rosemont theater. It was excellent. Nobuo Uematsu was in attendance and performed on an amazing rock version of "One Winged Angel" at the end of the concert. In terms of FF7, they also played Aerith's Theme and the Opening/Bombing Mission track. They're going to be back in Chicago again on August 1st, 2010 with the CSO. I looking forward to going again.
Playtime: 21:26-27:23
Yeah, it's been a good chunk of time since I've posted. In the meantime, I've done the Corel, Ft. Condor, and Underwater Reactor huge materia quests, as well as the Wutai sidequest where Yuffie steals your materia (what a bitch). Wutai is a fun little distraction. I kind of wish there was more of it. I can go back later of course to do the quest to get the Leviathan materia. Running into the Turks on vacation is amusing, as is the confrontation with Don Coreno when he does his little bit where he asks you a question and then gets it turned around on him as he's hanging off a cliff.
Fort Condor is just completely obnoxious, another mini-game that I could completely do without. I've never actually won it without having to fight the boss, and I don't really care enough to try. The sub minigame after the underwater reactor is less annoying, but it's really damn easy. You don't really have to do much sub hunting. The red sub spawns right in front of you and usually you can catch up to it in a couple seconds and start mashing square. I actually got killed by the Carry Armor boss in the Underwater Reactor. That goofy-ass looking lanky robot is one of the tougher boss fights in the game. His lapis laser attack does something like 1500 damage to everybody, and he can keep a party member held in each arm to take them out of battle. So you have to destroy the arms fast. I managed to use Morph on the ghost ship enemy (and by the way, why are you fighting a floating pirate ship with a skeleton on it in a hallway anyway), so I have the Guide Book for the Underwater Materia later on.
On a related note, last weekend I went to the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert at the Rosemont theater. It was excellent. Nobuo Uematsu was in attendance and performed on an amazing rock version of "One Winged Angel" at the end of the concert. In terms of FF7, they also played Aerith's Theme and the Opening/Bombing Mission track. They're going to be back in Chicago again on August 1st, 2010 with the CSO. I looking forward to going again.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Cowboy Bebop Session #4: Gateway Shuffle
Session 4: Gateway Shuffle
"You Know what they say, cowboy, 'easy come, easy go.'"
"They also say, 'no honor among thieves.'"
"Jet is she sayin' what I think she's sayin, 'cause if she is..."
"I don't know and I have no opinion."
"She's takin' a shower in our shower. That's not okay, right?"
"Don't know and have no opinion."
We open the episode with Faye stranded; out of gas orbiting Jupiter. Looking for someone to bail her out, she picks up the signal of a wrecked ship. Jet and Spike, meanwhile, are at work, staking out their next target at an upscale restaurant. Jet makes what I believe is one of the first references to the gate disaster that happens some years before the series begins, which killed a bunch of people. Jet puts on a pair of sunglasses with computerized spy lenses that let him zoom in on their target and match what he looks like to his real face. Apparently in the future changing your face is pretty easy, as we already saw Abdul-Hakim do it in Stray Dog Strut. There's kind of an interesting shot, briefly, where we see a reflection of Spike in Jet's lenses--his false eyes. Spike, as we learn later, has a false eye himself. The guy they're watching, Morgan, looks like something out of Lupin the Third, sporting a big pompadour. He orders the sea-rat sautee, drawing the ire of the eco-terrorists, the Space Warriors dining next to him. They don sea-rat masks and open fire on him and his lady friends. They call their leader "mom," just like the lackeys of Mom from Mom's Friendly Robot Company from Futurama (they seem to be almost as inept sometimes). Jet remembers that she has a huge bounty on her head and Spike manages to stop her at gunpoint while her minions pile into the elevator.
