(We're reposting our review of The Wrestler form the Toronto International Film Festival to coincide with the film's theatrical release.)

By James Rocchi

After winning top honors at the Venice Film Festival, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler rapidly became the must-see of the Toronto International Film Festival, with huge lines at the press and industry screening this afternoon seemingly unaffected by the news that Fox Searchlight had purchased the film. After seeing The Wrestler for myself, I feel the need to extend a note of caution about the film, which sailed into Toronto buoyed by advance raves for Mickey Rourke's performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a low-level professional wrestler -- and we soon see how really, both those words could be in quotation marks -- whose '80s glory days are long over, scraping by at low-level, low-paying matches until a heart attack forces him to leave the ring and look at his life in the shadow of death. Many have already written about the parallels between Mickey Rourke and the swaggering, scarred wrestler he plays -- early success, fame and notoriety, a series of mis-steps and mistakes taking it all away bit by bit as the years advanced -- and the charge Rourke's own rise and fall offers a filmmaker like Aaronofsky looking to explore ruin and redemption.

But don't believe the hype -- or, more importantly, look past it; if a complicated, messy personal life were all it took to deliver a great performance, Paris Hilton and O.J. Simpson would have more Oscars than Katharine Hepburn. Rourke's work as Randy is physical, invested, powerful and sprawling -- but it's also quiet, sad and hauntingly wounded, too. And The Wrestler offers viewers far more than just Rourke's performance -- which, it must be said, is excellent -- if they're willing to not flinch from what it has to say: The Wrestler is a fascinating, rich, unblinking look at the dark, hunched mean streak that lies curled and poisonous inside of so much American popular entertainment and of so much American life. It's early to say this, but The Wrestler is one of the most grimly exciting, magnetically repellent movies we've had in a long time; it's flat-out one of the best American movies of 2008.

I don't need much of an excuse to visit Austin, Texas. Find me an event that A) strings more than four movies together, and B) takes place at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and there's a good chance I'm checking my bank account, desperately scrambling for flight money. But despite the fact that I've done five SXSW visits, three Fantastic Fest trips, and a few more Austin journeys just for the heck of it ... I'd never attended a BNAT shindig. But I made it to the tenth annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and of course I had a damn good time once it got rolling.

Let's just do a quick run-through, chronologically speaking, and I'm listing just the FULL movies here. At the end I'll go over the various clips we were treated to...

Once again, your friends at Cinematical will be braving the arctic cold in Park City, Utah to bring you the best and brightest from the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2009. The films in competition this year, spread across four different categories (Documentary Competition, Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition and World Cinema Dramatic Competition) were just announced and we've got 'em right here.

Among some of the highlights we have Doug Pray's doc Art & Copy about the advertising world, Good Hair (comedian Chris Rock examining African-American hair?), John Krasinski's (The Office) directorial debut Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Paper Heart (that secret Michael Cera flick we told you about), Cold Souls (with Paul Giamatti and Emily Watson) and An Education (from writer Nick Hornby). Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore noted that "This year's films are not narrowly defined. Instead we have a blurring of genres, a crossing of boundaries: geographic, generational, socio-economic and the like. The result is both an exhilarating and emotive Festival in which traditional mythologies are suspended, discoveries are made, and creative storytelling is embraced." Tomorrow we'll have the non-competition films.

Check out the entire slate (with descriptions) after the jump, then tell us what looks good to you.

My favorite film festivals are the ones that are kinda small, intimate and easy to access, which is why we here at Cinematical are big fans of The Big Apple Film Festival in NYC. The 5th Annual Big Apple Film Festival begins this Wednesday at Tribeca Cinemas with the New York premiere of festival darling The Living Wake, starring Mike O'Connell and Jesse Eisenberg. Easily one of the more eccentric films of the year, The Living Wake is a must see for anyone who likes a little absurd with their humor.

