Category Archives: Sports

Sep 15 2023
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The Entertainment Forecast

Friday, Sept. 15 – Thursday, Sept. 21

Married life takes a murderous turn, Batman wings it all day, and Kim Kardashian’s ‘Horror Story’

Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Jenna Coleman in ‘Wilderness’

FRIDAY, Sept. 15
El Conde
Well, here’s something you don’t see every day: A dark comedy set in Chile about a fascist ruler who happens to be vampire and decides the undead life isn’t for him. Think What We Do in the Shadows with a South American twist (Netflix).

Wilderness
A cross-country dream trip turns into a domestic dilemma in this British TV-series thriller as a young wife (Jenna Coleman) stews over the infidelity of her unfaithful husband (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) as marital bliss turns into fury and revenge, with an opening song by Taylor Swift (Prime).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Game geeks, get ready! The first videogame was created about 70 years ago, but now that “novelty” has become a worldwide phenomenon. Game Changers (Phaidon) is the definitive illustrated compendium of some 300 of pop culture’s most influential and iconic games, consoles and more.

Screen Style (Lawrence King) by film fashionista media consultant Marnie Fogg lets you eyeball some of the most colorful, iconic and wowza wardrobe items from iconic TV shows and movies, including Bridgerton, Empire, Downtown Abbey, The Deuce, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Euphoria, Schitt’s Creek, The Crown and much more. And it’s packed with hundreds of full-color pics, helping exoplain how clothes “make” the man (and the woman!) by establishing time and place and character traits, and setting the tone in subtle, distinctive and absolutely integral ways.

Lovers of language (and how it sometimes gets mauled) will love Damp Squids and Card Sharks (Hardie Grant) by Robert Anwood. This lively little volume is a treat for anyone who appreciates mangled phrases, mixed metaphors, mispelling mishaps and other interesting mis-uses and outright abuses of English. 

SATURDAY, Sept. 16
WOW-Women of Wresting
Pull up your ringside seat for season two of this series about the fabulous female grapplers who it duke it out on the mat…if that’s your jam (syndicated).

Batman
Take wing with the Cape Crusader (above) and a full day of movies, include director Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed trilogy with Christian Bale (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises), plus Justice League and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (begins 10 a.m., TNT).

SUNDAY, Sept. 17
Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein
True-crime fans will flip over this new docuseries, about the serial killer and grave robber whose twisted mind and heinous acts of real-life horror inspired the movies Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (MGM+).

The Gold
Hugh Bonneville and Dominic Cooper lead the cast of this new drama (below), based on a true 1983 story about how a group of men inadvertently stumbled across some $34 million in gold bullion during a London robbery (Paramount+).

MONDAY, Sept. 18
Neighbors
New season of the Australian drama series begins tonight, following the lives, loves and challenges of residents on the fictional Ramsay Street in a suburb of Melbourne (Freevee).

The Academy of Country Music Honors
This annual all-star fete, which was held in August at Nashville’s historic auditorium, will salute country hitmakers including Chris Stapleton, Clint Black, K.T. Oslin, Tim McGraw and Mary Chapin Carpenter (8 p.m., Fox).

Superpowers
Sean Penn directed this documentary about Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky and the country’s ongoing fight for its freedom against Russia (Paramount+).

NOW HEAR THIS

Ready for some hard-charging, guitar-slinging retro rockbilly? Brian Setzer’s new The Devil Always Collects (Surfgod Records) is a hip-cat trip to rockville with a new collection of tunes from the former Stray Cats frontman—including a blisteringly groovy take on the old Del Reeves country truckin’ anthem, “Girl on the Billboard.”

TUESDAY, Sept. 19
Celebrity Name That Tune
How well do the stars know music? Find out as more famous folks come aboard for season three and try to win big bugs for their charities. Randy Fox and Jane Krakowski return as hosts (8 p.m., Fox).

The Mask
See the 1994 superhero comedy which began Jim Carrey’s trajectory as a gonzo breakout star, established Cameron Diaz as a leading lady, and made swing music hip again. And oh, yeah, it made more moolah (at the time) than any other film ever based on a comic book (10 p.m., TruTV).

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 20

American Horror Story: Delicate
Kim Kardashian, Emma Roberts and Cara Delevingne are among the cast for the latest installment of the award-winning anthology horror series, which will feature episodes about witches, a traveling freak show, a haunted hotel and the apocalypse itself. It’s scary good! (10 p.m., FX).

The Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal
On March 2, 2023, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of the murder of his wife, Maggie, and son Paul. The world watched with bated breath as a verdict was announced. The people of South Carolina’s Lowcountry had been waiting the better part of two years to understand what happened the night of June 7, 2021. Now you can find out more in season two of the documentary delving into that fateful night (Netflix).  

THURSDAY, Sept. 21
Bill Murray Moviefest
He’s done some semi-serious stuff, but Murray will always be known for making us laugh. Settle in tonight for a back-to-back mini-fest of his funniest films, including Caddyshack, Scrooged, Meatballs and Stripes (5 p.m., Pluto).

