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Kurt Loder's Top Films Of 2008: 'The Wrestler,' 'Milk,' And 'Tropic Thunder' Make The List

Posted 12/30/08 11:25 am EST by in Hot Stuff, Reviews


Mickey Rourke and Darren AronofskyFROM MTV.COM: December's end brings with it once again the curious need for movie reviewers to pretend there's some sort of objective standard by which to determine the year's best picture, director, actors and whatnot. This is an undertaking that doesn't bear extensive contemplation. If more than a thousand films were released in this country in 2008 (the figures are a little murky), you'd have to sit through two or three a day, every day of the year, to see them all. I don't know anyone with little enough of a life to manage this. Then there's the apples-and-oranges problem. "Slumdog Millionaire," "Elegy" and "Tropic Thunder" are all top-level movies, but in no way do they resemble one another; attempting to discern which among them is "the best" would be like comparing androids and avocados, with the winner facing off against a chunk of Appenzeller cheese.

But I guess best-of lists, while very light in the meaningful department, can be sort of fun. Below are some of the year's standout people and pictures, with one in each category arbitrarily allotted the top perch, and some other candidates, often equally deserving of that placement, sub-grouped below. So:

Best Picture: "The Wrestler"

Continue reading Kurt Loder’s look at the best films and performances of 2008 on MTV.com!

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Kurt Loder Reviews 'The Wrestler': 'A Fearless And Heartbreaking Performance'

Posted 12/19/08 1:40 pm EST by in Reviews


Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler'FROM MTV.COM: Mickey Rourke has taken a lot of punishment over the years, most of it with a puzzling eagerness. In movies of the 1980s, like "Diner," "Angel Heart" and "The Pope of Greenwich Village," his whispery charisma made him one of the most fascinating young actors in film. Then, in the early '90s, he bailed out of the business to become a low-level professional boxer, which is where the punishment came in. Now, at the age of 52, with a face so heavily repaired it resembles an Easter Island import, Rourke has found the role of a lifetime in Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," in which he plays a has-been grappler who has also taken a lot of punishment but can't stop coming back for more — punishment is his life. It's a fearless and heartbreaking performance: Rourke himself may look lumpy and worked-over, but his charisma remains undented.

His character is Randy Robinson — "The Ram" — a star on the pro-wrestling circuit back in the '80s. Twenty-five years later, he's still pulling on the tights and soaking up steroids, but the matches are sparse these days, and the money minimal — he works a dead-end supermarket job on the side, but still can't make the rent in the dismal New Jersey trailer park where he lives. (New Jersey, with its bare trees and wintry flatlands, is a presiding emotional presence in the picture.) Wrestling has changed, too: Now your opponents come at you with barbed wire and staple guns, and rake dinner forks across your face. It's a young man's game, and Randy, with his bad back, hearing aid and deteriorating ticker, is no longer young.

Continue reading Kurt Loder's review of "The Wrestler" on MTV.com!

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Mickey Rourke And Darren Aronofsky: Party People, By Kurt Loder

Posted 12/4/08 4:21 pm EST by in Behind The Scenes


Mickey Rourke and Darren AronofskyNEW YORK -- Fox Searchlight Pictures threw the first big movie-biz holiday party of the season on Wednesday night, in the Library of the Hudson Hotel. (It's a "library" with a bar, a billiard table and giant framed cow portraits thick on the walls.) The company had much to be festive about, two of its latest features being the focus of much, as they say, "Oscar buzz."

Director Danny Boyle was on hand to absorb back pats and congratulatory chatter for "Slumdog Millionaire," his quasi-Bollywood love story/adventure movie, which was shot in Mumbai and features, among several other things, one of the year's great soundtracks (by famed Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman). Also in attendance was the film's cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, a madly affable Englishman, who attempted to explain the special camera he'd invented for the picture -- a sort of mini-Steadicam rig, it sounded like, amid the din -- and expressed his great love of India, a country where he's spent a considerable amount of time. Mumbai, especially, he said, is an extraordinarily crowded place ("You open up a cupboard and a family of fifteen comes tumbling out"), and it's a challenge to shoot in, but he'd go back in a minute. Not right this minute, though. First he has to hook up for a new picture with his longtime colleague, the Danish curmudgeon/director Lars Von Trier. Read More...

