Teen Wolf

1985 werewolf comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Scott Howard has no identity. He's a mediocre basketball player on a terrible high school team. The object of his affection doesn't know he exists. He's even got a really boring name! That all changes when he turns into a werewolf, the transformation suddenly giving him this dynamic personality and superhuman abilities. Becoming a wolf, however, has its price, and the price for Scott Howard is his true self.

Here's the deal. Since 1985, I've had recurring nightmares where I die after an accident while surfing on my friend's van. The dream is generally the same with slight variations. I'm surfing, and my friend starts turning into a wolf, gets really freaked out by the sight of his wolf fingernails, and swerves wildly. I spill off, the Beach Boys music stops, and a steamroller rolls over me. My last words are almost always, "Learn to fucking drive, Alex P. Keaton!" For the past 25 years or so, I've been convinced that I will die while surfing on a van and have done my best to avoid the activity.

Recently, as most of my readers know, I've been working at the dumpiest motel on the face of the earth, an establishment crawling with drug dealers, prostitutes, and drifters. Lately, it seems that it's unlikely that I'll die while surfing on a van and will probably die while working a night shift at this motel.

So in retrospect, it was probably a terrible idea to watch Teen Wolf while working a night shift at the motel. I'm not supposed to sit on the couch in the lobby and watch television anyway. Well, I don't think I am. It's never been addressed officially, but it seems like a really strange thing for my manager to pay me to do. If he knew, I can imagine having a conversation with him that had the words "Do you think I pay you to sit around and watch Teen Wolf?" which would probably make me start laughing which would make him ask "What? Do you think this is funny?" which would make me say (of course!) "I am an animal! Woooo!"

The perfect end to that story would be for my manager and I to take advantage of the sweet van the motel uses to shuttle people to the airport (illegally, it seems, since we're told to take off the sign on the door that advertises the inn because "we're not allowed there") to ride the waves. It's the perfect vehicle for van surfing! We would go out on the highway and pull over on the shoulder. My boss, a little Indian fellow, would start to get out, but I'd stop him, look him in the eye, and say, "These waves are mine." And then I'd probably die.

But I digress. My manager isn't Stiles, and I doubt he'd ever take me van surfing. Watching the most dangerous movie of all time in the most dangerous motel of all time? I defied the odds by surviving the experience. It's like I stared Death in his scary skull eyes and chuckled. And I got paid like 15 dollars to watch Teen Wolf on a couch that smells like somebody urinated on it. That, my friends, is a win-win situation.

"I'm not a fag. I'm a werewolf." I think that line was in Universal's Wolf Man, wasn't it?

The Karate Kid

2010 remake

Rating: 12/20 (Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: Same as the 1984 version of The Karate Kid except the thirty-five year old "kid" Ralph Macchio has been replaced with Will Smith's daughter. Oh, and it takes place in China and has a Lady Gaga song replacing that Joe Esposito "You're the Best . . . Around" song.

When I was a kid, I was in a book with Grover, the Sesame Street Muppet. My mom or grandmother or somebody had sent away for it. It had my picture in it, and Grover used my name. And you can bet that I felt special as a seventeen-year-old kid, the only boy in my high school who co-starred with Grover in a picture book! I imagine this version of The Karate Kid is a lot like that only Will Smith's daughter's parents have a lot more money to spend on the project. The story is nearly identical, cheesy layer after cheesy layer. I think it might (shockingly) have even more montages though. The incomparable Jackie Chan replaces the incomparable Pat Morita, and the fight scenes are, and this is no compliment, a bit flashier. The big climactic "Crane" thing from the first movie is replaced by something incoherent and goofy, and probably because of the 1984 movie, I knew it was coming and just had to sort of wait for it in agony. "Oh, I bet Will Smith's daughter is going to try to pull that off in the tournament," I groaned. Jaden Smith isn't awful, even with all the bad lines she's forced to read, and the endless training montages looked authentic enough. The kung-fu aficionado in me probably liked those best. That whole jacket thing didn't quite have the impact that "Wax on/Wax off" had though. I also liked the lone fight scene with old man Jackie Chan beating up some children although I wished those children would have been dressed as skeletons. The biggest problem I had with this remake was its length. At five hours and twenty-three minutes, it just seemed a little long. I probably could have done without the couple hours of violin recitals and the montages could have been cut in half from fourteen to seven. I think Will Smith should have his daughter remake Teen Wolf next, by the way. Or maybe the three Back to the Futures! Hell, Jackie Chan could even take Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown in that one, right?

