Darren Aronofsky’s (Black Swan, The Fountain) The Wrestler was my most anticipated movie of 2008. Professional wrestling is my guilty pleasure. I don’t watch it every week, and I never order a pay-per-view (okay, maybe Wrestlemania now and then), but I know what is happening. I also have a few compilation DVDs of some of my favorite wrestlers. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) really is a soap opera in an alternative form. When I first heard a movie coming out called The Wrestler, I figured it would be some lame comedy that made fun of the world of professional wrestling. When I heard that it was not, but was being referred to as not just one of the top 10 movies of the year but the performance of Mickey Rourke’s (A Prayer For The Dying, 9 1/2 Weeks ) career, I knew it was a movie I would see just as quickly as I could. The main problem was that I had to wait forever to see it. It was only filmed in cities like New York and Los Angeles for the longest period. Once it came closer to Washington DC, it was still in just one theater which was not very close to my house. Finally, some two months after dying to see the movie, I got my wish when it came to our local artsy theater. By then, the film could not live up to its hype.Continue reading The Wrestler (2008)
Moneyball is the true story of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane. In 2001, the Athletics advanced to the Major League Baseball American League Division Championship Game, where their opening day payroll of $33,000,000 was facing the New York Yankees and their opening day payroll of $109,000,000 in an elimination game for the right to advance to the conference championship. Instead, the Athletics lose the game and the series. It is a foregone conclusion that the team will lose its three marquee players, who are free to sign wherever they want, to bigger market cities because the team doesn’t have the money to sign the players to the massive contracts they have demanded with great statistical seasons.
With some of his performances, George Clooney has been known for hitting the ball out of the ballpark. A two-time Academy Award Nominee for Best Actor in a Leading Performance (2007’s Michael Clayton, 2009’s 
Had it received a release date in any other year, Rabbit Hole would have made my 
After being thoroughly disappointed by Terrence Malick’s tone poem The Tree of Life, I was hesitant to watch Melancholia after watching its similar artistic trailer and hearing comparisons between the two movies. However, unlike The Tree of Life, which I went to see thinking would be a good movie, I decided to view Melancholia because some were calling it the best performance of Kirsten Dunst’s (Spiderman, The Virgin Suicides) career. While Dunst was deserving of the praise, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the experience of Melancholia.