Fighting Tommy Riley (Drama,Sport)

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Trainer Marty Goldberg has been stuck working on the fringes of the professional circuit far too long. Searching for a way out, he discovers Tommy, a young man with raw talent to burn. Outside the ring however, Tommy displays a self-destructive streak that could end his career before it begins. Marty works with Tommy to tame that streak.
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Ali (Biography,Drama,Sport)

Forget What You Think You Know
The Champ is here!
Download here
In 1964, a brash new pro boxer, fresh from his olympic gold medal victory, explodes on to the scene, Cassius Clay. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African American's in sport with his proud public self confidence with his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. To his credit, he sets out to prove that with his highly agile and forceful style soon making him a formidable boxer who soon claims the heavyweight championship. His personal life is no less noteworthy with his allegiance to the Nation of Islam, his friendship with the controversial Malcolm X and his abandonment of his slave name in favour of Muhammad Ali stirring up controversy. Yet, at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test with the military draft rules are changed, making him eligible for military induction during the Vietnam War. Despite the fact that he could easily agree to a sweetheart deal that would have meant an easy tour of duty for himself, Ali refuses to submit on principle to cooperate in an unjust war for a racist nation that treated his people so poorly. The cost of that stand is high as he finds himself unable to legally box in his own country while his case is contested in court. What follows is a battle for a man who would sacrifice so much for what he believes in and a comeback that would cement his legend as one of the great sports figures of all time.
Download here

"Ali" is a long, flat, curiously muted film about the heavyweight champion. It lacks much of the flash, fire and humor of Muhammad Ali and is shot more in the tone of a eulogy than a celebration. There is little joy here. The film is long and plays longer, because it permits itself sequences that are drawn out to inexplicable lengths while hurrying past others that should have been dramatic high points. It feels like an unfinished rough cut that might play better after editing.Consider, for example, a training sequence set in Zaire, after Ali travels there for "The Rumble in the Jungle." He begins his morning run, which takes him past a panorama of daily life. All very well. But he runs and runs and runs, long after any possible point has been made--and runs some more. This is the kind of extended scene you see in an early assembly of a film, before the heavy lifting has started in the editing room.The film considers 10 years in the life of Ali, from 1964, when he won the world heavyweight championship as Cassius Clay, to 1974, when as Muhammad Ali, he fought in the Rumble. This is the key decade in Ali's life, cut in half by three years when he was barred from boxing because of his refusal to be drafted.Although many mistakenly believe he refused to serve because of guidance from the Nation of Islam, the film makes it clear that he took his stand on principle, and it cost him both his title and his religion; the Nation of Islam disapproved of his decision, and suspended him. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in his favor, he had lost what should have been his prime years as a young fighter. When he went into the ring against George Foreman in Zaire, he was 32, the challenger 24.Michael Mann's story of these 10 years is told in the style of events overheard--this isn't a documentary, but it seems to lack a fiction's privileged access to its hero. Key scenes play out in enigmatic snippets of dialogue. We work to make connections. We see Ali's wives, but don't feel we know them; they fade in and out of focus like ghosts. The screenplay by Eric Roth and Mann seems reluctant to commit to a point of view, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. During some scenes, you can almost sense it shrugging. Ali remains an enigma.This is despite what is actually a good job of acting by Will Smith in the title role. He has bulked up and looks convincing in the ring, but the key element of his performance is in capturing Ali's enigmatic, improvisational personality. He gets the soft-spoken, kidding quality just right, and we sense Ali as a man who plays a colorful public role while keeping a private reserve. There are times when he grows distant from even those close to him, and they look at him as if into a mystery.The real problem with Smith's performance is the movie it finds itself in. Smith is the right actor for Ali, but this is the wrong movie. Smith is sharp, fast, funny, like the Ali of trash-talking fame, but the movie doesn't unleash that side of him, or his character. Ali was not only the most famous man of his time, but had fun with his fame. I can't claim any special insights, but I did once spend a day with him, and I saw a man enormously entertained by life, twinkling with bemusement, lowering the tinted glass window of his Rolls limousine so that pedestrians could do a double-take when they saw it was the Champ. Smith could play that man, but "Ali" doesn't know or see him--it sees Ali as more meditative and subdued--as sad, sometimes, when sadness is the last thing you feel when you risk everything on principle. The film feels like it's under a cloud.Among the many key players in his life--his wives, his trainer Angelo Dundee, his right-hand man Bundini Brown, his mentor Malcolm X, his father, his leader Elijah Muhammad--Ali's most authentic relationship in the film seems to be with the sportscaster Howard Cosell. Played by Jon Voight in a performance that captures his theatrical weirdness and forthright honesty, Cosell comes across as a man who slipped into TV before the cookie cutting began. His voice, his toupee, his sublime self-assurance, are all here, along with a tender, almost paternal regard for Ali, a man he clearly loves and worries about. Ali responds in kind, and Smith is able to suggest that in a world that surrounded him with toadies, boot-lickers and yes-men, Ali turned to Cosell almost in relief at being able to hear the truth, plainly spoken. Jamie Foxx is also engaging and appealing as Bundini, the self-destructive mascot who sold the champ's belt "and put it into my arm." The fight scenes are convincing and well-staged. Smith looks at home in the ring. But the unique thing about the life of Muhammad Ali is precisely that it was not just about the fighting. More than any other heavyweight champion and few athletes in any sport, Ali changed the subject: His life was not about boxing, but about a black man who dared to triumph in American society without compromise, apology or caution.Those who called him a coward for refusing to fight in the war will learn here that he had been offered a sweetheart deal by the Army; all he had to do was go along, be inducted, not play the angry black rebel, and he'd be entertaining the troops and defending his title and getting nowhere close to combat. To turn down that deal, and the heavyweight title, and to lose the blessing of the Nation of Islam in the process, was to show himself as a brave man entirely governed by ethics."No Viet Cong ever called me nigger," Ali famously said, and the movie makes it clear that the American establishment was terrified of a black uprising in the tumultuous Vietnam era, and that J. Edgar Hoover, whose G-men tracked and tricked Martin Luther King and Ali, was one of the great villains of his time.The movie includes scenes involving King and Malcolm X, but doesn't really deal with them (you find out more in Spike Lee's "Malcolm X"). After King is shot, Ali watches a city burn, but curiously has no dialogue. We wait for issues to be clarified, for points to be made, for the movie to punch up what is important, but the dramatic high points slowly slip back down into a miasma of unfocused and undisciplined footage. The visual look of the picture mirrors its lack of energy; the colors are subdued, the focus often a little soft. "Ali" looks like a movie that was never properly prepared and mounted, that got away from its makers in the filming, that has been released without being completed.Download here

