Tag: sport

Virgin Pockets

  By

★½
“Don’t take this cue.”

In sports films is, actors don’t necessarily have to be able to play the game in question. But they should be able to fake it – if not necessarily at a level capable of fooling professionals, at least to get it past the casual viewer. When it comes to ball and cue games, I am certainly a casual. Unfortunately, the two players are the core of proceedings here do not look like pro players. They look considerably closer to me, down the pub, after a few pints. The major difference is, they at least do not look pleasantly surprised when they knock in a ball. But when one half of the “sports drama” equation is unconvincing, it puts a lot of weight on the other.

It fares at least somewhat better there. This is the story of veteran pool hustler, Lizzie Monroe (Madison), who avoids the bright lights of the pro tour circuit. Instead, she hustles players in various bars and other establishments, with the help of manager ‘Grace’ Scott (Krukowski), because “That’s where the real money is.” Admittedly, there’s no particular indication of this being true here, with the money changing hands not exactly life-changing. Anyway, Lizzie meets Jordan ‘J.J.’ Jamison (Grace), a younger and rawer player who uses her sex appeal to help her win, albeit with penny ante rewards. An unimpressed Monroe hustles the hustler, but is eventually convinced to become a mentor to J.J, and show her the proper way to play.

If you’ve seen any films from this genre, you can probably figure out how this is going to go. Eventually, there will be dissension in the ranks, J.J. will go her own way, and the mistress will end up facing off against her student. Give yourself two points, since that’s exactly what happens. To get there, however, you have to sit through an awful lot of pool montages, accompanied by music from mediocre punk(ish) bands – presumably friends of the director, likely sourced from the local scene in Erie, Pennsylvania where this was made. It’s filmed almost glamour style: with many shots of our leads’ cleavages and butts leaning over the pool table. Can’t say I minded, and yet…

Because, cheesecake aside, the pool is probably the least entertaining thing about this. You never get to see much apart from random shots, so there’s absolutely no sense of ebb and flow or contest progression. Rather than the humdrum mechanics of playing the game, what I did find interesting was the psychology of hustling, and the strategy of how you can lure someone in, to take all their money. The best sports films transcend the game they’re about, to tell a story which can resonate, even if you aren’t a fan. Only occasionally does this spend long enough away from the table to be capable of simply engaging the viewer. And inevitably, a few minutes later, you’re back to enduring another montage of unconvincing players making simple shots. 

Dir: Paul Gorman
Star: Marie Madison, Chexy Grace, Jeremy Krukowski, Shannon Solo

Baseball Girl

  By

★★½
“Pop-up on the infield.”

And if the above phrase doesn’t make any sense – it’s basically an underwhelming outcome during a baseball game – then you are probably not the target audience for this sporting drama. After almost a quarter-century living in America (much of it spent running a site about the local team as a sideline!), I’m fairly well-versed in baseball’s intricacies. But in contrast to some of the other Korean movies in this genre, such as Run Off or As One, you really need to know the sport going in to understand this on more than the surface level. Do not expect the film to explain what a knuckleball is, or the importance of spin rates.

The central character is Joo Soo-in (Lee J-y), a high school student who has dreams of becoming a professional baseball player. The main problem there is, she’s a teenage girl, and no woman has ever played professionally in Korea. While she pitches well enough – for a girl – she doesn’t throw with enough velocity to catch the eye of scouts. It doesn’t help that nobody really believes in her dream, with just about everyone trying to dissuade her. Even when she does get an offer from a professional team, it turns out to be to front their women’s outfit. Not least among Soo-in’s critics is her own mother (Yeom), already dealing with a feckless husband, who just wants her daughter to get real and start working in the same factory she does.

There are basically few surprises to be found here at all, with everything unfolding more or less as you would expect. It feels as if the script started off with a single word – “empowering” – and everything was developed from that point outward. For example, you will likely not be shocked to discover that mom is eventually won over to her daughter’s cause. Though I was amused by the scene where she’s told by the pro team the deposit on her daughter’s services is $60,000. Her response is, “I can’t give you that much money right now,” unaware the team is the one paying! Otherwise, it often plays like an All-Star Game of sports cliches, such as the gruff coach, romantic interest, etc.

