Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (13 February 2005)

Much of how I rate a film is based on whether or not I, at any moment during the viewing, become conscious of the passage of actual time; that is, that I am actually conscious at any given moment of viewing a movie in a real time-space continuum. If a movie carries me along and causes me, in a fairly complete way, or as completely as possible, to be oblivious to my surroundings, then I believe the story is being told in a skillful and masterful way. You can split hairs over technique and other such minutia, but, the extent of how a movie accomplishes the above determines for me and, I believe, for others how good a film really is.
Million Dollar Baby accomplishes the above for me in a way that no other movie has done; at least in recent memory. There is no doubt in my mind that Million Dollar Baby is a masterpiece. Give Clint Eastwood the credit he is surely due. There are a lot of his directorial efforts (at least the ones I have seen which does not include Mystic River)that have been great. But, they have also been in what I like to call the "almost nearly but not quite hardly" category.
To coin some boxing terminology, Eastwood goes the distance on this one. I now consider MDB the best movie of all time.