Movie Review The Whale

The Whale (2022) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Samuel D. Hunter 

Starring Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 7th, 2022 

One of the biggest anxieties in my life is having food on my face. It's a fear of humiliation, I get triggered by being embarrassed. Logically, intellectually, I know this is not something worthy of serious concern and that it is an unavoidable fact of life, food on your face is normal, wipe it off and move on. But, my brain won't let it be that simple. Thinking of this aspect of my anxiety has me triggered. My eyes are welling up and I can sense that if I linger further in this space, I will become quite inconsolable. 

I've rarely seen this type of emotional reaction, this type of triggered anxiety in a movie. It's quite difficult to capture this kind of internalized emotional struggle, the rigorous internal battle to stop yourself from crying over something not worthy of crying about. The Whale comes the closest I have seen in some time of seeing this kind of emotional turmoil, a roiling mass of embarrassment and shame, on screen. Brendan Fraser's Charlie captures this feeling in all of its internalized horror. If only the rest of the movie were capable of capturing anything remotely as genuine. 

Charlie is a dangerously obese man who gets by as a literature professor at an online college. The shame over his weight causes him to conduct his classes with his camera on, using only his voice to instruct his class. Charlie's only friend is his caregiver, Liz (Hong Chau). They were friends before she became his caregiver. In fact, Liz is intrinsically linked to Charlie's past. She was connected to Charlie's late boyfriend, a man whose death changed both of their lives. 

Throughout The Whale we will slowly unpack Charlie's backstory as a man who was once married and had a daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), who he would like to reconnect with. Charlie was pushed out of Ellie's life after he fell in love with one of his male students and embarked on a new life with this man. Ellie doesn't know that Charlie had wanted to be in her life but wasn't allowed to be. She only knows that he appeared to choose being with this man over being her dad and she harbors a deep, and justifiable resentment. 

Much of the plot of The Whale centers on Charlie trying to reconnect with Ellie before his weight problem, and his unwillingness to get help for it at a hospital, takes his life. Ellie, however, proves to be far more difficult to reconnect with than he imagined. Ellie's bitterness has hardened into an almost sociopathic cruelty. Despite Charlie's attempts at dressing up her cruelty as a kind of blunt curiosity, Ellie is rarely anything less than bitter to a toxic degree. 

This toxicity is explored in her relationship to a strange young man named Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is insinuating himself into Charlie's life. Thomas claims to be a missionary from an extreme offshoot of Mormonism called New Life. He goes door to door with literature and, after meeting Charlie, and seeming to save his life, Thomas makes it his mission to save Charlie's soul before his weight kills him. Thomas is harboring a deep, dark secret that Ellie will spend some time drawing out of him. 

This is the portion of The Whale that is the most poorly developed. The idea appears to be to establish Ellie's empathy and care, qualities that she has worked hard to hide. How they choose to portray this is strange, misguided, and simply doesn't track with what we see on screen. In fact, it takes a late monologue from Charlie to explain that what Ellie did was kind and helpful. Realistically, it appeared she was trying once again to do something cruel, and it happened to turn out well. 

Find my full-length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: The Wrestler

The Wrestler (2008) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Written by Darren Aronofsky 

Starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

Release Date December 17th, 2008

Published January 12th, 2008 

As a fan of professional wrestling and someone who owns the DVD of the dark and compelling documentary Beyond The Mat, I thought I was prepared for anything when I sat to watch Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. Oh, how wrong I was.

Mickey Rourke's seering, visceral, forthright performance is devastating in such a human manner that really nothing can prepare you for the assault on your sympathies. It is arguably, the best acting job I've seen by anyone in my time as a critic, more than 9 years.

In The Wrestler Mickey Rourke plays Randy The Ram Robinson a pro wrestler clinging to the last vestiges of a long faded glory. An opening credit montage tells us that more than 20 years ago Randy the Ram was a big deal in the wrestling world. It doesn't take long however to tell us where that got him.

We meet Randy backstage in the locker room of a non-descript High School where he is taping his broken down body together for a main event match in the school gymnasium. It's a brutal thing what wrestlers do to themselves and one of the first things we see Randy do is use a razor blade to cut his own forehead.

It's a shockingly typical way for wrestlers to build drama and create tension in a match but when you watch wrestling they hide this from the audience, The Wrestler makes you watch Randy do this and it's a jarring incite into his character.

His pay for mauling himself? 50, 60 bucks maybe. He returns home to find his trailer locked because he hasn't paid his rent, he sleeps in his van. Randy's free time is spent training, obtaining and using steroids to keep his busted up physique in shape and attending a local strip club where he harbors a fantasy of a relationship with Pam (Marisa Tomei), a stripper whose been on the pole for far too long.

Pam has a rule about not dating customers but there is something so heartbreaking and charming about him that she might let him get close. It is with Pam's urging that Randy attempts to reconnect with the only family he has, a daughter named Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood).