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Kurt Loder Reviews Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire': 'It Leaves You Breathless'

Posted 11/14/08 11:17 am EST by in Reviews


'Slumdog Millionaire'FROM MTV.COM: Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire" is a head-first immersion into the roiling urban culture of modern India, a quest movie that follows its teenage hero through the slums of Mumbai into slave camps, gangster dens and garish bordellos on his way to unexpected fame, unimaginable fortune and — he hopes — a reunion with the long-lost love of his young life. It's a unique adventure movie, and it leaves you breathless.

Boyle is a director who never seems to make the same sort of film twice. He's previously ventured into snarling drug comedies ("Trainspotting"), tropical island fantasies ("The Beach"), zombie horrors ("28 Days Later") and visionary sci-fi ("Sunshine"). Now he brings his rousing genre sensibility to bear on a vibrant world that's new to most of us, and we feel that we're discovering it, in considerable wonder, right along with him. (Boyle also credits Mumbai-based casting director Loveleen Tandan as the picture's co-director.)

Continue reading Kurt Loder's review of "Slumdog Millionaire" on MTV.com!

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Kurt Loder Reviews Charlie Kaufman's 'Synecdoche, New York'

Posted 11/7/08 10:37 am EST by in Reviews


Michelle Williams in 'Synecdoche, New York'FROM MTV.COM: Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter for whom "brilliant" is the default adjective, is reported to have been displeased in the past with what some directors have done with his scripts (notably George Clooney, with "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"). Now, with "Synecdoche, New York," Kaufman has directed one himself. The result is a picture that is (a) brilliant, in scattered parts, but also (b) a reminder that virtually every writer needs an editor.

The movie is about failure, decay and death, pretty much in that order. Oh, and confusion, possibly your own. It's presented as a comedy (well, of a Kaufmanian sort), but it's not exactly light on its feet. Philip Seymour Hoffman, usually such a fascinating actor to watch, is here sunk deep in shlubbiness as Caden Cotard, a mediocre director of plays stranded in the theatrical outback of Schenectady, New York. (Cotard's Syndrome — meaningfully, no doubt — is the psychiatric delusion that one is dead or rotting, or that the world no longer exists.) Caden is obsessed with disease and dying; his wife, Adele (the unconquerable Catherine Keener), thinks a lot about her husband dying, too, but in a hopeful way. Adele is an artist — she paints pictures so tiny they require headset magnification to make out what's going on in them. When she scores an exhibition of her work in Berlin, she leaves Caden behind but takes their 4-year-old daughter along. Not a good sign, but what can Caden do? As someone says at one point or another, "He lives in a half-world between stasis and anti-stasis."

Continue reading Kurt Loder's review of "Synecdoche, New York" at MTV.com.

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Kurt Loder Reviews Guy Ritchie's 'RocknRolla'

Posted 10/31/08 10:57 am EST by in Reviews


'RocknRolla'FROM MTV.COM How bad can the world economy be if people are still giving Guy Ritchie money to make movies? On the 10th anniversary of his breakthrough with "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" — a film about the near-incomprehensible doings of a group of London toughies with names like Dog, Plank, and Barry the Baptist — Ritchie is back with "RocknRolla," a film about the almost entirely incomprehensible doings of a group of London toughies with names like Waster, Tank and Fred the Head. Given the crash-and-burn of his last mob job, the utterly incomprehensible "Revolver" (with French Paul, Fat Dan and Lord John), the time would seem to have come for Ritchie to stop making this movie.

