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December 31, 2008
The Wrestler
(out of four)
Everybody knows wrestling is fake, but those are real professionals throwing Mickey Rourke around the ring and real staples piercing skin in one particularly grisly fight.
Thrust into the Oscar spotlight after winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Fest, The Wrestler features one of those exceptional, born-to-play roles by Rourke, relying just as heavily on the former heartthrob's background in boxing as it does on the off-screen mileage he has endured en route to this comeback.
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 01:59 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2008
Clint Eastwood's Imperfect World
In 1993, coming off Unforgiven's Oscar win, Clint Eastwood made a little movie called A Perfect World in which he played a lawman who dreams of apprehending a kidnapper without firing a single shot — a far cry from the director's trigger-happy Dirty Harry days.
But that perfect world, Eastwood would probably be the first to tell you, simply doesn't exist (as was the unfortunate case in the titular film). Where Eastwood lives, laws have their limits, rules are seldom adequate and justice tends to be subjective. But the notion that forgiveness, for the first time in his career, wasn't entirely out of the question marked a significant change for Eastwood (just think how different Million Dollar Baby might be if his character spent the rest of the movie getting even).
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2008
Young Film Critics Insist the Sky Is Not Falling
Now is probably not the right time to enter the world of film criticism, but don't tell that to aspiring pundits. Even as the professional ranks implode, young writers are expressing their passion by any means necessary.
Keith Uhlich, 31, runs a blog called the House Next Door. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" will probably make his top 10 list but not "The Dark Knight," which he dissed in 1,500 words earlier this year. Like many of the writers who contribute to the site, Uhlich would like nothing more than to make a living reviewing movies.
"I want to be a critic," he says, "but more important, I am one already. A lot of people get hung up on the monetary issue, and I understand why. If you're looking at this as a (paying) profession, at this point it seems untenable."
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Posted by Peter Debruge at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)