It's a small role but Evan Rachel Wood brings extraordinary life to it. She has lived with the disappointment of Randy as her father and when she allows herself to believe in him again you can feel the seismic shift in her life even as convention tells you what has to happen next.

There is a twist in Randy's career path that I won't mention other than to say that  it sets up for an ending that will leave many unsatisfied. I myself was quite satisfied with the ending. Even though I was left with a sense of dread and sadness, it wasn't a disappointing feeling, it was a draining and cathartic feeling.

This is a draining and cathartic movie that is filled with sadness and heartbreak and not much light. And yet, there is Mickey Rourke whose Randy 'The Ram' who has found sad resignation to his place in life and lives for the small pleasures and finds them in the ring.

For all the pain, the ring is the one place where things make sense. The roar of even the smallest crowd is like a hit of the most potent drug imaginable and with no other aspect of his life that makes sense, the ring is the one source of happiness and stability he has.

That is what makes the ending of The Wrestler so potent and appropriate. It is the only way the movie could end. Anymore and the drift toward melodrama might become overwhelming. Aronofsky and screenwriter Robert D. Siegel no when to, in wrestling parlance, 'go home'. They end the movie just as the crowd is peaked, just as our emotions are heightened and we long for more.

The Wrestler is a powerfully sad movie but with a performance by Mickey Rourke that finds an oddly uplifting note. It's odd but recalling Randy The Ram I don't feel as much sorrow or pity as I do empathy and understanding. Sorrow and pity seem more appropriate in many ways but The Ram isn't looking for that.

In every way he wants understanding and while most will never fully understand how people can destroy there bodies as he does, we come to an understanding of why Randy does it and that is a powerful connection for him and us to make.

Movie Review The Fountain

The Fountain (2006) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Written by Darren Aronofsky 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz

Release Date November 22nd, 2006 

Published November 22nd 2006 

With its gorgeous sci-fi visuals and promise of a grand love story, I expected The Fountain to be an epic of film technology and a grand love story. Maybe I was expecting too much. The visuals are there, lushly beautiful sci-fi vistas, mind blowing uses of color and light and technology. However, the love story is simply tedious.

A mopey, dopey Hugh Jackman wanders through this eye popping sci-fi set piece weeping and falling over and just generally ruining what might otherwise be the closest anyone has come to evoking the genius of Kubrick's 2001, or at the very least the minor pleasure of Roger Corman's The Trip.

Izzie Creo (Rachel Weisz) is dying. She has an inoperable brain tumor but that has not stopped her research scientist husband Tommy (Hugh Jackman) from spending every waking moment trying to find a cure. So driven by his quest that he has begun neglecting what little time he and Izzy have left, a point well made by his boss  Dr. Guzzetti (Ellen Burstyn), who visits Izzy while Tommy continues working.

Tommy and Izzy have a connection that seems to have lasted through time. In a story written by Izzie, the two are cast as Spanish conquistador and Queen in the search for the fountain of youth. And in a future that we see but Tommy and Izzie are seemingly unaware of, another version of Tommy has for thousands of years traveled the universe with what we can only assume is Izzy's body buried within the bark of an ancient tree. His quest is for a dying star that may be able to restore Izzy's life and allow them both to live for eternity together.

It's a grand idea but in execution The Fountain is a somewhat sappy take on eternal love with a performance by Hugh Jackman that leaves one to wonder whether this really was the guy who played the tough guy Wolverine in the X-Men movies. Clearly this teary eyed , mumblemouth can't be the same man who brought life to one of the comics' manliest superheroes.

Jackman's performance notwithstanding, there are a number of stunningly beautiful images in The Fountain that make me wish I liked this movie more than I did. Darren Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique craft some awesomely psychedelic visions that will dazzle your eyes even as your brain rebels against the lame love story.

I could watch Rachel Weisz make a sandwich, she is that interesting as an actress. Her Oscar winning role in The Constant Gardener was tiny compared to star Ralph Fiennes and yet she steals the entire picture with her wounded toughness and vulnerability. Even her roles in mainstream fluff like The Mummy, Constantine or Runaway Jury are given weight by her appearance.

In The Fountain, Rachel Weisz plays second to Hugh Jackman and is too often left on the sidelines. Though I find it easy to imagine a man wanting to follow Rachel Weisz through lifetimes, and attempt to conquer death on her behalf, her character here is too thin to provide the dramatic motivation needed to justify all of Hugh Jackman's weepy determination.

Much has been made of The Fountain and its appeal to the stoner crowd and though I have never used psychedelic drugs I would like to imagine the experience to be something akin to watching The Fountain. Not an entirely satisfying experience but one of mind melting visual excesses that might inspire great art and great thought. The film is so wonderfully visual that it may have been a masterpiece had there been as much care given to the story as to the trippy visuals.