Back to Faye, who finds a man dying amid the debris of his ship. He hands her something and tells her to hand it over to the ISSP--the police. On board the Bebop, Jet and Spike have "Mom", aka "Twinkle" Maria Murdock tied up. Jet gives a bit more exposition about the group, and that there's a bit of an issue. For some reason the Ganymede police (fyi, Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter) dropped the bounty on her yesterday. Are Spike and Jet shit out of luck again? Returning again to Faye, who opens the case to find a tiny little device inside. "Bebop" is full of little, insignificant looking, things that end up serving as the MacGuffin for the episode. Last episode we had the poker chip, and later in the series a chess piece will be important. At the Space Warriors headquarters, we learn that the police have canceled the bounty on "Mom" at the demands of the remaining Space Warriors who seem to have an ace up their sleeves: they're going to release a virus on Ganymede. Faye manages to contact Spike and Jet. They decide to bail her out, but handcuff her aboard the ship. Spike pulls out the mystery device from a random pile of Faye's stuff. Maria Murdock sees it and seems to know what it is.
Jet contacts one of his old acquaintances in the police, who begrudgingly tells him that the reason they canceled the bounty because of the threat to release the virus. Spike tries to break whatever the device Faye has open, and eventually shoots it and manages to free the tiny diamond shape in the center of it from the rest of it. Jet enters and tells Spike that they have no choice but to let Murdock go. Murdock contacts the Ganymede government and is apparently unsatisfied with their concession to limit, but not prohibit, the harvesting of sea-rats. They're still going to release the virus. Ganymede tries to intercept the Space Warriors' ship, but they find a decoy instead, Spike manages to find the real ship in hyperspace, but not before they release the virus, which we now see turns humans back into monkeys. Spike takes off in his red ship to try and intercept the missile carrying the vitus. Faye, meanwhile, has broken out of her cuffs and is gassing up her own ship. The missile splits into three separate parts. Spike gets two of the three but can't get to the last one. Faye can, and agrees to destroy it... for a cut of the bounty. As the Joker would say, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
"Mom's" plan is foiled. To make matters worse, the tiny little diamond vial--she stole it from Spike on her way off the Bebop--falls out of her pocket and smashes against the wall of the ship. It was a vial of the virus, giving the ending of the episode a nice little "Frankenstein destroyed by his own creation" sort of flavor. Once again, though, Spike and Jet come up empty as far as bounty is concerned. Quelle surprise. Faye says "we'll do better the next time," apparently naming herself a member of the Bebop crew. So the episode ends with three fourths of the eventual crew in place (or I guess four-fifths if you want to count Ein).
This is another episode that shows just how brilliantly written "Bebop" is. The entire Space Warriors plot is a lot to get through in 25 minutes, while there's simultaneously a subplot to bring Faye back together with Spike and Jet. Yet they manage to make it compelling, and to establish the Space Warriors as bizarrely fascinating villains in that time, while not having it feel rushed at all. Next up we start getting into the meat of the series and the first appearance of Vicious.
"You Know what they say, cowboy, 'easy come, easy go.'"
"They also say, 'no honor among thieves.'"
"Jet is she sayin' what I think she's sayin, 'cause if she is..."
"I don't know and I have no opinion."
"She's takin' a shower in our shower. That's not okay, right?"
"Don't know and have no opinion."
We open the episode with Faye stranded; out of gas orbiting Jupiter. Looking for someone to bail her out, she picks up the signal of a wrecked ship. Jet and Spike, meanwhile, are at work, staking out their next target at an upscale restaurant. Jet makes what I believe is one of the first references to the gate disaster that happens some years before the series begins, which killed a bunch of people. Jet puts on a pair of sunglasses with computerized spy lenses that let him zoom in on their target and match what he looks like to his real face. Apparently in the future changing your face is pretty easy, as we already saw Abdul-Hakim do it in Stray Dog Strut. There's kind of an interesting shot, briefly, where we see a reflection of Spike in Jet's lenses--his false eyes. Spike, as we learn later, has a false eye himself. The guy they're watching, Morgan, looks like something out of Lupin the Third, sporting a big pompadour. He orders the sea-rat sautee, drawing the ire of the eco-terrorists, the Space Warriors dining next to him. They don sea-rat masks and open fire on him and his lady friends. They call their leader "mom," just like the lackeys of Mom from Mom's Friendly Robot Company from Futurama (they seem to be almost as inept sometimes). Jet remembers that she has a huge bounty on her head and Spike manages to stop her at gunpoint while her minions pile into the elevator.
