Million Dollar Baby

[partygirluk]

This is a very strong contender for film of 2005.
Hilary Swank's performance is just extraordinary, and she would be a very worthy Oscar winner. She has the most beautiful smile I have ever seen.
Clint Eastwood, directed, produced, acted and wrote the score for this film. At the age of 73, that is one seriously impressive feat.
Morgan Freeman is excellent in a supporting role, don't be surprised if he wins an Oscar.
The film is, on the surface, the story of a female boxer. Whilst you have to suspend your disbelief at times, the film makes many poignant points about human nature. Some of the dialogue is superbly written, and the relationship between Eastwood and Swank is wonderfully developed, laced with black humour. It explores some very deep moral issues towards the end of the film, and a measure of its success is that I just woke up after 4 hours sleep, thinking about the film. It will live long in my memory.

5/5

p.s. there is a moment in this film that should go in a "Movie Mistakes" thread. Eastwood removes Swank's mouthguard during a round break, but fails to replace it in time for the next round. Minor quibble.

[pshreck]

Im assuming you were lucky enough to watch it without knowing the ending?

Every conservative movie reviewer in the nation gave it away and told us not to see it.

[DontRaisePlz]

I think someone also mentioned this before, but it really damaged my expectations for the movie after I read the Sports Guy's column on it. I still don't know whether to watch it or not.

[tdarko]

dont listen to a sport's guy column, this movie is superb...damn near perfect only bad thing is my girlfriend crying her eyes out but other than that a [censored] helluva movie!

[tripdad]

[ QUOTE ]
Im assuming you were lucky enough to watch it without knowing the ending?

Every conservative movie reviewer in the nation gave it away and told us not to see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

i am a conservative (just slightly to the right of ghengis khan), so i was curious to know what was so controversial about it. so, i went to a site i knew the "plot twist" was given.

i agree with those who say the ads are misleading and so forth, but who cares? isn't that what you want in a movie...an out of nowhere plot twist?

i want to see the movie now more than i did before. knowing the twist will in no way deter from me liking it, and the twist itself doesn't bother me in the least. you'd think from all the hoopla it was about something far graver than what it is.

seriously, who wants to watch a movie about a chick boxer?

cheers!

[tdarko]

exactly! not knowing what happens is the whole effect of the movie...i saw this movie before it was wide released at one of those artsy independant film theatres and had no clue what was gonna happen and it knocked me on my ass! love this [censored] movie

[Bill Murphy]

..the liberals who took part in Slate.com's Movie Club hated MDB and dropped a couple spoilers themselves, although not as bad as Michael Medved in USA Today this week. I basically said fuggit and just read the short story it's based on.

I'd been meaning to post on this as I think the studio waited too long before putting MDB into general release. I understand there're many factors that go into setting a date(not the least being Oscar qualifying), but there's been non-stop hype about this film for well over a month and you can tell that every critic has been dying to drop hints. "Just when you think you're watching Rockyette it suckerpunches you" etc. Sports Guy actually did a good job holding back as he obviously hated the twist.

The studio musta known/hoped there was going to be lots of controversy. I don't think the spoilers have hurt my potential enjoyment of MDB too badly(I'm a huge Swank fan) but I wish they just would've thrown it into general release right away. Of course there is something to be said for all the anticipation buildup, too.

I'm normally really careful about spoilers, too; buy Harry Potter and Dark Tower books day of release, stay way away from the Net, etc. I took great pains not to read anything about Sideways, but let my guard down a bit w/MDB. Ah well.

Spoiler bad beat story. Never saw Sixth Sense cuz I hate the cute but troubled kid shtick. Heard enough about it that I decided to rent it about a year afterward. Foolishly nose around a Sixth Sense thread on 2+2 beforehand... /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Of course, every other MNight movie shoulda been spoilered to high heaven, to save people money. Whatta one hit wonder. I think Village was so lame he's gonna lose his spoiler protection; actually read a few articles on this topic. And he has to stop 'acting' in his own films, but that's another thread.

[partygirluk]

Unfortunately, the plot twist was given away for me. I was reading a newspaper on Sunday, and the headline was

*SPOILER ALERT*

"Catholic Church outcry over Eastwood's Euthanasia film"

I did not even read the article, but this headline gave away the film for me. I am sorely tempted to complain to the newspaper. Couldn't they just have had the same headline without the penultimate word? I feel like it would have been one helluva twist if I had not known it was coming. Nonetheless, the film was sensational.

[Bill Murphy]

I just saw MDB(unfortunately after knowing the ending). Without rehashing I'll say that I agree with most of the praise and criticism leveled at it. It's defo worth seeing just for the Swank & Eastwood performances, esp. *if you haven't heard about the ending yet*. Feel free to stop reading now.

However, as a long time boxing fan/nit I must point out a rather serious error: "Blue Bear" would definitely have been disqualified(and likely suspended/banned) for the late hit on top of everything else, therefore Maggie would've "won" the fight, thus becoming the champion(at least 'posthumously'). A small thing, perhaps, but it might be more evidence that F.X. O'Toole's stories should've been a starting rather than ending point for the script.

Three more quick thoughts: There have to be some more bad girl roles out there for Lucia Rijker(who is a legitimate world-class fighter BTW); a manager mercy-killing his crippled (girl!)fighter would only be like the biggest story in the country up until the next 9/11; and while most of Swank's career is charitably average at best, give her a trailer park accent and a burning desire for metamorphosis and she turns into Meryl-freaking Hepburn. Very unusual for any actress(or actor) to portray two completely different characters where you can imagine them and only them in the role.

The only other ones I can think of have very famous names.

[partygirluk]

The boxing was definitely unrealistic, but then so it is in every boxing film.

[Nottom]

I finally saw this movie and thought it was great. Somehow, I had not only not heard about the ending but had apparently been so far under my log I didn't even know there was a controversy.

I consider myself pretty conservative, but I really don't see what all the fuss is about.