BLU-RAY: THE WRESTLER

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The Film:

Darren Aronofsky is a director who isn’t scared to take risks. Hiring Mickey Rourke, when no one else would take his calls, that was a risk. It resulted in his promised budget evaporating to just $6 million.

Consequently, the aesthetic of The Wrestler is that of the cinema verité documentary, all hand-held-cameras and available-light in existing locations rather than beautifully-lit custom-built sets. Mixing real people in with the actors, that’s always a risk, because that can go either way. The set-piece scenes seem thrown hap-hazardly together as though the film were being assembled on the fly. Turns out a lot of it was. Now that’s very risky!

We spend an inordinate amount of time behind Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke, on career-best form) as he stomps, huffing and puffing down poorly lit corridors. When he talks, his expressions range from pained to confused to just plain depressed and he genuinely seems to have no idea what he’s going to say next, which is, let’s face it, the defining characteristic of anyone not reading from a script. In fact, the only thing that this film lacks to make it a real documentary bio-pic is Nick Bloomfield deliberately getting himself in shot as much as possible.

No, unlike Mr Bloomfield, both Aronofsky and Rourke demonstrate an almost painful lack of vanity in this project. When Ram tells his daughter “I'm an old broken down piece of meat and I deserve to be all alone. I just don’t want you to hate me”, tears roll down his rough red-raw cheeks and you feel as though it is Rourke himself speaking to us, the viewers, from the heart.

Then we come to the careworn flower of Cassidy, as played by Marisa Tomei. Like Randy, she takes her clothes off to entertain others. She, like him, performs under a pseudonym. Their key connection is that they have both seen better days. Tomei, like Rourke, is perfectly cast. These are roles which have been waiting for these performers to be ready for them, which helps you see through the clichéd nature of the story because, after all, clichés are clichés for a reason … mostly because they are recognisable as truth!

I wonder, when he signed on the line, if Mickey Rourke knew quite what he was letting himself in for. Did he, in his heart, think this was his big shot at an Oscar? If nothing else, The Wrestler has offered Mickey Rourke the chance to successfully demonstrate to a cynical world that he really is the fighter he has always believed himself to be.

All of which brings us to the fight scenes themselves. These are clearly hard work for Rourke (who is now well into his fifties, let us not forget) but then that just adds to our empathy with the suffering of Ram.

But the film isn’t about the fighting, it’s about the fighters and we particularly feel for them during the rightly notorious ‘Hardcore Deathmatch’, where the combatants hit each-other with furniture and various house-hold implements, most of which are wrapped in barbed–wire.

This sequence is quite shockingly brutal. There is considerable bloodletting, reminding us of the visual and metaphorical similarity between fighters and raw-meat. What we have is the reality of the WWE-type pantomime we happily let our kids watch on TV. This is the brutality that exists one-step away from the TV cameras. These are the gladiators who are, quite literally, being sacrificed for our entertainment.

The Disc:

You get the film in dizzying 2.35 wide screen but I must mention that, being as it was shot under documentary conditions, it doesn’t really benefit all that much from the hi-def of Blu-Ray. The extras included aren’t numerous, but they are telling …

Within The Ring – 43 mins. A no-nonsense ‘making of’ made by Niko Tavernise, the stills photographer on the main film. It’s a genuine, honest behind-the-scenes document similar, in some ways, to Vivian Kubrick’s Making The Shining.

It features talking-head interviews with film-makers for whom the gloss of show-biz has worn off. They don’t want to maintain the pretence of glamour. They want to talk about shooting a film with no money in the depths of winter on New Jersey.

The real-life wrestlers who feature in the film are all erudite and softly spoken, in their tights and tattoos. “Necro Butcher” (sic) comes across as an affable sort of chap who will likely have a career in after-dinner speaking when he’s too rickety to be jumping off ladders onto people’s heads.

The main impression you get from watching this documentary is how important the subject of wrestling is to Aronofsky who, as a child, went to many matches with his dad. Film-making at this level should be personal and it should be passionate.

And speaking of passionate:

Mickey Rourke Interview – 15 mins. Rourke gave so many painfully honest interviews during The Wrestler’s extraordinary awards season that there’s very little in this one that’ll come as news but, as with all those interviews, he is shamelessly honest.

He talks about rewriting some of the key dialogue to make it more personal and then ruminates, quite movingly, on the lives of real sports people who, once their routine and career is over, are lost souls. Well, every moment of this disc tells you that Mickey Rourke’s soul is found.

And for those with attention-spans so short they can’t even be arsed to read the review – I give this a Cellulord Rating of: CCCCC

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky.

Written by: Robert Siegel.

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and John D’Leo.

Cert: 15

Dur: 109 mins

Images © Optimum Releasing in the UK.