The Prank Panel In the season finale, the practical-joker pranksters (Johnny Knoxville, Eric Andre and Gabourey Sidibe) help pull off an elaborate practical joke involving a new bride and an allergic reaction (9 p.m., ABC).

Sep 01 2023
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Books, DVDs, Movies, Pop Culture, Sports, Television, TV

The Entertainment Forecast

Friday, Sept. 1 – Thursday, Sept. 7

‘The Little Mermaid,’ love in the Smoky Mountains & a sordid scouting scandal

Disney’s live-action ‘Little Mermaid’ comes ashore for streaming this week.

FRIDAY, Sept. 1
The Wheel of Time
Season two begins tonight, about a farm boy who may destroy the world and a group of sorceresses fighting his power and madness (below). With Rosamund Pike (Prime Video).

Power Book IV: Force
The hit franchise returns tonight, as Tommy Egan (Joseph Sikora) charts new territory, capitalizes on his competitors’ weaknesses and makes a play at becoming Chicago’s top drug dealer (8 p.m., Starz).

SATURDAY, Sept. 2
Unforgotten
No, it’s not the Clint Eastwood Western, which was Unforgiven—but rather season five of the British crime series in which London detectives solve a new variety of cold-case disappearances and murder (9 p.m., PBS)

SUNDAY, Sept. 3
Love in the Great Smoky Mountains
Arielle Kebbell and Zach Roerig (above) star as a pair of former sweethearts who rediscover romance while working together on a project in the nation’s most-visited national park (8 p.m., Hallmark).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

You’ll get the “feels” with Motherhood (Tate Publishing), a heartwarming collection of visual representations of motherhood as depicted by artists over the centuries.

A host of vocalist all-stars tell what it’s like to do what they do in The Singers Talk (Permuted Press), featuring more than 70 revealing, wide-ranging interviews, including Tony Bennett, Emmylou Harris, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Dionne Warwick, Rod Stewart, Willie Nelson, Stevie Nicks, Ozzie Osborne and many more!

Fans of everything royal will delight at Queen Elizabeth II: A Photographic Portrait (Thames & Hudson), a splendid collection (and reflection) on the royal highness and her 70 years on the throne, from her first official baby portrait to her Platinum Jubilee last year. More than 200 images, from acclaimed photographers, trace her life and reign, with essays by bestselling historian and author Philip Ziegler.

MONDAY, Sept. 4
Secrets of Penthouse
Four-episode series tells the true story of the rise and fall of Bob Guccione, who made millions as the founder of Penthouse magazine, which challenged Playboy for the girlie-mag market—and pushed the envelope of adult publishing further than it had ever been before (9 p.m., A&E)

Ancient Empires
Three-night event explores the legacies of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra (8 p.m., History).

While We Watched
Strong-stuff documentary offers an unfiltered looks at NDTV, once the bastion of information within India’s TV networks, now spiraling downward in waves of fake news, financial setbacks, creeping nationalism and extremist attacks on truth. It’s a snapshot of a world in crisis, told through the microcosm of one television network that stands as a representative of modern journalism (10 p.m., PBS). 

TUESDAY, Sept. 5

BRING IT HOME

Worlds collide in the acclaimed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), in which multiple versions of the character intersect in a dazzling spectacle of animated adventure. With Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Daniel Kaluuya, Mahershala Ali and Oscar Isaac.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
The reality series returns for a new season (below) with frigid family dynamics, red hot international travel and a shocking betrayal that none of the women saw coming (9 p.m., Bravo).

One Shot: Overtime Elite
Six-part sports documentary series follows the new generation of NBA top draft-pick rookies, led by Amen and Ausar Thompson, Jakhi Howard, Rob Dillingham and Eli Ellis (Prime).

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 6
Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America
How did the Scouts try to cover up one of history’s most horrific sexual abuse scandals? Find out in this documentary, which talks to whistleblowers, survivors and former BSA employees (Netflix).

The Little Mermaid
Disney’s recent live-action re-imagining of its “under the sea” music-filled classic comes today to streaming, with Halle Bailey as Ariel, Javier Bardem as King Triton and Melissa McCarthy as the evil Ursula (Disney+).

THURSDAY, Sept. 7
The Dead Files
Season three of the spooky reality series finds psychic medium Cindy Kaza and homicide detective Steve DiSchiavia teaming up again for more investigations of the paranormal (10 p.m., Travel).

Virgin River
Alexandra Breckinridge (above) returns as midwife “Mel” Monroe for season five of the romantic drama series as the characters face a shocking breakup, a wrenching court trial and a wildfire that threatens their northern California town (Netflix). 

