Million Dollar Baby (2004) * * * *

 

Directed by:  Clint Eastwood

Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Mackie, Brian F. O'Byrne, Margo Martindale

Million Dollar Baby is not a typical boxing movie.  It doesn't end with a "big fight", but with paralyzed fighter Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank) winning her final battle against her shamelessly manipulative mother who wants to swindle Maggie out of her money even as Maggie lies motionless in a hospital bed.  Maggie's family wasn't around for years and only showed up when they learned she might have money earned from her brief boxing career.  

Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning film (it won four Oscars for Picture, Director, Actress, and Supporting Actor) is about Maggie's dream to become a boxer and how the reluctant Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), who "doesn't train girls" not only becomes her trainer and mentor, but cares for Maggie in a way no one ever did.  He is asked by Maggie to assist her suicide when it becomes apparent Maggie will spend the rest of her life paralyzed from the neck down after a dirty punch in a lucrative match.  By then, Frankie would do anything for her, even help end her life.  Frankie himself is full of guilt to the point he attends church daily.  Guilt about what?  We never know for sure.  Eastwood's performance is among the best of his career.  He's gruff and outspoken, an old school boxing trainer, but he hides deep reservoirs of love and caring for those he allows into his world.  

Among them is Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris (Freeman), another trainer whom Frankie once managed and is blind in one eye following a beating in the ring long ago.  Freeman narrates the story in his inimitable way and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role.  He senses the immeasurable pain and regret in Frankie, but Eastwood doesn't play for pathos or sympathy.  Swank, a Best Actress Oscar winner for her role, is the eternal optimist who won't quit until she understands she may have to quit.  She changes Frankie's mind about her due to her energy and willingness to listen.  Boxing is a way out of a career of waitressing and anonymity.  

Eastwood the director is as certain and minimal as Eastwood the actor.  There is barely any fat there.  He drives the story forward, only showing us what is necessary.  He does nothing just for the hell of it.  If it's there, there's a reason.  Million Dollar Baby takes place in the world of boxing and knows its stuff, but there are deeper emotions involved.  Eastwood and his brilliant cast gets to the heart of it and stays there. 

Pee Wee as Himself (2025) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Matt Wolf

Starring:  Paul Reubens (interview subject)

Pee Wee as Himself is not a standard documentary about a famous actor and the character he created which became entrenched in pop culture in the 80's and 90's.  Pee Wee Herman is still beloved today, while its creator Paul Reubens seemed to lament not being known as being anything but Pee Wee Herman.   Many actors and comedians wish they had his problems, but the late Reubens comes across in this documentary as someone at odds with himself in many ways, not least of which is his ambivalence about consenting to be interviewed for forty hours for the documentary. 

Pee Wee's Big Adventure thrust Reubens into the spotlight in 1985 after toiling for years on the L.A. comedy circuit.  Before assuming the Pee Wee Herman character, Reubens struggled as an actor with bit parts in short films and working the comedy circuit.  Once he crafted Pee Wee, the rest was history.  The two-part documentary, directed by Matt Wolf, shows Reubens as a person so intensely private he did not inform anyone that he was privately battling lung cancer for six years.  Reubens playfully, and sometimes not, addresses the camera and reluctantly reveals his story like a magician unwilling to part with the secrets to his tricks.  He was someone who wasn't used to ceding control, and Wolf needs to check in with him to gauge Reubens' trust in him.  Reubens hands over the reins and it takes every bit of self-control to keep his teeth from gnashing.

Reubens was so committed to Pee Wee Herman that he would rarely go out in public as Reubens.  He was homosexual, and the great love of his life was an artist named Guy whom he met in the 1970's.  However, Reubens felt he was losing his drive to be an actor because of the relationship, and then not only broke up with Guy (who later succumbed to AIDS) but then decided to go back in the closet for fear his homosexuality would ruin his career.  Following the success of Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Pee Wee's Playhouse came the failure of Big Top Pee Wee (1988), which Reubens produced and wrote.  While happy about the success of Big Adventure, Reubens was also angry about not receiving enough credit as the creator of the character while feeling director Tim Burton received more credit for the movie's success.  Reubens regained control with Big Top Pee Wee and it failed at the box office and with critics.  

Then came the summer of 1991, when Reubens was arrested for allegedly masturbating and exposing himself in a Sarasota, Florida adult theater.  He disdainfully mentions his "Charles Manson mugshot" and for the first time, Reubens made headlines minus the Pee Wee Herman persona.  It was a troubling summer, and he pleaded no-contest to lesser charges.  Besides a famed appearance at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, Reubens did not down the suit and bowtie for another twenty years.  Legal troubles in the early 2000's followed, when Reubens' home was raided for alleged child pornography.  None was found, but Reubens pleaded no-contest again to a lesser charge and had to register as a sex offender.  

