8 Mile [Blu-ray]

One of my favorite movies to watch.

I hadn't seen this movie in a long time. I've always been a casual fan of Eminem until about 2010 when the legend caught up to me. The man has real talent, and this movie is just more proof of the same. It's raw talent, and he's not Eminem in this movie either, but he's also not not Eminem in this movie. And it works, tremendously! The movie actually holds up pretty well all this time later. Even though the premise may be a little shallow for those who don't understand the importance of battling, the film is a powerhouse. Director Curtis Hanson paints so many beautiful scenes into this movie that it's hard not to enjoy.What I love about this film is that it overcomes it's main star's notoriety, but also uses it to give you something to start with when Rabbit hits the screen. You know who he is and you sort of might know where he comes from, and then the journey goes off with the filmmaker showing you what people from 8 Mile think of him. From there it grows as each rap or battle becomes more intense, and more real. I love that throughout the film you hear chopped versions of Lose Yourself like it's coming to him during the movie and he's creating the song with you watching. The film has a very artistic touch in that way that it's shot and put together, and I really enjoyed that on the re-watch as well. It doesn't look particularly great in the Blu-ray format, but it has some good special features including a Making of and a BTS Rap Battle they hosted during the shoots and they caught some fun footage with Eminem.After watching this again, I think that it's honestly the best movie about a rapper coming up other than Hustle & Flow. 50 Cent's movie came out around the same time and wasn't nearly as good as 8 Mile was. Eminem holds his own as a dramatic actor and despite being kind of quiet, drums up a lot of emotion in his scenes with the little girl Lily. Kim Basinger is great but feels somewhat out of place at times, while Mekhi Phifer is also outstanding as Future. Fun seeing early Michael Shannon as the man with Rabbit's mom, as well as Anthony Mackie's Papa Doc who is ultimately the main bad guy of the movie. So many great cameos like John Singleton as well (RIP), but I highly recommend this film to anyone who hasn't seen it! If you're a fan of rap you'll enjoy the movie, but I'd like to say that even if you're into a "down but not out" drama, this is a winner for sure.

Good movie

8 mile is a great semi biographical movie based on Eminem/marshals friends (I love cheddar bob) experiences and how hard it was for him to come up as a white rapper in a black American dominated industry. He should have won awards for this movie. We didn’t appreciate him enough.Eminem is obviously not an actor but, he did a great great job, he's a philosophical mind who tells stories based on all of his life experiences.. one could even argue that the Slim personality was his excuse to be able to talk about the most obscene crap he deals with while using the air of comedy to deal with it all in a palatable way for his audience.His ego isn't big enough to want to be anything more I don't think.. fame was never his reason, he's told us that many times, he has it now, but, it still isn't his reason.I feel like that's the reason he's only done cameos in movies/shows where it's usually self depreciating humor.

Great movie!

I have to admit I didn't even know who Eminem was until "The Marshall Mathers LP" came out in the summer of 2000. When I first heard "The Real Slim Shady" on the radio that summer, I honestly thought it was some kind of practical joke. Could anyone's voice really be that nasal?Of course, the joke was on me. The joke's on everyone when it comes to Eminem. The morning that "8 Mile" came out, I heard two radio hosts in New York City (a right-wing social crusader, and a left-wing civil rights lawyer) debating Eminem. One host decried Eminem, while the other lauded him, and it's not hard to figure out which host took which side. Obviously, once I heard the debate phrased in those terms, I simply had to go see the film."8 Mile" is well worth owning on DVD -- if nothing else, for those of us less than fluent in hip-hop, the English subtitles make the movie remarkably easier to understand. In the theater, the film was inspirational, without being hokey. It stands up to repeated viewings, which is the mark of a truly good film. Director Curtis Hanson has made increasingly solid movies throughout his career (his early "The Little Dragons" was banned to the purgatory of monthly airings on the Lifetime Network in the late '80s; now he's an Oscar winner) and in "8 Mile" he pushes all the right buttons without ever producing anything phony.The magic element that makes "8 Mile" hang together is Eminem... of course. Rabbit's an anti-hero, who picks a fight every ten minutes and loses most of them. His film romance (with Brittany Murphy) is limited to an erotic encounter in an auto-stamping factory; the would-be couple's romantic gesture involves the middle finger. If you're expecting "8 Mile" to conclude with a triumphant record deal and a marriage proposal, you're in the wrong theater.The supporting cast in "8" mile is also notable. Mekhi Phifer, who first came to my attention with an explosive recurring role on the penultimate season of "Homicide", is outstanding as Rabbit's hip-hop mentor and would-be sponsor. Someone named Evan Jones is quite likeable as "Cheddar Bob", quite possibly the dumbest sidekick to appear in a movie since Steve Buscemi in "The Big Lebowski". Sample exchange: "I need some privacy." "Can I come with you?". The third notable character is Detroit itself. Here's one of the bleakest movie landscapes ever, and it's all filmed "entirely on location in the 313", as the film's credits tell us.The extras are a little weak. The "making of" featurette runs just 10 minutes and doesn't seem to involve any original contribution by Eminem himself. Well done, however, is the music soundtrack options, which all you to jump directly to the scene in the movie in which a particular song appears. You can also watch the film's excellent freestyle battles this way.The finest feature on the disc is a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of the freestyle battles. Here we see the "American Idol"-style selection process of four extras who'll get to actually battle Eminem in the movie. The feature is all the more riveting for the fact that this sequence didn't make the final cut. This feature is the closest that the "8 Mile" DVD comes to actually penetrating Eminem's barriers and getting a look at the real man himself.

5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Exactly as described, thanks!