I will say, the baseball stuff is well done: the actress seems to know her way around a pitching mound, and her mechanics look sound. [I wonder if CGI was used for the baseball, or if she really was throwing at 80+ mph?] It’s interesting that we never actually see Soo-in play in an actual game. Instead, it’s all training sessions and try-outs, as she tries to learn a new pitch, which relies less on velocity. As a fan of the game, I probably got a bit more out of this than most viewers, and was still never more than moderately engaged. When the outcome of any sporting contest is obvious, there’s not a lot of point, and much the same goes for sporting movies like this.

Dir: Choi Yoon-tae
Star: Lee Joo-young, Lee Joon-hyuk, Yeom Hye-ran, Song Young-kyu

Chicks with Sticks

  By

★★
“Two minute penalty, unnecessary cliches.”

Printed directly from the finest template of sports movie tropes, this is less a script than a bullet list of plot points you’ve seen a thousand times before. Struggling single mom (check) Paula Taymore (Gilsig) had to give up a promising ice hockey career to take care of her son (check). A bar argument leads to a challenge match against a local men’s team (check). Paula has to assemble a women’s side (check), from a ragtag group (check), including an ex-convict (check), sassy Black girl (check) and a witch (check). Can she overcome adversity and local prejudice (check), find love with hunky single dad Steve Cooper (Priestley, and check) and triumph in the big game? (BIG BOLD CHECK, LARGE FONT).

It’s not just the storyline that comes out like a prepackaged frozen dinner, the style and approach to the content is equally safe, competent and, ultimately, bland. That means training montages, a soundtrack of bland country and pseudo-inspirational pop/rock, and attempts to yank on audience’s emotional heartstrings which could not be more blatantly obvious. Yet there are reasons these things have become overused stereotypes: it’s because they are effective. You may know, with absolute certainty, the women’s team are going to fight back after falling 4-1 down. This doesn’t make it any less heartwarming when it happens, and this is effective enough as undemanding cinematic comfort food. It’s the kind of movie you curl up on the couch with, clutching a cup of hot chocolate, some Sunday afternoon.

What’s odd is that there are moments where it does have the opportunity to break away from the obvious. For example, there’s a plot thread where one of the women absconds with the hard-raised team funds. However, this is discarded almost as soon as it has begun, with no actual resolution. In its place suddenly appears, out of nowhere, the fact that the goalkeeper is throwing the game for gambling purposes. Still, nothing a few stern words from Paula can’t sort out, amIrite? There’s no effort at all put in on the side of their opponents, who might as well be a pack of skating Neanderthals. Their idea of wit is putting a camera in the women’s locker-room, an element that has not aged well, to put it mildly.

The performances are likely better than the material deserves. Kidder, as Paula’s mom, manages to be heartfelt without coming over as insincere or sacchariney, and Gilsig has her moments, mostly when struggling to balance her family responsibilities with her own hopes and goals. Of the supporting cast, Marquis comes off best, making a strong impression as acidic goth Felicity Carelli, though singer Michie Mee seems thoroughly out of place. Whoever thought it made sense to have her rap the Canadian national anthem, probably has found themselves on an RCMP watch-list. You may not need to know anything about hockey to watch this. However, you won’t learn anything about it either.

Dir: Kari Skogland
Star: Jessalyn Gilsig, Margot Kidder, Jason Priestley, Juliette Marquis
a.k.a. Hockey Mom or Anyone’s Game

Take the Ice

  By

★★
“Just about skates by.”

There’s no doubt that women’s sports very much plays second fiddle to their male equivalent, though the gap varies from sport to sport. The WNBA is experiencing a surge of popularity, though the NBA is still a financial behemoth. This documentary focuses on ice-hockey, and the debut season in 2015 of the first professional women’s competition in the US, the National Women’s Hockey League. Though semi-professional is closer to the truth: the league could only afford to pay its players around $15,000 a year, meaning almost all of them had to have day jobs, from teachers to paralegals to engineers, to cover the expenses. Commissioner and founder Dani Rylan spends most of her time seeking sources of finance, though finds the men’s league less than thoroughly supportive.