Mr. 3000 (Comedy,Drama,Sport)

Back in the game. Out of his league.
Big league. Big mouth. Big time.
He's putting the "I" back in team.
Hits theaters everywhere.
Download here
Stan Ross was a baseball superstar who turned his back on the game years ago when he finally hit 3,000 hits. Years later, he's now a successful, self-made entrepreneur whose many businesses revolve around his title: Mr. 3000. But a clerical error has proven that Stan is just short three hits of his spectacular hit record. Now, with time on his side and the potential to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Stan must return back to the game and get back his title. But things have changed with age, and as Stan finds out, it's not too easy to get back into the game when he hasn't played for years, and he's nearing 50.
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Baseball heroes are not necessarily the nicest guys on earth, but do moviegoers want to know that? Two movies about flawed legends, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, bombed at the box office. Now here is "Mr. 3000," starring Bernie Mac as a player so disliked that even the team's mascot disses him. This time, however, the movie is a comedy, not a dirge, and Bernie Mac gives a funny and kind of touching performance as a man who attains greatness once and then has to do it again.



Mac plays Stan Ross, a legend in more ways than one on the Milwaukee Brewers, where he retired after getting 3,000 hits. In fact, he retired immediately after hit No. 3,000, leaving his team in the middle of the season, to devote himself to his car dealership and TV commercials. Even his best friend doesn't sound sincere when he speaks on Stan Ross Day. Maybe there's still some bad feeling because Stan climbed into the stands to get the ball he hit for No. 3,000, and grabbed it out of the hands of a little kid.



Time passes. Stan basks in the afterglow of his 3,000 hits. He is considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame, and then a statistician discovers a crucial error: Because of a discontinued game, some of his hits were counted twice, and he in fact has only 2,997 hits. Too bad he didn't finish out that season.That's all set-up. The fun is in the payoff, as Stan comes out of retirement at 47 to try to get three more hits. He's past his prime and even past his decline, but his comeback makes a good story and ticket sales zoom. But the kids on the team hardly know who he is, and his attitude wears badly when he's batting 0 for 27. You may be in trouble if you're starring every night in Jay Leno monologues.



The thing about Stan, though, is that he knows baseball. He thinks his team is loafing, and he's right. He calls them a Little League team. He notices things, like an opposing pitcher's "tell" before he throws a curve. He starts passing out advice and criticism in the dugout. There's room for that, because the team's manager (Paul Sorvino) sits with sphinx-like detachment at the end of the bench, never uttering a single word.The Bernie Ross story is a big one for ESPN, which assigns ace reporter Mo Simmons (Angela Bassett). She's an old girlfriend of Stan's, maybe the only woman he ever loved, although love for Stan does not come easily. She puts the pieces in place for what becomes the redemption of Mr. 3000, as he struggles to attain his crucial hits, but somehow at the same time becomes a nicer and even a wiser guy.



Bernie Mac is a meat-and-potatoes kind of actor, at least in the roles he's given to play. In his characters, what you see is what you get: A no-B.S. straight talker with unlimited self-confidence. He's a good choice to play Stan Ross, because we believe him when he says what he thinks, and we especially believe him when he says what he shouldn't be thinking. Stan's romantic relationship with the Mo Simmons character is obviously based on a lot of history. Angela Bassett plays what could have been a routine role with a convincing emotional spirit; she'll cover the story, but Mr. 3000 has not earned an entry in her record book.



