The Wrestler

Nominated for Best Picture in 2009, The Wrestler is a poignant movie about the life of an aging former professional wrestler and his attempt at a comeback.

Love. Pain. Glory. The movie stars Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, who, ironically, has an almost paralleled life to the wrestler. Rourke's career is pretty much over, no one cares about him, and he makes a big movie to try and make a comeback. Oh, and he's old and ugly. And to top off the king of creepiness, he owns an old Chevy van.

Also in the mix are his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood - Running With Scissors, Thirteen) and a stripper that he tries to engage in a relationship, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei - My Cousin Vinny, What Women Want). After experiencing a heart attack Randy attempts to reconnect with his daughter. He sees the end of the road and he wants to make it up to her. But he has never been there for her and has always found a way to mess up his life and their relationship even more.

Meanwhile, Cassidy the stripper sort of feels bad for the guy. He's a has-been, but he's always good to her. He tries to light a flame under her and their relationship, but she IS a stripper.

While staging his comeback, Randy becomes observant of his fellow wrestlers and what they've become. Is this how he wants to end it? Will he ever be able to make something of his life? Or will he end up as another footnote in the tragedies of professional wrestlers?

The movie is Rated R for language, thematic violence (remember those crazy wrestling matches?), drug use, and sexuality and nudity (she IS a stripper!) and the movie is 105 minutes long.

However, depressing this movie is, it is a great movie. I'm not sure if this movie will jump-start Mickey Rourke's career, but he sure did a great job with the character and he deserves the nominations that he received. I give this movie 4 stars.

Juno

Nominated for Best Picture, but not winning, Juno is about a young high school girl who gets pregnant and decides to put her baby up for adoption - a most admirable gesture in my opinion.

The potty mouthed Juno, played by Ellen Page, informs her father and step-mother that she got pregnant by Paulie Bleaker (Michael Cera), one of the runners on the cross country team. He's not exactly who you would expect to get a girl pregnant in high school. He's a better candidate to be one of the people that I hung out with (was I really that nerdy???)

In giving her baby up for adoption, Juno goes out to find the perfect parents. He meets Mark and Venessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner). They have that querky relationship - you know, the kind where she's a freak about everything and seems to be in charge despite her own failures and neurosis.

Just when everything seems to be perfect, Mark changes the plans and leaves Juno in distress. Now shee needs to decide if she will still allow Venessa to adopt the baby or find new parents.

The movie is very comical. There's lot's of bad words, some adult situations, like the abortion center scene, but nothing too bad. We all knew a girl like Juno and a boy like Paulie. And we now all know a woman like Venessa and a guy like Mark. It is very easy to relate to this movie.

Overall, I give this movie 4 stars. I could easily see myself watching it again. It's only 92 minutes long, so if you put your kids to bed at 9pm, you'll be in bed before the 1o o'clock news is over on Channel 45. This movie lost out to No Country For Old Men, a movie that forgot to include the ending. I think this movie would have been a better choice for the award.

Atonement

I am sucker for any movie set during World War II. And I'm a sucker for Keira Knightly (Pirates of the Caribbean movies). And had this movie missed any 2 of these elements, it probably would have been one that you could just forget about.

In Atonement, Keira Knightly stars as Cecilia Tallis, the older sister of Briony Tallis (Saorise Ronan, the 13 year-old version of Briony, who absolutely sucks as an actress, as does Romola Garai, the adult who plays the older Briony later in life.) Briony sees several events at their palatial home during the late 1930's that shape her views and opinions of others.

The movie shows several events from Briony's point of view and they do seem scandalous. However, the events are then replayed from the point of view of Cecilia, and they are not quite what they seem. In what will probably be the most memorable scene from the movie, Knightly dives into a large fountain in a sheer slip to retrieve a piece of a broken vase, only to get out of the fountain to reveal what she's got.

