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Russell Crowe’s Epic ‘Rocky’ Replacement Is About To Be a Knockout on Netflix

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Not long after his surprising win in the Best Actor category at the Oscars, Russell Crowe clearly attempted to go for gold again. Crowe won the prestigious honor for his performance in Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator, the massive blockbuster that remains one of the most controversial winners of the Best Picture Academy Award. Crowe had previously shown promise in acclaimed films such as L.A. Confidential and The Insider, and following his Best Actor win, he appeared in a string of awards-bait movies. The first of the lot earned him a third straight Oscar nomination following The Insider and Gladiator. While Crowe didn’t win, the movie in question — A Beautiful Mind — became his second film in a row to pick up the Best Picture honor.

Crowe didn’t stop there. He starred in Peter Weir‘s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, a period epic that has become a millennial favorite in recent years. Two years later, Crowe reunited with Howard for a critically acclaimed boxing drama that once again courted The Academy. While the movie was well-received, it wasn’t the smash-hit that A Beautiful Mind turned out to be with its $300 million-plus worldwide box office haul. Crowe and Howard’s 2005 film concluded its run with around $110 million worldwide against a reported budget of around $90 million — certainly not enough for it to be categorized as a hit. In fact, it did only slightly better at the box office than fellow boxing gem Ali, directed by Crowe’s The Insider collaborator Michael Mann. The movie in question is now poised to debut on Netflix in the United States, over two decades after its theatrical run.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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Here’s When You Can Watch Russell Crowe’s Fan-Favorite Boxing Movie on Netflix

We’re talking, of course, about Cinderella Man. Also featuring Renée Zellweger and Paul Giamatti, the movie tells the true story of the heavyweight champion James Braddock, who emerged as a beacon of hope for the American public during the Great Depression. Cinderella Man holds a “Certified Fresh” 80% critics’ score and a 91% audience score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “With grittiness and an evocative sense of time and place, Cinderella Man is a powerful underdog story. And Ron Howard and Russell Crowe prove to be a solid combination.” Like Master and Commander, Cinderella Man has been reappraised in recent years, which is reflected in its terrific audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch the movie on Netflix from June 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.


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Release Date
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June 2, 2005

Runtime

144 minutes

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Writers

Akiva Goldsman, Cliff Hollingsworth

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