FilmBender: sh*tfaced on movies

"King of California" is rich with idiosyncrasy

There are so many peculiar little things stuffed into King of California -- the notion of a crazy man possibly being genius, the fantasy of finding buried treasure, the novelty of using a metal detector, the possibility of buying a clunker over eBay (and being under age), the odd visual of tract housing suburban sprawl eating your quiet rural home (and you can resist, and it just builds up around you), the harsh reality of working at McDonalds, that some people's parents are stoners who are in bands, that sulfur springs exist, and the list goes on and on and on.  Maybe none are exactly idiosyncratic (other than Michael Douglas's character), but it is rife with kitch or irony or cliché or something funky that I liked.

And Michael's performance as a kook is just priceless... he crazy kills it.  And Evan Rachel Wood is just adorable to a level that makes her pretty hot (to the extent that you can't hardly imagine that she needs to work at Mickey D's or has to drive a beater like that, I mean, there's gotta be a sugar daddy [or a post high school graduate pervert] willing to take care of a cute high school drop-out).  Anyway, watch the movie trailer and read on because...

"The Wrestler" will f-ing kill you

Who knows what Mickey Rourke did to his f*cking face.  I've been sayin' that for the last couple of years.  Well... whatever... it kinda lends to the credibility of his has-been character in The Wrestler -- the prize of the 80's who's abused his body with tanning, 'roids, ho's and who knows what else.  It works.  If there's one thing that is totally believable about this movie, it's Mickey.  Wow... my heart bled for him.  It ached from the first scene and just never stopped.  If he doesn't win the Oscar, I give up.

But Mickey never does.  And he's not just the one thing that makes this film amazing.  Really, it's everything about this film.  Darren Aronofsky (from Pi: Faith in Chaos and Requiem for a Dream) is behind the lens while Mickey is in the ring and in the dumps; and the texture, the music, the bleached blond/long hair, the barbed wire, the stables, the glass and all his fans adoring him -- it all comes together in a wonderfully torturous existence that's second only to that other character you've heard of, Jesus Christ.  And Darren is God.  The charm behind the deli counter and then the meltdown.  I loved it and barely survived.  Regardless, watch the movie trailer and read on because...