Year 2004: Million Dollar Baby

Hillary Swank's transformation as a struggling up-and-coming boxer in Clint Eastwood's serene but beautifully devastating motion picture would certainly knock you off of your feet. At first look, this film might be just about hard work and overcoming odds to achieve one's dreams. And yet, inside the psyche of each character is their undying flame of passion - a search for their own purpose to survive, and a desire to connect and to belong. Eastwood's take on human frailty versus vigor may not have its silver lining to appease a fairy-tale-ending savvy viewers, but I'll take cinema's tragedy every time because the way I see it - there is no security good enough to assuage our fears, we live according to the risks we take and the sacrifices we burn in order to make worthwhile the one life that we live.