The Fighter
I really like Mark Wahlberg as an actor. Add in Batman (Christian Bale), and it seems like you'd have a pretty good movie on your hands. In general, boxing/wrestling movies seem to do really well (Million Dollar Baby, Rocky, Cinderella Man, The Wrestler), but I feel like there have been a lot of those lately. Kind of played out a bit, you know? This film is about Mark Wahlberg (Micky) being trained by his brother, Batman, who used to be a pretty well-known fighter (he fought Sugar Ray) - someone is shooting a documentary about him, and it's assumed at first that it's about him training his brother, but you find out later that it's about crack addiction.
First of all, Christian Bale (Dickie) is a creepy looking guy when he's thin - remember The Machinist? Yikes. But it definitely works for him in this movie, because he plays a guy who was famous and now is, you know, not. I'm just saying though, Batman loses forty pounds and looks like a meth addict. I mean, okay, he's playing a drug addict, but I think that's obvious without knowing about it. Evidently, this is a relatively true story, or at least based on one. Not knowing anything about boxing, that isn't that big of a deal to me, so I hope they did an okay job representing the characters. Mark Wahlberg pretty much played the exact character he has in, oh, every other movie he's been in, but he does it well, so I guess it's good to stick with what works.
What's good about this movie isn't the action and boxing, but the general plot of a broken family, i.e. Christian Bale. I really want to not like him, but he is a damn good actor. The woman who plays their mother, Alice, was awesome, and I'm surprised Amy Adams was nominated instead of her. Frankly, I don't know why Mark Wahlberg was nominated for Best Actor - his performance was subpar in my opinion. Not terrible, not special, just vanilla. If you read my review of The Social Network, I wasn't a huge fan of that either, and Jesse Eisenberg was better than Mark Wahlberg. Ugh. I guess it was slim pickings this year.
This film is nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor-Drama (Mark Wahlberg), Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Best Supporting Actress (Amy Adams), and Best Director. So it's one of the more heavily nominated films for the Globes this year - and it's a fair assumption that it will be well-nominated for the Academy Awards as well. In my opinion, Christian Bale has a good shot at Supporting Actor, but I don't think the film deserves any other awards. Although, maybe it's the best of all the crappy movies that were out - we shall see.
First of all, Christian Bale (Dickie) is a creepy looking guy when he's thin - remember The Machinist? Yikes. But it definitely works for him in this movie, because he plays a guy who was famous and now is, you know, not. I'm just saying though, Batman loses forty pounds and looks like a meth addict. I mean, okay, he's playing a drug addict, but I think that's obvious without knowing about it. Evidently, this is a relatively true story, or at least based on one. Not knowing anything about boxing, that isn't that big of a deal to me, so I hope they did an okay job representing the characters. Mark Wahlberg pretty much played the exact character he has in, oh, every other movie he's been in, but he does it well, so I guess it's good to stick with what works.
What's good about this movie isn't the action and boxing, but the general plot of a broken family, i.e. Christian Bale. I really want to not like him, but he is a damn good actor. The woman who plays their mother, Alice, was awesome, and I'm surprised Amy Adams was nominated instead of her. Frankly, I don't know why Mark Wahlberg was nominated for Best Actor - his performance was subpar in my opinion. Not terrible, not special, just vanilla. If you read my review of The Social Network, I wasn't a huge fan of that either, and Jesse Eisenberg was better than Mark Wahlberg. Ugh. I guess it was slim pickings this year.
This film is nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor-Drama (Mark Wahlberg), Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Best Supporting Actress (Amy Adams), and Best Director. So it's one of the more heavily nominated films for the Globes this year - and it's a fair assumption that it will be well-nominated for the Academy Awards as well. In my opinion, Christian Bale has a good shot at Supporting Actor, but I don't think the film deserves any other awards. Although, maybe it's the best of all the crappy movies that were out - we shall see.
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