Wisdom of Nuggets

Director Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning The Wrestler, the beautifully crafted vehicle for Mickey Rourke’s dramatic comeback role, will screen one time, Thursday, April 23, at 8:30 p.m. at the Nugget, in the Telluride Film Festival Presents! series.

“Like many great performances, it has an element of truth,” writes Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times, “Rourke himself was once young and glorious and made the big bucks. He did professional boxing just for the hell of it. He alienated a lot of people. He fell from grace and stardom, but kept working, because he was an actor and that was what he did. Now, here is his comeback role, playing Randy the Ram’s comeback.”

Randy (Rourke) is estranged from his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) and has trouble sustaining any real relationships. He exists for the adoration from his fans and for the electricity he generates inside the ring, until, unexpectedly, he is forced into retirement after a heart attack. His sense of identity begins to disintegrate; re-evaluating the state of his life, he attempts to reconnect with his daughter, and pursues romance with Cassidy, an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei – also nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her performance).

But his passion for his art beckons him back to the life of wrestling, and Randy soon finds himself working his way up the independent circuit for one final opportunity to defeat his longtime rival.

There will be one show, at 8:30 p.m., on Thursday, April 23 at the Nugget Theater, one night only. The movie is rated R and runs 105 minutes. Tickets are $8. No Nugget Passes, please.

And don’t miss The Secret Garden, free at Sunday at the Palm on April 26

Free films and free flowers! As Telluride begins to bloom, bring the whole family to eprxience this an inspiring film about life, magic and flowers. The Telluride Film Festival’s Sunday at the Palm series presents Polish Director Agnieszka Holland’s award-winning adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s novel The Secret Garden. The film follows young Mary Lennox, a strong-willed English girl orphaned by an earthquake in India who is sent to England to live with her uncle, a widower still in mourning for his wife, who died a decade ago, in a cold, unwelcoming Yorkshire mansion.

The resourceful and curious Mary she soon makes two exciting discoveries, first finding the key to a long-forgotten garden (locked up since the death of her aunt), and then discovering that she has a cousin, Colin, a sickly boy who must stay in bed and avoid daylight at all times. As Mary and her new friend, a local boy named Dickon, bring the garden back to life, they decide that Colin must see it. This decision will change several lives and will bring magic back to the entire house.

Critic Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “It is a beautiful, intelligent film – a fable, a lesson, and an entrancing entertainment,” and while he predicted that “the summer of 1993 will be remembered as the time when every child in the world wanted to see Jurassic Park,” also released in 1993, “the lucky ones will see this one, too.”

Garden screens Sunday, April 26, at 4 p.m., at the Michael D. Palm Theatre for the Performing Arts. Rated G, it is free to all; running time is 101 minutes

Sunday at the Palm is presented by The Telluride Film Festival, The Telluride Foundation and Telluride R1 School District.