Number 7. The Wrestler
The Wrestler is almost more remarkable for what it's not than for what it is. A film about an over-the-hill wrestling superstar who can find no Happiness or stability outside the ring - and increasingly less inside of it - it could have been a melodramatic, soapy mess. There's even yet another stripper with a heart of gold, one of the most overdone clichés in movie history. But Darren Aronofsky, Mickey Rourke, and Marisa Tomei take the stereotypes and make them genuine again. The physical and emotional pain of Randy "The Ram" Robinson feels completely real in every single scene of The Wrestler. Rourke has been praised for giving one of those soul-baring, physically demanding performances that you only see every few years, but it's a part of the realism that Aronofsky is going for in the entire piece. Even the emotional confrontation with his estranged daughter, an underrated Evan Rachel Wood, which would have been pure soap opera in another director and actor's hands, feels painfully honest.
The Wrestler is almost more remarkable for what it's not than for what it is. A film about an over-the-hill wrestling superstar who can find no Happiness or stability outside the ring - and increasingly less inside of it - it could have been a melodramatic, soapy mess. There's even yet another stripper with a heart of gold, one of the most overdone clichés in movie history. But Darren Aronofsky, Mickey Rourke, and Marisa Tomei take the stereotypes and make them genuine again. The physical and emotional pain of Randy "The Ram" Robinson feels completely real in every single scene of The Wrestler. Rourke has been praised for giving one of those soul-baring, physically demanding performances that you only see every few years, but it's a part of the realism that Aronofsky is going for in the entire piece. Even the emotional confrontation with his estranged daughter, an underrated Evan Rachel Wood, which would have been pure soap opera in another director and actor's hands, feels painfully honest.