Some moments of the documentary drag.  I didn't find the behind-the-scenes aspects of Pee Wee's Playhouse as interesting as expected, maybe because I didn't watch the show.  Reubens cut off the interviews after forty hours and then decided later to try and finish the project.  He was not easy to work with, and Pee Wee as Himself does not attempt to hide that.  What we have is Reubens trying to his hardest to be honest while keeping himself hidden in plain view of the camera.  There is still mystery to Reubens, and his death in 2023 left the documentary without a true ending.   However, when Reubens said goodbye as an animated Pee Wee, it contains power and displays why we loved Pee Wee Herman in the first place. 

Thunderbolts* (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Jake Schrier

Starring:  Florence Pugh, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lewis Pullman, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan

Thunderbolts are now the new Avengers and, despite their efforts, they simply lack the personality of the originals.  Like Avengers movies, there is plenty of action and things blowing up, but the heart is missing.  The movie perks up when it delves into the nature of Bob (Pullman), an ordinary man who was the victim of an experiment which will turn him into an invincible villain who can annihilate the heroes, but that is also resolved haphazardly.  

The movie begins with Yelena Belova (Pugh), sister of the late Black Widow, feels dispirited and disengaged from her work as a hired gun for the opportunistic villain Valentina (Louis-Dreyfus), who is trying to cover up her misdeeds from a government committee by gathering up all of the other mercenaries she has hired and trying to eradicate them.  They include U.S. Agent aka John Walker (Russell) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and soon after the attempt to kill them fails, they are on the run with Yelena's father Red Guardian (Harbour) and the Winter Soldier (Stan) joining the outlaws.  Oh, and let's not forget Bob, who stumbles into the plot and is in the wrong place at the wrong time, or is he?

There is little about Thunderbolts which is memorable or makes you care.  The heroes are colorless, even though Harbour tries the hardest to wring laughs out of this material.  The Winter Soldier has been seen in much better Avengers movies than this one.  Based on the recent Avengers track record, it seems the movies have run out of gas.  

A Working Man (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  David Ayer

Starring:  Jason Statham, Michael Pena, David Harbour, Jason Flemyng, Arianna Rivas, Noemi Gonzalez

You can place Jason Statham in the same category as Liam Neeson as a reliable action star whose movies check off certain boxes.  Sure there are hits and misses, but the formula is dependable.  Neither actor even bothers trying to affect a different accent.  Neeson is Irish, Statham is British, and that's that.  They learned from Sean Connery.  

A Working Man, although superior to The Beekeeper, follows the same elements of rugged everyman Statham trying to live a normal life, but has a secret past as a special forces soldier.  When his boss's daughter is kidnapped, Statham springs into action and tracks down her kidnappers.  Like Neeson, he is a man with a particular set of skills and they're on full display.

A Working Man is less ridiculous than The Beekeeper and more grounded.  He isn't taking on the government or the system, just trying to rescue his friend's daughter.  What's also interesting is how the daughter (Rivas) isn't a typical damsel in distress.  She's quite adept at kicking ass herself, once she's free to do so.  Statham sturdily delivers the goods as the latest in a series of reliable action heroes who aren't superhuman, but just plug away mercilessly until the villains can't help but surrender.  

The Accountant 2 (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Gavin O'Connor

Starring:  Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, JK Simmons, Daniella Pineda, Cynthia Addai-Robinson

The reason The Accountant (2015) was successful was its mystery surrounding Christian Wolff (Affleck), the autistic accountant who infiltrates criminal organizations ostensibly to cook their books and winds up declaring war on them with help from federal agent Ray King (Simmons).  We see flashbacks to his upbringing by his strict military-officer father and in the end is reunited with his long-lost brother Braxton (Bernthal) while bringing down the client who tried to kill him and his co-worker he grew fond of. 

The Accountant unfolded like an enigma wrapped inside a riddle and was thrilling to watch.  The Accountant 2 no longer contains any surprises.  It is a buddy action picture which never needed to be made.  It's competently produced and Bernthal provides the most energy whenever he's on screen, but Affleck affects a distracting Irish/Puerto Rican accent as Christian Wolff.   He doesn't sound like himself.  

The plot:  A mysterious woman (Pineda) is killing off human traffickers and is tracked by the now-retired fed-turned-private-eye King to a dive bar where he is killed by the woman's targets.  He scrawls "Find the Accountant" on his forearm before dying and his replacement at the agency (Addai-Robinson) does indeed locate Christian and asks for his help.  Christian recruits his long-lost (again!) brother Braxton, whom we assume he hasn't seen since the last movie.  Braxton reluctantly helps Christian, mostly because it gives him another chance to be close to his brother.  They are an effective action team, but aside from buddy movie cliches, there isn't much here that stands out.

There are callbacks to the first film, including the New England institute where Christian's non-verbal, but brilliant assistant can provide any information he needs at a moment's notice.  She now has a team of savants who can hack anything at any time.  The NSA and CIA have nothing on this group.  It's a pity the accountant of the title is the least interesting part about its sequel.