To be honest, I can’t blame them. There’s a vague sense of entitlement coming off the NWHL, not realizing they are largely competing with the NHL for the same fans and money. Why should the NHL help a rival start-up, just because they have women players? That’s the harsh reality here. I respect Rylan for putting in the work and starting the league, but this is capitalist equality in action. There were points at which I wanted to reach into the TV set and remind the NWHL, nobody has a “right” to funding in the world of professional sports. You have to earn it, whether you are male or female, and doing so starts with the quality of your product.

It may have been a mistake to start with just four teams, because with all of them making the playoffs, the entire regular season felt kinda pointless. And how did Boston end up with eight members of the US national team, while none of the other franchises had more than a couple? Wasn’t there some kind of a draft to balance the teams? Unsurpisingly, the Boston Pride won the inaugural championship – without, it seems, too much trouble. The film does make some effort to make this less of a procession, by telling the story of Denna Laing, a player on the Boston team who suffered a spinal injury during a game, which left her paralyzed.

I felt these elements, concentrating on the players and their stories rather than the business, worked better, but were frustratingly brief, except for Laing. There’s not enough of a narrative in the game-play to sustain things, and I suspect I’m an outlier, in that most other people watching the documentary probably will already be well aware how the first season ended. The league is still going, albeit under different ownership, although it’s interesting the film didn’t come out for more than six years after the season covered by it. I’ve been to ice hockey games, both here and back in the UK, and at various levels. But I’d have to say, in contrast to, say, Perfect, there is not much here likely to make a fan, if you weren’t one already.

Dir: Rachel Koteen
Star: Dani Rylan, Denna Laing, Anya Battaglino, Kaleigh Fratkin

Run-Off

  By

★★
“Fast, loose and out of control”

It feels as if South Korea is going through all the Olympic sports, making films based on each of them. Indeed, this film’s alternate title makes it a sequel to Take Off, about ski-jumping. I’ve seen two of the previous entries, covering archery (3 Heroines) and table tennis (As One), with the latter the more successful. This one comes up shorter than either. Less due to the technical side, which is always solid and occasionally impressive. However, the “true story” element is riotously inaccurate, the film completely rewriting reality in favor of what is not much more than a series of the most obvious sports movie cliches, for two hours and five minutes of increasingly sappy nonsense.

The story is of the first South Korean women’s ice-hockey team, formed to take part in the 2003 Asian Winter Games. There was basically no women’s ice-hockey in the country, so the team’s core players include a disgraced speed skater, a roller hockey player, a figure skater, and a North Korean defector, Lee Ji-won (Soo Ae). The national committee need to give the impression of trying, to boost Korea’s chance of hosting the games. But they can’t find anyone to coach, so end up hiring alcoholic deadbeat coach Kang Dae-woong (Oh D-s). Fill in the rest of the plot yourself, as the team goes from losing to an elementary school team, to facing North Korea – and Lee’s sister – with a medal at stake.

Except, it never happened. 2003 wasn’t even the team’s debut, as they played at the Asian Games in 1999. The results were… rather less heroic than depicted here, where they never lose by more than one goal. In reality, they were hammered in all four games, and outscored by a total of 80-1. Not quite as cinematic. The film ends by proudly announcing the team went on to qualify for the 2018 Olympics. Conveniently omitting the fact they got in automatically as hosts – the same way Team GB qualified for handball in 2012. The more I read about the reality, the worse the taste left in my mouth by the movie’s rewriting of history. There’s artistic license, and then… I’d be embarrassed to be one of the players involved.

Up until this wholesale factual butchery, it had been competent enough. Nothing outside the standard inspirational sports movie, e.g. training montages, clashes of characters, unsupportive families, etc. Yet the games are actually well enough staged, with camerawork that puts you right there on the ice, and it feels like the actresses are doing enough of the skating to pass muster (they had three months training before shooting). It’s just not an honest film. A better approach would have been like Next Goal Wins, covering the climb from embarrassing defeat through to redemption. If only they had waited. For the year after this came out, Korea had a 3-2 shoot-out win over China – the same opponent who had pounded them 30-1, fourteen years earlier. With a story like that, you don’t need to make stuff up.

Dir: Jong-hyun Kim
Star: Soo Ae, Oh Dal-su, Oh Yeon-Seo, Jae-suk Ha
a.k.a. Take Off 2

The Swimmers

  By

★★
“Sink or swim.”

