The Wrestler

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WARNING: From this point forward, I shall proceed to ruin the first-half plot of the movie. Thereafter, I intend to prevent your first-time enjoyment of a significant number of its riotously funny moments. This doesn't make me different from any other reviewer, but I want to admit it to you first because The Wrestler deserves better than your reading my opinion before a viewing. If you haven't seen it and intend to, or if by some freak coincidence you haven't seen it, don't intend to, and count yourself able to enjoy anything of complexity in life, PLEASE do not read this review. And go to the Fandango or the theater or wherever it is you go, and get you some tickets. Do not give this blog, other reviewers, or the forthcoming DVD jacket the chance to take a little piece of life from you. Thank you.

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The Wrestler is the kind of movie you walk away from awestruck and speechless. It's an ambitious look at a certain pattern of destructive behavior, taking the form of a person putting up self-deluding psychological armor against the world and boxing out life's real, meaningful situations in favor of dealing with the world through a hollow dream that is projected onto oneself and those with whom one exists. Compulsive fantasy role-playing, if you will.

The titular character is Randy "The Ram" Robinson, played excellently by Mickey Rourke. Randy, or just "Ram" (he's addressed with both names at various points in the movie) is a professional wrestler, some twenty years removed from the peak of his career, in which he fought a spot-on caricature of the offensive wrestling characters and events of old, this one waving an Iranian flag with bad intent and calling himself "The Ayatollah." It was a glorious high, as made clear by the film's introductory perusal of its fliers and taglines, as well as the existence of an 8-bit Nintendo game that's used at one point to re-enact the match. Now, in the twilight of his years and despite financial difficulties and an inability to draw quite the crowd he once could, Ram is a happy enough guy who juggles low-key wrestling events and a part-time supermarket job.

In his free time, Ram frequents a local strip club and cozies up to Cassidy, also known by her real name, Pam, at some points in the movie. Played by a constantly naked Marisa Tomei (no complaints; just sayin'), she engages conversation with Ram in a way befitting real friends at the very least, and practices her craft for his entertainment. Theirs is a bond between two different kinds of dancers with two different kinds of audiences, and their relationships with themselves and with those audiences track and intersect one another throughout the film. At the end of every day, though, he's still just a customer to her, and as such, pays Cassidy for her time.

Things are OK for Ram until he has a heart attack and learns he can't wrestle any more. He finds himself struggling for meaning in the world, deprived of the one way he was able to grope through some sort of existence, and the artificial construct of the world he's built inside his brain implodes. The green spandex pants, the posters reminding him of his day in the limelight with the Ayatollah, the '80s hair metal music played at deafening volumes while cruising down the highway, the random hookups with younger girls -- none of them are fulfilling without the mental fuel he always needed to make them jibe. Precisely, this was an innate ability to tune out an honest approach to events and people in his life and to hide inside of a superstar image he projected on himself.

Looking for direction, he goes back to Cassidy after leaving the hospital, thinking she might represent his one chance at filling the resultant loneliness in his life. After all, he doesn't really know anybody else. Except when Cassidy balks, signaling that Ram should probably know better than to ask and that maybe this is a time for him to call family, it turns out he has an estranged daughter, Stephanie. Stephanie leads a very different lifestyle than Ram, and he doesn't know her very well. Worse, he probably didn't want to until it turned out he might not have much time to live.

When he looks her up and meets her, it turns out the new feelings aren't mutual. Stephanie can't forgive his complete absence during her youth -- an absence he admittedly forced upon their relationship because to do otherwise would have been too difficult given his demanding schedule and emotional inability to connect with her. Stephanie thinks she sees right through a grubby attempt by a long-absent father to suckle a few years of elderly care off his daughter, and throws up her armor with full vigor. His challenge for the rest of the movie is to build this connection before it's too late, and by asking for the occasional spot of help from Cassidy, to transform the nature of that connection, as well.

Director Darren Aronofsky successfully captures Ram's approach to the world and subtly suggests what our reactions as both adoring fans and pitying observers should be. A large amount of the film is shot by cameras directly trailing the characters, combining a celebrity-obsessed followership with the blunt reality of some very unglamorous daily lifestyles. There is an arc of shot distances, too, that follows the storyline and the worldview changes initiated by Ram. Note the emphasis on uncomfortable, twitchy close-ups and piercing, intense sound effects at both the film's beginning and end, and the tendency toward harmony Aronofsky suggests through more relaxed shot distance and smoothed sounds at the center of the film.