Mongolian Ping Pong

2005 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: In the Mongolian grasslands, young Bilike lives with his parents, older sister, and grandmother. He chills with his peeps, racing his horse against his friend's moped and occasionally playing some spirited rounds of grab-ass. One day, he finds a ping pong ball floating down the river. Only he doesn't know what a ping pong is, so the object fascinates him. He and his friend ask around. Is it a pearl, some sort of egg, something from heaven? When Dad, a guy obsessed with a carnival game that involves rolling tires to win prizes, finally gets the audio on the television working, Bilike finds out that his treasure is the national ball of China and decides it needs to be returned.

This is a charming little movie, kind of a cross between The Story of the Weeping Camel and The Gods Must Be Crazy. It's beautifully shot. The Mongolian steppe is almost as important as the characters or maybe even more important than the characters, and it's filmed in a way to make this family seem completely alienated from industrialized society. There are some great shots in this. Maybe it's just my current state of mind and my desire to be as far away from people as possible, but I would love to live in Middle-of-Nowhere, Mongolia with these folks. And I liked the story of how a simple object like this can get a child's imagination going. The pace is very slow, but instead of being dull, the space you're given helps you absorb the experiences of these children. The focus stays with the children, and it gives the story an innocence that I found refreshing. I'm not sure if any of the cast is a professional actor, but the only times things didn't seem authentic, almost documentary-authentic, were a few scenes where the children interacted with each other. The ending of this coming-of-age (sort of) story is a poignant one, the only movie I can think of that ends with a sound effect. I only grabbed this movie because I hadn't seen a Chinese movie in 2011, and I'm glad I picked this one.

January Movie Club Selection: Field of Dreams

1989 baseball fantasy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: After a choppy backstory that explains a broken relationship with a father and how he married the most annoying woman in Iowa, Ray Kinsella settles into the present day where he struggles to stay afloat as a corn farmer. One afternoon, Ray is standing in his field (this is apparently something that farmers often do) and hears a voice telling him to build something so that somebody will come. He giggles. He later hallucinates and decides, because of his father's lack of spontaneity, to build a baseball field so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can boss him around on it. Shoeless Joe and his friends start playing on the field regularly, and Ray semi-retires so that he can sit on the bleachers and do absolutely nothing. But more voices lead him to Boston to find Darth Vader and then Minnesota to find J. J. Hunsecker.

Right away, we know why Cory loves this movie. For there, right on the Kinsella television screen, is Jimmy Stewart himself (in Harvey)in the first of two too-obvious references to mental illness. The other is that "I'm Crazy" song playing at a farm supply store.

I'd seen this movie once with my father about twenty years ago. Until I watched it again, I thought it was a pretty good movie that I actually liked. Turns out that it's a big sloppy mess of Hollywood treacle that I really kind of hated. It starts with the music. After some overly dramatic big Hollywood music accompanying pictures of young Ray, we get to the shots of Ray in his cornfield with the creepy ambient music that plays whenever he hears dead people. Here's what I want to know--does Ray also hear the creepy ambient music? After about fifteen minutes, I was already tired of the five-note piano theme that played every time something important happens. Later, I wanted to invent a drinking game or something like a drinking game where I shoved a pencil in my ear every time that music played.

I don't mind stretching my imagination, suspending my disbelief, or whatever. Field of Dreams forces me to stretch things a little too thin. Take for instance the hallucinations that lead him to his epiphany. He keeps asking if he's crazy because the script has him ask it about ten times. The answer has to be "Yes!" doesn't it? Nobody in his right mind is going to build a baseball field in that situation. Then, after he gets the "Ease his pain" message, he just happens to show up to a really awkward book-banning discussion where author Mann's name pops up, and he makes the connection? I loved that book discussion by the way. People randomly yelling out, "Pervert!" or "He's probably a communist!" And it climaxes with the most un-arousing catfight in the history of cinema. It's hard to swallow that a big coinkydink leads him to want to travel to Boston and Mann. But when his obnoxious wife starts in with the "I had a dream you were watching a game at Fenway with Mann" thing? I might have thrown up anyway, but that five-note piano motif came on and made it happen a little quicker.