I was reminded throughout The Fountain of the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come another visually stunning film that dies on the vine of melodrama. Both films are about men who attempt to conquer death by crying uncontrollably and both films are gorgeous boundary pushing exercises in visual virtuosity. If you were a fan of What Dreams May Come you may find similar pleasure in The Fountain.

Darren Aronofsky is a visionary with an uncompromising will to tell this story. Unfortunately he seems to have become dazed by his own visuals and lost in the morass of the lovely sci-fi landscapes of The Fountain. He gets little help from star Hugh Jackman who delivers a weak kneed, weepy performance, more suited to a daytime soap opera actor than to the man who was Wolverine.

The Fountain is a lovely example of the visual aspects of filmmaking. As a story however, it's a teary and bleary chick flick dressed in sci-fi clothes.

Movie Review: Black Swan

Black Swan (2010)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Mark Heyman

Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassell, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Release Date December 3rd, 2010

Published December 2nd, 2010  

Cause this is f.....d up, f....d up.." Thom Yorke "Black Swan" The Eraser 2006.

Thom Yorke unknowingly encapsulated Darren Aronofsky's “Black Swan” in his song Black Swan back in 2006. Indeed, “Black Swan” the movie is 'F....d up.' The story of a prima ballerina in New York City who gets her big break as the lead in the legendary "Swan Lake."

“Black Swan” is extreme melodrama of a kind that only Darren Aronofsky can create and features a second to none, tour de force performance from Natalie Portman that bears comparison with De Niro's method take on Jake Lamotta in “Raging Bull.”

In “Black Swan” Natalie Portman stars as Nina Sayers an overgrown child with dreams of being the featured performer at the New York City Ballet. Living at home with her codependent mom (Barbara Hershey) whose own failure to rise beyond the corps in the same company years earlier has driven much of Nina's own career. If having her mother trying to live vicariously through her isn't troubling enough, Nina is also a cutter who has apparently started cutting again as we join the story; her mother discovers a scratch on Nina's back as she dresses her.

Arriving at Lincoln Center for the beginning of rehearsals for a new season Nina finds that the company's lead ballerina, Beth (Winona Ryder) is being forced out and that Thomas (Vincent Cassell) will mount a newly re-imagined version of Swan Lake with a new lead dancer. Complicating matters for Nina is the arrival of a new, free spirited dancer from the west coast, Lily (Mila Kunis), who Thomas has apparently recruited specifically to join this production.

The plot unfolds as one might expect as Nina finds herself in competition with Lily and constantly concerned that the newcomer is attempting to undermine her. What is not predictable is the ways in which director Darren Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique turn up the heat on these proceedings and juice “Black Swan” from slight, goofy melodrama into an over the top camp melodrama that combines exploitation films with high minded art films like we've never seen before.

Natalie Portman spent months training to become a ballet professional losing more than 25 pounds from her already slight frame and allegedly breaking both ribs and toes in the process. I will put what Ms. Portman did up against the physical commitment of any actor in just about any role; her commitment here is remarkable and the performance is devastating as a result.

In previous roles Ms. Portman has played vulnerable but in “Black Swan” she takes on a frightful level of frailty. Looking as if a stiff breeze could take her away and speaking with the quivering voice of a small child, Ms. Portman portrays a fragility that is both physical and emotional. As Nina descends the depths of “Black Swan” Ms. Portman's delicate performance acquires bizarre new levels and by the end you are so fascinated by her that “Black Swan's” many artistic flights slip past almost unnoticed.

The extraordinary look of “Black Swan” is achieved with a combination of hand held digital and an extraordinarily small 16 millimeter film camera with minimal movie lighting that gives an intimate, almost claustrophobic effect in scenes set in Nina’s tiny apartment and an elegant yet macabre look during the lavishly produced ballet sequences. The camera work is so fluid and the production design so terrific that it may go unnoticed by many.

Not surprisingly, the scenes getting the most attention are the sex scenes. Long time friends Portman and Kunis engage is a rigorous girl on girl scene that is more in the imagination of the viewer than you may have been lead to believe. In an exceptional series of scenes Matthew Cassell's imperious leader instructs Nina to touch herself in order to get in touch with the seductive character of the Black Swan leading to a scene that begins erotic and grows disturbingly, darkly, comic.

Darren Aronofsky is part of that rare breed of directors with nerves of steel who rarely question their vision even if that vision is wildly out of the norm. Few other filmmakers would have the guts to try what Aronofsky somehow pulls off in “Black Swan,” a blithely over the top melodrama that haughtily demands to be taken seriously. Laugh if you like, Aronofsky and “Black Swan” stand proudly and in the ungodly brilliant performance of Natalie Portman indeed you have something that cannot easily be dismissed.

“Black Swan” is a stunner; a film of extravagant oddity and highly charged passion. A film with a deeply melodramatic heart and yet high minded pretensions. Darren Aronofsky and company walk a daring high wire act to keep all of these elements in play, at odds and ever moving toward a crashing, spectacular crescendo. This is a film that demands and commands your attention.