Mostly by chance, I saw Million Dollar Baby on the same day it won Best Picture on tonight's Oscar's. I usually don't pay much attention to awards type shows but this year's crop does seem pretty good. I haven't seen Hotel Rwanda or Ray yet but I have seen Sideways, which I mostly liked, but was way out of it's league with Million Dollar Baby. Let's just say this, MDB is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time, if for no other reason than the sheer volume of emotional response it elicited. I figure you could score movies kind of like football games. One of the main metrics in football games is Time of Possession for one team or the other. So for movies, one of the gauges you could use is what percentage of the time you really gave a shit about the characters, and have some emotional reaction to what's going on with them. This was my issue with Sideways. Once I got the point of the movie (about 1/3 of the way through), it kind of meandered and got repetative until the end. I "kind-of" like most movies. I don't expect a major life-changing experience to feel like I got my 8 bucks worth, but it does take quite a bit for me to go much beyond that. I'll give it to MDB though which had me from start to finish. I didn't once wonder when it was going to be over, was truely amazed by Hillary Swank's performance, and am trying like hell to figure out how I can be more like Clint Eastwood not only now but when I'm 70. When I first heard about this movie I wasn't terribly compelled to go see it but now (Oscar or not), I'm glad I did.
Print | posted @ Sunday, February 27, 2005 11:49 PM