This is the story of Syrian sisters Yusra Mardini and her sister Sarah, played by real-life sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa. Growing up, they were trained by their father, a professional swimmer himself, and had the goal of reaching the Olympics for their country. The (still ongoing) Syrian Civil War led to the sisters leaving their homeland, and this is mostly the story of their journey, through Turkey, across the Mediterranean in a very flimsy dinghy to Greece, then across Europe to Germany. It’s a journey fraught with peril, on which predators looking to scam migrants (or worse), lurk at every turn. However…

I don’t typically like to get political here, but when a film explicitly does, I will go there. I have every sympathy for refugees, who want safety. But once you leave your home country and reach a safe destination, that’s it. If you then decide to move on – making a beeline for a country where lax immigration laws let you pull the rest of your family with you – you’re not a refugee, you’re an economic migrant. My sympathy for you drops a whole order of magnitude. It’s like if your house burns down, I feel sorry for you. It doesn’t give you the right to move into the neighbourhood’s swankiest residence. Most of the film’s attempts to pull on my heartstrings failed due to this. As soon as the sisters left the Turkish beach, they were 100% responsible for putting themselves back in danger.

Rant over. What about the film? It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Having sisters playing sisters definitely works. Especially at that age, this is the kind of relationship which is hard to simulate for teenage actors. There’s a genuineness here, for obvious reasons, which makes the family devotion at the film’s core, easy to see and appreciate. Less successful is the apparent random switching between languages. Many conversations occur in a hodge-podge of English and Arabic. While I can’t speak to the authenticity of it, as a viewer, it was jarring to switch repeatedly from listening to reading subtitles. I ended up basically tuning out the dialogue and sticking with the subs.

I appreciate the necessity of bending the facts to fit a cinematic narrative, but this probably goes too far. It’s one thing to have Yusra overhear snark from other competitors about how she doesn’t deserve to be there. But maybe avoid this when the movie then omits to mention the only swimmers she beat were, basically, other charity cases? The Olympic Selection Time was 60.80 seconds. Mardini finished in 69.21, and even her personal best is more than five seconds off the OST. The awkward truth is, she really did not deserve to be there, but few are greater at virtue-signalling than the IOC. It all feels like there are probably better refugee stories which could have been told. All the gloss this applies to its tale. can’t disguise that it is uncomfortably close to well-made propaganda.

Dir: Sally El-Hosaini
Star: Nathalie Issa, Manal Issa, Ahmed Malek, Matthias Schweighöfer

As One

  By

★★★
“Ping-pong diplomacy.”

After the bombing of a South Korean jet by North Korean agents in 1987, relations between the two nations sank to perilously low levels. In an effort to help mend fences, the countries agreed to join forces and send a unified squad to the 1991 World Table Tennis Championship in Japan, to take on the all-powerful Chinese. The process was not without its bumps, as the South’s star player, Hyun Jung-hwa (Ha), and her counterpart in the North, Ri Bun-hui (Bae), struggle to overcome their differences and become a cohesive doubles partnership. Their respective coaches (Park and Kim) also have to learn to navigate shoals both sporting and political on the way to the gold medal match in Tokyo.

Since this is based on real events, it’s no spoiler (and certainly would not have been for the Korean audience) to say that the unified team triumphs in dramatic fashion. Indeed, the whole thing is more or less an exhibition of Sports Clichés 1 0.1, with moments which you feel have been needlessly juiced up for emotive purposes. For example, did the entire South Korean roster really kneel in the rain outside their hotel, after the North Korean players were withdrawn for breaches of the rules? Did Ri really collapse during the last few minutes of the final, before an inspirational speech from Hyun? I’ve been unable to confirm either incident and it feels like a case of the writers over-egging the pudding, dramatically speaking.

Fortunately, everything else is excellent, and it’s clear a lot of attention went into details, some of which may not be visible to a Western audience e.g. the North Korean players speaking with appropriate dialect and accents. What was impressive even to me, was that the actresses genuinely looked like they were professional table-tennis players. Months of training went into that, with the real Hyun being one of the coaches. Praise in particular to Bae, who had to learn how to play with her left-hand, to match the one used by Ri. Although CGI was used to “fill in” the ball during the actual tournament sequences, there were no doubles used for the actresses, and the results look close to impeccable – as good as any sports movie I’ve seen. 