Almost all sports movies end with the big play, the big point, the big pass, the big putt, whatever. I guess they have to. There's not much point in showing the next play, point, etc. And of course the big moment has to come in the last moment of the last game of the season, after countless setbacks, in a sudden death situation. "Mr. 3000" follows this formula up to a point, and then, to my surprise, it finds a variation. Don't assume I'm hinting that Stan Ross doesn't get hit No. 3000, or for that matter that he does. It's more a case of allowing the implacable logic of baseball strategy to take over.Download here

Wimbledon (Comedy,Drama,Romance,Sport)

She's the golden girl. He's the longshot. It's a match made in...
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In just two summer weeks, a British tennis player who was ranked 119th in the world (Bettany), and generally considered to be on his last legs as a professional player, gets his one last chance to win both the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships on the grassy courts of Wimbledon... and the heart of the rising star "bad girl of tennis" (Dunst) as well...
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"Wimbledon" is a well-behaved movie about nice people who have good things happen to them. That's kind of startling, in a world where movie characters, especially in sports movies, occupy the edge of human experience. What a surprise to hear conversation instead of dialogue, and to realize that the villain may actually be right some of the time.The movie stars Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst as tennis pros -- she a rising star, he a fading one. Lizzie Bradbury's greatness is ahead of her, but Peter Colt fears his is all behind. He was once ranked 11th in the world, is now down around 113 and falling. He gets a wild card berth at Wimbledon and vows that, win or lose, he'll retire from the pro circuit after this tournament.



The two players have parents representative of their respective civilizations. Lizzie's dad, Dennis (Sam Neill), is a hard-driving American control freak who has managed Lizzie's career since she was a child. Peter's parents (Bernard Hill and Eleanor Bron) are rich British eccentrics; his mother potters in the garden, and his father moves into the treehouse after a fight with his wife. Stop to consider how few movie sports heroes even have parents (some do not even seem of woman born).



Lizzie and Peter have a Meet Cute early in the film, when he is mistakenly given the key to her suite at the Dorchester. She is nude in the shower, but handles the situation with such composure that we wonder if she arranged for him to get the key, especially after, with admirable frankness, she asks him, "Where do you come down on the whole fooling-around-before-a-match issue?"She comes down in favor of it, and soon they're snoggling and holding hands. Her father of course believes sex before a match is a drain of precious bodily fluids and warns Peter away. Peter tries to reassure him, but the father says, "This time it's different. She's falling for you."



And so she is, in a movie where the lovers keep late hours for finalists at Wimbledon. His nightly workouts seem to inspire Peter, who scores one upset after another over highly seeded players. But Lizzie's father is afraid she's tiring herself, tries to hide her, and even tracks the lovers to Brighton in a scene embarrassingly captured on live television.All of this is told in a movie more realistic about tennis than about love. The tennis scenes are well choreographed and acted (Bettany looks to me like a competent player). They make sense visually and dramatically, and they evoke the loneliness of a sport where everything depends on one person at one moment in time. Interior monologues allow us to hear Peter talking to himself, psyching himself out, quieting his fears. Is it ridiculous to believe he plays better because he's in love? Of course not.



But what kind of love is it? On Peter's part, it seems to be old-fashioned over-the-moon romance. But Lizzie is rather alarmingly direct in the way she originally recruits Peter, and later she seems too willing to give him up. Does she use lovers like a convenience? We've seen male characters like this in the movies, but a woman with such a casual attitude is unusual. For that matter, is she really casual? There's a stretch of the movie when we're not sure.



We're also not so sure we like Ron (Jon Favreau), Peter's once and future agent. He's a little too much of a caricature, and the movie uses his cell phone for easy laughs. Sam Neill, as Lizzie's father, could also be a caricature, but I liked the way the movie backed off toward the end and showed a certain common sense beneath his decisions.What I mostly liked was the warmth between the two leads. Lizzie and Peter like each other, and because they share the same profession they have more to talk about then their feelings. We get a sense for what it's like to be all alone on a court with everything depending on you and no possible excuses. This is not a great movie, and you will be able to live quite happily without seeing it, but what it does, it does with a certain welcome warmth.Download here

Goal II: Living the Dream (Drama,Sport)

The Journey Continues...
Download here
After gaining experience with the football club Newcastle United, Santiago Munez (Becker) gets a huge break when he's transferred to Real Madrid.
Download here

Goal II: Living the Dream (Drama,Sport)

The Journey Continues...
Download here
After gaining experience with the football club Newcastle United, Santiago Munez (Becker) gets a huge break when he's transferred to Real Madrid.
Download here

Ali (Biography,Drama,Sport)

