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Seabiscuit (2003)
Seabiscuit: Triumph in the Great Depression
In this riches to rags 1930s-era film, a half-blind jockey too tall and a horse too small, wild, and lazy team up to recreate themselves as the new juggernaut in horse racing.
Based on a true story, the film starts with a narrative by the documentary voice of great historian David McCullough. In the way that Sputnik caused Americans to fear communism and the rise of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, Seabiscuit, a mere race horse, inspired an America sorely beaten down by The Great Depression. No one exactly knows how this horse achieved what it did, but the story is all about heart.
Tobey Maguire does well as an unsure and improbable jockey while Jeff Bridges plays the race team's promoter and personal coach in an enthusiastic style reminiscent of champion football man Vince Lombardi. Likewise, another must-see, whether or not you care about sports or horse racing at all.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Cinderella Man (2005)
Cinderella Man : Stamina and Heart
In the last few decades there has been a drought of good films about the Great Depression, or at least ones that weren't about bootleggers and Italian mobsters. Cinderella Man recounts the true story of an on-his-way-out boxer and longshoreman whose family is down to their last penny.
James Braddock's unlikely last hope is his boxing career. While slumming it to the dock every single day to find scarce work, he hides his injuries to take a crack at the younger up-and-coming professional fighters at first just for the pay. But his stamina and heart, and ability to withstand a beating (both in life and boxing) gifts him with a few knockouts and an underdog's chance to challenge the great killer champion Max Baer for the title.
If you ever have spent a day of your life feeling useless or defeated, watch this film and it will put your attitude and your head straight.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Fever Pitch (1997)
Arsenal's Fortunes Always Hiding. Until Now.
A London football-obsessed school teacher has spent the last 20-some years, and every day going forward, viewing life through the one lens: his favorite team, The Arsenal Football Club. Having sublimated the grief of his parents' divorce through English Football, he views every week of his life as another football match in pursuit of fortunes always hiding.
Colin Firth, who usually plays the archetypical sullen Brit, is resounding as author Nick Hornby's autobiographical noncommittal single man who's really just a lad grown up. Hornby's character then grows smitten a prim and proper English teacher who dislikes him at first but warms up to him and his enthusiasm for sport and life in general.
Fever Pitch is a nice portrayal of the struggles of an irrational sports lover reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that, to the rest of the world, there are more important things than Saturday's game.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Don King: Only in America (1997)
Don King: Showboating to the Top
The great Ving Rhames plays a local Cleveland bookie and some time ex-con maneuvering his way to the top of the nascent and dynamic world of pro boxing.
Rhames, best known for his role as Pulp Fiction's gang thug Marcellus Wallace, plays a different type of tough guy and hustler in the form of an animated and verbally combative Don King; a persona he nails. Only in America also cameos Bernie Mac, Jeremy Piven and the late soul singer Lou Rawls.
For as much as other films like Any Given Sunday and Jerry Maguire have endeavored to depict the perceived evil, cutthroat and slimy nature of sports promoters, Only in America does so not by belaboring its players as bad people. Rather Don King's character is flamboyant, very human, and so exciting that, as he puts it "If you didn't have Don King, you'd have to invent him." written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Invictus (2009)
From a Checkered Past, to World Cup Glory
You need know nothing about rugby, and you need know nothing about South Africa. Clint Eastwood directs, as Matt Damon, perhaps for the first time in career, acts so well that you forget you're watching Matt Damon.
Damon portraits François Pienaar, the captain of the South African Rugby team; a team that is talented but in a wholesale state of disarray. The team's players are listless and unmotivated, while their level of play is evocative of the Bad News Bears. Meanwhile, the nation's black rugby fans cheer not for South Africa but for England.
At the same time, newly elected Nelson Mandela wrestles with the task of running the government and uniting the country while reconciling black aspirations with white fears.
With South Africa hosting the soon-approaching World Cup, the rugby team's management is fired while the new black government coalition tries to change the team's mascot and team name, The Springboks, in attempt to erase all memory of Apartheid.
Mandela quietly calls on captain Pienaar to reset the tone of the team and prepare the Springboks for the unlikely feat of winning the World Cup at home and uniting the nation.
Invictus gets its name from a poem by William Ernest Henley that Mandela holds dear as something that made him stand up when, imprisoned for 26 years, "all he wanted to do was lie down". Like the poem, which speaks of the ability to take responsibility for one's destiny, the film tells the story of South Africa's steps forward in the work-in-progress of setting free the nation, both psychologically and socio-politically from its checkered past.
Invictus has so many important facets at work in a brilliant, exciting, but well-tailored storyline, that you'll digest it for days. Do yourself a favor, and go see it.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Ali (2001)
Ali: Acting a Knockout, Storyline with rubber hands
Michael Mann's 3-hour epic about one of the greatest and most charismatic athletes of the 20th Century was an ambitious project and a noble venture, but falls hard. Too bad this film, Ali, was boring and almost as hard to endure as Oprah's Beloved. Sadly, this film, with bold aim and a careless hand largely missed the mark.
Will Smith displays his best and most studied acting as Muhammad Ali himself, along side other great actors who play titan roles. Jon Voight as sportscaster legend Howard Cosell, and Mario Van Peebles as Malcolm X also shine. Still the dramatic potency of the cast is weighed down by the storyline's inertia.
