Christian Bale, Honorary Powerpuff Girl

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone fame is being roasted again as the all time champ of shameless Blurb Whores but that's not the point of this post.

While interviewing Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter, who seem to be in great moods (why wouldn't they be after the Globe & BFCA announcements?) Travers tries to entice Bale to serenade us with a little Newsies number. And why shouldn't he? Is there anything so wonderful as Bale crooning "Santa Fe" on horseback with that little red kerchief round his neck?

Travers doesn't get what he expects.



Unexpected delight: Wahlberg throwin' a little Boogie Nights encore in there.

Okay, I can't resist posting it... the best moment from Newsies bar none.



He has a lovely voice. Sad that he doesn't want to do another musical.

My Favorite Thing About "The Fighter" Is...

I saw The Fighter last week and didn't even deliver a "this is all the time I have" 7 word review. I have more than 7 words on this one though what follows is not a traditional review. The first thing I tweeted was...

It still applies. Yep, Christian Bale is doing his best work ever in the co-lead role of Dicky Eklund (Let's call it The Fighters) or at least his best since American Psycho (2000). Barring Geoffrey Rush's mutant power (awards magnetism) the "supporting" Oscar is most definitely Bale's to lose. And this is an important distinction: It'd be his to lose even without his baity penchant for putting his health at risk to dwindle down to anorexic nothingness for a role. This is his third time doing so. We hope it's the last.

A Tale of Two (Half) Brothers

But what's my favorite thing about The Fighters other than him?

I guess it'd be the way Melissa Leo (playing the mother to both fighters) and Christian Bale are always believably in sync as mother/son. They're practically twins with their darting hollow eyes, perpetually nervous body language and emotionally vampiric yet super vibrant energy. Would that more actors would co-author such compelling familial bonds while playing at "family". What's more, Bale and Leo have mastered the weird arms-length charisma of charming people who are simultaneously completely off-putting. Alice Ward and Dicky Eklund are the type of people you can't help but want to hang out with... but from a very safe distance, with plentiful escape routes.

Melissa Leo's on fire.

No, no. it's not that. That sympatico style is great but it's not my favorite thing about the movie.

Also worth loving is the everyman mundanity of Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg, a somewhat perverse use of their combined star power. (Though they both have it, they're more recognizably "human" and thus smaller than giant film stars, here and elsewhere). Charlene (and Adams who plays her) and Micky (and Wahlberg who plays him) are constantly drowned out by the cacophony of Much Bigger Personalities surrounding them. It's hilarious how often they both just shut right down in the center of a scene with an 'I give up' pout. And they're the "Stars" for lack of a better word!

No, no.

The best element has to be the idiosyncratic humanity that director David O. Russell keeps breathing into the proceedings. By all rights, The Fighter ought to feel far more generic than it does; make no mistake, this is a "true story" inspirational sports biopic. Russell keeps finding ways to vary the tone, play with the moodswings (even perpetually "on" people like Alice & Dicky have quiet days) and have fun with the framing, which generously allows the orbiting cast members to contribute to the movie as well (the standout being Jack McGee as Alice's impressively sturdy husband George). Sports movie fans won't like the film quite as much, one suspects, since the boxing scenes are arguably the most generically executed part.

And then there's the subplot involving the making of the unflattering HBO documentary on Dicky "High on Crack Street" (1995). Dicky willfully deceives himself about it but the doc scenes gives the film tremendous tragicomic boost.

There's also a choice scene in which Micky & Charlene go to the movies and... well, I don't want to spoil it.

David O. Russell loves a rangey ensemble.

 Oh wait, I know.

My favorite thing is the clown car chorus of Dicky & Micky's trashy big haired sisters (John Waters will be green with envy). There are so many of them. They're the most abrasively comic gaggle of sisters since the perpetual assault of Adam Sandler's siblings in Punchdrunk Love.

Or. Well...

The best thing might be the way The Fighters manages to slide so easily into David O. Russell's undervalued filmography even though it's much less original than his other films. When some auteurs make stabs at mainstream genres or popular appeal they lose themselves. Such is not the case here. Russell is still in love with the juggling act of impossibly noisy mixes of disparate acting styles (Flirting With Disaster, I Heart Huckabees), he's still fond of Oedipal undercurrents (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting...), he can still turn a film on a dime from comedy to 'wait, that's not funny' disturbing (Three Kings, Huckabees)  and he's still just about the only director who Mark Wahlberg should ever work with (though, that said, "Micky Ward" has nothing on Wahlberg's Kings or Huckabees performances... the character's too much of a cypher this time.)

But no, it's not that. It's... NO. 

No. No. No. You have to stop somewhere.

Needless to say, The Fighter is incredibly watchable. It's a solid good time at the movies. More importantly, it's a total K.O. for fans of Bale, Leo and O. Russell. A-/B+

Yes No Maybe So: The Fighter

Our first glimpse of the highly buzzed David O. Russell boxing picture The Fighter. If it becomes a major player at this year's Oscars I want y'all to remember that I believed it would happen first. Toot Toot. (That was my own horn).



And now the patented foolproof system for judging our own reaction to the trailer: Yes, No, Maybe So™. Join us with your own in the comments.

First things first: It seems obvious that this film will live or die on the chemistry between its central brothers, boxer Mickey (Mark Wahlberg) and his trainer (Christian Bale). It seems obvious from the trailer that their relationship could well float like a butterfly and sting like a bee or whatever the hell boxers are supposed to do. Maybe Wahlberg is the type of performer who has to have a strong director to be properly called an actor -- but that question of his ability is already solved by reteaming him with David O'Russell who is already responsible for his best performance (I Heart Huckabees). Plus we'd like Christian Bale to stop doing these crazy things to his body so maybe mass acknowledgement that he's a good actor will dampen down that particular self-destructive urge for awhile?


On the other hand, haven't we seen enough boxing pictures? Isn't it the #1 most populated sport within the movies -- you'd think there'd be boxing gyms on every corner of every street to meet the need. Boxers are like hitmen: way more prevalent in the movies than they are in real life. But there will be blood... in the movies. Since we've seen so many rise and fall and rise again biopics and so many boxing pictures, what could this possibly add to the bloated over populated genre? I fear it looks a smidge generic... at least visually. Not that you can always tell from a trailer.

The cast sounds good on paper but how do they all come together onscreen? It's possibly delicious that there will be a catfight of sorts between Mickey's mom (Melissa Leo) and his girl (Amy Adams) but it also just might be typical Hollywood poverty porn. You know how they love the 'We're going to Disneyland!' white trash families the movies... or maybe I'm just thinking of the last Oscar baiting boxing pic. So, to make a long story short: I knew that both Leo and Adams were in the movie but who expected that the movie would contain girlfights? Haven't we all wanted to see Amy Adams test her range a little ever since her triumph in Enchanted? So why am I a little worried about her in this context.

How about you?

The Fighter opens in December.
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