Back to Faye, who finds a man dying amid the debris of his ship. He hands her something and tells her to hand it over to the ISSP--the police. On board the Bebop, Jet and Spike have "Mom", aka "Twinkle" Maria Murdock tied up. Jet gives a bit more exposition about the group, and that there's a bit of an issue. For some reason the Ganymede police (fyi, Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter) dropped the bounty on her yesterday. Are Spike and Jet shit out of luck again? Returning again to Faye, who opens the case to find a tiny little device inside. "Bebop" is full of little, insignificant looking, things that end up serving as the MacGuffin for the episode. Last episode we had the poker chip, and later in the series a chess piece will be important. At the Space Warriors headquarters, we learn that the police have canceled the bounty on "Mom" at the demands of the remaining Space Warriors who seem to have an ace up their sleeves: they're going to release a virus on Ganymede. Faye manages to contact Spike and Jet. They decide to bail her out, but handcuff her aboard the ship. Spike pulls out the mystery device from a random pile of Faye's stuff. Maria Murdock sees it and seems to know what it is.
Jet contacts one of his old acquaintances in the police, who begrudgingly tells him that the reason they canceled the bounty because of the threat to release the virus. Spike tries to break whatever the device Faye has open, and eventually shoots it and manages to free the tiny diamond shape in the center of it from the rest of it. Jet enters and tells Spike that they have no choice but to let Murdock go. Murdock contacts the Ganymede government and is apparently unsatisfied with their concession to limit, but not prohibit, the harvesting of sea-rats. They're still going to release the virus. Ganymede tries to intercept the Space Warriors' ship, but they find a decoy instead, Spike manages to find the real ship in hyperspace, but not before they release the virus, which we now see turns humans back into monkeys. Spike takes off in his red ship to try and intercept the missile carrying the vitus. Faye, meanwhile, has broken out of her cuffs and is gassing up her own ship. The missile splits into three separate parts. Spike gets two of the three but can't get to the last one. Faye can, and agrees to destroy it... for a cut of the bounty. As the Joker would say, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
"Mom's" plan is foiled. To make matters worse, the tiny little diamond vial--she stole it from Spike on her way off the Bebop--falls out of her pocket and smashes against the wall of the ship. It was a vial of the virus, giving the ending of the episode a nice little "Frankenstein destroyed by his own creation" sort of flavor. Once again, though, Spike and Jet come up empty as far as bounty is concerned. Quelle surprise. Faye says "we'll do better the next time," apparently naming herself a member of the Bebop crew. So the episode ends with three fourths of the eventual crew in place (or I guess four-fifths if you want to count Ein).
This is another episode that shows just how brilliantly written "Bebop" is. The entire Space Warriors plot is a lot to get through in 25 minutes, while there's simultaneously a subplot to bring Faye back together with Spike and Jet. Yet they manage to make it compelling, and to establish the Space Warriors as bizarrely fascinating villains in that time, while not having it feel rushed at all. Next up we start getting into the meat of the series and the first appearance of Vicious.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Please Insert Disc 2
Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime 18:24-21:26
One of the reasons why I think FF7 is one of the easier FF games is how easy they go on you with respect to status effects. Except for the two that effect your limit breaks, Fury and Sadness, all of the others only effect you for a single battle. Poison can be absolutely brutal in some of the SNES games, while here, I usually don't even bother to cure it since I can most assuredly end the fight before it kills the character and it'll then be gone. The start of disc 2 throws marlboros at you as one of the possibilities in random battles. They're the bane of every FF players' extistence, but they're really not all that difficult to deal with here compared to a lot of the other games. It also helps that I already have a Ribbon on one character at this point. While its nice not having to sift through menus after battles to try and find whatever cure item matches up with the status affliction you need to take off, I wish there was a bit more challenge in this regard.
A lot of the snow area at the start of disc 2 just annoys me. The snowboarding minigame is nigh impossible to control, long, frustrating, and just generally weird. It also makes me want to play Snowboard Kids on N64, a snowboarding game that's actually fun to play from the same era. The whole Great Glacier area where you have a map with different landmarks and spend a lot of time running along paths between them, is uninteresting and tedious to me. Then there's the whole "climb up the side of this mountain and stop at every overhang and mash square to warm yourself up again" thing. Fairly mind-numbing. The two-headed monster thing you fight at the end is genuinely a pretty tough fight though. It can mess you up pretty good with its final attack. I'm saved at the first save point down in the Great Crater, glad to be out of the snow, and anxious to get on with the main story again.
