Foxcatcher

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2015)

I couldn't for the life of me see how anyone was going to turn a book about wrestling into a brooding thriller, and the trailer for it frankly looked about as gay as a c*ck in a frock and his socks on a rock in Bangkok.
But 'Foxcatcher' turns out to be a relentlessly dark, hypnotically tense, creepy film that's almost anti-Hollywood in all its silence and subtlety, with so many of the most powerful moments being communicated through pauses, glances, flickers of recognition and realization, with no dumbing down or over-explaining to the cattle-stalls. Amazing they got such big names in to make it, even if you can't recognize the most famous one in it at all.
Really, it's only a film 'about' wrestling in so far as Million Dollar Baby is a film 'about' boxing. And nowhere near as depressing, either, so that helps.