Mark Goes To The Movies

Million Dollar Baby (dir. Clint Eastwood) Hard to write about this one without spoilers--but say it starts out like a standard boxing/sports story and takes a couple of hard left turns from there, ending up a boxing/sports story like The Brothers Karamazov is a mystery story: posing and nowhere near resolving big questions about self-reliance and interdependence, success and failure, life and death, love and loss. Clint's been playing to the limitations of his acting ability for many years now, but he pretty much owns the soft-hearted curmudgeon role. And Hilary Swank is just plain amazing. (Not to mention easy on the eyes even when she's getting the crap knocked out of her in the ring.) Mark's rating: ****