There's also a lot of clever, ironic humor in this very tragic story. Aronofsky and writer Robert Siegel portray the amount and types of violence to which the wrestlers in the film subject themselves as ludicrously excessive, fairly turning their characters into crash test dummies. One is encapsulated in a trash can and battered with a nearby fan's prosthesis. A walking crutch wrapped in razorwire is deployed. At one point, while the camera is closely following Ram, he takes a steel chair from an audience member and smashes it into his own head, boosting his adrenaline and jarringly confronting the film's audience with the impulsive and destructive self-abuse required in order to entertain a particularly sadistic audience. The audience's whims are also subject for parody; their see-sawing between cheers for a face and boos for a heel (to say nothing of the chants' substance) is rife with instantaneous demands and emotions, suggesting that it's all pretty meaningless, anyway. Ram is made up at one point in the movie to look not-so-unlike a little girl with blond pigtails, and his technique at the grocery store deli counter is a thing of beauty. Particularly subversive is a brief series of cuts where Aronofsky moves from the farfetched and ridiculous to the poignant in drawing connections between the things people of different age and maturity levels hold in reverence. By moving quickly and deliberately from a young girl's room full of fireman posters to the '80s hair metal poster in Ram's trailer to an American flag in his bedroom (and holding the latter in the frame for a few cuts thereafter), Aronofsky finds at least a little bit of eye with his grasping thumb.

All said, Aronofsky & Co. put on a clinic with The Wrestler. If it gets the nomination for Best Picture, I'll have no problem with its winning for sheer quality, based on everything I've seen this year. I'm still partial to The Dark Knight for other reasons (overall, I think its victory would benefit the film industry and community to a greater extent), but The Wrestler is the superior pic. Besides, I was content with No Country for Old Men's victory last year despite my preference for There Will Be Blood. This is a movie to be seen in a theater, though, especially considering the use of uncomfortable close-ups and a soundtrack loaded with unsettling loud-volume effects. Don't miss the chance (provided you ignored my instructions above, in which case, jolly good show).

Blue Velvet

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This was my second David Lynch movie, after Mulholland Dr. I saw the Drive a few years back and honestly the whole thing is a blur to me at this point. At that time, I was rapidly and intentionally expanding my film tastes and wasn't wholly prepared for a movie like that. Blue Velvet now presents the requisite argument for my giving it (and many other David Lynch movies) another chance in the near future.

You've got your American Beautys. You've got your Little Childrens and your Edward Scissorhandses. To some degree, Blue Velvet fits right in there with these more-or-less dark tales of suburban dystopia. But more convincingly, it's a wild and bipolar film, vacillating between a deadpan mockery of that lifestyle and an unrelentingly intense look into the carnal essence boiling underneath.

There's a main character, a college kid named Jeffrey who finds himself called home to be with and care for his aged and newly disabled father. He's a curiosity of earnestness; every one of his lines throughout the movie comes across as entirely straightforward and without guile. You learn to trust the guy.

It's the same with all the characters inhabiting Side #1 of Blue Velvet's insistent duality. This first "side" is set up at the beginning of the movie. When Jeffrey gets home, he meets up with the local police detective, and later, his daughter. He encounters his own mother and some of her friends. All of these characters' lines are written in platitudes and filmed in a deadpan style. Although you learn that nothing from the filmmaker's perspective is everything-as-it-seems, it is literally impossible to lose even a kernel of trust for any of these bright, happy, daytime characters.

Furthermore, Lynch starts with bright colors and relaxing imagery. At the very outset, he shows some picket fences, flowers, and other idyllic shots. Crisp and clean colors: yellow and red flowers, green grass, white fence, blue sky. A red fire engine. Serene folk in beautiful, geometrically satisfying structures (cages?) whiling away the days. No cause for alarm, aside from a few juicy hints dropped by Lynch regarding the approaching Side #2. Taken in sum with the deadpan verbal delivery, Lynch puts forward a lacerating and unflinching case for the falsity of this entire existence.