Forget What You Think You Know
The Champ is here!
Download here
In 1964, a brash new pro boxer, fresh from his olympic gold medal victory, explodes on to the scene, Cassius Clay. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African American's in sport with his proud public self confidence with his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. To his credit, he sets out to prove that with his highly agile and forceful style soon making him a formidable boxer who soon claims the heavyweight championship. His personal life is no less noteworthy with his allegiance to the Nation of Islam, his friendship with the controversial Malcolm X and his abandonment of his slave name in favour of Muhammad Ali stirring up controversy. Yet, at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test with the military draft rules are changed, making him eligible for military induction during the Vietnam War. Despite the fact that he could easily agree to a sweetheart deal that would have meant an easy tour of duty for himself, Ali refuses to submit on principle to cooperate in an unjust war for a racist nation that treated his people so poorly. The cost of that stand is high as he finds himself unable to legally box in his own country while his case is contested in court. What follows is a battle for a man who would sacrifice so much for what he believes in and a comeback that would cement his legend as one of the great sports figures of all time.
Download here

"Ali" is a long, flat, curiously muted film about the heavyweight champion. It lacks much of the flash, fire and humor of Muhammad Ali and is shot more in the tone of a eulogy than a celebration. There is little joy here. The film is long and plays longer, because it permits itself sequences that are drawn out to inexplicable lengths while hurrying past others that should have been dramatic high points. It feels like an unfinished rough cut that might play better after editing.Consider, for example, a training sequence set in Zaire, after Ali travels there for "The Rumble in the Jungle." He begins his morning run, which takes him past a panorama of daily life. All very well. But he runs and runs and runs, long after any possible point has been made--and runs some more. This is the kind of extended scene you see in an early assembly of a film, before the heavy lifting has started in the editing room.The film considers 10 years in the life of Ali, from 1964, when he won the world heavyweight championship as Cassius Clay, to 1974, when as Muhammad Ali, he fought in the Rumble. This is the key decade in Ali's life, cut in half by three years when he was barred from boxing because of his refusal to be drafted.Although many mistakenly believe he refused to serve because of guidance from the Nation of Islam, the film makes it clear that he took his stand on principle, and it cost him both his title and his religion; the Nation of Islam disapproved of his decision, and suspended him. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in his favor, he had lost what should have been his prime years as a young fighter. When he went into the ring against George Foreman in Zaire, he was 32, the challenger 24.Michael Mann's story of these 10 years is told in the style of events overheard--this isn't a documentary, but it seems to lack a fiction's privileged access to its hero. Key scenes play out in enigmatic snippets of dialogue. We work to make connections. We see Ali's wives, but don't feel we know them; they fade in and out of focus like ghosts. The screenplay by Eric Roth and Mann seems reluctant to commit to a point of view, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. During some scenes, you can almost sense it shrugging. Ali remains an enigma.This is despite what is actually a good job of acting by Will Smith in the title role. He has bulked up and looks convincing in the ring, but the key element of his performance is in capturing Ali's enigmatic, improvisational personality. He gets the soft-spoken, kidding quality just right, and we sense Ali as a man who plays a colorful public role while keeping a private reserve. There are times when he grows distant from even those close to him, and they look at him as if into a mystery.The real problem with Smith's performance is the movie it finds itself in. Smith is the right actor for Ali, but this is the wrong movie. Smith is sharp, fast, funny, like the Ali of trash-talking fame, but the movie doesn't unleash that side of him, or his character. Ali was not only the most famous man of his time, but had fun with his fame. I can't claim any special insights, but I did once spend a day with him, and I saw a man enormously entertained by life, twinkling with bemusement, lowering the tinted glass window of his Rolls limousine so that pedestrians could do a double-take when they saw it was the Champ. Smith could play that man, but "Ali" doesn't know or see him--it sees Ali as more meditative and subdued--as sad, sometimes, when sadness is the last thing you feel when you risk everything on principle. The film feels like it's under a cloud.Among the many key players in his life--his wives, his trainer Angelo Dundee, his right-hand man Bundini Brown, his mentor Malcolm X, his father, his leader Elijah Muhammad--Ali's most authentic relationship in the film seems to be with the sportscaster Howard Cosell. Played by Jon Voight in a performance that captures his theatrical weirdness and forthright honesty, Cosell comes across as a man who slipped into TV before the cookie cutting began. His voice, his toupee, his sublime self-assurance, are all here, along with a tender, almost paternal regard for Ali, a man he clearly loves and worries about. Ali responds in kind, and Smith is able to suggest that in a world that surrounded him with toadies, boot-lickers and yes-men, Ali turned to Cosell almost in relief at being able to hear the truth, plainly spoken. Jamie Foxx is also engaging and appealing as Bundini, the self-destructive mascot who sold the champ's belt "and put it into my arm." The fight scenes are convincing and well-staged. Smith looks at home in the ring. But the unique thing about the life of Muhammad Ali is precisely that it was not just about the fighting. More than any other heavyweight champion and few athletes in any sport, Ali changed the subject: His life was not about boxing, but about a black man who dared to triumph in American society without compromise, apology or caution.Those who called him a coward for refusing to fight in the war will learn here that he had been offered a sweetheart deal by the Army; all he had to do was go along, be inducted, not play the angry black rebel, and he'd be entertaining the troops and defending his title and getting nowhere close to combat. To turn down that deal, and the heavyweight title, and to lose the blessing of the Nation of Islam in the process, was to show himself as a brave man entirely governed by ethics."No Viet Cong ever called me nigger," Ali famously said, and the movie makes it clear that the American establishment was terrified of a black uprising in the tumultuous Vietnam era, and that J. Edgar Hoover, whose G-men tracked and tricked Martin Luther King and Ali, was one of the great villains of his time.The movie includes scenes involving King and Malcolm X, but doesn't really deal with them (you find out more in Spike Lee's "Malcolm X"). After King is shot, Ali watches a city burn, but curiously has no dialogue. We wait for issues to be clarified, for points to be made, for the movie to punch up what is important, but the dramatic high points slowly slip back down into a miasma of unfocused and undisciplined footage. The visual look of the picture mirrors its lack of energy; the colors are subdued, the focus often a little soft. "Ali" looks like a movie that was never properly prepared and mounted, that got away from its makers in the filming, that has been released without being completed.Download here