Aug 24 2023
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Movie Reviews, Movies, Sports

Balls ‘n’ Bibles

Dennis Quaid goes gonzo for God in heavy-handed baseball biopic

The Hill
Starring Dennis Quaid, Colin Ford, Jonelle Carter, Bonnie Bedelia & Randy Houser
Directed by Jeff Celentano
PG

In theaters Friday, Aug. 25

Baseball and the Bible round the bases in this sermonizing biopic based on the real-life story of a young Texan with a degenerative spine disorder who dreams of becoming a Major League baseball player.

If you happen to already know about Rickey Hill, this story won’t yield any big grand-slam surprises. But for most mainstream viewers, not steeped in the obscure stats and historic miscellany of America’s pastime, you’ll be learning about him for the first time—how he grew up with stiff braces on both legs, how his rural-preacher daddy forbade him to play ball, how little Rickey did anyway. And how the underdog Rickey, ultimately, lived his dream.

Rickey is played as a child by newcomer Jesse Berry, making his acting debut, and he’s good—one of the best things about the movie, in fact. He’s certainly much more of a “screen presence” than Rickey as a high schooler, played by Colin Ford, a Nashville native who appeared in TV’s Under the Dome and several other series (including as a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer in last year’s Dahmer: Monster). He’s kind of a victim in The Hill, too, confined in a movie that seems unable to give him more than one dimension to maneuver.

Dennis Quaid plays Rickey’s father, dishing out fire and brimstone from the pulpit while his young son blasts rocks with sticks in the backyard, sending them sailing into the sky and over the trees—and sometimes through windshields. More than once we hear other people marvel that his talent is “phenomenal,” his batting skills a “miracle” given his condition.

Director Jeff Celentano is a former actor (whose movies you’ve likely never heard of) turned B-movie filmmaker (whose films, well, ditto). He’s playing in the big leagues now, sort of, with a handful of brand-name actors (Quaid, Bonnie Bedelia, Scott Glenn, Joelle Carter from TV’s Justified and Chicago Hope) and a movie releasing nationwide. Rickey Hill’s story is, for sure, an inspirational one—how a kid never let go of his dream, despite the odds that he’d never make it. It’s a feel-good movie for people who want a movie that wants to make them feel good, scratch their “films about faith” itch and likes their sports with a great deal of Bible thumping. It means well, but its real-life drama of the diamond, under the halos of the ballpark lights, gets lost in tedious, telegraphed tent-revival messaging.

And The Hill is Hallmark Channel quality up on the big screen, with ooey-gooey sentimentality, cringey performances, and a heavy, holy-hokum dose of Sunday School threaded by stories of David and Goliath, the strength of Solomon, sermons about water and rocks, God’s “calling” and being “tested,” admonitions about respecting “the Lord’s house,” and so many quoted Bible verses, I lost count. The dialog is laughably clunky and scripted with such a heavy hand, prone to speech-ifying and often putting words into character’s mouths that, I’m certain, they wouldn’t say. (“Hardscrapple,” for instance, wasn’t a word you would hear a lot in the rural South of the early 1960s. I was there, and I know.) And it just seems odd to hear a little girl—Ricky’s childhood sweetie—chide him about his batting and limited “body rotation.”)

In some instances, you can tell that characters mouths move to salty words that we spoken in a scene but later overdubbed into substitutions—“darn” for “dam,” “stuff” for, well, another word that stars with an “s.” This is a movie that doesn’t have the conviction it’s so preachy about—to let people talk the way they would naturally talk.

Quaid has a deep acting resume that has swung wide, as they say, over the decades, with some bona fide classics (Breaking Away, The Rookie, The Right Stuff) and some real dogs (Jaws 3, A Dog’s Purpose, I Can Only Imagine). This one leans into foul territory, as he gets all grim and clammy—and hammy—digging deep into fever-pitch fervor, insisting that his son follow his zealous path into pastorhood. It’s over the top, even for an actor who played Jerry Lee Lewis, Ronald Reagan, and Lindsay Lohan’s dad in The Parent Trip.

Bonnie Bedelia, who plays his mouthy mother-in-law, is bedecked in a wad of ghostly white granny hair and makeup to make her appear even older than her 75 years. The former soap star who made a splash alongside Bruce Willis in Die Hard looks like she entered every scene from the set of a small-town community playhouse. Oh, and she gets a deathbed scene so full of corn, it’s a real bumper crop. There should be a trail of it following her into the cemetery.

There are several moments that mimic other, better movies—a “railroad tracks” scene set to a retro tune that recalls Stand By Me, slo-mo slugfest batting a la The Natural. Church-going folks may flock to The Hill, but more discriminating movie fans can find a (sand)lot of better baseball movies to love.

—Neil Pond

Jun 02 2023
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Books, Music, Pop Culture, Sports, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

Friday, June 2 – Thursday, June 9

Ah-nold gets real, Shatner returns to space & dark Duggar Family secrets

The ‘Terminator’ star gets real in his new Netflix series.