Aside from The Living Wake (which also played CineVegas and the recent Los Angeles AFI Fest), Big Apple is screening upwards of 90 films this year (their largest number to date) - most of which come packaged with New York style, settings and edge. Other notable films in the lineup include The Project (Audience Award winner at Slamdance '08), Goodbye Baby, The Ultimate Jew: Jackie Mason, iMurders, Last Call and a pretty cool doc called Beyond Wiseguys about Italian-Americans in film. Cinematical will be on hand for all four nights of the fest (Wednesday through Saturday), and yours truly will also be moderating six post-screening Q&As, so definitely make sure you stop in and say hello.

For more on The Big Apple Film Festival, like a complete schedule and info on how to buy tickets, please visit their official website. See you later in the week!

Well my friends are gone
And my hair is gray
And I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day In the tower of song
-- Tower of Song, Leonard Cohen

Harvey Shines (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York jingle-writer who doesn't quite toil in the tower of song; maybe in a small office in a nearby strip mall. But the rest of it applies; he's older, tired, headed to London for his daughter's wedding and obsessing about getting back fast in time for a job-related meeting. Harvey's dreading the trip before he even takes it, which guarantees it will be dreadful, but then he meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), another single, singular person unwilling to confront the terrifying possibility of happiness. ...

Written and directed by Joel Hopkins (who previously gave us the younger-skewed Jump Tomorrow), Last Chance Harvey may be easily -- in fact, too easily -- dismissed as "Before Sunrise for the sunset years," as Harvey and Kate meet accidentally, mesh immediately, dare to hope, get brought together by chance and separated by accident. Younger audiences will ignore Last Chance Harvey like a an overdue bill notice in the post, but if you've been around the block of life a few times -- on the bus or under it -- you'll find that it wins you over, bit by bit, in no small part thanks to the mix of effortless charm and contemplated sincerity Hoffman and Thompson bring to their work; the whole film has an air of lightweight gravity to it, and Hopkins may not be swinging for the fences, but he knows just how to swing and hit for a solid double.

What were the breakout films at this year's Fantastic Fest? Which French horror film had audiences squirming and arguing at Fantastic Fest and Toronto's Midnight Madness? What question couldn't James shake during Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- and what, according to Scott, is that film's secret weapon? And which October films are waiting to be your new fave film of the fall? Joining James this week to talk about all of the above -- and more -- is Cinematical's Managing Editor Scott Weinberg. ... Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

I haven't even finished all of my Fantastic Fest work yet (expect a semi-large wrap-up real soon), but my inbox has been flooded with new reports from three other genre festivals. And since I love this stuff, I figured I'd throw 'em all into one handy section. Let's begin reverse-chronologically, shall we?

Beginning on October 17 is the small-but-powerful Toronto After Dark festival (October 17 - 24), which aims to fill a post-TIFF void while Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes and his staff take a well-earned vacation. I shan't be able to attend this fine-looking event, but the final slate just came in -- and I can definitely vouch for titles like the brilliant Let the Right On, the amusingly bizarre South of Heaven, the splatterific Tokyo Gore Police, and the stylishly nasty Donkey Punch. Among those "ooh, I wanna see that" titles we have Kevin Tenney's Brain Dead, the comedy horror Netherbeast Incorporated, and I Sell the Dead, which stars Ron Perlman, Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden AND Angus Scrimm. Cool. For more info on Toronto After Dark, click right here.

After the jump: More geeky droolings on L.A. Screamfest and the biggie: SITGES!

Above: Jasper Sharp, author of Behind the Pink Curtain; the Alamo Drafthouse; Sean Donnelly (blue shirt), director of doc I Think We're Alone Now; Rian Johnson (glasses), director of The Brothers Bloom; Devin Faraci (glasses and beard), writer, CHUD.com, in the midst of debate; Jay Slater, English writer, ready to resolve a debate by boxing.

What qualifies a mainstream comedy like The Brothers Bloom to screen at Fantastic Fest, a festival reknowned for its horror, science fiction, fantasy, and other hard-core genre entries? One answer might be: 'Because co-founder Harry Knowles said so,' but even Knowles wondered if the film belonged in the program. The better answer might be: 'Why the heck not?' The best film festivals in the world are programmed by knowledgeable people who are passionate about presenting films they love to audiences who are eager to discover great new work.