It doesn't help Robbie's (James McAvoy) case later in the movie when he writes an apology to Cecilia for their unfortunate encounter earlier in the day, but then also writes a second erotically-charged version in which he writes Cecilia that he wants to taste her cunt (the movie's words, not mine), which happens to be the version that he gives to Briony to give to Cecilia.

The movie flashes forward and backward constantly, giving the viewer an absolute dismal time of trying to keep up with events. On a nighttime search for the missing twins, a common event in many classic English movies, Briony witnesses a rape of a young girl, but only briefly gets a glimpse of the perpetrator. She immediately suspects Robbie whom she has seen with her sister several times in the misinterpreted moments. Hours later, Robbie returns with the missing twins looking bewildered at the lack of enthusiasm for the safe return of the young lads. He's immediately arrested and sent to prison for several years.

The movie transitions to later in life and Robbie is serving in the military trying to escape Europe during the evacuation of Dunkirk. Cecilia and Briony are both nurses, though Cecilia refuses to speak to her sister. Briony at this point has a sparking drive to deliver penance to Robbie and Cecilia realizing her mistake. Neither will have anything to do with her and she never sees them again.

The movie ends with Cecilia as an old woman talking to a reporter about her latest and final book, Atonement. She tells how her sister died during the bombing of London and Robbie died during the evacuation. So, ironically, the miserable wretched Cecilia, who wrongly accused Robbie of raping a girl and denied her sister true love, gets to live a long life while everyone else died. How wonderful.

As mentioned previously, the historical reference to the evacuation of Dunkirk sparked my interest, as did the passionate love scene between Knightly and McAvoy, as witnessed by Cecilia.

Overall, I gave this movie 3 stars. The Briony parts of the Oscar-nominated movie are clear 1 or 2 star parts, the Cecilia parts are definitely 5 star parts, so I averaged the two ratings. The movie is 2 hours long and is rated R for containing some disturbing war images, and some undisturbing sexual images.

Going My Way

The war-time winner of the Oscar for Best Picture in 1944, Going My Way stars Bing Crosby as Father O'Malley who was sent to an older parish that is in financial disarray. The movie won 7 Oscars total, including Best Actor (Bing Crosby) and Best Supporting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald) and was nominated for 10.

Crosby shows an uncanny knack for handling difficult situations and inspires the neighborhood hoodlums into joining the Church choir. In the end, Crosby saves the Church only to see disaster strike. The movie is filled with singing and includes Crosby's famous "White Christmas".

The movie is not without a great supporting cast. Black and white movie aficionados will recognize the mortgage lender as the judge from Miracle on 34th Street (whose famous line was "if the United States Post Office recognizes this man as Santa Claus, then so does this court!", and William Frawly, who was made famous as Fred Mertz on "I Love Lucy".

Additionally, the movie contains the famous saying that is something to the effect of, "At 18 I thought my father was the dumbest man in the world. By the time I was 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in that short period of time."

Overall, I give this movie 4 stars. I love the old movies, and best of all, this movie put my son to sleep the other night when he refused to go to bed. He's not as much of a fan of "gray movies" as I am.

North by Northwest

North by Northwest is the Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Cary Grant and the lovely Eva Marie Saint (check out the movie, you might put her on your list). It was one of the last movies that Cary Grant starred. He only played in six more movies before retiring.

The movie is your typical Hitchcock thriller. Nominated for 3 Oscars and the winner of the highly coveted Edgar Allen Poe Award for best picture, NBTW keeps the viewer in constant suspense. Grant is kidnapped and later framed for murder and spends the rest of the movie trying to find out why so that he can prove his innocence. He never knows who's a friend and who's a fiend.

He does run into the lovely Eva Marie Saint who quickly seduces him. She claims to be 26 years old and traveling. Grant, who's about 55, is charmed and finds nothing odd in that a woman half is age is extremely attracted to him. Now, when I'm 55, this would be my greatest fantasy, but come on, this was not that realistic.

The special affects are reflective of the technology from the 1950's - very special. However, very few movies keep me in suspense like this. For that, I give this movie 4 stars. It's one of the classics and a must see for a movie aficionado.