FRIDAY, June 2
Searching for Soul Food
The term “soul food” means different things to different people in different places. Celebrity chef Alisha Reynolds travels the world to experience this time-honored ethnic cuisine and its various regional and international incarnations (Apple TV+)

Shooting Stars
Hoops fans will want to watch this original film, a dramatization of how LeBron James grew up to become a peerless basketball superstar (Peacock).

Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets
Limited docuseries (below) exposes the dark secrets of abuse behind America’s infamous TV family (remember their reality show, 19 Kids and Counting?) and the radical, cult-like church in the background (Prime Video).

NOW HEAR THIS

Air is this year’s movie for people who say they don’t like sports movies, a feel-good flick that feels like a mashup of vibes from Jerry McGuire and Moneyball. The soundtrack is etched with deep-dish ‘80s grooves from Dire Straits, Violent Femmes, Mike & The Mechanics, Bruce Springsteen, Run-D.M.C, Squeeze and more, all woven into director-actor Ben Affleck’s true-story tale of how a third-tier shoe company launched the business of superstar sports marketing by lacing up a deal with basketball phenom Michael Jordan.

SATURDAY, June 3
TLC Forever
Don’t go chasin’ waterfalls…. Instead, watch this two-hour documentary about the Atlanta-based female group (below) that led the way with their music, message and style in the 1990s, going on to sell more 85 million records (8 p.m., Lifetime and A&E).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Jessica Lange: An Adventurer’s Heart (University Press of Kentucky) is author Anthony Uzarowski’s new deep-dive biography of the award-winning actress, covering her early years in Minnesota, her carefully guarded private life, and her fruitful partnership with playwright/actor Sam Shepard, which became one of Hollywood’s most tumultuous secretive relationships.

Ever since Moneyball, we’ve been much more savvy about how much the information age has shaped pro sports. In Game of Edges (W.W. Norton), author Bruce Schoenfeld goes even deeper for a fascinating inside look at how data analysis, tech and commercial considerations continue to reform the landscape of baseball, soccer, football, basketball and even gaming. 

You know that filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have made some classic films, including Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou and The Big Lebowski. Find out in The Coen Brothers and American Roots Music (McFarland) just how important the musical soundtracks have always been to their cinematic work.

SUNDAY, June 3
The Lazarus Project
New drama series follows a recruit (Paapa Essiedu) in an organization that has harnessed the ability to turn back time whenever the world is on the precipice of extinction (9 p.m., TNT).

MONDAY, June 4
The Eric Andre Show
Season six of the cult-fave grownup sketch series begins, and its slate of upcoming guest stars is pretty impressive—Natasha Lyonne, Jon Hamm, Raven-Symone, Cypress Hill, Lil Yachty and many more (midnight, Adult Swim).

TUESDAY, June 5
Stars on Mars
Star Trek icon William Shatner hosts this space-y reality competition (below) in which “celebronauts”—including Lance Armstrong, Natasha Leggero, Marshawn Lynch and Rhonda Rousey—don spacesuits and embark on a mission to see who’s got the right stuff to colonize the Red Planet (8 p.m., Fox).

Cruel Summer
Season two of the hit anthology series follows intense teenage friendships in an idyllic Pacific Northwest waterfront community (9 p.m., Freeform).

WEDNESDAY, June 6
The Luckiest Guy in the World
New two-part “30 For 30” sports doc covers the life and times of basketball Hall of Famer Bill Walton, known as “The Big Redhead” (8 p.m., ESPN).

Destination: European Nights
Five-part docuseries follows CBS sports analyst Gillem Balague through months of travel across Europe covering the UEFA Champions League and catching the continent-wide buzz of the world’s most prestigious annual soccer tournament (Paramount+).

THURSDAY, June 8
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
It’ll be sunny tonight for fans of this acclaimed comedy series, which has become the longest-running live-action sitcom in TV history as it begins its landmark 16th season with stars Danny Devito, Charlie Day, Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney (10 p.m., FX).

Arnold
Yes, that Arnold—the Terminator, the former gov of California, the muscle man who became a movie icon. New docuseries pulls back the curtain on the fascinating story of Arnold Schwarzenegger (Netflix).

Based on a True Story
Inspired by a real event, this dark-comedy thriller (above) set in L.A. follows a realtor, a plumber and a former tennis star whose lives unexpectedly collide in a true-crime caper. Starring Kaley Cuoco, Chris Messina and Tom Bateman (Peacock).

Hailey’s On It!
Auli’I Cravalho stars in this animated comedy-adventure about a teenager on a mission to complete her ambitious list of tasks to save with world. With supporting voices by Julie Bowen, Jo Koy and Al Yankovic (8 p.m., Disney Channel).

Apr 05 2023
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Movie Reviews, Music, Pop Culture, Sports

If the Shoe Fits

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck score big in their modern Cinderella story about one of the greatest underdog victories in sports marketing history

Matt Damon stars as a Nike marketing exec in ‘Air.’