In his introduction to the film, which was presented as the first "secret screening" of the festival (titles not revealed in advance; the shows always sell out anyway) on Tuesday evening, Knowles expressed his conviction that writer/director Rian Johnson "creates his own worlds." Certainly there are fairy-tale aspects to Johnson's featherweight con man tale, but I doubt anyone present really cared if the film "belonged" at the festival or not. The steady stream of visual gags drew near constant laughter, though I agree with James Rocchi that the film drags too long and, for me, edged too far into sentimental obscurity. The Brothers Bloom opens wide in January.

My screening day began with horror thriller Donkey Punch, a conventional yet refreshingly hard-edged dive into depravity that could be summed up as "threesomes never end well for anybody," a modern updating of the 80s slasher film notion that sexually active teens must pay for their sins by dying in repulsive ways. It's due for limited release in January.

By Monday, we were more than halfway through Fantastic Fest. On the one hand, festgoers who were just there for the weekend had departed, thinning the crowds slightly. On the other hand, some of us realized that there were still tons of movies to see and only a limited time, so we had better try to get into as many films as we could. I know some people who managed to see 5 or 6 films a day. I'm not one of them -- too wimpy.

One movie I saw and liked on Monday was Santos, a superhero film from Chile. When director Nicolas Lopez took the stage before the movie, I recognized him as one of the judges from Thursday night's Air Sex Championships. He was a wonderfully unpredictable judge and turned out to be a charming speaker during the intro and later during the Q&A for his film (as shown in the photo after the jump). Santos is about a comic-book artist who doesn't realize he has the same superpowers as one of the characters he writes about -- and at various points in his life, he's called upon to use those powers. It's very funny, but if you get the chance to see it, bear in mind that many of the gags are not at all family-friendly. Santos was produced by Elizabeth Avellan of Austin's Troublemaker Studios (which produces Robert Rodriguez's films) -- no U.S. distribution deals as of yet, but I hope that changes.

(from left to right) Fantastic Fest programmer Zack Carlson, Fantastic Feud co-hosts Devin Steuerwald and Scott Weinberg, and Not Quite Hollywood director Mark Hartley

With the weekend came no sure rest for Fantastic Fest attendees. Saturday kicked off with, among other things: a screening of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes shown from an HD master of a cut unseen in over thirty-five years; initial screenings of the very popular Tiffany stalker doc I Think We're Alone Now and the very anticipated Swedish vampire drama Let the Right One In (which can now fall firmly in the former category); and a boat party held in honor of Donkey Punch, in which several youthful types face some serious consequences after their high behavior on the high seas. Did life end up imitating art on that front...?

Arriving at my place of lodging shortly before 3:00 a.m. very late on Saturday night (or early this Sunday morning), it felt like a short night at Fantastic Fest. That's not to say that everybody parties until dawn, but with three (sometimes four) screens pumping out a steady stream of genre flicks all day long -- some of which don't start until well past midnight -- Fantastic Fest attendees might be forgiven for losing track of "normal" hours.

That's what happened to me on Friday night, which stretched well into Saturday morning. But before that craziness ensued, there were the films, and I got to see a typically odd combination, beginning with Ole Bornedal's Just Another Love Story. One of two productions that the Danish director made last year, Just Another Love Story plays like While You Were Sleeping on acid, which is basically how Alamo Drafthouse / Fantastic Fest programmer Zack Carlson described it in his introduction. A family man is mistaken for the boyfriend of an accident victim in a coma. When she wakes up, the deception ensues.

Rather than romantic comedy hijinks, Just Another Love Story pushes quickly into dark dramatics and the fantasy of a mid-life crisis before circling back around to the territory inhabited by Jonathan Demme's Something Wild. I followed that up with The Substitute, also directed by Bornedal, which was a big box office success in Denmark. It's easy to see why. The terrific Paprika Steen lets her hair down, so to speak, as a farmer's wife who is possessed by an alien life form.

There are indie filmmakers who try to work in the realm of small character dramas and succeed only in making myopic films that feel inert and meaningless; there are those who attempt to stand out from the pack by writing scripts replete with quirky story lines and witty dialogue, only to end up with a mundane mess; and then there are a few who manage to achieve, through a combination of richly drawn, yet simple stories and excellent cinematography, a level of filmmaking that inspires without overwhelming, impresses without overreaching. Ramin Bahrani falls firmly in the latter camp, and with his latest film, Goodbye Solo, the director builds on the excellence of his previous work with a finely drawn tale of a cabdriver and the fare who changes his life.