Goal II: Living the Dream (Drama,Sport)

The Journey Continues...
Download here
After gaining experience with the football club Newcastle United, Santiago Munez (Becker) gets a huge break when he's transferred to Real Madrid.
Download here

Ringer, The (Comedy,Sport)

Only a jackass would fix the Special Olympics
Special has been redefined.
Download here
This comedy is about two guys who decide to rig the Special Olympics to pay off a debt by having one of them, Steve (Knoxville), pose as a contestant in the games, hoping to dethrone reigning champion, Jimmy. Mentally-challenged high jinks and hilarity surely follow.
Download here

Gridiron Gang (Drama,Sport)

One goal. A second chance.
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In the Kilpatrick juvenile detention center, the supervisor and former football player Sean Porter sees the lack of discipline, self-esteem, union and perspective in the teenage interns and proposes to prepare a football team to play in one league. He is supported by his superiors and his successful experience changes the lives of many young kids.
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Longest Yard, The (Action,Comedy,Drama,Sport)

Hit hard or go home.
If you can't get out, get even
It was hard to put a team together... until they found out who they were playing.
It's time to even the score
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Paul "Wrecking" Crewe was a revered football superstar back in his day, but that time has since faded. But when a messy drunk driving incident lands him in jail, Paul finds he was specifically requested by Warden Hazen (James Cromwell), a duplicitous prison official well aware of Paul's athletic skills. Paul has been assigned the task of assembling a team of convicts, to square off in a big football game against the sadistic guards. With the help of fellow convict Caretaker, and an old legend named Nate Scarborough to coach, Crewe is ready for what promises to be a very interesting game. It's only the warden and the guards who have no idea who or what they're up against, with Paul the driving force behind the new team.
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Mr. 3000 (Comedy,Drama,Sport)

Back in the game. Out of his league.
Big league. Big mouth. Big time.
He's putting the "I" back in team.
Hits theaters everywhere.
Download here
Stan Ross was a baseball superstar who turned his back on the game years ago when he finally hit 3,000 hits. Years later, he's now a successful, self-made entrepreneur whose many businesses revolve around his title: Mr. 3000. But a clerical error has proven that Stan is just short three hits of his spectacular hit record. Now, with time on his side and the potential to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Stan must return back to the game and get back his title. But things have changed with age, and as Stan finds out, it's not too easy to get back into the game when he hasn't played for years, and he's nearing 50.
Download here

Baseball heroes are not necessarily the nicest guys on earth, but do moviegoers want to know that? Two movies about flawed legends, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, bombed at the box office. Now here is "Mr. 3000," starring Bernie Mac as a player so disliked that even the team's mascot disses him. This time, however, the movie is a comedy, not a dirge, and Bernie Mac gives a funny and kind of touching performance as a man who attains greatness once and then has to do it again.



Mac plays Stan Ross, a legend in more ways than one on the Milwaukee Brewers, where he retired after getting 3,000 hits. In fact, he retired immediately after hit No. 3,000, leaving his team in the middle of the season, to devote himself to his car dealership and TV commercials. Even his best friend doesn't sound sincere when he speaks on Stan Ross Day. Maybe there's still some bad feeling because Stan climbed into the stands to get the ball he hit for No. 3,000, and grabbed it out of the hands of a little kid.



Time passes. Stan basks in the afterglow of his 3,000 hits. He is considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame, and then a statistician discovers a crucial error: Because of a discontinued game, some of his hits were counted twice, and he in fact has only 2,997 hits. Too bad he didn't finish out that season.That's all set-up. The fun is in the payoff, as Stan comes out of retirement at 47 to try to get three more hits. He's past his prime and even past his decline, but his comeback makes a good story and ticket sales zoom. But the kids on the team hardly know who he is, and his attitude wears badly when he's batting 0 for 27. You may be in trouble if you're starring every night in Jay Leno monologues.