The edges start to peel back on Side #1 when Jeffrey finds a disembodied human ear in a field and, after walking away from the aforementioned police detective with his curiosity unsated, determines to unravel its mystery himself. When asked to explain why, despite the danger and the fact that there are policemen working on this, he proclaims his belief that, in life, there is a finite number of occasions where one may greatly enrich himself through new and challenging experiences that are not necessarily comfortable, and that finding the ear had presented one too great to pass up.

And so, the colors and the scenes and the characters change, and we are introduced to Side #2. A world of crimsons and blacks and rich, deep blues becomes known to Jeffrey. As he pursues the chain of events and characters caught in the ear's story, he finds types of hurt and longing unknown to the people from Side #1. There is a world of profanity, interpersonal violence, police corruption, sexual sadomasochism, and a general dehumanization of others by the characters in the nighttime side of Blue Velvet.

There is very little overlap between the two sides, and that's just the way the folks from Side #1 like it (one gets the impression the nighttime people couldn't care less; maybe they've actively rejected the first lifestyle after having experienced it for some time). When Jeffrey's curiosity occasions a few of these undesirable interactions between the sides, the daytime folk are unnaturally perturbed. The police detective's daughter recoils in intense agony when she sees her Jeffrey may be romantically involved with one of these people. The detective maintains a granite veneer trying to fend the other world's encroachments from his home and family, and when the situation seems as if it may spiral out of his control, he provides what may be the one serious bit of menace from anyone of this side throughout the entire movie. Things that would seem grave to a person inhabiting Side #1 turn out to be illusory; dress exercises abandoned as mere play when confronted by the real thing. Take, for example, the scene in which Jeffrey is chased with ill intent by a few football players in a car when one of them thinks Jeffrey's stolen his girl. Even after a successful pursuit and verbal throwdown, everything is summarily forgiven and apologies even ensue when the intensity of Side #2 jarringly presents itself.

Put simply: one side is real, honest, and alive. The other, despite its superficially seeming to be more of each of these things, is in fact none of them. It's a joke, to be laughed at and not to be regarded seriously. What's worse, the characters in Side #1 may in their hearts know this to be true, and if so, they're even more despicable for their willful ignorance.

Blue Velvet is a rich and textured experience, as its title suggests. It's a real thinker and is not a movie for a late night spent dozing on the couch. It's not easy to find too many films that match this one in terms of intensity, and its certainly worth considering whether or not this is treated with unfair glibness. Irregardless, it's got loads to say, and if movies like the ones I mentioned in my second paragraph are what you consider essential viewing, then queue this one up.

RoboCop

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Seems this one may be up for a remake in the near future, and it looks to be by the guy who was turned down for the 2005 Batman reboot because his take was too dark.

With that in mind, I desperately needed to catch up and see what source material was attracting this kind of creative mind to do its very damnedest. What I found struck me first and foremost as an horrifically violent film, but in as cutesy and '80s of a sense as possible. In RoboCop, director Paul Verhoeven finds time to bathe screen-lovin's on a man's hand being exploded from something to nothing. He luxuriates in an era when a single human being would accept dozens of high-powered bullets before having the good graces to pass on. He shows a severe prejudice for hitting his characters with the biggest, hardest thing around, and at one point even has a roving gang of flunkies and their druglord searching for the titular character while armed with cannons that fire what must be explosive dark matter.

The violence is ever-present and it is oppressive, but not in any way that degrades the caliber of filmmaking. Rather, it convincingly establishes the need for a character like RoboCop -- a humanoid Juggernaut for the crime-fearing, drug-fighting, Nancy Reagan days of old. Not to say Verhoeven is in any degree connected with the sappiness of the afore-referenced administration, but you kinda have to admit: even RoboCop's voice sounds a little bit Eagle Scout.

So: the premise. It's dangerous, gritty Detroit, and there's a lot of money to be made through the ostensible purpose of slum clearance. And there's even more money to be made when this public relations front is actually hiding a murky iron triangle of profiteering arranged between law enforcement, big business, and illegal drug racketeering. It's a cynical world, and the little guy (remotely represented here by two honest grunt cops in the beginning of the film) has no place at the table. The elite interests at the top control all and have little regard for the corruption and pain they've let loose on the world. The film's excessive violence -- it's been called "desensitizing" -- helps to reinforce this feeling.