ANGELS & DEMONS

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Full-size cathedral version (1,200 words)

“What a relief, the symbologist is here!”

- Stellan Skarsgård's Commander Richter

Even as the plenitude of corporate logos are appearing at the very beginning of this film, the music – by Hans Zimmer – is telling us that this is going to be a huge, important, MASSIVE experience! Then we hear the male-voice choirs - à la Miklós Rózsa’s Ben-Hur (1959) and King of Kings (1961) – and we realise we are being told that this isn’t just an epic … it’s a Biblical epic!!

But no, no dimple-chinned Americans in togas and sandals here. As anyone who’s slid effortless through Dan Brown’s book will know, it addresses the Religion versus Science dilemma in a very modern setting (and, as such, should really be called Angels and Antimatter, I suppose). Director, Ron Howard addresses this binary opposition early-on, very succinctly, through a simple lap-dissolve from a communion wafer to the entrance of CERN, connecting and contrasting them in a simple, elegant stroke that shows just what a skilled, mature film-maker little Ritchie Cunningham has evolved into.

Although CERN, Europe’s premier mad-professor-emporium, plays a far greater role in the book than in this film, the immense amount of publicity that was generated earlier this year by the Large Hadron Collider’s brief cough and splutter of life was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a God-send for this film. For that matter, Pope John Paul’s shuffling off this mortal coil so recently will have reminded a whole new generation of the process of replacing Popes. It’s fair to say this film has found its moment.

Story-wise, it’s a race against time as the apotheosis of Science – the creation of Antimatter – threatens to destroy the capitol city of the Catholic Religion on the day that its Cardinals are voting for a new Pope. Hanks’ Langdon is brought in for … well, no clearly discernible reason … but proves invaluable since he’s seemingly the only person in Rome who understands the place and, fortunately, is completely indestructible, as his escape from many implausible certain deaths clearly attests.

One has to give credit to Howard and his crew for the visual exuberance of this film, a lot of work has been put to good purpose finding and fabricating stand-ins for the Vatican City locations (I don’t imagine the Catholic hierarchy will have welcomed them in with open arms after all-but declaring war on them over The Da Vinci Code – 2006). I can hardly think of a more picturesque locale for a film about running around and shouting.

The book is a really quite interesting alternative-travelogue, delving into the reasons that the Vatican City and the capital city around it evolved, drawing into play the personalities, beliefs and conspiracies of the Artisans and Architects (ooh, there’s another alternative title) who built it. The film ejects all but the barest bones of that and concentrates on the running and shouting.

Never-the-less, Hanks and Howard are old hands at this and bring a real lightness of touch and even a wry sense of humour to events. The former manages to make a hair’s-breadth escape from certain death in a library (yes, really) delightfully funny through his mime acting (it’s easy, these days, to forget that he spent the first ten-or-fifteen years of his career as a comedian); while the latter even finds time for a few moments of subtle commentary … such as the wonderfully humanising moment when all the cardinals are handing over their mobiles and cigarette packets before entering Conclave; or a close-up of a tea strainer being squeezed by the bad-guy, which deliberately reminds one of censers used by the bishops in their ceremonies; or the cutaway which shows the perfect, alabaster skin of a devotional statue whose pious, peaceful face melts away in a fire, to reveal the rough-hewn stone beneath. In all the decedent splendour of Rome, it is worth remembering that even the saints have feet of clay.

But all of this subtlety and nuance is undermined every time Hanks et al open their mouths. For the film’s first thirty minutes or so, they rarely speak save to tell each other things they already know, purely for the audience’s benefit, and the plethora of historical terms they employ are always followed by a word or twelve of explanation. Seriously, guys, I didn’t need twice telling that The Preferiti are the preferred candidates for Popedom. It’s kinda obvious.

Equally obvious is why they persuaded Ewan MacGregor to get off his motorbike and back onto a film-set to play the Camerlengo, the man who is caretaker of The Church in-between Popes (as they explained to us several times), because he radiates pious, wide-eyed innocence convincingly, even if his supposedly Irish accent was a tad cosmopolitan.

With the CERN scenes mostly missing, Langdon’s companion, Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer) serves no purpose at all, save that of, say, a Doctor Who companion; namely to be the sounding-board to whom the know-it-all protagonist patiently explains everything, so that we, the audience, can feel like we’re still in the loop.

And yet, ironically, there are so many things that are only partly explained. Where the book could develop tension and had the time to explain in great detail the intricacies of the conspiracies, here we have little time, so the explanations are incomplete, the leaps of logic Langdon makes are inexplicable and , with the cat-and-mouse game ranging all over Rome, the film lacks focus. Maybe they should have played a little faster and looser with the novel’s text, carefully filleted out some of the layers of conspiracy and concentrated all their attention on the Vatican itself. Maybe that would have made it a more successful, more satisfying adaptation.