The thing about Stan, though, is that he knows baseball. He thinks his team is loafing, and he's right. He calls them a Little League team. He notices things, like an opposing pitcher's "tell" before he throws a curve. He starts passing out advice and criticism in the dugout. There's room for that, because the team's manager (Paul Sorvino) sits with sphinx-like detachment at the end of the bench, never uttering a single word.The Bernie Ross story is a big one for ESPN, which assigns ace reporter Mo Simmons (Angela Bassett). She's an old girlfriend of Stan's, maybe the only woman he ever loved, although love for Stan does not come easily. She puts the pieces in place for what becomes the redemption of Mr. 3000, as he struggles to attain his crucial hits, but somehow at the same time becomes a nicer and even a wiser guy.



Bernie Mac is a meat-and-potatoes kind of actor, at least in the roles he's given to play. In his characters, what you see is what you get: A no-B.S. straight talker with unlimited self-confidence. He's a good choice to play Stan Ross, because we believe him when he says what he thinks, and we especially believe him when he says what he shouldn't be thinking. Stan's romantic relationship with the Mo Simmons character is obviously based on a lot of history. Angela Bassett plays what could have been a routine role with a convincing emotional spirit; she'll cover the story, but Mr. 3000 has not earned an entry in her record book.



Almost all sports movies end with the big play, the big point, the big pass, the big putt, whatever. I guess they have to. There's not much point in showing the next play, point, etc. And of course the big moment has to come in the last moment of the last game of the season, after countless setbacks, in a sudden death situation. "Mr. 3000" follows this formula up to a point, and then, to my surprise, it finds a variation. Don't assume I'm hinting that Stan Ross doesn't get hit No. 3000, or for that matter that he does. It's more a case of allowing the implacable logic of baseball strategy to take over.Download here

Ringer, The (Comedy,Sport)

Only a jackass would fix the Special Olympics
Special has been redefined.
Download here
This comedy is about two guys who decide to rig the Special Olympics to pay off a debt by having one of them, Steve (Knoxville), pose as a contestant in the games, hoping to dethrone reigning champion, Jimmy. Mentally-challenged high jinks and hilarity surely follow.
Download here

Like Mike (Comedy,Family,Fantasy,Sport)

Think like Mike, Achieve like Mike, Be Like Mike.
Download here
Calvin and his friends, who all live an in orphanage, find old shoes with the faded letters MJ connected to a powerline. One stormy night, they go to get the shoes when Calvin and the shoes are struck by lightning. Calvin now has unbelievable basketball powers and has the chance to play for the NBA.
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Kids can't be Michael Jordan, but they can wear his basketball sneakers, and in their fantasies, the sneakers give them the power to be--like Mike. Sports shoes are one of the most powerful totems in kid society, in part because of M.J.'s TV ads, and "Like Mike" is not merely a good idea for a movie, but an inevitable one.Lil' Bow Wow (whose name should properly be spelled Li'l' Bow Wow, but never mind) stars as Calvin Cambridge, an orphan who comes into possession of a pair of faded Nikes with the initials "MJ" written inside the tongue. We might doubt that Jordan writes his initials in his shoes (and if he does, he probably has someone to do it for him), but Calvin has no doubts, not even when the shoes are a perfect fit, which seems unlikely.He lives in an orphanage that seems to be running as a profitable scam. His best buddy is Murph (Jonathan Lipnicki), and his worst enemy is Ox (Jesse Plemons). Ox throws the sneakers so they hang by their laces from a power line, Calvin climbs up a tree in a storm to retrieve them, lightning strikes, and somehow the sneakers and the lightning magically combine to make him like Mike.Really like Mike. The kind coach of the local NBA team (Robert Forster) gives Calvin some tickets to a game, he ends up in a halftime shooting contest with an NBA star and, wearing the sneakers, outshoots the star so dramatically that the team owner signs him up--as a gimmick, of course, although Calvin is soon in the starting lineup and leading his team to the finals. Wearing the magic sneakers, he makes Air Jordan look like a puddle jumper.Rapper Lil' Bow Wow (who has since dropped the "Lil' ") is responsible for a lot of the movie's success. He is confident and relaxed on the screen, engaging, and has good moves on the basketball court. In a role that could have been deadly with the wrong kind of kid actor, he's the right kind, a no-nonsense professional who wisely plays the fantasy as if it were real.A lot of the surrounding plot is recycled from other movies, of course, including the playground bully, the tried-and-true orphanage situations (the kids are like puppies hoping for new owners) and the last-minute, cliff-hanging plays of the big games. But the movie overcomes its lack or originality in the setup by making good use of its central idea, that a pair of sneakers could make a kid into an NBA star. This is a message a lot of kids have been waiting to hear.Download here