Air
Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis & Jason Bateman
Directed by Ben Affleck
Rated PG-13

In theaters Wednesday, March 5

Move over, Cinderella, and make way for another shoe story. And this one’s no far-off fairy fable.  

Director Ben Affleck’s earnestly crowd-pleasing Air tells the true tale of how a third-rate sneaker company signed a teenage college basketball phenom, Michael Jordan, and revolutionized everything that followed. One of the most groundbreaking deals in the annals of sports marketing, Nike’s affiliation with Jordan sparked quantum changes in pro sports as well as the realms of fashion, celebrity endorsements and lifestyle.  

It catapulted Nike to the top of the sports-shoe pyramid and eventually made Jordan—today widely recognized as pro basketball’s GOAT, its greatest player of all time—an ever-growing multi-million mountain of moola, dwarfing what he ever earned in his entire NBA career as a superstar for the Chicago Bulls and the Washington Wizards.

Air is a rah-rah, rousing feel-good story about taking risks, following gut instincts, sweating bullets and scoring big. It’s like sports in that regard, but it’s not really a “sports drama.” It spends very little time courtside. Most of the plays we see are as business execs watch grainy scouting tapes. The central figure of the story, Jordan, appears only briefly, a silent sentinental seen almost always from behind. We never get a good look at his face, and we hear him speak only one word, “Hello,” over a telephone.

He’s a looming presence without really being present. It’s a bold, completely effective choice from director Affleck, who knows that dwelling too much on Jordan as a character would take us away from the “sole” of the story and the people who made it happen.

So Jordan, and the game of basketball itself, are sidelined as movie focuses, instead, on the human drama—fathers, sons, workaholic businessmen and one super-savvy mom who connected all the dots, against all the odds. It’s like Moneyball crossed with Jerry Maguire and a dash of David and Goliath.

Ben Affleck is Nike’s philosophical founder, Phil Knight.

It opens in the heart of the go-go, greed-is-good 1980s as we learn how Nike is on the financial ropes, floundering far behind its competitors, Adidas and Converse. The board of directors is pressuring CEO and founder Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to cut corners and slash budgets. Advertising honcho Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) bemoans that “George Orwell was right: 1984 is a terrible year—sales are down, growth is down.”

And Nike is down. But Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), in the company’s basketball scouting division, has a bold brainstorm to turn things around…maybe. He wants to use the company’s entire marketing budget to lure Michael Jordan, then only 18, into an endorsement deal, custom designing a shoe that “fits” him in more ways than one, footwear that will become his emblem, his lifestyle, his legacy.

Sonny knows that if his gamble doesn’t roll out a winner, he’ll be out of a job. But he’s all-in. “We build a shoe line just around him. He doesn’t wear the shoe, he is the shoe,” he says. “I’m willing to bet my career on one guy.”

The shoe, of course, would be the Air Jordan, so named for Jordan’s jaw-dropping leaping abilities as a prolific scorer.

Viola Davis plays the mother of teenage basketball phenom Michael Jordan.

Viola Davis plays Jordan’s mother, a shrewd negotiator who innately understands the longterm value her supremely gifted son brings to the table. Marlon Wayans is George Raveling, a superstar basketball coach who only appears briefly but offers some enduring words of inspiration from his past. Comedian Chris Tucker steals his scenes as a Nike marketer with some valuable insights for Vaccaro, especially in dealing with Black athletes. “Always go the mamas,” he tells him. “The mamas run stuff.”

Chris Messina has some spicy comedic bite as a Jordan’s hard-driving agent, David Falk. Matthew Maher is the shoe designer who comes up with the iconic, inspired design for a product that would ultimately travel far, far above and beyond the basketball court.

It’s a juicy, Oscar-bait ensemble, but Damon’s Vaccaro is the heart and soul of the story, the bedraggled underdog who rallies his Nike cohorts—his teammates—behind his big, high-stakes push to land a legend…and help create another one in the process.

Air is Affleck’s fifth project as a director, and it brims with the confidence and slam-dunk sure-footedness he’s developed in The Town, the Oscar-nominated Argo, Gone Baby Gone and Live by Night. The film is rich with ‘80s period-piece touches (handheld video games, Trivial Pursuit, VCRs, running suits) and a soundtrack of expertly curated MTV-era hits (“Blister in the Sun,” “Money for Nothing,” “Born in the USA,” “Time After Time”). It marks the first project of the production company, Artists Infinity, Affleck formed with Damon, his childhood bestie from the ‘hood in Massachusetts.

This is the ninth film in which Damon and Affleck have appeared together, beginning with uncredited appearances as Fenway Park extras in another sports-related human drama, Field of Dreams. They have a natural, unforced ease onscreen together, a natural stride that feels like, well, two old friends who’ve marched along the same path together for years, often as collaborators, doing what they always dreamed of doing, now getting to do it in Hollywood’s big leagues.

