Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood's gritty boxing drama was the big winner at the 2005 Academy Awards, garnering Oscars for Best Film, Best Director (Eastwood), Best Actress (Hillary Swank) and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). As it did for 2003'sMystic River, Eastwood's life-long love of music and budding confidence as a composer has led him again to score the film himself. Anchored by elegiac figures for solo acoustic guitar and piano, it often sharesRiver'sspacious, subtle introspection. But it's also occasionally seasoned with welcome dollops of jazz and blues, the byproduct of a longstanding love affair with American roots music that also yielded his Charlie Parker biopicBirdand the insightful, Eastwood-produced Thelonius Monk documentary,Straight No Chaser. If its haunting, gently yearning string arrangements lack the bombast and overwrought melodicism that fuel so many Hollywood vehicles, Eastwood's musical sensibility here echoes his contemporary evolution as an actor and director: Surprisingly modern, with an emotionally tender, less-as-more ethos that's light years removed from his action film roots.--Jerry McCulley