So, all in all, I feel this film is more successful as a piece of cinema than The Da Vinci Code was, possibly because it lacks the weight of expectation and reverence that film bore; but, ultimately, Angels & Demons is a less satisfying yarn than the novel on which it is based.

You see, the script only works intermittently because it is written by one of the patchiest genre script-writers working in Hollywood today, David Koepp (The Shadow - 1994 - and Jurassic Park: The Lost World – 1997 - both excellent, Snake Eyes - 1998 - War of the Worlds - 2005 - both shockingly poor) teamed with Akiva Goldsman, a man who should have a restraining order keeping him at least one hundred yards away from any kind of word-processing equipment. He it was who inflicted the legendarily awful Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) on us and he it is who bears sole responsibility for the atrocity that was (shudder) Lost In Space (1998). When it comes to the inevitable film version of The Lost Symbol, the new Dan Brown / Robert Langdon adventure, please, please, please leave these guys at home unravelling a ball of wool and get a Steven Zaillian or a Frank Darabont on board, y'know, someone who's proven they can adapt. Prosecution rests, m’lud.

Dir: Ron Howard

Stars: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård, Ayelet Zurer

Dur: 138 mins

Cert; 12A

More modest parish church version ( 500 words)

Anyone who’s slid effortless through Dan Brown’s book Angels & Demons, will know it addresses the Religion versus Science dilemma in a very modern setting (and, as such, should really be called Angels and Antimatter, I suppose).

Story-wise, it’s a race against time as the apotheosis of Science – the creation of Antimatter – threatens to destroy the capitol city of the Catholic Religion on the day that its Cardinals are voting for a new Pope. Hanks’ Langdon is brought in for … well, no clearly discernible reason … but proves invaluable since he’s seemingly the only person in Rome who understands the place.

One has to give credit to Howard and his crew for the visual exuberance of this film, a lot of work has been put to good purpose finding and fabricating stand-ins for the Vatican City locations. I can hardly think of a more picturesque locale for a film about running around and shouting.

Hanks and Howard are old hands at this and bring a real lightness of touch and even a wry sense of humour to events. For example, they make a hair’s-breadth escape from certain death in a library (yes, really) delightfully funny through Hanks’ mime acting (it’s easy, these days, to forget that he spent the first ten-or-fifteen years of his career as a comedian).

The problems arise every time Hanks et al open their mouths. They rarely speak save to tell each other things they already know, purely for the audience’s benefit, and the plethora of historical terms they employ are always followed by a word or twelve of explanation. Seriously, guys, I didn’t need twice telling that The Preferiti are the preferred candidates for Popedom. It’s kinda obvious.

Ironically, there are so many things that are only partly explained. Where the book could develop tension and had the time to explain in great detail the intricacies of the conspiracies, here we have little time, so the explanations are incomplete, the leaps of logic Langdon makes are inexplicable and , with the cat-and-mouse game ranging all over Rome, the film lacks focus.

You see, the script only works intermittently because it is written by one of the patchiest genre script-writers working in Hollywood today, David Koepp (Jurassic Park: The Lost World – 1997 - excellent, War of the Worlds - 2005 - shockingly poor) teamed with Akiva Goldsman, a man who should have a restraining order keeping him at least one hundred yards away from any kind of word-processing equipment. He it was who inflicted the legendarily awful Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) on us and he it is who bears sole responsibility for the atrocity that was (shudder) Lost In Space (1998). When it comes to the inevitable film version of The Lost Symbol, the new Dan Brown / Robert Langdon adventure, please, please, please leave these guys at home unravelling a ball of wool and get a Steven Zaillian or a Frank Darabont on board, y'know, someone who's proven they can adapt. Prosecution rests, m’lud.

STAR TREK

The Writer’s Cut (1,500 words):

Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born in, of course, the middle of an interstellar fire-fight.

The original Star Trek telly programme has always been a bit of an oddity. Almost uniquely among SF TV (at least until quite recently) it’s a show that has always attracted female fans. By which I don’t mean beer-swilling would-be-boys with breasts or timid, transparent teenagers with no friends … I mean women with lives and families and, presumably, lots of better things to do.

I’ve seen them at Star Trek conventions, dressed in Star Fleet uniforms, with their normal looking families in tow. I’ve been to many different types of cons … Eastercons, Comic Cons, Anime Cons, Dr Who cons, a Worldcon … and I’ve never seen noticeable numbers of families anywhere … except Star Trek cons.