The acting--I didn't like it, almost top to bottom. Burt Lancaster's the best of the bunch, but there are some moments when he's reading his lines like he's in a hurry, almost like he feels he has to finish them before he dies. Young "Moonlight" is maybe the worst, wide-eyed and talentless. He even overdoes winking. Amy Madigan is just too much, but maybe Ray's wife is supposed to be irritating. It's almost like Madigan read the script, thought it was a comedy, and played everything for laughs. James Earl Jones doesn't really fit inside his pants or his character, and Mann's behavior and dialogue is so inconsistent. There's an obnoxious child actor, Gaby Hoffmann; the only thing she accomplished was making me wish Ray and his wife were childless. At one point, Ray's brother-in-law (right before he shoves her off the top of the bleachers and nearly kills her) asks, "What the hell is she talking about?" and that was exactly what I was thinking. I wanted to give Timothy Busfield (Ed's brother on the TV show Ed) a high five. And there's Ray Liotta who seems bored with his role as Shoeless Joe. And good ol' Kevin Costner. His idea of "acting" is apparently looking into the distance and nodding or, sometimes, looking really confused. My favorite Costner moment is during a scene where he's driving his VW van and practising how to greet Mann. It's nearly a Nicholas Cage moment.

Some random questions I had:

--Ray is telling his daughter Shoeless Joe's story while building half of a baseball field--clearing it of the corn, smoothing out the dirt, planting the grass seed, putting up the lights, assembling the bleachers, etc. Is he a really really slow storyteller or a quick builder of bleachers?

--When Shoeless Joe arrives, there's all this baseball equipment just sitting there ready to be used. Where did that come from?

--Was Shoeless Joe supposed to be kind of a jerk? I thought he was kind of jerky.

--Why was Ray's wife wearing a beanie at one point?

--Time travel? Seriously?

--Where did the umpires come from?

--Is the line "Who is this? Elvis?" supposed to be as funny as I thought it was?

--How about the line "You guys are guests in my corn"?

--The six minutes after the little girl is shoved from the bleachers--does it turn into a comedy there?

--Wouldn't the "Hey, Dad? Want to have a catch?" line really confuse John?

This is the type of movie that stretches sentimentality so far that it snaps and hits you right in the brain. Or the groin. Hard. It's just too, too much. And most unfortunately, Ray and his wife are trying to figure out how the baseball field can be a financial enterprise at the end of the movie. That was a sickening thematic twist there, wasn't it?

I'll end with something positive because I don't want to be all negative with the first movie club selection. There's a scene where James Earl Jones walks into the cornfield. Before he enters, he stands there with a dumb grin on his face, sticks his hand in and out a few times, laughs really awkwardly, wobbles a bit. I had to rewind and watch that several times. Take it out of the context of Field of Dreams, and it's absolutely hilarious.

The Blind Side

2009 big-screen after-school special

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 15/20; Emma: 15/20; Abbey: 18/20)

Plot: The extraordinary true story of Michael Oher, a troubled black teen without a home or family who is transformed overnight into a student-athlete after the well-to-do Touly family takes him in and feeds him turkey.

Somebody made Dylan watch this at school, and he told me, after his class had almost finished the entire thing, that it was a great movie, one that he would rate an 18. That's three times what he rated Dr. Strangelove, by the way. So we watched it, actually finishing the movie before he got a chance to watch the rest. I told him he was going to feel let down by the ending because Oher ends up devouring the Touly son S.J. Sandra Bullock walks in and watches in horror as Oher gnaws the rest of S.J.'s flesh from what appears to be a bloody, tooth-marked femur, and screams, "Big Mike! What are you doing?" Oher looks at her with this demented look in his eyes, a string of cartilage dangling from his lips, and exclaims with a mouth full of S.J., "I told you not to call me Big Mike!" That would have made this a much, much better movie, but a much, much less extraordinary true story. Speaking of S.J., I don't see how anybody can watch Jae Head's performance, a slightly-more-obnoxious-than-normal child performance, and consider this as a Best Picture nominee. His first line ("It's girl's volleyball, mom. You didn't miss anything.") almost made me stop watching The Blind Side. Sandra Bullock's critically-acclaimed performance isn't much better though. I wasn't as impressed with her down-home accent and tough-cookie personality as most seemed to be. It seemed to me that she had only a single move that she used over and over in this movie--a sideways glance with slightly-parted lips that she'd use whenever another character in the movie said anything to her. It kind of made her character seem dumb a lot of the time. This alternates between bland, derivative, and overly sentimental, and although the story is a nice one, I don't get the hype. It's definitely not three times better than Dr. Strangelove.

