DVD OF THE WEEK

THE WRESTLER ****
Dir: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

Filmed hand-held in a grainy semi-documentary style, The Wrestler is a remarkable character study, set in the strange world of professional wrestling and powered by as good a performance as Mickey Rourke has ever given.
Rourke was always an extraordinary actor, his talent only matched by his own self-destructive qualities and marred by the occasional habit of coasting by on good looks and charisma. His eventual fall from Hollywood grace saw him embarking on a career as a boxer which eventually left his face a battered remnant of its former beauty. Here that works in his favour, making him perfect for the role of 'The Ram”, former big-time wrestler (he once sold out Madison Square Gardens!) now clinging to past glory, battling a bad heart, and wondering what happened to his life.
He is perfectly complemented by Marissa Tomei - frequently naked and seemingly with the ability to not age - as a sympathetic stripper, who the Ram hesitantly tries to woo. He is also making tentative steps towards getting to know his estranged daughter.
But a film needs to be more than a character study and this is. Not only does it delve in fascinating detail into the somewhat seedy world of wrestling and the tricks and pain and drug use that come with it, but it subtly explores the whole ethos of performance. Tomei and Rourke's characters remain apart because she recognises that stripping is just performance as a job while he cannot separate his life from what he does in the ring, an addiction to the crowds and the adulation that will eventually (we assume) kill him.

The Boat That Rocked (***) heads back a few years to give us a fictionalised take on the Radio Caroline story, which was basically a more interesting version of what happened to the Hauraki pirates in the early days of independent radio (these guys even played vinyl on the high seas rather than pre-recording). And much fun is had by the eccentric DJs who include Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Rhys Darby. Most entertaining is station boss Bill Nighy, but the whole thing has a rather soft and sentimental centre that continually drags proceeding to a less interesting mainstream.

A subtitled comedy that relies on differences of accents is a hard call but Welcome to the Sticks (***) just about pulls it off. The running joke is that those in the South of France view Northerners as philistines and peasants so that, when a malfeasant post office manager is sent there, first hilarity ensues then he slowly falls in love with the place (while hiding the fact from his unhappy wife). It's pretty broad comedy, and hardly original, though has become the biggest-grossing film in France so will probably appeal to those with Francophile tendencies.

Hailed as one of the shining lights of the recent British horror revival, Hush (***) is a perfectly competent if completely derivative effort that will probably have a few people sitting tensely on the edges of their seats. In it a young bickering couple are driving on the motorway when the back of a truck briefly swings open and he sees a naked screaming woman. Then at the next service station his girlfriend disappears. The film follows his attempts to find her while being menaced by the anonymous trucker. Happily, this relies on tension rather than gore, and does have at least one surprise twist, but for a seasoned horror-watcher it all seems kinda familiar.

Transporter 3 (**) is pretty much everything you expect from a Transporter movie. Jason Stathan, the titular courier, is forced to deliver a package and has to drive really fast and beat up a lot of people, usually without his shirt on (a fight where he uses his clothes as weapons is a high point). Things blow up frequently. There is a vague crack at adding a more complex plot but, really, who cares? These guys have their formula down pat and feel no need to change it now.