Even away from the table, the performances are good, and if the melodrama is turned up little too high, the balance otherwise is nicely handled, with a mix of humour, human interest and patriotism which is effective. While the Chinese are depicted as the “villains” her – and it’s not exactly subtle! – there is very much a message of how sport can act as a unifying force for a country. That’s something I tend to agree with, which is why I have little time for those who use it in divisive ways, such as kneeling during the anthem. There’s no doubt the intent here is almost nationalistic, yet it still works well enough for non-Koreans – and for those who still call the game ping-pong.

Dir: Moon Hyun-sung
Star: Ha Ji-won, Bae Doona, Park Chul-min, Kim Eung-soo

Altitudes

  By

★★★
“Climb every mountain…”

I was really surprised to discover that this French film is actually made for television. It has a certain gravitas and thoughtfulness to it, that you rarely find in a genre which is (often rightfully) derided as being formulaic and cliched. This doesn’t escape those criticisms entirely – in particular, there’s a “Disease of the Week” subplot, which does feel as it it might have strayed in from Lifetime or Hallmark. However, even there, it feels handled in a relatively natural manner, rather than being shoehorned in there to elicit sympathy from the viewer. It definitely looks better than most TVMs out of Hollywood. Whether this is down to Félix von Muralt’s cinematography, or simply the stunning Alpine landscapes, is open to debate.

It begins at a funeral. Isabelle Dormann (Borotra) has returned following fifteen years away, after the death of her father, a former mountaineer, who then ran a lodge high in the Alps. This allows her to reconnect with her friend, Kenza (Krey), a world-class climber herself, but also more awkwardly, with Antoine (Stévenin), a man with whom she had a relationship which helped precipitate Isabelle’s sudden departure from the mountains. She decides to honour her father by climbing a new route up Les Roches Brunes, the nearby mountain after which the lodge was called. At 4,357 metres high, it’s the tallest peak in the area, and Isabelle always talked with her father about pioneering a new route up it, to be named for the family.

She and Kenza decide to honour her late father by doing just that. However, it turns out Isabelle is suffering from a neurodegenerative condition, which is slowly but inevitably killing her, making it a race against time before her physical abilities just aren’t there. It seems this is a fight she has lost, as practice sessions don’t go well. Yet after Kenza calls off the attempt, Isabelle decides to strike out on her own for a solo ascent. Kenza and Antoine follow, hoping to save her from herself.

I like films about climbing, when they concentrate on the climbing. Yet, it seems inevitable to tack on personal drama of one kind or another. It’s not enough simply to have one person taking on nature. Too often, they need to have a dead fiance or similar motivation, and the results often tend to resemble bad soap-opera. That’s definitely the case here, with the whole Isabelle-Antoine relationship dramatically overcooked, and muddying the water. The same goes for Isabelle’s condition: she could simply have been not experienced enough to take on the climb. However, when the movie sets such formulaic conceits aside and concentrates on the almost primeval struggle, it’s much more effective. I can’t even dock it significantly for Antoine effectively white-knighting things, since the ending is bittersweet enough to justify it. I think it’s one which will stick in my mind, for longer than it felt it would at the time. 

Dir: Pierre-Antoine Hiroz
Star: Claire Borotra, Déborah Krey, Sagamore Stévenin, Isabelle Caillat
a.k.a. The Climb

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo

  By

★★★
“Cowgirls behind bars.”

Well, this is certainly the first film I’ve reviewed here which drops both into the “women in prison” and the “sports” category. It takes place in Oklahoma, where since 1940, they have been staging an annual prison rodeo event in McAlester. The competition takes place in an arena built just inside the walls of the State Penitentiary, and includes competitors from facilities across the state. In 2006, the event was opened to female inmates as well, and this documentary (while not absolutely focused on just the women, also including 13-year rodeo veteran and convicted murderer Liles) is about their preparation for the 2007 event, training on a rig pulled back and forth by fellow inmates, and climaxing with the event itself.

What stood out in particular was how normal most of the inmates seemed, though my perceptions there were likely skewed by the more, ah, dramatic depictions of life behind bars. You’d be hard pushed to pick the likes of Brooks, Witte and Herrington out of a line-up at the local PTA, though some of the stories they tell are startling – as much for the casual air with which they admit to dealing drugs or violent robbery. The rodeo gives them a bit of relief from the crushing boredom of life inside, though it’s very much a privilege. Brooks is kicked off the squad when caught in possession of contraband, reportedly unauthorized lipstick, an incident which also puts her release on parole in doubt.