Playtime 18:24-21:26
One of the reasons why I think FF7 is one of the easier FF games is how easy they go on you with respect to status effects. Except for the two that effect your limit breaks, Fury and Sadness, all of the others only effect you for a single battle. Poison can be absolutely brutal in some of the SNES games, while here, I usually don't even bother to cure it since I can most assuredly end the fight before it kills the character and it'll then be gone. The start of disc 2 throws marlboros at you as one of the possibilities in random battles. They're the bane of every FF players' extistence, but they're really not all that difficult to deal with here compared to a lot of the other games. It also helps that I already have a Ribbon on one character at this point. While its nice not having to sift through menus after battles to try and find whatever cure item matches up with the status affliction you need to take off, I wish there was a bit more challenge in this regard.
A lot of the snow area at the start of disc 2 just annoys me. The snowboarding minigame is nigh impossible to control, long, frustrating, and just generally weird. It also makes me want to play Snowboard Kids on N64, a snowboarding game that's actually fun to play from the same era. The whole Great Glacier area where you have a map with different landmarks and spend a lot of time running along paths between them, is uninteresting and tedious to me. Then there's the whole "climb up the side of this mountain and stop at every overhang and mash square to warm yourself up again" thing. Fairly mind-numbing. The two-headed monster thing you fight at the end is genuinely a pretty tough fight though. It can mess you up pretty good with its final attack. I'm saved at the first save point down in the Great Crater, glad to be out of the snow, and anxious to get on with the main story again.
The Wrestler
The Wrestler (***1/2)
The three films that Darren Aronofsky has directed previously, in order: are Pi, about a mathematician who becomes convinced that he's discovered the key to all patterns in nature and goes insane, Requiem for a Dream, about four people who all abuse drugs and consequently pretty much go insane, and The Fountain, which I haven't seen yet, but which I think involves time travel and probably at some point, somebody going insane. As such, his newest film, The Wrestler, a character-driven piece about a washed up profession wrestler with no real heady philosophy or psychedelic drug-induced hallucinations, might seem a bit out of place. When you really think about it though, professional wrestling is perhaps not that much less strange a concept than chaos theory or the fountain of youth. On any given day all over the world there are wrestling shows going on where real people sustain real injuries, hit each other with real blunt objects, take steroids to bulk up and then take pain killers to recover, all so they can fight in matches with predetermined outcomes. There was a time in my testosterone-filled tween-age years when I was really into wrestling, and while I can't get the same sort of enjoyment out of the whole spectacle now, I have to admit that every once in a while when I catch it on TV I'll still stop on it for a while and observe it with some level of curiosity. Its kind of this weird form of performance art that's never going to look perfectly real because, well, its scripted, and the script is usually pretty obvious, and yet every night an audience which is perfectly aware that its scripted will come out and get incredibly in to the whole thing. It really is a pretty weird phenomenon, especially the (real) blood-soaked "extreme" brand that is by-and-large what's depicted in the movie.
The Wrestler takes us into the life of Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Robinson is his stage last name, not his given one, which he seems to despite for reasons that aren't fully articulated. He was once at the top of the wrestling world, as shown in a fleeting montage of memorabilia during the opening credits. 20 years later, the spotlight has long passed him by, but he's still wrestling in little indie circuits where he fights in high school gymnasiums and hotel lobbies to get paid in a little roll of cash at the end of the night. He still has a decent amount of prestige amongst the small clique of other wrestlers relegated to small-time gigs, who shake his hand and tell him how much they respect him backstage before going out to the ring and staple gunning staples into his chest. Outside of his professional life, though, he's pretty much alone in the world. On weekdays he works doing grunt work at a grocery store and gets mocked by his boss ("What you want more hours? Did they raise the price of tights?"), and his college-aged daughter despises him for his not much caring about her when she was growing up. Perhaps his closest friends are the kids roaming about the trailer park that he lives in, who he can occasionally convince to play his original Nintendo, though while they're playing they ask if Randy knows about the new Call of Duty game. The money Randy doesn't spend on rent and steroids seems mostly to go towards beer at his favorite strip club, where he always goes to see Cassidy (Marissa Tomei), an aging single mom still working as a stripper to provide for her son. Business is hard to come by for Cassidy, surrounded by much younger women (there's something of a suspension of disbelief required here, because Marissa Tomei still looks pretty damn attractive), and she sort of flirts with a pseudo-relationship with Randy, being a fellow relic of a bygone era still lingering around.
