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In the last 30 years there has been at least one pugilistic film released every year. Movies about female boxers are still rare. 2000 gave us Michelle Rodriguez in Girlfight. Hilary Swank won a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby in 2004. In 2014 India gave us Mary Kom. Last year (2024) we had The Fire Inside, a biopic about Claressa "T-Rex" Shields. And now, just in time for award season we have Sydney Sweeney bringing the story of Christy Salters to the screen.

I knew nothing about Christy Salters going into my screening. This naïve, rambunctious scrapper from West Virginia started her pugilistic journey by entering a local strong man contest in 1989. She kept boxing around the area where she lived winning small purses. By 1995 she was being scouted, taking an offer Jim Martin (Ben Foster) to train her. He got her fights, and she continued to get noticed until she got a meeting with the infamous Don King (Chad L. Coleman), at which point her career skyrocketed.

This is a movie about Christy taken in by a less than scrupulous man, about Christy who preferred women at a time when that was frowned upon, about Christy who is constantly at odds with her religiously snobbish mother Joyce Salters (Merritt Wever). Joyce does everything in her power to come between Christy and her real love Rosie (Jess Gabor). We follow the twists and turns of Christy's life, and the painful existence that attached itself to her.

Sweeney and Foster electrify the screen with their performances. Sure, at times it does feel like another boxing biopic. At other times it is engaging, like riding a roller coaster of emotions with the title character. Sweeney conveys the full range of those emotions, sometimes with just her eyes. Foster embodies the creepy Jim without any sense of self-consciousness. I have always liked Ben Foster no matter what the roll. This is a good bad one for him. And the final act is worth it when it comes. You just wait and see what hits you.

Sometimes a film has so much build-up, such high expectations that only the most immaculate premiere has a chance to win over an audience. Add to that the fact that Guillermo del Toro has a split audience between lovers and haters and you have a very difficult uphill climb for a filmmaker. Full disclosure - I am in the lover category, with The Shape of Water still at the top of my list of favorites from him.

Any adapted screenplay requires choices. When the filmmaker does the adaptation, it becomes personal, meshed with the cinematic vision of the director. This is truly Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, beginning to end. It is told in parts, beginning with a prologue. That opening gives way to the bulk of the first 90 minutes as "the maker" Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) tells his story. We see Victor as a boy (Christian Convery) overwhelmed by his overbearing father Leopold (Charles Dance). We learn about a frustrated genius being rejected by the medical establishment. We meet a benefactor, an arms merchant named Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz) who bankrolls Victor's experimentation.

We meet his younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and William's wife Elizabeth (Mia Goth) who happens to be Harlander's niece. We follow along as Harlander acquires a castle which becomes the laboratory for Victor's work. This is the place where The Creature (Jacob Elordi) is brought to life. The final hour is The Creature's story, the story wherein The Creature becomes more "human." I have read other reviews reminding the audience that del Toro likes to empathize with his monsters and creatures. Sometimes I sense that there is something amiss about that as I read these reviews.

I do not believe this to be so. It is the sympathy and "humanity" bestowed upon the Amphibian Man by both del Toro and Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) in The Shape of Water that makes the movie so great for me. I love the set design and cinematic beauty of the first 90 minutes of Frankenstein. I think Oscar Isaac provides a solid performance as the scientific groundbreaker. I always like Mia Goth. I am also grateful when Christoph Waltz is in the mix.

I found that the last hour revealing a fully formed Creature telling his story very satisfying. Giving The Creature a "soul," and a real heart that does not just pump blood makes the movie for me. It is what makes del Toro's Frankenstein different than other Frankenstein films. We are left to wonder who the real monster is. It is not that much different, I suppose, than the conversation people sometimes have about an omniscient, omnipresent, and all-powerful God who lets humans, and even babies die; who lets millions starve; who sits idly by as war and natural disasters ravage the planet. Is the maker the monster, or are the human beings and other living creatures who do what they need to do to survive the monsters?

Guillermo del Toro has crafted a beautifully horrific masterpiece that comes close to unseating The Shape of Water as my favorite of his. I know he worked long and hard to bring his vision of Shelley's work to the screen. Thank you, Guillermo. You have done yourself proud, adding to the Shelley cinematic canon a much needed and unique entry.

In the workaday world people with high levels of skill might have problems when seeking employment. For instance, you might be let go by a scientific lab where you were running a study on the effect of lunar cycles on the mental stability of the human species. Now what are you going to do? Or, perhaps, you might be a highly skilled CIA agent who was part of the Agency's belt-tightening effort. This is where Nelson Crowe (Laurence Fishburne) finds himself at the beginning of Bad Company.

Fortunately, for him, former Agency man Vic Grimes (Frank Langella) runs something he calls The Toolshed, a covert operation that requires the skills of people like Crowe, and Margaret Welles (Ellen Barkin), and Tod Stapp (Michael Beach). Corporate espionage is the focus of the operation, as well as messing with politicians and judges. In this case State Supreme Court Justice Justin Beach (David Ogden Stiers).

The movie has a noirish feel, but it is a political thriller (I use the term "thriller" lightly here). Everyone works hard to be cool. But that is the thing about being "cool." If you are cool, you do not need to work at being cool. The plot is typical. The twist in the second act is not at all revelatory. Nevertheless, a solid cast does their best with what they are given. Barkin and Fishburne were doing well in their careers, although Fishburne would soon explode with the success of 1999's The Matrix.

I have no doubt that things like this go on in world of politics. In fact, things like this have probably become so common that a movie like this from 1995 no longer "thrills" as it may have at the time. Of course, today it is not so much covert ops as it is just bribery out in the wide-open spaces of business and politics. The film tells its story, which is to say that it is talky. There is not much action here.