In-keeping with that, the release of the new Star Trek movie has generated a palpable buzz of excitement among civilian women and among people who, ordinarily, don’t get excited about films. There’s just something about Star Trek that has got under the skin of normal, healthy, well-balanced people.

I suspect this isn’t because J.J. Abrams has promised to thoroughly ‘re-boot’ the franchise, it isn’t because they all went to see MI:III (2006) and so are expecting something equally kinetic, it isn’t because of the vast sums that Paramount has spent on marketing the movie … it’s purely because it’s Star Trek.

So, what has Jeff served up for us? Well, not inappropriately, Star Trek starts right at the beginning of something big … an anomaly is opening up, a giant multi-coloured storm-cloud in space. Now, you’d think Star Fleet would recognise a worm-hole when they see one, but no, and out of this gaping hole in space-time heaves a gigantic spaceship, one part V’Ger to two parts Babylon 5 Shadow Ship.

It seemingly doesn’t come in peace as there promptly ensues a lot of explosions and the sort of crash-zoom wobbly-camera-work that has been the signature of Battlestar Galactica’s space-born battles.

Meanwhile, as with any canny film-maker, Abrams contrasts this story of rending steel and flashing phasers with a human story. Within the spiralling innards of the USS Kelvin, George Kirk has to take command of the ship during its death-throes while his wife, Winona, is giving birth to their son who will, surprisingly, be named James. The adult Kirk is very much his son’s father, he makes the decision his son will make sixty-odd years in the future (at the beginning of the film Generations – 1994 - confused yet? I am. But then prequels do that to me …) he opts to put his navy’s interests before his own.

So, typically for protagonists in films like this, young James grows up without a father. We see this in just one scene – the one featured in the trailer with him stealing a car. An extraordinary moment, designed to give Star Trek ‘cred’ in its opening moments with high-octane editing all set to the pounding guitars of The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage.

Where Kirk’s mother is called Winona, half a universe away on Vulcan, Spock’s mother is played by Winona. Winona Ryder. An odd choice to play Spock’s mum since she is only six years older than Zachary Quinto. Not sure if that was just one of the in-jokes that pepper the film. The ones that definitely are in-jokes are all dealt with with a very light touch throughout the film. For example, when the crew of the Enterprise make planet-fall, the first person to die is wearing red. This isn’t dwelled upon, it’s just there for you to notice or not. And, if you don’t know why that’s a Trek in-joke, that’s fine, you don’t need to.

Then we fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it - the first of several he'll lose during the film - on his way to picking up the Rick Deckard belt for film's finest fumbling fist-fighter) and bumping in to Commander Pike who points out that his reckless, rudderless lifestyle is a waste of potential: “You like being the only genius-level repeat offender!” Pike then dares Kirk to join Star Fleet and be a better officer than his father was, knowing full well that, like his father, Jim couldn’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.

Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Quinto, can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.

So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana), reappears and wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.

Ignoring the cheap, nasty product-placement. Ignoring the fact that the music eschews all the themes that we know and love in favour of a score which just rumbles along largely unnoticed. Ignoring the fact that no one thinks to ask “So where exactly has Nero been hiding for the last twenty-five years?” Ignoring the fact that Spock having Kirk ejected from the ship, rather than throwing him into the brig, is just flat-out illogical. Ignoring all that - this film barrels along at break-neck pace. Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat.

The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan Noonien Singh are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!

As can the audience. We get slapstick, snogging, melodrama, swearing, chaotic action sequences, over-lapping dialogue, loads of wobbly camerawork, tasteful lens-flare, terrible hair-cuts and no time to think about anything we’ve just seen.

The major action set-pieces are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight all inter-cut with earthquakes, explosions and rescues. And it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.

This hysterical sense of pace carries you through the experience with your disbelief duly suspended. Only in the plot-line involving a major figure from the past/future and a pretty sizeable bright red maguffin (which no one troubles to explain) does the film lose it’s way. But only for a few moments. Otherwise, what great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.

There has been much debate among the fans, during the years of pre-release hype, about whether or not this film would conform to the ‘rules’ already known; whether it would, in other words, be cannon. Well, it isn’t. Not really. But the characters openly discuss the multi-verse theory and state that they appear to have branched off onto an alternate path. So this film is set up to launch a whole new alternative universe cannon wherein … well, literally anything goes! No foregone conclusions now, no sacred cows. It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.

Dir: Jeffrey J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg.
Dur: 126 mins
Cert: 12A

The Short Cut (500 words):

Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born, in the middle of a fire-fight.

Fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it) and bumping in to Commander Pike who dares Kirk to join Star Fleet, knowing full well that he can’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.

Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Zachary Quinto can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.

So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana) wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.

The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!

Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat. The major action set-pieces here are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight and it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.

What great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.

It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.