After a particularly brutal match, Randy passes out and wakes up in the hospital. He had a heart attack and almost died, his doctor explains, and if he continues to wrestle he probably is going to die. This presents for Randy both a long-term problem, because he really doesn't know what to do with his life, if not wrestle, and a short-term problem because Randy was set for a historic rematch against "The Ayatollah", a "heel" (a.k.a. villain) that he had a big rivalry with in his glory days. Randy tries to move on in his life by working more hours at the supermarket, trying to make amends with his daughter, and trying to start a real relationship going beyond strip club employee/strip club patron with Cassidy. He has some successes in this efforts, but also failures, sometimes spectacular ones. Eventually, he finds himself being drawn again to the only thing he's really known, wrestling, even being fully aware that it might kill him. Lest you question the realism of this, consider that WWE wrestler "Umaga" just died at the age of 36.
Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe and got nominated at the Oscars for Best Actor, and he is indeed excellent. I don't know if he exactly has any soliloquies that are going to be remembered for decades or anything. His character is pretty quiet, and its a pretty quiet movie in general. He nevertheless does a fantastic job of embodying the character. The wrestling scenes look genuine, the toll his character takes is palpable, and he does an excellent job of wearing the emotional and physical strain of the character on his face. Marissa Tomei and Even Rachel Wood, Randy's daughter, are both good in their roles as well. The movie's ending is ambiguous and somewhat unsatisfying. It dodges the chance for a cheesy, feel good ending along the lines of the end of Rocky, which is of course a good thing. Part of me wanted more closure for Randy, though. I'm certainly not against ambiguous endings, some of my favorite movies have them. Is Randy capable of changing, or is his fate to keep wresting and isolating people until it kills him? The movie shows us some hints that both may be true. I wanted to see if we could get a definitive answer.
Even with the ending exactly as it is, Aranovski's film works as a compelling human drama. It also works as a sort of pseudo-documentary--and maybe a criticism, or condemnation--of the wrestling industry. The Wrestler's writer, Robert Siegel, obviously knows the sport (or the performance, whatever you want to call it) well; all the pagentry of it, as well as the underside of it. Randy's adversary, The Ayatollah is played by the old WCW wrestler the cat, and without digging through IMDB to be sure, I imagine several of the other actors were real wrestlers as well. As I said at the top of this, wrestling is an odd phenomenon, and The Wrestler is an excellent portrait of a man who's been beaten up for the sake of it, in more ways than one. It so happens that Randy is a fictional character, but any wrestling aficionado likely knows at least several actual wrestlers with almost the same life track.
The three films that Darren Aronofsky has directed previously, in order: are Pi, about a mathematician who becomes convinced that he's discovered the key to all patterns in nature and goes insane, Requiem for a Dream, about four people who all abuse drugs and consequently pretty much go insane, and The Fountain, which I haven't seen yet, but which I think involves time travel and probably at some point, somebody going insane. As such, his newest film, The Wrestler, a character-driven piece about a washed up profession wrestler with no real heady philosophy or psychedelic drug-induced hallucinations, might seem a bit out of place. When you really think about it though, professional wrestling is perhaps not that much less strange a concept than chaos theory or the fountain of youth. On any given day all over the world there are wrestling shows going on where real people sustain real injuries, hit each other with real blunt objects, take steroids to bulk up and then take pain killers to recover, all so they can fight in matches with predetermined outcomes. There was a time in my testosterone-filled tween-age years when I was really into wrestling, and while I can't get the same sort of enjoyment out of the whole spectacle now, I have to admit that every once in a while when I catch it on TV I'll still stop on it for a while and observe it with some level of curiosity. Its kind of this weird form of performance art that's never going to look perfectly real because, well, its scripted, and the script is usually pretty obvious, and yet every night an audience which is perfectly aware that its scripted will come out and get incredibly in to the whole thing. It really is a pretty weird phenomenon, especially the (real) blood-soaked "extreme" brand that is by-and-large what's depicted in the movie.