And in Air, they’ve found a shoe—and a shoe story—that feels like it fits them perfectly, a cinematic Cinderella’s slipper accented with the Nike swoosh.

—Neil Pond

Jul 02 2018
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Movie Reviews, Sports

Full Court Press

NBA All Stars Go Old School in Basketball Buddy Comedy

Uncle Drew_group

Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber, Nate Robinson, Reggie Miller & Kyrie Irving play former basketball stars who reunite after three decades for a streetball tournament.

Uncle Drew
Starring Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery & Shaquille O’Neal
Directed by Charles Stone III
PG-13

Uncle Drew is a basketball comedy with its roots in television spots for Pepsi Max featuring the NBA’s Kyrie Irving of the Boston Celtics, disguised as an elderly man who schools younger players—or “youngbloods”—in pickup games.

The film takes that concept and runs with it, expanding the plot, adding a half-court of NBA all-stars and some Hollywood live wires.

After a faux ESPN 30 For 30 documentary intro—in which we learn that Uncle Drew was an NBA legend who mysteriously disappeared from the scene three decades ago, at the height of his fame and glory—we begin to meet the players.

UD_D028_20209.JPG

Lil Rel Howrey, Nick Kroll & Tiffany Haddish

Dax (Lil Rel Howery, from Tag and Get Out) is a hapless Foot Locker employer who loves basketball. But traumatized by a childhood buzzer-beater block on the court, he hasn’t been able to play the game since. So now he manages a team from the sidelines and dreams of winning a big annual streetball tournament—and $100,000—at Rucker Park in Harlem.

His gum-smacking, wisecracking nemesis, Mookie (Nick Kroll), thwarts him at every move, however. At the last minute, Mookie steals Dax’s star player, Casper (Aaron Gordon of the Orlando Magic), the rest of his team and his gold-digging girlfriend, Jess (Tiffany Haddish).

Dax is understandably crushed, but things begin to start looking up when he finds the fabled Uncle Drew, mopping up with a cocky youngblood on a playground court. Drew (again played by Irving) agrees to play for Dax’s team, under one condition—if he can bring along his old teammates.

So Dax and Drew set out on a road trip in Drew’s orange, shag-carpeted conversion van to collect Preacher (Chris Webber, who retired from the Golden State Warriors in 2008); Lights (Reggie Miller, the three-point maestro whose entire 18-year career was spent with the Indiana Pacers); Boots (Nate Robinson, the NBA’s first three-time slam-dunk champion); Betty Lou (former WNBA Los Angeles Sparks star Lisa Leslie); and Big Fella (the towering, 7’1” Shaquille O’Neal).

Of course, rounding everyone up is not so easy—and the team certainly doesn’t appear as sharp and game-ready as they were 30 years ago. Preacher, now a bona fide man of the cloth, has to sneak away from his church, and his wife, to play ball. Lights is legally blind. Boots is in a wheelchair—and a psychiatric ward.

Shaquille O'Neal as "Big Fella" in UNCLE DREW. Photo by Quantrell Colbert.

Big Fella (O’Neal) is a martial arts instructor in the Zen zone.

And Big Fella is in the Zen zone as a children’s martial arts instructor—with a mountain-sized grudge on his gigantic shoulders. “Without a good defense,” he tells his class of young students, “your offense means nothing.”

Can Dax and Drew get them all back in shape, and on board?

The big appeal is seeing all these big basketball stars in decades-deep disguise as geezers, then finally breaking out their hidden mojo on the court to show younger hotshot players how it’s done, old-school style—like an NBA edition of Undercover Boss. There’s plenty of humor as Dax and the players jib and jab each other, and basketball fans in particular will appreciate the inside jokes and zingers—Shaq and free throws, Webber’s character inquiring about time-outs.

Howery, Kroll and Haddish are all comedy pros, and the needle on the laugh-o-meter jumps whenever they’re on screen. Director Charles Stone III, whose other films include Drumline and the Bernie Mac baseball comedy Mr. 3000, keeps things light, lively and generally predictable while weaving in some sentimental messages about family, forgiveness and what it means to play a “good game.”

UD_2 (72)

Watch for J.B. Smoove and Mike Epps in small roles, and Erica Ash (who stars as Gwen Sullivan on the BET series In Contempt) as Boots’ granddaughter, Maya, who takes a romantic shine to Dax.

As “non-actors,” the b-ball players roll loose and easy with their parts, especially since they are performing underneath layers of makeup and latex prosthetics, wigs and gobs of glued-on grey facial hair. If there’s ever an award for Best Buns in a Hospital Gown by a Former NBA All Star, well, Shaq’s a shoo-in for a nomination.

Uncle Drkew isn’t a cinematic slam dunk, but it’s a surprisingly solid basketball buddy flick that plays by the rules, shoots for laughs, and scores—especially for sports fans.

