Cinderella Man which came out in 2005 is one of the greatest all-time boxing movies without any doubt. The boxing scenes, unlike movies like Rocky 3 and 4, were realistic and exactly like the fights were fought in history. This movie is about the boxer James Braddock whose career spanned incredible highs and lows all occurring the time of the Great Depression. The story stretches from his early career which was successful to the middle years where he could not even get a fight and had to work on the docks, constantly struggling for money and even having to ask his friends and trainer for handouts. Braddock had a wife and 3 kids and one can only imagine the struggles of raising a family during the Great Depression.

Braddock’s fight with Max Baer on June 13, 1935, is considered one of the greatest ever and in terms of upsets against a fighter who was not only knocking out but in 2 cases killing his opponents. Braddock’s fight with Baer is the equal to the Ali-Foreman fight in 1974 where like Ali, nobody thought Braddock had a chance and most were afraid he might be killed by Baer. Despite all the long odds, Braddock won in a decision and completed an amazing comeback to win the heavyweight championship.

Ron Howard directed this great movie and its one of his best ever. Russel Crowe was outstanding playing Braddock as was Renée Zellweger who played his wife. The actor who stole the entire movie was Braddock’s trainer, played by Paul Giamonte. Giamonte’s emotion and concern over Braddock and his enthusiasm for his comeback were the best parts of this move and he was nominated for best supporting actor for this role, arguably his best ever.

At the end of this movie, the audience I saw it with stood up and applauded, which is something very rare in my experience. Everything about this movie was great, the acting and the boxing scenes and the great story. Cinderella Man is a definite must see movie.

I am actually embarrassed to admit that I saw this movie. Part of the reason for sitting through this mess was for this blog, the other part of the reason was that I hoped that just maybe there would be something funny in this horrible disgusting film. I could not have been more wrong because there was hardly anything funny in this entire film.

From the perspective of the four lead actors in their 30’s who star in this movie: Zack Efron, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick and Adam Devine my guess is that they have to constantly work in movies to maintain their expensive lifestyles which automatically comes with living in any kind of decent house in the Los Angeles, Malibu or Hollywood areas. Property taxes for multi-million dollar houses, huge mortgages to pay off, other financial pressures mean that you have to work all the time to stay in the game, even if it means making a movie that is complete garbage. Because of money, you have to completely forego your integrity after reading a script and accept a part that you know is horrible just so you can continue to make money. Then you make a very bad film in the hopes that one day a miracle will happen and you will get that great break of a high-quality well-made drama or comedy. This is just one of many reasons why so many bad movies are made. There are back-room deals that are made and agreements when previous movies are made to agree to a new project in the future as a favor for some producer who gave you a break in the past. Deals like this and so many others affect the overall quality of films that are made in Hollywood and this is why the quality of movies in this country seem to degrade year after year.

While I was sitting through this nightmare of almost 2 hours I wondered how something this so obviously bad could have been green-lighted and as a screenwriter myself I wondered how so many good scripts are passed over or never even read and something this bad gets through. You just had to realize that so many people must have known how bad it was when they decided to produce it. There is something wrong here with this industry and sadly it’s probably an unfixable problem. Its all been going on for far too long.

Anna Kendrick and Adam Devine are both cast members of the Pitch Perfect franchise and they are both excellent in those roles and both can sing especially Kendrick. As far as Aubrey Plaza she has some real skill as a comedic actress and never should have taken this part. As for Ephron this is probably his 7th bad movie in a row and his career is probably just about over at this point, but I could be wrong about that because he keeps getting bad parts in bad movies all the time. Go figure.

Miss this very bad movie because it is just plain very bad.

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It’s shocking and very depressing to realize that in this country in the year 2015 that some 38,000 people were killed in traffic accidents. People lose their parents, their children, close friends and relatives every day in accidents that are in most cases completely avoidable. In many of these cases, people are able to somehow move on with their lives but what if your one of the many who can’t move on? What if you are not able to ever recover from the death of your wife or your husband or the loss of your parents? What then? What do you do? How do you cope with an unrecoverable loss that can ruin your entire life because of a random car accident?

The aftermath of a tragic car accident where a wife is killed, leaving her badly injured husband and young daughter is what this movie is mostly about. This is a very difficult story that is rarely a story line of any movies over the years and this film does it so well that it should be nominated for an academy award. This film also has the extreme contrasts of human traits and emotions: namely the strong bond and love between a father and daughter trying desperately to overcome the loss of her mother and his wife which increased their bond, along with the other extremes of selfishness and cruelty of his wife’s sister and husband who try to take his daughter away from him. The custody battle causes Crowe’s character extreme financial hardship and even more angst and stress after his wife’s death. Aside from Crowe’s overwhelming grief over his wife dying he also sustained some major medical problems after the car accident that killed his wife, including violent seizures which caused him to have to leave his daughter with his wife’s sister and husband so he could seek treatment for 7 months. One telling scene was a call from his lawyer requesting a 25,000 dollar retainer fee so Crowe could keep his own daughter from being taken away from him which was another injustice Crowes character had to endure. The cruelty and injustice of life are consistently and depressingly depicted in this movie throughout, reminding us all of life’s many pitfalls. What was worse is that fact that Crowe’s character is a struggling novelist who is running out of money due to bad recent book sales and is another additional reason why his relatives are trying to take his daughter away from him.

In my many years of seeing many movies, I cannot remember seeing an out of the mainstream, low budget movie release with this many A-list actors. “Fathers and Daughters” has 3 academy award winning actors: Russel Crowe, Jane Fonda and Octavia Spencer. Amanda Seyfried plays Russel Crowe’s daughter in one of her best ever performances. Aaron Paul does an outstanding job in playing Seyfried’s boyfriend and Diane Krueger is excellent playing the bereaved sister of Crowe’s wife and Bruce Greenwood as her husband. This movie has seven A list actors and was still not released as a mainstream movie which is something I have never seen before. Perhaps it was because they didn’t find room to release this movie because of all the summer blockbusters. This movie was also made in 2015 so maybe it didn’t test well enough to be considered for a December 2015 release. In my opinion, this movie is as good as any drama I have seen in quite some time and is worthy of an Academy Award nomination for the acting performances and a very well told story.

Russel Crowe has is as good as I have ever seen him as the lead actor in this film and his young daughter played so well by Kyle Rogers that some of the emotional father and daughter moments of grief were very hard to watch because the scenes between the two of them were so believable. Kyle also starred in the movie Miracles from Heaven which is also reviewed in this blog. Amanda Seyfried was outstanding as Crowe’s daughter in her adult years and the side story was that because of her grief she was unable to have any kind of a normal adult relationship because of her fear of losing another person she loved. She also was a psychologist specializing in helping children which was another outlet during her life for her extreme grief and love of her father.

This movie is outstanding and a must see for anyone who appreciates great acting and a great story.