In the name of dozing a low-value area of Detroit and replacing it with a gleaming new sector of buildings, big business (represented by a company called O.C.P.) has developed an experimental crime-fighting technology to soothe investors into believing the area is safe. O.C.P.'s intention with this technology, as evidenced by reactions to a rival and failed internal experiment, is utterly misanthropic; it seems the company might even be willing to commit a genocide, of sorts. The end result is to create RoboCop, with a mandate for having a test program up and running as soon as possible.

Back to those two hapless little-guy cops. One of them ends up getting killed. Slowly. But then, flush with that mandate, big research brings him back to life as a barely human sentinel with awesome destructive power, and he's sent out into the world as the prototype RoboCop. As such, he's the most public and invincible member of the Detroit police force. Unfortunately for O.C.P. plans, his former partner solves the puzzle of his creation, and ends up feeding him just enough information to trigger the shards of his human memories. What's left of his psyche then becomes obsessed with finding justice.

The whole while, RoboCop runs into a despairing set of obstacles that seem intrinsic and permanent to both his construction and that of the world he inhabits. But he stays ever the Boy Scout, and gradually, everything that should be standing up to entrenched, evil interests backs away from the challenge and turns on him, culminating in his pursuit at the hands of the Detroit Police. And so, this unstoppable force soldiers on with a gun as big as a normal man's arm, having little positive recourse but to dispatch every single evildoer with relentless abandon.

To me, RoboCop is a success for a few reasons. One, it's a lovingly-made snapshot of pop artifice at its time of creation. The soundtrack, the noises RoboCop makes, the way people talk, the fake newscasts; all are hopelessly dated and yet feel so alive even in 2009. Two, the movie paints a convincing portrait of a desperate and irredeemable world. Finally, RoboCop is a damn interesting character. He's got very little that's his own, and the film deals intensely with what happens when you take everything from a person and turn him into a caged beast.

But there's that little something of a bittersweet tinge to this one. Without knowing too many of the details of its making, I can say it feels a little more compromised and "Hollywood" than some other films. Two things, and these are spoilers: one, I don't believe RoboCop's honest-man-with-both-guns-blazin' style is really enough to change the world he lives in. Although the film stands up in 2009 as it was made, it would never be made with the same exact character and message today. People are too cynical for this sort of thing. Stemming directly from that is my second reason for finding this one a little cheapened: the ending. Not only does he save the day, but his last word is a smiling and upbeat "Murphy" when asked his name. Like all is forgiven. Really?? Truth be told, it only circles back to my first reason; I just thought the ending deserved its own separate emphasis.

On a scale of 1-10, RoboCop is somewhere near the very top. There's a lot to love, and then there's some more. However, after having adopted the worldview of American man circa 2009, I'm waiting to see a revised and darker take on the subject matter.

Frost/Nixon

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SPOILER ALERT

Frost/Nixon is one of many, many movies sandwiched into a few weeks' worth of release schedule that seems increasingly unbearable to miss. Unfortunately, the successful advertising campaign that made me feel this way about the film also had the effect of cueing me into a larger-than-necessary number of the its plot points as they were happening, and consequently rendered stillborn a chunk of the movie's potential emotional resonance for me. For a feature made with as much love as this one was, I'd advise strongly against seeing that trailer.

Despite its having been slightly blunted on me, though, Frost/Nixon remains one of the true standouts I've seen this year. Phenomenal acting all around; in fact, I'd say Frank Langella's Richard Nixon is secondly only to Heath Ledger's Joker in quality of supporting performance. And after seeing Michael Sheen play David Frost here and reflecting briefly on his acclaimed turn as Tony Blair in The Queen (2006), I checked out his IMDB page and was shocked to see his first image file be that of some werewolf creature in a January-release slasher (or whatnot) movie. Not having seen many of his other movies, this worries me. Isn't this sort of beneath Sheen? If it's as bad as it sounds, is it reflective of a difficulty he has finding work, or of a personal preference in choosing roles? I could be jumping to incorrect conclusions; this article makes him seem largely a serious actor, and I haven't seen The Deal. In any case, here's hoping Sheen's well-deserved star grows and his work remains of its caliber in Frost/Nixon.

