long, languid.....and dull

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2005)

Mystic River pulled it off. It had perfect pacing and tension woven into an artfully fluid drama/tragedy. The audience was allowed a sneak into the machinery of Boston Americana and then allowed to go a little deeper into it's underbelly. It was strange and horrible and beautiful too. Million Dollar Baby, conversely, began to feel wincingly contrived as it began to resolve. Have you guys ever read poetry that was TRYING to be poetry...it's painful to read, almost...for all the wrong reasons. Well this movie was a tragedy that was TRYING to be a tragedy. I was never transported in this film. I felt stranded in my seat watching a film about boxing with some flakey comic relief and lots of piteous twists of fate. Each new heaping of plot, toward the end, elicited groans and massaging of my temples...not in empathy, but in dismay. I was barely finished processing one mouthful in one moment when another spoonful comes marching in. It's one thing to be stung by irony in a story and quite another to be buried up to your neck in it.I know, I know...these kinds of things do happen, and they are awful....we've got our Christopher Reeve story...I cannot imagine the struggle that these heroes undergo. But I'm gonna have to insist on some sense of evolution within film making these days. Of course we need tragedy in our movies...I love to hate tragedy...but give it an edge...God knows, being murdered with a dull blade is, well...murder. I cannot help but to think that the Academy is starting to crust over with its lack of movement...like old pudding. Somebody needs to stir the pot...Aviator was a far better film.