While regular rodeo typically limits female involvement to the less dangerous events, such as barrel racing, there’s no such restriction here. The women inmates take part in bull and bronco riding, as well as the particularly fraught event called “Money the Hard Way”, where the first person to pluck a ribbon tied to a bull’s head wins $100. The beast is clearly no respecter of the fairer sex, sending both men and women into the air with a strictly gender-neutral approach. The comparisons of the event to gladiatorial combat seemed particularly apt here. Yet this feels more like a backdrop to the lives of the prisoners, and I found myself Googling their names in hopes of recent updates.

As with most documentaries, it’s not tidy, with loose ends a-plenty, and if I was both informed and reasonably entertained, I can’t say I reached the end with any life-changing revelations. It feels quite “safe” and conventional as a film of its genre, and Beesley clearly is not interesting in challenging narratives, least of all the self-reported ones of the women’s lives. While they do largely accept responsibility for their crimes, it’d be interesting to hear an outside perspective on those. Not mentioned in the film: the event was canceled in 2010 due to a state budget shortfall. It hasn’t returned since, mostly because the arena has now fallen into disrepair, despite support from the warden, local community and state governor for that. Whether it ever will is uncertain, leaving the documentary a record of an odd slice of Americana that may be forever gone.

Dir: Bradley Beesley
Star: Jamie Brooks, Brandy Witte, Danny Liles, Crystal Herrington

Charlotte Who? – A Gaelic Football Story in America

  By

★★★★
“When Irish eyes are smiling.”

I stumbled across this entirely by accident, Tubi’s autoplay feature putting it on after watching some World Cup highlights. But the start was intriguing enough to keep me watching, and turned out to be a really good documentary, even if the story is a bit clichéd. The original title was the rather more forthright, Who the Fxxk is Charlotte? and that sums up the approach here. Any viewers with an aversion to strong language should not apply. It’s the story of the Charlotte, North Carolina women’s Gaelic football team, and their quest to win the national title. Gaelic football? Yes: an Irish sport, which combines elements of football and rugby. In Ireland, it’s close to a religion with fierce rivalries that go back to the 19th century. 

The Charlotte club was formed in 2000, and based on what we see here, is as much a social organization as a sports club. There does appear to be quite a lot of consumption of adult beverages. But there’s no doubt, they take the sport seriously, and recruit from all round the area, both Irish and American players. On North America, teams can bring in experienced players from Ireland, known as “sanctions”, to help grow the sport. But some clubs do that to excess: Charlotte refuse to go that route, putting their team at a potential disadvantage compared to Boston, or their arch-rivals from San Francisco, the Fog City Harps. The film follows Charlotte as they develop their team, and take part in the 2016 and 2017 senior women’s tournament, for the best sides in North America. 

There are absolutely no pretensions here. It’s a very straightforward approach, and that no-nonsense style fits the participants to a T. Unlike some docs, there’s no off-field drama here, be it artificial or genuine. It’s all about the sport, and it’s depicted as a classic underdog story with plucky Charlotte trying to beat their larger, more established and more “sanctiony” opponents. Though in regard to the last, I would have been curious to see actual numbers: how many of their team were Americans, and how does that compare, say, to the Harps? It’s an easy enough sport to pick up for a viewer, though in some of the games, it was occasionally hard to know the exact score. A score bug in the corner would have been useful. 

In some ways, the structure feels like it mirrors that of a classic kung-fu film. The heroine loses the first battle against her nemesis, but this only increases her resolve. She withdraws, trains harder and learns new techniques, in order to prepare for the rematch. That’s what we have here, with the 2016 tournament ending in defeat. The Charlotte coach also retires, his previously pledged three-year term having come to a close. Yet this opens the door for a dual-headed approach, with two managers of different styles. Considering this is a sport about which I knew almost nothing going in, it was all remarkably engrossing. If you’re not cheering by the end, you’ve clearly got no Irish in you.

Dir: David N. Stiles
Star: Aoife Kavanagh, Catríona O’Shaughnessy, Jan Henry, Kevin Tobin