Perhaps what doomed the film was that the timeline stuck militantly to Ali's life between the years of 1965 to 1975. Unfortunately, much of what was shown of this decade focused less on boxing and more on personal affairs, as it spent much time on Ali being banned from the sport and scorned by the establishment for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. And while (in real life) Ali's court case went on for years during his ban from the sport, the film didn't go the route of The People Versus Larry Flint, focusing on intellectual ventures surrounding the legal fight.
Besides the great acting, the only high spike in Ali is the scene surrounding the Rumble in the Jungle fight that took place between Ali and George Foreman, in Zaire in 1975. Here, Mann does deserve some credit for transitioning his underlying assertion –that Ali was a universal and influential American icon—to the build up and anticipation about this legend challenging and beating the new champ Foreman.
Like most sports fans, I wanted to see this charismatic, inspirational man and prolific athlete fight titans in the ring, not fighting sociopolitical causes or punching wind against partisan apparitions. Maybe shame on me for wanting Ali to be more like Rocky and less like Against All Odds.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Vision Quest (1985)
Nosebleeds, Sweatpants and an Awful Film
This film, which features Madonna about the time she hit it big, stands as the only major studio work about high school or collegiate style wrestling. The film tells the story of Louden Swain, a high school senior who has been wrestling for barely two years. Because of his "balance" and natural gifts, he's already a state champion and the best in his weight class. But that's not enough. The tall and lanky wrestler, played by Matthew Modine, decides that the path to glory is to starve and sweat himself down two weight classes so that he can challenge the unbeatable 3-time state champion, Brian Shute. Shute trains by walking up and down stadium bleachers holding an 18 inch wooden telephone pole.
For Swain, making weight is a long and arduous process, consisting of constant running and frequent nosebleeds. Swain's sanity and competence are questioned by everyone else in his drab suburb of Spokane, WA. Meanwhile his only inspirations come from a beautiful, feisty 20-something wild flower named Carla, played by Linda Fiorentino, who drifts into town and bunks with Swain and his dad for a while.
All in all there are a lot of problems with this film. First off, the writers have little understanding of Wrestling as a sport. Matches end for no reason and scoring is inconsistent. In one scene, the home team forfeits the match simply because the away team has taken the lead, meaning the last couple wrestlers forgo their matches. Anyone who knows Wrestling remotely knows that this doesn't happen. Imagine your hometown baseball team is down 10-0 in the 3rd Inning. Even the Cubs would finish that game.
Also, like with Chess, champions in Wrestling are never made in a matter of two seasons. But inaccuracy and uninformed fantasy aside, there's more.
When not starving himself and risking his health to reach his goal, our "hero" is babbling on about virtues and character. Yet in one scene he tries to force himself sexually on his house guest/love, Carla, before she punches him in the face (prompting nosebleeds, again), only to have it brushed under the rug when she shows up to cheer him on at his wrestling meet.
In the end, boy wins girl, boy beats the unbeatable champion, and returns to high school and a normal diet. But Vision Quest will leave you and anyone who's not an anorexic, nerdy, sexually deviant excuse for an athlete wondering what the hell you've just watched for two hours.
But social issues and hang-ups aside, Vision Quest is just a bad, bad film.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Invincible (2006)
The Working Class Football & Philadelphia Life
I'll have to admit bias on this one. Not so much because I grew up a Philadelphia Eagles fan, but because even more than that I am a huge fan or the underdog and outsider. Even better, Invincible is based on a true story of a man walking on to his hometown NFL team.
In the drab and recession-laden mid-1970s, the lowly Philadelphia Eagles are so bad that their new head coach, Dick Vermeil, announces team tryouts open to the public on live TV. While every Eagles fan and football-obsessed yahoo in town lines up, one standout athlete, a 30 year old bartender named Vince Papale is good enough to make the team and go pro.
In a style reminiscent of Rocky, the film's character struggles not only with his past failures amidst a new challenge of making the cut day-by-day, but he also grapples with his new role as a star and outcast in his own microcosm of working class Philadelphia life.
Greg Kinnear and Mark Wahlberg are both convincing in their roles, and even if you're a Giants or Cowboys fan, you will be inspired to root for Papale as the underdog that delivers on game day.
written by Andy Frye, MySportsComplex.blogspot.com
Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)
Z-Boys' Up-from-the-Bootstraps History
A dozen bored surfers, mostly kids in Venice, California, not only reinvent the skateboard but remake a once-forgotten-about suburban fad from the 1950s into an action sports revolution.
Narrarated by Sean Penn, Dogtown depicts life in the more rundown "Locals Only" beach communities circa 1974, which consisted of mostly of surfing in the early morning tides and loitering. The Zephyr Team (or Z-boys as they are called) spend one summer combating the boredom by building their own boards with the help of a local who owns a surf shop. After they enter re-emerging skateboarding competitions in SoCal, they transfigure it all into their own scene; one that rouses a generation of skateboarders consisting of greats like Tony Hawk, Shaun White and the creators of the of X-Games.
Dogtown puts chronological perspective into skateboarding, and the up-from-the-bootstraps history you never knew it had.
from Andy Frye at MySportsComplex.blogspot.com