In theaters June 29, 2018

Mar 09 2016
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Movies, Sports

Fly Like an Eagle

‘Eddie the Eagle’ soars with inspiring tale of unlikely Olympic star

 

Eddie the Eagle

Starring Taron Egerton & Hugh Jackman

Directed by Dexter Fletcher

PG-13

Ever since he was a tot, Great Britain’s Michael “Eddie” Edwards dreamed of becoming an Olympic athlete. But the odds were always stacked against him.

Weight lifter, pole vaulter, discus thrower, hurdle jumper—he didn’t care. But no amount of backyard “training” made any difference. With congenitally wobbly knees bolstered by leg braces and thick eyeglasses to correct his terrible vision, young Eddie was no one’s idea of the Olympic ideal.

Though it takes a few—or more—liberties, Eddie the Eagle is based on the rousing real-life story of Edwards, who proved all the naysayers wrong to become an Olympic competitor, representing Great Britain in the 1988 Winter Olympics as a ski jumper. The movie traces his improbable journey, against the wishes of his working-class father, who urges him to settle into a proper trade, and England’s stuffy Olympic committee, which thwarts his every attempt to qualify for their team.

“Frankly,” one official dismissively tells teenage Eddie (Taron Edgerton), “you will never be Olympic material—goodbye.”

Eddie counters that curt farewell with his usual optimism, tenacity and pluck. Nothing is going to deter him. He sets off on his own to a Winter Olympics training facility, where he meets former ski champ Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), who reluctantly, eventually agrees to take Eddie under his wing.

As the stocky, bumbling, socially awkward Eddie, Edgerton is miles—or kilometers—away from his best-known former role as a stylish, slick super-spy in Kingsman. Jackman provides American-cowboy grit (all the way down to his boots) as a washed-up one-time “whiz kid” of the slopes and former Olympic star himself, who finds his own path to redemption through Eddie’s relentless ambition.

You probably haven’t heard of British actor-director Dexter Fletcher, whose films haven’t made much of a splash here in America. But he gives Eddie the Eagle a look, texture and sound perfect for its time and place, from Prince Charles and Lady Diana salt and pepper shakers on a kitchen table to the music, which combines pop and rock tunes of the era with instrumental synthesizer swooshes and swirls that would have been right at home driving the grooves of most any 1980s flick.

The movie shares its uplifting underdog spirit with Rocky, Rudy, Seabiscuit, Hoosiers and any number of other film sagas about individuals or teams that come from behind, power through roadblocks or are told they can’t, shouldn’t or won’t ever.

Hugh Jackman, left, poses with Eddie Edwards on the set of EDDIE THE EAGLE.

Hugh Jackman with the real-life Eddie Edwards on the set of ‘Eddie the Eagle’

When Eddie finally makes it to the Olympics, the crowd and the media love the naïve, effusively enthusiastic oddity who barely qualified for his team and who causes the announcers to declare, “The eagle has landed!” when he makes his climactic breathtaking, daredevil descent intact—and alive.

“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part,” we’re told, a quote from one of the games’ founders. And no one embodied that spirit like Eddie, whose inspiring, soaring tale of determination and personal triumph in the heartwarming Eddie the Eagle is a joy to behold as it takes flight.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Feb 01 2016
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Movie Reviews, Sports

Butting Heads

Will Smith tackles the NFL 

1286100 - Concussion

Concussion

Starring Will Smith, Alec Baldwin & Albert Brooks

Directed by Peter Landesman

PG-13

Will Smith has fought zombies, space aliens and killer robots. Now he’s squaring off against an even bigger, completely human foe—and certainly a much more popular one.

In Concussion, he plays Dr. Bennett Omalu, who discovers the link between football and CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy—potentially fatal brain damage from repeated concussions.

The true story (originally told in a 2009 article in GQ magazine) begins as we meet Nigerian-born Omalu in 2002, while he’s working in Pittsburgh as the county coroner’s forensic pathologist. The untimely death, and bizarre final days, of a former Pittsburgh Steeler football Hall of Famer, Mike Webster (David Morse), troubles him: Webster’s autopsy reveals severe brain trauma that caused him to go crazy, freak out and eventually expire of a heart attack. When Omalu learns of other NFL players dying in similar fashion, he investigates further and comes to a conclusion that almost no one wants to hear—especially not the National Football League.

Playing football can kill you.

Unlike some other creatures, such as the woodpecker or the bighorn sheep, Omalu points out, humans have no natural shock absorber in our skulls to cushion the blow when one of our noggins impact with something hard—like another noggin. Nature, or providence, simply did not equip us that way. Therefore, Omalu reasons, “God did not intend for us to play football.”

Smith, a bona fide movie star, is outstanding in a non-flashy role that doesn’t involve car chases, spaceships, shootouts or CGI special effects—just straight-up, strong, dig-in acting and a very plausible, start-to-finish nail-down of Dr. O’s West African accent and mannerisms. He makes you feel Omalu’s passionate sense of commitment—and his dream to be accepted as “American”—as the NFL tries to quash his research and discredit him.