Space Jam (Adventure,Animation,Comedy,Family,Fantasy,Sci-Fi,Sport)

Get ready to jam
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Swackhammer, owner of the amusement park planet Moron Mountain is desperate get new attractions and he decides that the Looney Tune characters would be perfect. He sends his diminutive underlings to get them to him, whether Bugs Bunny & Co. want to go or not. Well armed for their size, Bugs Bunny is forced to trick them into agreeing to a competition to determine their freedom. Taking advantage of their puny and stubby legged foes, the gang selects basketball for the surest chance of winning. However, the Nerdlucks turn the tables and steal the talents of leading professional basketball stars to become massive basketball bruisers known as the Monstars. In desperation, Bugs Bunny calls on the aid of Micheal Jordan, the Babe Ruth of Basketball, to help them have a chance at winning their freedom.
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``Space Jam'' is a happy marriage of good ideas--three films for the price of one, giving us a comic treatment of the career adventures of Michael Jordan, crossed with a Looney Tunes cartoon and some showbiz warfare. It entertains kids at one level while giving their parents a lot to smile at, too. It's an inspired way to use, and kid, Jordan's image while at the same time updating Bugs Bunny & Company to doing battle in the multizillion-dollar animation sweepstakes.The story begins with young Michael Jordan shooting baskets with his father in the backyard of their home and dreaming of his path to happiness: North Carolina . . . the NBA . . . and finally the ultimate goal, pro baseball. Then we flash forward to very funny sequences showing Jordan in the midst of his baseball career.He's not a very good baseball player (a TV newscast is frank about that), but everyone around him is starstruck by his sports stardom, anyway. (``He looks good in a uniform,'' one player enthuses. ``You can't teach that.'') An opposing catcher is such a fan that he tells Michael what pitches to expect, and Jordan is having a great time realizing his childhood dream when suddenly he finds himself yanked down a hole on the golf course, and into Looney Tunes-land.A parallel story has filled us in on the situation in an alternate cartoon universe, where an amusement park in outer space has desperate need for new attractions. To bolster ticket sales, the alien Nerdlucks, who run the park, kidnap the Looney Tunes stars (the stellar roster includes Bugs, Daffy, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester, the Tazmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and the sexy newcomer Lola Bunny). The desperate Bugs and friends have cut a deal: They'll get their freedom if they can defeat the Nerdluck ``Monstars'' in a basketball game. But the Monstars suck up the basketball talent of such stars as Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing (leaving them unable to even catch a ball, and telling it all to therapists). In desperation, the Looneys kidnap Michael as their secret weapon.``I'm a baseball player now,'' Jordan protests.``Right!'' says Bugs. ``And I'm a Shakespearean actor!'' Rising to the occasion, Jordan coaches the Looney Tunes squad in a series of high-energy games and action sequences that combine his live scenes with state-of-the-art animation. The cartoon sequences employ traditional animation techniques and newer approaches, such as the three-dimensional computer animation used in ``Toy Story.'' You can watch the movie on the sports and cartoon levels, and also appreciate the corporate strategy that's involved. A successful feature-length animated family film can roll up astronomical grosses (more than $1 billion from all sources for ``The Lion King''). But the problem for the rest of Hollywood is, only Disney seems to have the key and the cachet to make those films. Animated movies from other sources tend to do disappointingly at the box office.Warner Bros. has historically been a studio with a rich legacy in animation; such great cartoon directors as Chuck Jones helped fashion their stable of stars. But six-minute cartoons are a neglected art form, and ``Space Jam'' looks like a Warners vehicle to catapult their Looney Tunes characters into the feature-length arena to do battle with Disney.There are hints of the rivalry all through the film. The outer space amusement park is named ``Moron Mountain,'' perhaps a tribute to Space Mountain at Walt Disney World. And when a professional hockey team is mentioned, Daffy sputters, ``The Ducks? What kind of a Mickey Mouse organization would name their team the Ducks?'' Will the Warners strategy work? It will if they can keep co-stars like Michael Jordan on board. It is difficult for an actor to work in movies that combine live action with animation, because much of the time he cannot see the other characters in a scene with him. But Jordan has a natural ease and humor, an unforced charisma, that makes a good fit with the cartoon universe. By not forcing himself, by never seeming to try too hard to be funny or urgent, Jordan keeps a certain dignity; he never acts as if he thinks he's a cartoon, too, and that's why he has good chemistry with the Tunes. He's a visitor to Looney-land, not a resident.There are other funny live action scenes involving Jordan and Hollywood's favorite unbilled guest star, Bill Murray, and scenes, too, with Wayne Knight, as a baseball publicist who comes along as an adviser and confidant. The film was produced by Ivan Reitman (``Ghostbusters'') and directed by Joe Pytka, who has directed Jordan in a lot of his best TV commercials; their work was blended with the animation of a team headed by Ron Tippe, and the result is delightful, a family movie in the best sense (which means the adults will enjoy it, too).Download here

Nacho Libre (Comedy,Sport)

He's nacho average hero
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Ignacio is a monk who aspires to be a professional wrestler (luchador = fighter in Spanish). This is against the other priests. He wrestles under the name "Nacho" for the children to help pay for their needs in hiding. The movie is what happens when he does this.
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Jack Black is not very funny in "Nacho Libre," and that requires some meditation. Jack Black is essentially, intrinsically and instinctively a funny actor. He has that Christopher Walken thing going where you smile when he appears in a movie. It takes some doing to make a Jack Black comedy that doesn't work. But "Nacho Libre" does it.



