End of 2005 comments culled by Roheryn ~
source: www.miami.com
Rene Rodriguez of Miami Herald gives Cinderella Man the no 5 spot on his Top Ten.
5) Cinderella Man: Stand-up Hollywood entertainment, an underdog story told with great skill and tremendous heart, climaxing with the single most exciting boxing bout to ever appear in a feature film."
source: www.philly.com
Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"There were performances that were so transcendentally good that they elevated flawed pictures to the top tier - Joan Allen's in The Upside of Anger, Gwyneth Paltrow's in Proof, Russell Crowe's in Cinderella Man."
Source: www.pennlive.com
New Hollywood classic: Ron Howard's "Cinderella Man" proved that there's always room for a straightforward telling of an underdog story. The way that Howard presents his narrative, with breathtaking period detail, is what makes boxer James Braddock's struggle to support his family during the Great Depression so gripping.
source: Dallas Fort Worth (dfw.com)
Had it been released in December, it might have gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar. Instead, Ron Howard's boxing drama, Cinderella Man, opened in June against sequels to Batman and Star Wars. Counterprogramming hurts: By the end of its first weekend -- around the time Russell Crowe was hurling a phone at a Mercer Hotel desk clerk -- the year's surest thing had gone down for the count. In a year of high-profile flops (Michael Bay's incoherent clone thriller The Island, Ridley Scott's medieval snooze Kingdom of Heaven, and Sam Mendes' all-too-plotless Gulf War meditation Jarhead), Cinderella Man remains the most puzzling. If an Oscar winning director and actor -- not to mention some of the year's best reviews -- can't get people into the theater, what can?
source: www.boston.com
(for both Gladiator and Cinderella Man)
With benefits: the best of the behind-the-scenes bonuses
By Tom Russo, Globe Correspondent | December 25, 2005
GLADIATOR EXTENDED EDITION
Sure, we've had ''Troy" and ''Alexander" to remind us of the neat trick director Ridley Scott managed in delivering a contemporary sword-and-sandal epic that was genuinely transporting, not simply taxing. But the highlight here, as prominently advertised, is Russell Crowe's first-ever commentary, as he and Scott sat down to provide an audio track. The DVD arrived on the heels of the Aussie Oscar winner's infamous hotel phone-chucking incident, which, rightly or no, led to some vague expectation that ''extended edition" would mean extended surliness. As it turned out, Crowe was downright chatty, at times bouncing Scott right out of the conversational driver's seat and making him ride shotgun. Oliver Reed's drinking, Joaquin Phoenix's performance anxiety -- whatever the subject, Crowe was surprisingly game to dial it up, as it were.
CINDERELLA MAN
Oh, one note about Crowe and commentaries: Don't expect him to make a regular thing of it. Crowe and Ron Howard followed up their collaboration on ''A Beautiful Mind" with this crowd-pleasing (yet somehow underappreciated) biopic of Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock. The filmmakers' enthusiasm for the sweet science comes across in bonus segments such as a history lesson from legendary trainer Angelo Dundee, who has a cameo in the feature. Elsewhere, Howard sits down with boxing enthusiast Norman Mailer to analyze old footage of Braddock's title bout with heavyweight champ Max Baer. Crowe, meanwhile, does supply a ''Cinderella" training diary, but alas, only on a more expensive collector's edition of the film.