Miami Baldwin & Psycho Pasta

The two most entertaining movies I watched this week were Miami Blues and Beyond the Mat.

Full throttle Baldwin.

Take one look at the film still above and you'll understand why I had to watch Miami Blues. This is a bizarre movie that's a lot of fun to watch; the schizophrenic tone of the film wanders between dark comedy, cop thriller, and B-movie drek. This forgotten nineties flick stars the inimitable Alec Baldwin in a full-throttle performance as a con man prone to thievery and suspicious sidelong glances. In most scenes, Baldwin can be seen slugging on a beer while proudly displaying his beastly chest hair. The wafer-thin 'plot' of the movie is nonsensical and bizarre - Baldwin kills a Hari Krishna at the airport by breaking his finger (?), and spends the rest of the movie dodging the cops while posing as one. Overall fun to watch for the weird performance by young Baldwin in his prime and tacky nineties Miami Vice wardrobes.



Unlikely pasta spokesman: psychopath with talking sock sidekick.
Beyond the Mat is a documentary about pro wrestling. These real-life stories might pull a Star Trek on you by entertaining and fascinating you even if you don't normally give a shit about the subject matter. Judging by the tales in this film, Mickey Rourke's chewed-up has-been in The Wrestler probably feels almost biographical for many former pros (especially Jake 'The Snake' Roberts). The most arresting character is Mick Foley (aka Mankind), a kind and sensitive family man whose on-stage persona is a savage madman. Foley gets a dose of reality when he sees his kids' visceral, potentially traumatic reactions to the beatings that Dad takes at work. Beyond the Mat reveals that pro wrestling is "fake, but not as fake as you'd think." These guys are choreographed and trained, but they often bleed real blood and literally put their lives on the line.