The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is a small, ragged character piece, modest in its ambitions but often striking in its emotional effects. It is not, as one would expect from the director of Requiem for a Dream, a particularly subtle movie, but in its broad gestures and shakycam aesthetics, it often locates a certain snub-nosed beauty at the fringes of the professional wrestling world. This is,