To me, Frost/Nixon is a boxing movie, reformatted into a different competitive scenario. David Frost is Rocky Balboa for the creative youth class: full of promise and talent, but also perceived as quite enjoying his youthful years and being unserious. He's sure he's got what it takes to get to the next level of success as a television interviewer, which for the arguably fictionalized version of his character is to achieve respect as more than a softballing "talk show host" and to permanently revive the brief taste of success he once enjoyed in the American media market (unlike any other in the world, he confides to an associate). Particularly haunting is the fear in Frost, which is so successfully manipulated in this film's writing and direction, that he really only has one chance left, and that his very dream is in danger of being plucked from him by forces more powerful and nimble than he.

Frost's path to realizing his dreams comes in the form of big game: the recently-resigned and disgraced former President of the United States, looking for a one-and-done interview to refresh his legacy with the American people, and make top dollar in the process. To Nixon, there's a lot of good that happened in his time in office, and it isn't right that Watergate is the only thing the world remembers him by. The President comes across as truly human in this movie; we are inside his mind to a greater extent than many other recent film characters, and he is drawn with great empathy and personal sadness. For him, as well, the interview represents a crucial moment in life. David Frost seems ideal, in his own masterful calculations: a soft personality; an entertainer more than an interviewer; a playmate more than an opponent. Surely not a person on the level of Nixon himself, and an ideal opportunity to get what he wants with minimal chance of failure.

These two competitors have their teams of coaches and advisers, and there are traces of training montages for both sides. Then, the interview itself is broken into something like the rounds of a fight, with time in the corners after every round. And, just like most fight movies, the Champ comes out swinging harder and faster than the challenger ever could have expected. A particularly fervent and loyal Nixon adviser, played by Kevin Bacon, even clearly articulates the analogy.

The drama with which these two men mentally feel one other out and drastically adjust their impressions of one another is striking and entirely satisfying. The sense of the interviews' gravity to Frost, Nixon, their respective aides, and to the era itself never abates. And the portrayal of the complex set of character traits in and events perpetrated by Nixon, himself, presents a useful meditation on our own time.

Despite all this, I couldn't help but feel a trace of what I remembered thinking leaving W. (a topic I now regret not committing to print). After seeing a depiction of a presidency and the preceding personal biography that was curiously simultaneous with the real-life version of events, I wondered where Oliver Stone was getting his source material, and just how much could be trusted. Was this historical fact, or was it a highly personalized interpretation of a set of current events important to the filmmaker's life? As such, should it be viewed with ethical expectations based on the constraints of a fictional work like Jurassic Park, of an earnest documentary like Sicko, or of one of the in-betweens like Borat?

After Frost/Nixon, I watched a few segments of the actual interviews (available on the film's official website, conveniently enough) and was disappointed to see that they were far less dramatic than the ones in the movie. From what I'd seen (which did not include some of the end moments shown in the film), gone were most of the introspective pauses on Nixon's part, and the sense of shame or contrition. Instead, from the selection visible here, there seemed to remain a chilling sense of self-righteousness and a stoic resolve to succeed on the same path that had so forcibly forsaken his derelict choices. Admittedly, I need to watch the whole interview. I'm sure the film relies far more in fact and less in conjecture than does W. But what seems particularly subject to filmmaker interpretation is Nixon's psyche during the interviews, and his set of mental character traits, as expressed in his non-recorded words and in all of his physical mannerisms. I want to be a believer, but it's hard not to feel a little skeptical towards the case for absolute fact in Frost/Nixon.

And yet. Frost/Nixon is a tremendously rewarding moviegoing experience, and the thoughts I've expressed in the previous paragraph shouldn't be ones that bother you too much with respect to any aspect of the film's craft. When making a movie partially or mostly based in history, it's impossible not to run into this set of issues. Besides, I didn't think of them until after I'd left the theater (whereas I struggled to put these thoughts aside for the entire duration of W.). Despite it all, Frost/Nixon remains an utterly captivating film, and one that should stimulate much reflection on the leadership of our own times and the possibility that it, too, has after-office obligations pending with the American people. Surely this was among the filmmakers' goals in this project, and I hope their effort succeeds as wildly as that of their film's subject.