Albert Brooks is Cyril Wecht, the county coroner who helps Omalu while warning him of squaring off against with the NFL. “You’re going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week,” he tells him. Alec Baldwin plays Dr. Julian Bailes, the former Steelers team doctor who assists Omalu in getting his message to football players, managers, agents and the commissioner. “You’ve turned on the lights and given their biggest boogeyman a name,” Bailes says.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Will Smith star in Columbia Pictures' "Concussion."

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Will Smith

British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Prema, the Nigerian student who becomes Omalu’s wife, reminding him that his family name means “He who knows, speaks.”

But the movie belongs to Smith, who tackles what might be his one of his trickiest, juiciest roles—a crusading underdog with a potentially life-saving message that falls on mostly deaf ears. “Tell the truth—tell the truth!” a frustrated Omalu jabs at a NFL team neurosurgeon who refuses to admit there’s any connection between football and brain injury.

As millions of football fans tune into the big game this weekend, it’s a truth that will likely be drowned out by the symphony of cheers all across America.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Feb 27 2015
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Movie Reviews, Movies, Sports

Running to Inspire

Kevin Costner is perfectly cast coach in uplifting true-life sports tale

McFARLAND

McFarland, USA

Starring Kevin Costner, Maria Bello & Carlos Pratts

Directed by Niki Caro

PG

When the folks at Disney were looking for someone to play the coach in this real-life sports drama, they knew who’d be perfect.

Kevin Costner, who turned 61 on Feb. 18, has been in just about every kind of movie, but he’s become a sort of senior statesman of sports flicks, with a career arc that started in the 1980s with baseball (Bull Durham and Field of Dreams) and continued through the ’90s with Tin Cup (golf) and into last year with Draft Day (football).

McFARLAND

Maria Bello, Kevin Costner, Elsie Fisher & Morgan Saylor

In McFarland, USA he plays Jim White, a high school football coach who—like Costner—has been around the block a few times. White doesn’t have a lot of patience with pampered jock-star players who don’t put their hearts, as well as their shoulders, on the line and into the game. An “incident” at the beginning of the movie—in 1987—finds the coach, his wife and their two kids on the move, again, transferred from Boise, Idaho, to the small central California town of McFarland, where he quickly discovers that the mostly Hispanic football team is a flop—but man, can those boys run.

That’s because they’re always running home from school to help their parents, or running after school to work in the fields. White sees their potential as a cross-country running team that could compete with bigger, better-funded schools—and possibly even compete at the state level. Never mind that the school has never had a running team, or that White has never coached one.

It’s a pretty basic underdog-tale movie template, but several things about McFarland, USA make it a standout. For starters, director Niki Caro (whose three previous other features include Whale Rider and North Country, both of which received Oscar nods) never cloaks Costner in the glow of aMcFARLAND “white savior” spotlight; he may be the star, but she makes sure the high school athletes shine. This “based-on-a-true-story” movie is their story, too, and the young actors cast as the runners, all newcomers and relative unknowns, give their onscreen characters personality, substance and dimension.

There’s humor as well as heart as White and his family clash with, and ultimately embrace, their new culture. “You got burgers?” White asks on their first—bumpy—night in town before settling for the local restaurant’s only offering: tacos. Maria Bello does a solid job as Mrs. White, even though she’s not given near enough to do, and Morgan Saylor, who played Dana Brody on TV’s Homeland, is lovely as their teenage daughter, Julie, who falls for the running team’s leader (Carlos Pratts).

We meet parents, neighbors, shopkeepers and other town residents. When the camera pans the crowd at the big state meet in the climactic final race scene, we realize that we—like coach White—have come to know, like and respect all these people, who were once unfamiliar, or even threatening.

As the credits roll, you’ll get to meet the real stars of this story: the now-grown McFarland cross-country runners from the team, and the real Jim White. And if you don’t walk out of this feel-good movie feeling better, more inspired and more uplifted than when you came in, proud of what happened back in this small California town in 1987 and proud of the boys and coach who made it possible…well, you must have seen a different movie than I did.

—Neil Pond, Parade Magazine

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Sep 08 2014
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DVDs, Movies, Sports

Feel The Draft

Kevin Costner leads all-star cast in behind-the-scenes drama

 0612176BTr1

Draft Day

Blu-ray $39.99, DVD $29.95 (Lionsgate)

 

Kevin Costner leads an all-star cast (including Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Frank Langella, Sam Elliott, Sean Combs, Terry Crews, Tom Welling and Houston Texans running back Arian Foster, making his feature film acting debut) in this behind-the-scenes drama about a pro football team manager navigating and negotiating his way through the hurdles—unhappy fans, a contentious coach and a bottom-line manager—of the NFL’s high-stakes Draft Day. Bonus features include a 58-minute making-of documentary, commentary, and a behind-the-scenes look at the real NFL draft.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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