REVIEW: Olga [2022]

You’re my warrior, right? Director Elie Grappe and co-writer Raphaëlle Desplechin waste no time showing their gymnast drama Olga is about more than the parallel bars. They introduce the titular fifteen-year-old Ukrainian (Anastasiia Budiashkina) perfecting the maneuvers necessary to advance onto the Jaeger technique—a move she hopes will help the team medal at the forthcoming European championships. She and best friend Sasha (Sabrina Rubtsova) are having fun as the nation’s top two athletes in the sport, their confidence so high that Olga doesn’t even really mind the fact her mother…

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REVIEW: БоксБалет [BoxBallet] [2021]

While a coup attempt against Russian President Boris Yeltsin unfolds at the parliament in 1993, a beautiful ballerina named Olga and a beaten-down boxer named Evgeny cross paths on the subway. The encounter lasts but a second with the former not even registering that it had before exiting the train car. If not for his television changing to static after news reports of the violence on the streets (147 people were killed with 437 others left wounded), that might have been the end of it. Instead, Evgeny leaves his apartment…

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REVIEW: Audible [2021]

This loss will not define us as a team. A forty-two-game winning streak is tough to fathom, but that’s what the Maryland School for the Deaf varsity football team was riding as they entered the game that begins Matthew Ogens‘ documentary short Audible. It wasn’t just against other deaf schools either. The program had grown into a football powerhouse with a championship pedigree that allowed its athletes a chance to grow together as a community on and off the field. And these kids need that considering everything they face on…

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REVIEW: King Richard [2021]

We need to make two more kids. You couldn’t watch tennis in the mid-90s without hearing an opinion about Richard Williams lurking behind his camera in the stands while his daughters Venus and Serena took the American program and the sport itself by storm. Every commentator had something to say to simultaneously champion his efforts putting them on the road to superstardom and vilify his off-court persona via his parenting technique, self-promotion, and hijinks. At times he became the bigger story and thus a big distraction to what the Williams…

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REVIEW: Sisters on Track [2021]

Run through the line. You must always be hesitant about stories dealing with the charity of multi-millionaires that never questions the systemic issues behind such “selfless acts” because they can often make it seem like those acts are a part of a working system. They’re not. Is it great that Tai, Rainn, and Brooke Sheppard‘s lives were forever changed after Tyler Perry gifted their mother Tonia Handy a Brooklyn apartment with two years’ worth of rent covered? Yes. Is it great that their Junior Olympic track and field victories landed…

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REVIEW: 12 Mighty Orphans [2021]

Optimism. Sports-writer Jim Dent had the best of both worlds when deciding to write the book Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football. He had a ragtag bunch of kids languishing in a Texas orphanage that was able to find the self-respect and courage necessary to overcome the stigma the label “orphan” possessed on and off the field in 1927 as well as a leader in Coach Rusty Russell who would end up revolutionizing football with the advent of the spread offense.…

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REVIEW: Safety [2020]

I am a winner. Anyone who’s played organized sports is familiar with their clichés. Whether “fighting in the trenches” as though a game is akin to war or loyalty and love transforming your teammates and coaches into a second family (the same rhetoric employers use as a means to get you to willingly sacrifice more than your compensation contractually demands), these platitudes are used to confirm that “we” is stronger than “I.” The result is two-fold: we do make priceless relationships from those experiences, but also sometimes find ourselves stripped…

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REVIEW: Embattled [2020]

More than myself. You’re either a sucker for films like director Nick Sarkisov and screenwriter David McKenna‘s Embattled or you’re not. I’m the former—a fact that’s proven especially true when the filmmakers are willing to use the fighting drama genre as a means to provide something more than just an adversarial winner takes all ambition. So I was hooked pretty much from the first scene as Cash Boykin (Stephen Dorff) runs his mouth on the way to the Octagon, pumping himself up with the crowd as his son Jett (Darren…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Chihuo Quan Wang [Chasing Dream] [2019]

Don’t drown yourself in mistakes from the past. We live in an era where celebrity has become more about fame than talent as those wishing for adulation do what they can to mimic the greats that came before them without ever worrying about proving whether they possess an ounce of originality. You want to impress the judges on “American Idol”? Show them you can be Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna all at once. You want to be the talk of the fighting world by unleashing your strength in the Ultimate…

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REVIEW: The Way Back [2020]

I don’t think I can help you. This isn’t a sports movie. While a lot of similar films (troubled adult is asked to coach a bunch of troubled kids en route to everyone finding an identity and purpose they couldn’t before) do try to distance themselves from that stigma, The Way Back seems intentionally built upon this separation. When all is said and done, there’s barely any basketball on-screen at all besides close-ups showing a full press defense and practices showing player strengths and weaknesses. The bulk of the games…

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REVIEW: Olympic Dreams [2020]

I really want it to be that thing I want it to be. Director Jeremy Teicher and writer/actor Alexi Pappas already made a film about the latter’s Olympic ambitions entitled Tracktown. Shot two years before she placed 17th in the women’s 10,000 m event at the 2016 Rio Olympics, it dealt with a physically injured athlete forced into taking a break amidst the chaos of Olympic Trials preparation. It was therefore only natural that the pair would choose to tackle a story dealing with the psychological and emotional experience of…

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