Big Fan

2009 sports movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Paul's sort of a loser. He lives with mom who wishes he could be more like his seemingly better-adjusted brother and sister. He's content with a dead-end job at a parking garage. He lives for one thing and one thing only--his New York Giants and their potentially bright future with star quarterback Quantrell Bishop. With pal Sal, he tailgates every Sunday before watching the game on a television in the parking lot of the stadium. On weeknights, he carefully pens some words for a local sports talk radio show, trading trash talk with an Eagles fan called Philadelphia Phil. But a violent encounter with the star quarterback threatens to disrupt his routine and ruin the team's chances of winning the division, and Paul is left to sort it all out.

I certainly wanted to like this movie more than I did. I almost laughed once--at a 50 Cent birthday cake with a "7" candle--but found the majority of what was supposed to be a dark comedy fairly discomforting. Writer/director Robert Siegel and Patton Oswalt take this character to some dark places, crush his bones, spit on him when he's down, and expect us to laugh, but there's not nearly enough of a payoff. Big Fan gets some things right. You could hear a lot of talk show callers (I'm looking at you, Clones) in Paul's scripted phone calls, and I thought Oswalt was excellent in portraying this guy. But too much of this was just difficult to watch--the interactions between Paul and his mother, the building tension as Paul sat watching his idol live it up with his entourage at a club, pretty much every conversation Paul had with anybody not named Sal. Pitiful characters can be funny, I guess, when it feels like they're somehow in on the joke, but with Big Fan, it just didn't feel right to laugh at this guy's pain. Or maybe it just wasn't funny enough. I would have liked some evolution with the character, something to make me think that it was all going to be all right eventually, some glimmer of light that would make it OK to crack a smile. I didn't get it.

This movie also loses a point because of Michael Rapaport. I don't like that guy.

Ballhawks

2010 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A documentary about grown men who hang around outside Wrigley Field to collect baseballs that leave the stadium.

A real treat for baseball fans, even diehard Cub haters like me. This is often funny, somehow made even funnier by Bill Murray's narration. But more importantly, it's often poignant, digging in and discovering truths about not only baseball and the generally heavy-hearted fans of the most embarrassing team in baseball but about life. More than anything, this is a movie about anticipation, people who wait and wait--probably infinitely--but who never lose hope. And there's something really cool about it. There's also something really cool about seeing just how much this team and this baseball field means to its city, and it really made me want to see another game at Wrigley. The Ballhawks themselves are entertaining, humorous, and complex individuals. There's an old guy who dresses like a young guy, a veteran (the Babe Ruth of Ballhawks who has an absolutely staggering 4,000+ baseballs), a guy who takes it way too seriously, and a controversial guy who breaks all the Ballhawks' unwritten rules. The director (Michael Diedrich) started out to make a film about these outsiders (literal outsiders) because he thought that the Cubs were going to win the World Series. They didn't because they're the Cubs, but an interesting accidental second story emerged when the Cubs people decided to extend the seating in left field, making it more difficult for balls to actually leave the stadium. The added conflict adds a dimension. There's far too much music, but this is a wonderful little documentary that all baseball fans (and especially Cubs fans, I reckon) will enjoy.

Caddyshack

1980 golf movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Mildly humorous goings-on go on at a country club. Danny the caddy tries to raise money for college. A stuffed gopher wreaks havoc.

The gopher being so obviously stuffed is likely the best joke in this movie. But there's not a single laugh to be had in this classic comedy. Nothing comedic genius Chevy Chase says is all that funny. Comedic genius Bill Murray is funnier but still not funny. And Rodney Dangerfield is just irritating. Some many comedy legends on one golf course, and whoever wrote this couldn't come up with one funny thing to have them do or say? Pitiful. Lump this with all those 80's comedies with its sloppy plot and envelope pushing that gives me a headache and makes me wish I had popped in one of Tati's movies instead. I've never seen it, but I actually wonder if that Bagger Vance movie is a funnier golf movie. Is there a stuffed gopher in it?

Cinderella Man

2005 boxing movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Jim Braddock loves punching people in the head. For a while during the late-1920s, he is really good at it and getting paid. Then, he breaks his hand. And everybody gets depressed. And he can no longer find anybody to pay him to punch people in the head. He desperately searches for work so that he can keep his wife and children fed and warm. A few years later, his manager gets him a one-fight offer, essentially to get paid to be knocked out for the first time by the then number two heavyweight contender. Improbably, he wins, and the performance puts him back in the spotlight as a legitimate contender to the heavyweight crown and as a people's champion.