The plot of "RocknRolla" can be suggested in only the most impressionistic terms. There's an old-school bad guy named Lenny (Tom Wilkinson, channeling Bob Hoskins in "The Long Good Friday") and a new-school Russian bad guy named Uri (Karel Roden, revisiting the shady Russki he played in "The Bourne Supremacy"). There are also a pair of low-level gangsters named One Two and Handsome Bob (Gerard Butler and Tom Hardy), and a pair of unlikely club owners named Mickey and Roman (Jeremy Piven and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges), and a nest of gamblers called the Wild Bunch, and a crafty accountant named Stella (Thandie Newton), and a drugged-out rock star called Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), who happens to be Lenny's stepson (not that it matters). Suave Mark Strong plays Lenny's enforcer, Archie, and gives the only really interesting performance in the movie.

Continue reading Kurt Loder's review of "RocknRolla" at MTV.com.

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Kurt Loder Reviews Cult Horror Film 'Midnight Meat Train'

Posted 9/26/08 6:39 pm EST by in Reviews


Vinnie Jones as Mahogany in 'Midnight Meat Train'FROM MTV.COM: Well, here it is, the little movie that Lionsgate dumped unheralded into about a hundred second-run theatres last month, consigning it to the trash heap of horror history — or so a legion of ticked-off Clive Barker fans feared. "The Midnight Meat Train," based on one of Barker's 1984 "Books of Blood" stories, is now scheduled to make a proper debut on the FearNet channel on October 1, and on the channel's Web site on October 30. I'd suggest not missing it.

Unexpectedly — by me, anyway — "MMT" is not a gore movie. Not in the way that most brain-dead blood feasts are, at least. True, there are some savage attacks, some queasy dismemberments, and a meat-mallet head-bash that knocks a victim's eyeball straight out at the camera. But these are surprisingly fleeting, for the most part. Japanese cult director Ryuhei Kitamura maintains impressive control of the story, ratcheting up tension along the way toward well-prepared and startling bursts of terror. Click Here To Read Kurt Loder's Full Review

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Kurt Loder Reviews Al Pacino And Robert De Niro's 'Righteous Kill'

Posted 9/12/08 11:58 am EST by in Reviews


Al Pacino in 'Righteous Kill'FROM MTV.COM: Meet Tom "Turk" Cowan (Robert De Niro). Turk loves his job. He loves the way it allows him to combine his fiercest passion with his favorite activity. "I hate scumbags," he says. "And I like killing people."

Turk is a cop, and a hothead, and over the course of his 30 years as a detective with the NYPD, he and his genial, wisecracking partner, David "Rooster" Fisk (Al Pacino), have put away a lot of scumbags. Lately, though, it appears that Turk has been freelancing, too. We know this from the very beginning of "Righteous Kill," because the movie opens with a videotaped interrogation (which also serves as narration for the rest of the picture) in which Turk, looking straight into the camera, confesses to doing a number of very bad things. Read More On MTV.com

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'True Blood': Our Vampire Neighbors Come Out Of The Coffin and Into Your House, By Kurt Loder

Posted 8/1/08 5:51 pm EST by in Reviews


Anna Paquin in 'True Blood'Walking down the street a couple weeks ago I passed a poster promoting something called the “Vampire Rights Amendment.” Maybe you did, too. It didn’t register at first -- living in New York, one grows accustomed to all sorts of civic grievance. The next time I encountered one of these posters, though, I went home and looked up the VRA online, and was, first of all, surprised to find it online, and then to discover that it was part of an elaborate, under-the-radar ad campaign for an upcoming cable series called “True Blood.” Okay, I was roped in.

I’ve since acquired the first two episodes of the show, and a considerable amount of obscure information related thereto. “True Blood” is drawn from the eight “Southern Vampire Mysteries” written by Mississippi novelist Charlaine Harris, who among other things, I gather, is a former weightlifter. I mean no disrespect. These books are apparently very popular; naturally I haven’t heard of them before this. They chronicle the unusual adventures of a telepathic Louisiana barmaid (already it’s getting good) named Sookie Stackhouse, whose backwoodsy hometown of Bon Temps is apparently infested with werewolves, witches, shape-shifters and, of course, vampires. In fact, the sheriff is a vampire. In fact, Sookie dates a vampire. Sex abuse and serial killing also crop up, but let’s stick with the supernaturals. Read More...

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