This movie is becoming more and more of a serious competitor to The Aviator for Best Picture. At the moment, it looks like it'll end up as the best reviewed film of the year:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/million_dollar_baby/

RT Score: 100%

Fresh - 25, Rotten - 0
Average Rating: 8.5/10

Unbelievable. Everyone thought that Eastwood delivered his definite masterpiece last year with Mystic River, but looks like we've been proven wrong. It is hard to imaghine, but Million Dollat Baby is getting even more praise than Mystic River.

It is a definite lock for a Best Picture nomination along with Sideways and The Aviator. Considering The Aviator's fading praise (79% at RT with a rating of 6.9/10 and only 67% at the Cream of the Crop) and Sideways' low profile and rather unknown cast, it looks like Million Dollar Baby might become this year's frontrunner.

Here are some of the quotes:

"Million Dollar Baby may be the first boxing movie to take the cliché of life imitating the 'art' and make it not feel like just another line."

- Erik Childress, EFILMCRITIC.COM

"Eastwood deserves another Best Picture nomination. Here's a man who has finally put Dirty Harry to rest."

- James Berardinelli, REELVIEWS

"Slow-burning drama of a determined female boxer and her hard-shelled trainer, a tale Eastwood invests with rewarding reserves of intimacy, tragedy, tenderness and bitter life knowledge."

- Todd McCarthy, VARIETY

It really looks like Clint Eastwood has made a masterpiece and his best film ever. The reviews are out of this world. Its metascore is 89, challenging Sideways's 92 for the year's high. It'll be seriously hard to deny his second oscar.

Chicago Sun-Times / Roger Ebert:
A masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true...The best film of the year.

Chicago Tribune / Michael Wilmington:
Achieves a mellowness and melancholy that recalls the jazzy dissonance of director (and here, composer) Eastwood's best work: "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Bird," "Unforgiven" and "Mystic River."

The Hollywood Reporter / Kirk Honeycutt:
Under Eastwood's painstakingly stripped-down direction -- his filmmaking has become the cinematic equivalent of Hemingway's spare though precise prose -- the story emerges as that rarest of birds, an uplifting tragedy.

Los Angeles Times / Kenneth Turan:
Perhaps the director's most touching, most elegiac work yet, Million Dollar Baby is a film that does both the expected and the unexpected, that has the nerve and the will to be as pitiless as it is sentimental.

Newsweek / David Ansen:
Eastwood takes the audience to raw, profoundly moving places. If you fear strong emotions, this is not for you. But if you want to see Hollywood filmmaking at its most potent, Eastwood has delivered the real deal.

The New Yorker / David Denby:
Has a beautifully modulated sadness that's almost musical. Eastwood once made a movie about Charlie Parker ("Bird"), but this picture has the smoothly melancholic tones of Coleman Hawkins at his greatest.

New York Post / Lou Lumenick:
A spare, exquisitely realized masterpiece about faith, redemption and boxing that beautifully illustrates his longtime philosophy that "less is more."

The New York Times / A.O. Scott:
With its careful, unassuming naturalism, its visual thrift and its emotional directness, Million Dollar Baby feels at once contemporary and classical, a work of utter mastery that at the same time has nothing in particular to prove.

Premiere / Glenn Kenny:
A remarkably appealing success story full of heart and humor and poignancy, with Swank as winning as she’s ever been.

USA Today / Mike Clark:
As good as "Unforgiven." Or, to put it another way, as good as any movie Eastwood has ever directed.

Variety / Todd McCarthy:
Staying at the top of his game when most of his contemporaries have long since hung up their gloves, Clint Eastwood delivers another knockout punch with Million Dollar Baby.

New York Daily News / Jami Bernard:
Million Dollar Baby is a knockout. It is Clint Eastwood's baby in every respect — a movie that approaches the level of great boxing films, like "Raging Bull," by using sport as a metaphor for human nature.

ReelViews / James Berardinelli:
It is a rich and challenging motion picture that both affirms life and emphasizes its fragility. Eastwood touches our hearts and energizes our minds without resorting to overt manipulation.

Rolling Stone / Peter Travers:
The knockout punch comes from Eastwood. His stripped-down performance -- as powerful as anything he's ever done -- has a rugged, haunting beauty. The same goes for the movie.

Is it possible that Scorcese will be snubbed again? I am starting to think that it is...

But look at The Aviator. It's not his normal type of film project. It's kinda paint by numbers when compared to his past masterpieces. If he is snubbed, it will hopefully send him in a different direction. He needs to nurture these films, not just take whatever big job is offered first.