Anybody who wants to make a derivative feel-good sports movie that teeters on edge of the Cliff of Over-Sentimentality starring the oft obnoxious Russell Crowe and the always obnoxious Renee Zellweger should watch this Ron Howard joint first to see how to get it just right. I was surprised that I liked this as much as I did, twice as much as Rocky and just as much as the original Karate Kid II. Crowe and Zellweger, as usual if I want to be fair, have fine, restrained performances, and it's so easy to root for them. There are several times in this story when poorly written dialogue or over-emoting could have made me vomit all over the boxing gloves and shiny pink trunks I wear when I watch boxing or boxing movies. (Yes, it's difficult to eat popcorn with boxing gloves on.) But the fears and worries, Crowe's when he has difficulty bringing home the bacon and Zellweger's whenever she pictures her man coming home with less head than he started out with, are restrained and authentic. Paul Giamatti, as Braddock's manager, tops both the leads with a great character and lines that he really gets to sink his teeth in. I also like a lot of the minor details, especially the ones that showed Braddock's relationship with his children. The Depression-era period detail paints a grim picture, and the boxing matches are brutally realistic and exciting. I did think the stuff with Braddock's friend and co-worker Mike, a sort of foil for the protagonist, could have been developed a little better, and I almost thought Craig Bierko's Max Baer was overly antagonistic almost to the point of silliness. I'm not exactly a boxing aficionado (Is Jorge Paez still around? That guy was my favorite!) so maybe Max Baer was actually just like that. This might not be the type of movie I love, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this, even to folks who don't necessarily like boxing.

The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend

1991 biopic

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A tall tale based on young Pete Maravich, a little guy with a big heart. He works hard, dribbling around his living room with a blindfold and practicing his father's basketball drills, until he winds up on starting for the varsity team as an 8th grader.

The only thing bigger than this kid's heart is the chunk of cheese the makers of this movie drop in your lap. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the message behind the movie. But when a character actually said, "Pete, watching you makes me want to dream," I had to start giggling. It's cheese from the get-go as we open with a scene of an old Maravich conversing with his son or some other kid (something about dreaming, I think) while walking in an empty gymnasium. There's gratuitous patriotism; at one point, there's a completely random shot of an American flag. I think it's to remind the viewer about dreaming or something. There are also about five too many of those 1980s musical montage scenes. I thought the kid playing Maravich (Adam Guier) was great. He looked a little slow as he was making his moves, but you could tell he had some game when he was spinning the ball on his finger, making behind the back or head passes, and dribbling around. But enough's enough. I don't need to see another five minute montage with terrible music to show me how hard he works. I guess it was to show what a person should do when they have a dream or something. The very worst thing about this movie is the narration. Whenever the narrator says anything, it seems like he's interrupting. And it's completely unnecessary since whatever he says is usually repeated visually or through character dialogue right after he's finished talking anyway. I'm fairly sure that liberties were taken with the late Maravich's story, but there are a couple few scenes that would have really embarrassed him. There are probably some sweaters that would have embarrassed him, too. One scene involves young Pete (a little guy with a big heart) finally deciding to stand up to the bully, a comeback we've been waiting for the entire movie, when all he can say is, "You're a butthead." You're a butthead? Come on, Pistol Pete! A scene involving an intentional foul is so poorly done that it made half of the people I watched this with laugh. Somehow, he's knocked unconscious even though he didn't have an injury to the head. The head, as you probably know, is where dreams are kept. And the final scene? Whoa. I almost lost my lunch. The above poster has the same effect actually.

This was watched on the big screen at school with students. I forgot to ask them for their ratings. They're a bunch of buttheads anyway.

Tyson

2008 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A grown man with a tattooed face makes excuses for his transgressions. Then, he becomes a cannibal.