MGMT: Oracular Spectacular

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This album reminds me of the Killers' Hot Fuss for odd reasons. It doesn't sound like the Killers. It's not a new-wave redux, and it isn't trying to capture nostalgia for the 80s (or much else). But like Hot Fuss, it's relentlessly good at what it does and it's goddamn happy, and it's both of these things from front to back. It's really happy, in fact--there are times where it seems to be just walking down the sidewalk whistling to itself at how great life is (see the melody lines on Time to Pretend and Kids). But underneath the pop veneer, there's a lot going on. I catch traces of the things that make David Bowie and Radiohead great. Compare the latter band's A Wolf At The Door and MGMT's The Youth, and pay attention to what happens with the high-range instrumentation in the background. Also see the change in tone that happens around 2:37 in The Youth. MGMT doesn't have to do these things to get great pop across. They have an amazing ear for the stuff, their lyrics are a blast, and they're so oozing with effortless glam-cool it's irresistible. But the extra mile is more than covered, and I for one can't wait to see what happens when this band starts making some more albums.

Hell; this song below even starts to sound like Toto around 1:30.

Electric Feel - MGMT

My Apology to Kanye West (and my two readers)

Hi Kanye --

It's OK that I call you by your first name, right? Awesome. Look, I'm really sorry about the bad review a few weeks ago. I was in a crappy mood and I put the album on from your Myspace page and I admit I didn't even give it 100% of my attention before I wrote about it. I hate to have to admit these things to you so directly, but I hate the fact that I wrote them even more. I pride myself completely on being as disinterested and thought-out in my writing as possible, and in the case of 808s & Heartbreak, I let one slip. Sorry sorry sorry sorry...

In truth, you've made more than a decent album. It's a unique and pleasurable and daring album, and I salute you for it. True, it's not rap. And I like your rap better; 808s & Heartbreak won't change my mind on that. But I see what you're getting at here. I see the straightforward title, I see your need to express what's going on inside you in a different way, and I see the experimentation wrapped up in every bit of sound. I like it lots.

I also think more than half of the album is downright catchy. I'm surprised I didn't catch this on my first listen. I'm an especially big fan of Paranoid and RoboCop for this. But the one that's been stuck in my head up to writing this post, and the one that I respect the most right now, is Welcome to Heartbreak. I was so wrong in my last post about the songs' lack of character and your bringing to 808s the things that make you special, Kanye, that I want to burn my hand every time I listen to this track. It's honest and painful and tuneful, and it completely wraps my shame into a melancholy nugget of sound every time it plays. Which is growing more often.

I hope you can forgive me. Unfortunately, I won't be able to retract the previous post. It's not mine any more, and I think it'll serve to remind me of this little lesson every time I feel daring enough to review an album after one "listen" (or to review an album at all).

Your friend,
Doug

The Hamburger at Veselka

Hell yes. Hell yes in the highest degree. I've recently become a follower of the New York section of A Hamburger Today. You can imagine the silent and semi-worshipful admiration my affinity for foodie websites has engendered among female coworkers. No matter, though; for this passion, it's worth the hit. And some deliciously griddled/grilled/broiled/etc. steer is just as good for the ego as their quote-unquote support, anyway. Especially when it comes from Veselka.

This burger is pretty near flawless in every single aspect. Take the bread. I've had a great many conversations recently about how bun choice affects the burger outcome, and I don't think I've ever had a better bun than this one. Soft and coated top and bottom with sesame seeds, but with the slightest touch of flakiness. Unique and wholly deserving of emulation, everywhere (just last week I went to Burger Joint and was subsequently disappointed to the point of spinal chills by what I'll swear were buns from Sunbeam).

It comes with fries (tried one; superb), home fries (not even a glimpse), and potato salad. I ordered the last, and by the time I got around to trying it (after snarfing 70% of the burger in what must have been 14 seconds) it came as no surprise to me that this, also, was the product of a deeper love. I thought I'd found the best boiled potatoes with artery-clogging creamy sludge at the Butcher Block in Queens, but the first real competitor in over a year has up-and-stepped forward. The product is a tidal wave of creamy dill with just the right textural mix of vegetables to suit the taters. The portion is shaped like the molding of a perfect ice cream scooper. Imagine my joy.

Did I [need to] mention the Pilsner Urquell was like $6 for 20 oz.???

Food porn and a link #1:

Food porn and a link#2: