April 21, 2009

The best movie of 2008 comes to DVD this week!

To me at least, this was my #1 of the year (check the archived top 10 list on the Main Page for proof if need be). It's a practically perfect film in my eyes, and the most clear cut PICK OF THE WEEK in a long time. It's:
The Wrestler
What Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky created here, based on the lovely yet sparse script from Robert Siegel, is nothing short of amazing. Rourke gave one of the ten best performances I've ever seen an actor give, Aronofsky did a flawless job of directing (or more appropriately in this case, cinematically observing), and the supporting roles by Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood are just about without peer for the year as well. The fact that a film like this only got 2 Oscar nominations while other films rake them in is just another reason why sometimes looking harder for quality films can pay off in a big way. I simply can't recommend this film enough to everyone. If for no other reason than getting to hear Bruce Springsteen's amazing title track to the movie, seek out this DVD at once!
-Also out this week we have Frost/Nixon, which while not fantastic, is a very solid flick. It's hurt a bit by pacing problems and unnecessary directorial choices by Ron Howard (which is unusal considering how unobtrusive Howard is), but overall the script by Peter Morgan and acting across the board make it a worthy film to check out. There's the biopic of the Notorious B.I.G. out as well, called, oddly enough, Notorious. It's somewhat standard issue, but it's slightly better than I expected it to be. If you were a fan of rapper, you should enjoy this. Finally we have the Sundance Film Fest graduate The Last Word, which takes an interesting premise (a man who comprises people's suicide notes falls for a relative of one of his employees) and manages to make a fairly bland movie out of it. Check it out if you're curious, but it's nothing special at all.
-My Vintage pick this week is The People vs. Larry Flynt. One of the odder subjects for a biopic/first ammendment rights film, this tale of a pornographer who fought for his rights so that we could live in a country that would protect not only him, but us as well, is a film that works a lot better than you'd ever expect it to. From Courtney Love's terrific performance as Flynt's wife to Milos Forman's directing, it's both an entertaining and important film, one worth watching if you have not already.
-What will you be watching this week on DVD?


10 comments:

  1. I've had this day circled for a month... I love Rourke in this flick...it really is as good as you say it is, maybe even a bit better!

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  2. between that (also my #1 of the year) and Frost/Nixon...best week in a while for me
    -Matt

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  3. as always, glad to see people love the film

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  4. still mad Rourke didn't win!

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  5. I'll see it after exams are done for the semester...not too familiar with the director's work but I'll check this one out based on word of mouth.

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  6. cool...if you haven't seen Aronofsky's other movies, check them out...his first film Pi is very claustrophobic and extremely creepy, a terrific Sundance flick...Requiem for a Dream is his most well known one, the anti drug nightmare...he also did The Fountain, which nobody liked but me

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  7. I loved The Fountain, though I wished it had been like 2 1/2 hours instead of 90 min. So you're not alone Joey :) We're both big Aronofsky fans. The Wrestler was tied with The Dark Knight for my #1 film of the year, simply because the two are such astonishing, yet completely different masterpeices that I couldn't pick one over the other, one is an epic crime drama, the other is a small indie slice of life drama.

    2008, while a somewhat weak year for film compared to 2007, was cool in that a lot of fanboy favorite directors made films. Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, Danny Boyle, David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro.

    I bought The Wrestler today and I think I will rent Frost/Nixon, but definitely not buy it. Also gonna revisit The Matrix trilogy later this week on blu-ray :) So sue me, I lvoe the Matrix sequels, and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, and the Star Wars prequels, and Indiana Jones 4. :P

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  8. One thing that realy struck me about The Fountain was Aronofsky's ability to tell a great story with a somewhat thin plot. It was all about the images, the score, and Hugh Jackman's career best performance. I dare anyone to ell me that Jackman was not utterly brilliant in that role.

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