Iron Mike is a fascinatingly complex dude. He's a heavily flawed fellow, and here he's telling his own story in a heavily flawed way, complete with what you have to assume are misrememberings and perplexing answers to questions you may not have even asked. A lot of the episodes in his troubled life, or more accurately his description of these moments, are entertaining. And for the most part, it seems completely candid, although with the amount of things that have been in this guy's system combined with the amount of times this guy's been hit in the head, you do wonder if he's the most reliable person to tell his own story. The most interesting thing to me about this is that he knows he's a heavily flawed fellow, and although he does try to excuse his bad behavior, it's not really in a despicable way. My biggest problem with the documentary was its heavy-handed documentary style. I could have done without the overlapping interview snippets or the split screen. One Mike Tyson is enough for me, thank you very much. I don't need to see two or three at the same time. Unless they're dancing. That would have been pretty awesome. This subject matter could have been handled in lots of different ways. Hearing it directly from the horse's ass's mouth makes for an interesting experience, and there's more than enough archival footage to fill in the gaps.

A Larst recommendation.

Dogtown and Z-Boys

2001 skateboarding documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Details the genesis of extreme skateboarding with California's Zephyr surfing (later skateboarding) team near Venice Beach in a small community called Dogtown. When the waves were quiet, they'd be forced to surf the concrete, eventually, thanks to a terrible drought, finding their way to empty swimming pools. In the mid-70s, they find overnight fame and success and go their separate ways to influence future generations of skate punks.

Great documentary by a couple of the Zephyr gang. There's an astounding amount of video and still photographs, and the participants give comprehensive and, for the most part, humble anecdotes and details to create a complete story. I was surprised with how interested I was in this stuff considering I'm old enough to chase people like this off my lawn. Even more impressive is how director Piralta was able to make clear the impact these kids had on the sport to a guy like me who wouldn't be able to attempt standing on a skateboard without breaking an arm. I was left with very few questions. And I imagine, a skateboarding fan and aficionado would find this just as rewarding. The story's very well-paced although it nearly grinds to a halt at one point when there's a focus on a few of the individual members instead of the collective. That punk Sean Penn narrates. There's also a terrific soundtrack. I'd type more, but I have to go buy a skateboard and empty out somebody's pool. I'm about to get gnarly, bitches.

This was a Kairow recommendation that I finally got around to watching.

Breaking Away

1979 Indiana movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Dave and his three friends are in limbo, recent high school grads who have no plans to go to college and no real plans to get jobs either. They're just free-floating in Bloomington, Indiana, swimming in the quarry, brawling with the college kids, and cruising in a borrowed clunker. Except for Dave that is. Dave spends most of his time on his bicycle, dreaming of racing with the Italians and even pretending to be an Italian foreign exchange student to impress a coed. His friends and parents are annoyed with his obsessions.

Filmed entirely in Bloomington, and it's cool to see some familiar sights. This is another well-written story about Hoosier underdogs, but in a way, it's the anti-Hoosiers. There's no way anybody could accuse Breaking Away of being overly sentimental. The story is told unpretentiously, and the characters grow on you naturally with very little trickery. Breaking Away also has a better score, mostly Italian opera pieces accompanying Dave's workouts. There's really no bombast at all with this movie. It's as quiet as a small town, and the human drama and themes are almost submerged beneath the, at times, barely important plots and subplots--the conflicts between the "Cutters" and the college kids, the troubles Dave has connecting to his father, the boys' search for love, their half-assed search for employment, the individual bicycle races including the climactic Little 500. My brother, a cyclist, calls this the best sports movie ever. I'm not sure about that, but I do think it is a great portrait of that confusing time between high school and real life and another chance to root for some likable underdogs.

Hoosiers

1986 Indiana movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Based on the true story of the 1954 high school basketball team from Milan, Indiana, a small-town team that overcame all odds to win the state championship after the hiring of coach Lex Luther.

A real schmaltz-fest, just dripping with treacle, but this Hoosier unapologetically loves it. The synth-laden score fixes it firmly in 1986, but that's one of its few flaws. Solid performances by Hackman and Hopper as the unorthodox and much-maligned coach and town drunk respectively, but the supporting cast--namely, the players--brings a down-home realism to rural Indiana. I'm so glad my state wasn't painted with the same brush that painted the landscape and characters in Deliverance or something. Good dialogue, too. The movie's got a ton of heart. I could have been spared the lackadaisical love story between Hackman and Barbara Hershey's character, but the other main subplot, Shooter's redemption, develops realistically, allowing you to care and root for his character. The basketball action itself, and there's a whole lot of it, is shot well, each of the games becoming their own little stories. I also enjoyed seeing the old gymnasiums. This is a well-written underdog story about second chances, worth seeing even if you have no opinion on whether or not Indiana moving to a class system was the right move or not.