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Score:
| The Wrestler MA
Next airing: 8:30pm Sun 21st March
After years in the acting wilderness, Mickey Rourke made a dazzling comeback as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a washed-up professional wrestler who craves one last shot at the big time, in director Darren Aronofsky’s powerful, brutal drama. In yet another case of life imitating art, both the actor and the character were major stars in the 1980s. Some 20 years later, Randy lives in a New Jersey caravan park, is estranged from his daughter Stephanie (a brooding, sullen Evan Rachel Wood), and barely makes ends meet as a grappler in seedy halls and school gyms. Only the camaraderie he enjoys with fellow wrestlers seems to keep him going.
Facing the end of his career, the battered and broke Randy is tempted to have a rematch with his old nemesis, The Ayatollah, while wooing a sympathetic stripper (Maria Tomei) and trying to reach out to Stephanie. Rourke gives a highly charged, bracingly honest portrayal of a tough but tender-hearted guy who’s past his prime and knows it: You really want him to win inside and out of the ring. The bone-crunching, blood-soaked wrestling scenes look very real, a far cry from the choreographed pantomime of the WWE. | |
Score:
| Roxanne PG
Next airing: 8:30pm Sat 20th March
Steve Martin with a Pinocchio-sized schnozzle is in top form in this updating of the Cyrano de Bergerac legend directed by Fred Schepisi. Written and executive produced by Martin, the romantic comedy centres around C.D. Bales, a small-town fire chief who has a complex about his elongated beak, although he’s willing to joke about it (''It must be wonderful to wake up in the morning and smell the coffee - in Brazil''…''I'd hate to see the grindstone”).
Like Cyrano, C.D. is a mean swordsman, except he uses a tennis racquet. He’s smitten when he helps a nude astronomy student named Roxanne (Daryl Hannah) get back into her house. She, inexplicably, has the hots for the new fireman Chris (Rick Rossovich), even without speaking to him. Chris is such a wuss he runs off in a panic when he first sees Roxanne, and he begs C.D. to help him woo her. Wearing glasses to appear brainy and spouting stuff about stars and comets, Hannah isn’t entirely convincing. But sooner or later you know Roxanne's going to realise something about her two suitors which is as plain as the nose on C.D.’s face.
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Score:
| Ordinary People M
Next airing: 6:25pm Fri 19th March
The affluent, upper middle-class Jarrett family are outwardly ordinary but cracks soon appear in their façade in this emotionally wrenching, Oscar-winning drama directed by Robert Redford, adapted from Judith Guest's popular novel. Donald Sutherland stars as tax lawyer Calvin Jarrett alongside Mary Tyler Moore as his tennis-playing wife Beth and Timothy Hutton as their troubled son Conrad.
Haunted by the death of his older brother in a boating accident, for which he blames himself, Conrad is hospitalized after trying to kill himself. Back home, the guilt-ridden teenager has trouble relating to his anxious parents and fitting in at school. Gradually his psychological wounds begin to heal thanks to a probing, sympathetic shrink (Judd Hirsch), and a cute girl he meets at choir practice (Elizabeth McGovern, in her movie debut), until a tragic incident sends him into a tailspin.
Hutton is outstanding as the angry, fragile Conrad, superbly complemented by Mary Tyler Moore as his emotionally distant mother and Sutherland as the well-meaning but ineffectual father. It won Oscars for best film (in a year when some pundits rated Raging Bull as more deserving), Hutton, director Redford and screenplay. | |
© The Premium Movie Partnership and Donald Groves 2009
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