Bahrani starts with an intriguing premise: Solo, a cab driver (Souléymane Sy Savané) picks up a routine fare, only to find his life turned upside down when the man he picks up asks him to take him to the remote mountaintop location of Blowing Rock in two weeks, where he plans to jump to his death. Solo's troubled by both the plans of his fare, William (Red West) to end his life, and the implications to himself of being a party to the man's suicide; he decides to befriend the older man in an attempt to persuade him to change his plans. This is the simple set-up for the film, and it's all Bahrani needs to make a thoughtful, compelling film that explores the relationship between these two vastly different men and the way they're changed by the friendship they form.

Based on journalist Mark Boal's real experiences following bomb disposal experts in Iraq, The Hurt Locker isn't just a welcome return to big-screen action from director Kathryn Bigelow (who has wrung both fame and infamy from her art with Near Dark, Strange Days and Point Break). It's an assured, confident, swaggering piece of moviemaking that manages to not only evoke every war of the 20th century but also, despite the claims by makers and some reviewers that it's an 'apolitical' film, speaks very specifically to the Iraq war. Even so, plunging us into the thick of things alongside the highly-trained men (and they're all men here) who defuse bombs for the Army, Bigelow and Boal avoid the speeches and postures and long, contemplative talks of home front films like Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah by staying in Iraq, and they shun the loopy, loony formal experiments of Brian De Palma's Redacted. Boal and Bigelow stay laser-focused on one group of men with a singular mission, and make us live in the constant possibility of death. Viewed from half a world away, a bomb is a political concern; viewed from less than a foot away, a bomb's just a high-stakes exercise in problem-solving, where making a mistake means a final, terminal education in the physics of expanding gases.

The Hurt Locker follows three soldiers -- bomb tech James (Jeremy Renner) and his subordinates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldrige (Brian Geraghty) into the jaws of death; it's all last names in The Hurt Locker, as seen on patches and heard in urgent radio dispatches. Early on, Bigleow establishes that people will be killed in this film -- with a bravura sequence that depicts a bomb's detonation on the macro and micro level, billowing bursts of smoke and pressure and flame intercut with gravel and dust leaping choreographed in lockstep by the pressure wave, as if God had slammed his fist on reality hard to make a point -- and while Renner, Mackie and Geraghty are fine actors, they're also unknown enough to subconsciously let us know that they aren't safe from what may happen.

It's hard to imagine for the few exhausted stragglers still going from film to film, but the end is in sight for the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Joining us this week on The Rocchi Review is critic, journalist, analyst and man-about-town David Poland, best known for his work at Movie City News and The Hot Blog, as well as his "Lunch with David" videocasts. Which films got a boost out of Toronto? What's it like to work at the Festival as a journalist? How crazy is it to feel 'behind' in covering movies that may not open for at least another three months? And what classic graphic novel did David dream of finally seeing adapted for the big screen after catching Waltz with Bashir? We talk about all those topics, Che, Slumdog Millionaire, Rachel Getting Married and much much more this week, all live from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Today I leave Toronto to head home to Seattle, leaving James Rocchi behind to see the fest through to its exhausting end. It's been a decent fest overall, not great but good. I saw a several films I enjoyed here, including Burn After Reading, Goodbye Solo, and 35 Rhums, as well as a couple of fun midnight picks with JCVD and Detroit Metal City.

I missed being able to see a lot of films I really wanted to see, due to schedule conflicts and the lack of a cloning machine at our hotel that would allow me to be multiple places at once (or at least, the ability to see far enough into the future to foresee which of two films screening opposite each other will be wretched).

It seems that lots and lots of people who attend this fest (I'm talking normal people, not those of us crazy or masochistic enough to work in any aspect of the film business) want very, very much to attend the big parties, and seem to think if they can't get in, they're missing something fun or perhaps even life-altering. There's always a gaggle of scantily clad girls and hipsters hovering around the entrance of these events, hoping to finagle a way to crash the party.