The premise of the movie is just fine in theory, and must have sounded great at the pitch meeting: Black plays Brother Ignacio, a monk who lives in a backwater of Mexico, cooks slop for orphans, and lusts after the beautiful Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera). Because he wants to be famous and make money and buy better food to cook for the orphans, he begins a secret career as a masked wrestler.



The sport he attempts to infiltrate actually exists in Mexico and the American Southwest. It is called lucha libre, and I learn from Wikipedia that it's a style of freestyle wrestling with more freedom and less strategy than the American variety. A lucha libre wrestler is known as a luchador. The sport is depicted with affection in the movie. If the luchadores (especially the giant Ramses, with his golden mask) seem a little ridiculous, well, all professional wrestlers have always seemed a little ridiculous, haven't they? What can you say about a sport whose heroes include Haystacks Calhoun?



The problem with "Nacho Libre" is not its content but its style. It is curiously disjointed. Episodes meander on and off the screen without much conviction. While in training, Brother Ignacio climbs a rocky cliff to eat the yolk of an eagle's egg, and what's the payoff? He eats it and dives back into the water. Jokes do not build to climaxes, confrontations are misplaced, the professional wrestling itself is not especially well-staged and Black's tag-team partner, Esquelto (Hector Jimenez) is not well-defined; it's funny that he answers all of Ignacio's theories by saying he "believes in science," but what's the punchline? He tags along all too literally, because the writers haven't carved out a role for him to play.



As for Sister Encarnacion, she is neither sexy enough nor pious enough to be funny as one or the other. She seems like an innocent not sure what she thinks about Brother Ignacio or anybody else. Nor is Brother Ignacio especially lecherous; his seduction technique is to ask her to "join me in my quarters for some toast." Again, funny, but free-standing, and leading nowhere.



One of the writers on the film is Mike White ("Chuck & Buck," "School of Rock," "The Good Girl," "Orange County"), who can usually do no wrong. The director is Jared Hess, whose "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004) is much beloved by many moviegoers. I have so often been assured that I missed the boat on "Napoleon" that I plan to go back and have another look at it; but now here is "Nacho Libre," which has the same incomplete and fitful comic timing I thought I found in the earlier film.



I suppose there will be those who find "Nacho Libre" offensive in one way or another, but with comedy a little political incorrectness comes with the territory. Yes, Mexico in the movie seems to be a country where English is the language and Spanish is a hobby. Yes, Brother Ignacio is mugged by a Wild Child for a bag of nacho chips. And yes, Brother Ignacio's cooking is so bad that this may be the first orphanage in the history of fiction where an urchin approaches the cook and asks, "Please, sir, may I have less food?" (This doesn't actually happen in the movie, but it should have.)



I dunno. I sat there and watched scenes flex their muscles and run off in the direction of comedy and trip over something. I saw the great Jack Black occasionally at wit's end. I saw wrestling matches that were neither painful nor funny and not well-enough choreographed to make much sense. "Nacho Libre" begins with a certain air of dejection, as if it already suspects what we're about to find out.Download here

Mean Machine (Comedy,Drama,Sport)

It's Not Just About Football, It's About Pride Inside!
Not Your Usual Suspects
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Disgraced ex-England captain (Danny 'Mean Machine' Meehan) is thrown in jail for assaulting two police officers. Whilst in jail, he doesn't recieve any favours because of his celebrity status in the outside world. He is out numbered and many prisoners constantly barrage him with insults for letting down his country in a crucial World Cup game. He keeps his head down and has the opportunity to forget everything and change the lives of the prisoners. These prisoners have the chance to put one over the evil guards. The prisoners are lead by Danny and the whole of the prison, guards aside, are behind them. Game on......
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Second String (Comedy,Drama,Sport)

She believed in him. Now he must believe in himself to lead the team to the Super Bowl.
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American football coach Chuck Dichter has worked wonders with the Buffalo Bills, and is even confident to crown his career with a Super Bowl victory, but before the play-offs an oyster food-poisoning wipes out his first team for a month. Dan Heller, an insurance salesman and former college quarterback, who was hired -relactantly, but his wife twisted his arm- just for practice, now has to captain and train a bunch of rookies and old-timers against the hardest adversaries. Dichter decides to sign up triple Super Bowl-winner Tommy Baker in Dan's place...
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