The Whale...

I'll start out by admitting that I cried.

Unless there's a performance that blind-sides me in the next couple of months, Brendan Fraser should have an Oscar this year. He ripped my heart out.

Darren Aronofsky has made a career dealing with addiction and obsession.

This is a film about addiction. It's an exploration of the reasons why, with several possible answers -- most of which are probably partial contributors.

The movie pulls no punches about the personal responsibility of the addict.

The main character, Charlie, is too many of us. Just like we see Charlie eating, not for pleasure, but out of a sense of inner compulsion.

In the end, the most that I can say without spoiling anything is that this is a movie about finding meaning.

It's a movie that deals with the fact that most of us will live and die without leaving much behind. Most of us won't have Wikipedia pages that'll even chronicle when we were born, or when we died. At some point, we may be grasping for that one thing that we can leave behind, and know was good.

The detractors of this film don't know what they're talking about. It's petty bullshit that people are questioning whether or not Fraser was right for the role. He was. He was perfect. The movie wasn't perfect; but, it was great.