Well, going by the reviews, we shouldn't call it a snub if Scorcese loses again. He may simply have made a good film at the wrong time, running into a career best by another veteran director. He still has a good shot at best director, but I think it's more and more likely that academy will want to reward Million Dollar Baby the best picture, especially since Clint did it all, directing/acting/writing/scoring for the film.

Well, we know what his movie is - The Departed starring DiCaprio and Damon, which is the remake of the Asian Infernal Affairs. If it is nearly as good as the original it will get him another Best Director nom. However, I don't think the movie should have been remade in first place...

What really surprises me, though, is that Eastwood appears not to be one of the frontrunners for Best Actor and that despite all the rave reviews for the movie and the fact that Eastwood has never won an Academy Award for acting yet.

BTW, according to Metacritic, there is actually a negative review on Million Dollar Baby by Charles Taylor (Salon.com):

A compendium of every cliché from every bad boxing melodrama ever made, Million Dollar Baby tries to transcend its cornball overfamiliarity with the qualities that have long characterized Eastwood's direction -- it's solemn, inflated and dull.

29 Fresh and 0 rotten now.

Sasha, the editor of OscarWatch, finally saw Million Dollar Baby, and this is what she had to say:

Well, after not being able to make it two screenings of the damned thing I finally went - was surprised to see a rather large crowd for the morning show (good sign). There was a smattering of applause at the end (another good sign).

The film is easily a grade A - a flawless, VERY conventional drama. Like Mystic River, it reminded me of the films Hollywood used to make in the '70s - small character drama. The acting is about the best thing it has going for it - Clint is amazing, Hilary Swank is every bit as good as she was in Boys Don't Cry, maybe better - and Morgan Freeman is as expected.

The dialogue is real, not forced, as is the story. I don't know if I'd call it the best film of the year ... as much as I loved it I wasn't undone by it as I expected to be. Sideways is, in fact, a better movie in that it seems to cover new ground somehow.

But no one can really hate nor complain about M$B. The only film that can beat it for Best Pic at this point is The Aviator - if it's more of a crowdpleaser - but I think the Clint movie has it hands down. It will probably win Picture, Director (though Payne or Scorsese could steal) at least.

It is exactly the stuff best pictures are made on, though, and it's nice to see that Eastwood is a better filmmaker today than he ever was.

40 fresh and 1 rotten, with an average score of 8.5.

the only reason why I refrain to even think of M$B taking Best Picture is because it seems to dark. I don't mean depressing or anythng, just not flashy enough like Oscar likes it. Even the scenes in the trailer are all shot mostly in not so lit places. The factvthat it doesn't show off also might work to its advantage.

But after seeing critical acclaim rival Sideways (40:1 good/bad reviews at RT), I'm thinking the Academy just might award one of the most well deserved films best picture and just give Marty best director cuz Clint already has that!

Poor lighting reminds me of another boxing movie that won best picture. Rocky was a dimly lit movie, which created a perfect atmosphere for the movie, and I hope that same type of magic works with Million Dollar Baby.

I'm looking very forward to seeing this, as I've been a huge Clint fan since the mid 1970's. He was my brother's favorite. He would have been 37 years old today, RIP, and I'm sure if he were still here, he would be even more psyched than I am about Eastwood's Oscar gold touch of late.

Scorsese is doing a bio pic type thing with Leo, so he's going to be hard to beat, since he's arguably deserved a best director award for years, but Eastwood's case is going to be hard to beat. It might come done to a split between director and picture, but if not, Eastwood probably gets the edge, especially after last year, in which he would have won had it been a year that he wasn't up against ROTK.

Salon...aren't they also the only critic to give Sideways a pan?

Yep, Salon didn't like Sideways either. I'm sure they usually praise movies like Envy.

Hmmm, maybe Rotten tomatoes hasn't entered that in.

Right now at tomatoes, it's 41 fresh reviews to 1 rotten:

"It worked in 1962 with Requiem for a Heavyweight, a shame it hasn't gotten any fresher in the intervening forty-two years."
-- Walter Chaw, FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Fresh - 45, Rotten - 1

Average Rating: 8.5/10

Might become better reviewed that Sidewys...just unbelievable.

IMDb's early score is coming in as well: 8.6 with 78 votes. This is resonating very well with the viewers.

The Aviator also increased its RT rating to 88% and the average score to 7.8. Certainly not a shame if it wins best picture.