The Wrestler takes us into the life of Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Robinson is his stage last name, not his given one, which he seems to despite for reasons that aren't fully articulated. He was once at the top of the wrestling world, as shown in a fleeting montage of memorabilia during the opening credits. 20 years later, the spotlight has long passed him by, but he's still wrestling in little indie circuits where he fights in high school gymnasiums and hotel lobbies to get paid in a little roll of cash at the end of the night. He still has a decent amount of prestige amongst the small clique of other wrestlers relegated to small-time gigs, who shake his hand and tell him how much they respect him backstage before going out to the ring and staple gunning staples into his chest. Outside of his professional life, though, he's pretty much alone in the world. On weekdays he works doing grunt work at a grocery store and gets mocked by his boss ("What you want more hours? Did they raise the price of tights?"), and his college-aged daughter despises him for his not much caring about her when she was growing up. Perhaps his closest friends are the kids roaming about the trailer park that he lives in, who he can occasionally convince to play his original Nintendo, though while they're playing they ask if Randy knows about the new Call of Duty game. The money Randy doesn't spend on rent and steroids seems mostly to go towards beer at his favorite strip club, where he always goes to see Cassidy (Marissa Tomei), an aging single mom still working as a stripper to provide for her son. Business is hard to come by for Cassidy, surrounded by much younger women (there's something of a suspension of disbelief required here, because Marissa Tomei still looks pretty damn attractive), and she sort of flirts with a pseudo-relationship with Randy, being a fellow relic of a bygone era still lingering around.
After a particularly brutal match, Randy passes out and wakes up in the hospital. He had a heart attack and almost died, his doctor explains, and if he continues to wrestle he probably is going to die. This presents for Randy both a long-term problem, because he really doesn't know what to do with his life, if not wrestle, and a short-term problem because Randy was set for a historic rematch against "The Ayatollah", a "heel" (a.k.a. villain) that he had a big rivalry with in his glory days. Randy tries to move on in his life by working more hours at the supermarket, trying to make amends with his daughter, and trying to start a real relationship going beyond strip club employee/strip club patron with Cassidy. He has some successes in this efforts, but also failures, sometimes spectacular ones. Eventually, he finds himself being drawn again to the only thing he's really known, wrestling, even being fully aware that it might kill him. Lest you question the realism of this, consider that WWE wrestler "Umaga" just died at the age of 36.
Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe and got nominated at the Oscars for Best Actor, and he is indeed excellent. I don't know if he exactly has any soliloquies that are going to be remembered for decades or anything. His character is pretty quiet, and its a pretty quiet movie in general. He nevertheless does a fantastic job of embodying the character. The wrestling scenes look genuine, the toll his character takes is palpable, and he does an excellent job of wearing the emotional and physical strain of the character on his face. Marissa Tomei and Even Rachel Wood, Randy's daughter, are both good in their roles as well. The movie's ending is ambiguous and somewhat unsatisfying. It dodges the chance for a cheesy, feel good ending along the lines of the end of Rocky, which is of course a good thing. Part of me wanted more closure for Randy, though. I'm certainly not against ambiguous endings, some of my favorite movies have them. Is Randy capable of changing, or is his fate to keep wresting and isolating people until it kills him? The movie shows us some hints that both may be true. I wanted to see if we could get a definitive answer.
Even with the ending exactly as it is, Aranovski's film works as a compelling human drama. It also works as a sort of pseudo-documentary--and maybe a criticism, or condemnation--of the wrestling industry. The Wrestler's writer, Robert Siegel, obviously knows the sport (or the performance, whatever you want to call it) well; all the pagentry of it, as well as the underside of it. Randy's adversary, The Ayatollah is played by the old WCW wrestler the cat, and without digging through IMDB to be sure, I imagine several of the other actors were real wrestlers as well. As I said at the top of this, wrestling is an odd phenomenon, and The Wrestler is an excellent portrait of a man who's been beaten up for the sake of it, in more ways than one. It so happens that Randy is a fictional character, but any wrestling aficionado likely knows at least several actual wrestlers with almost the same life track.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)