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Evan Rachel Wood and Mickey Rourke an item?

January 30th, 2009 by Scott Marks

Evan Rachel Wood & Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.”

If you’re willing to take Marilyn Manson home to meet your dad, dating your movie “father” seems downright socially acceptable.

Rumors are swirling that The Wrestler co-stars Evan Rachel Wood, 21, and Mickey Rourke, 56, were caught making out after the SAG awards. The pair were spotted getting hot and heavy at the Grey Goose after-party following the show. They then popped up at another post-game party at the Four Seasons.

According to Fox News Pop Tarts, “the actress went upstairs with Rourke (whose second marriage ended over a decade ago) when he suddenly grabbed her for a lip-lock in the outside area of the swanky five-star hotel.”

Why couldn’t it have been Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch?

Wood and Rourke have been romantically linked since she played his daughter in The Wrestler, although Wood always denied that they were anything more than friends.

The Mick’s “people” did not respond for a comment. As much as I’d like to see Rourke walk away with the Oscar,  who needs one with Wood as a prize?

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Filed Under Gossip

Review: WENDY AND LUCY / Kelly Reichardt (2008)

January 26th, 2009 by Scott Marks

Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Written by Jon Raymond and Kelly Reichardt based on Raymond’s short story Train Choir
Starring: Michelle Williams, Walter Dalton, Will Patton, John Robinson, Will Oldham and Larry Fessenden
Running Time: 80 min.
Photographed by Sam Levy

Rating: ★★★★★

I wanted to wait until the film received a theatrical release before reviewing it. Oscilloscope Laboratories, the film’s distributor, sent out screeners, but several of the nighttime scenes were so dark all I could discern was floating teeth.

The camera first spots Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) traipsing through a forest and playing fetch with her dog Lucy. Wendy could be just another pet lover exercising her pooch, but she’s not. Without once calling the monster by name, Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy paints a damning portrait of hopelessness and despair in George Bush’s America. It’s the type of story we haven’t seen much of since Warner Bros. in the 1930s.

Unlike the homeless gang warming themselves by a campfire that she happens upon, Wendy is determined to make a better life for herself. With exactly $525 to her name, Wendy is en route from Indiana to Alaska in search of employment in a cannery, and hopefully a better life. She makes it as far as Oregon before her Honda breaks down in a Walgreen’s parking lot. The same security guard (Walter Dalton) that tells her she can’t sleep there is kind enough to give Wendy a push. He becomes of the few characters in the film that understands Wendy’s pain and the only one deserving of the young woman’s limited trust.

After freshening up in a Shell Station lavatory, Wendy hitches Lucy to a bike stand and proceeds to shoplift that evening’s dinner. Before she can make it through the door, Wendy is stopped by Andy (John Robinson), a young handsome grocery clerk at a local market. Had they met in a bar, the jock would probably have put the make on her. Under these circumstances, he decides to make an example of Wendy in hopes of impressing his boss. In his eyes, if you can’t afford to feed a dog, you shouldn’t own one. Wendy is arrested and by the time she returns, Lucy is gone.

Budgeted at somewhere around $300,000 and shot in natural lights, Wendy and Lucy is as close as modern day movies come to neorealism. The story is slight, but the emotions and storytelling anything but. Watching the way in which characters react to Lucy’s plight is nothing short of miraculous.

Several people have complained that we are not given much in the way of backstory. Apart from a phone call to her sister and brother-in-law, we know nothing of how Wendy hit rock bottom. It’s not important. She did and no matter how much we root for her, nothing in the film gives any sign of a brighter tomorrow. The last shot finds Wendy hopping a freight train, only her flight isn’t the same as a glamorized hobo riding the rails in depression era America. In an interview with Gus Van Sant in BOMB Magazine, Kelly Reichardt commented, “Oddly, some people see the film’s ending as having hope. I didn’t see that much hope…These haven’t been optimistic times.”

None of the characters show any sign of ulterior motives. Were this a major studio release, surely one of the men around the campfire would have tried to assault Wendy to hammer home just how dire her situation is. As is, Wendy keeps her guard up by first sending Lucy in to scout out the situation before making contact with the group, but any sense of menace stops there.

Michelle Williams gives one of the best performances of the year. When asked why she chose Williams for the lead, Ms. Reichardt said, “It was easy to decide to work with her, I knew I needed someone who could be very still without coming across as emotionally dead or absent. In all her roles, Michelle seems to have a lot going on internally. She just has that thing where something is always coming through in her eyes.” It’s an insightful, wonderfully understated performance. Viewers will want to scream in frustration, but the only time Wendy loses her cool is when she bumps into the grocer after her arrest.

The audience I saw Wendy and Lucy with seemed oddly disconnected from the film. They actually chuckled when the security guard handed Wendy a few dollars. This wasn’t the type of nervous laughter audiences generally emit after being shocked or made to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps they found it amusing that someone was so naive in thinking that six or seven bucks could actually make a difference.

Make no mistake about it: Wendy and Lucy is a downer, but so what? Almost every great film short of Duck Soup contains elements that are bound to disturb. That’s what gives them their force and keeps me coming back for more.

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Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical

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