Tag: Sports Flick

Empty Balcony: Jerry Maguire, or, Never Go Full Cute

Jerry Maguire movie poster, in French!Cameron Crowe has made a number of films of note. His films consist of entertaining, escapist, happy storytelling that has about as many sharp edges as a bowl of jello. He made the type of films that challenge no assumptions, and throw in just enough emotion to tug on the heartstrings. The worst part about this is not all the squishiness, but the fact the only reasons his films arouse any emotional responses at all is because they are manipulative, reducing human emotion to a formula. Crowe doesn’t evoke emotions in a viewer — he extracts them.

At the start, Jerry Maguire, Crowe’s film from 1996, freewheels its way through the life of the titular character, played by Tom Cruise. He’s a sports agent, and his life is shown as one of glitz and glamour, right until the moment he finds himself the public spokesperson for clients in trouble with the law or in trouble with the media. (Is there really any difference when it comes to sports?) Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Jerry Maguire, or, Never Go Full Cute”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Burnout

Scott (Mark Schneider), is a child of privilege. After he kills an old woman during an illegal street drag race, his hotshot father/lawyer gets the judge to merely suspend his license, rather than lock him away. This is not an auspicious start to the protagonist’s story in Burnout, the 1979 drag racing flick from writer/producer Martin J. Roseman and director Graham Meech-Burkestone. We’re supposed to be able to root for the hero in a film like this. There’s no hoping to see Scott’s redemption when he hasn’t had to suffer. It seems pretty tone deaf for 1979, much less today. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Burnout”

Empty Balcony: The Color of Money

Still burning off those reviews for the aborted Cruise month. Here’s criticism of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time:

Good things come to those who wait. Many times in the film and television business these days, it seems as if a film sequel or further seasons of a television series are greenlit as soon as a project has a whiff of success. Reasonably enough, the people in charge of feeding us content see success as evidence that we viewers would like more of the same. But sometimes it takes a long time for a success to have a follow-up. Such was the case with The Hustler, the 1961 film directed by Robert Rossen, from the novel by Walter Tevis. A full 25 years went by before Tevis penned a sequel. When he finally did, the film adaptation, The Color of Money, bore little resemblance in plot, but it was helmed by Martin Scorcese. That’s a pretty good tradeoff. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: The Color of Money”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Hell on Wheels

Hell on Wheels 1967 movie posterNot all shitty movies are bloody horror, or borderline pornographic sleaze. Not all shitty movies are cut and paste westerns, Italian sci-fi ripoffs, or rubber monsters. Some are family flicks, featuring well-known country/western crooners in tales of race cars, music, and moonshine. That particular formula is followed by Hell on Wheels, the 1967 star vehicle for singer/songwriter and gentleman race car driver Marty Robbins.

Directed by Will Zens from a screenplay by Wesley Cox, Hell on Wheels follows Marty Robbins as Marty Robbins, a fictionalized version of himself. Marty has built a nice life. He’s a successful musician, and that success allows him to pursue his passion as a stock car driver.

Something similar happens to a number of people after they attain fame and riches. Auto racing is an addictive pursuit, scratching an itch in one of the more primal areas of the brain. It’s a fast and dangerous occupation, and for men like Robbins, Paul Newman, James Garner, Patrick Dempsey, Steve McQueen, and even Frankie Muniz, it has an irresistible lure as a risky pastime. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Hell on Wheels”

Empty Balcony: Undisputed

Monroe Hutchens (Wesley Snipes) is a hell of a boxer. In fact, he has never lost a fight. The big problem for Hutchens, though, is that all the boxing he’s done for the past ten years has been care of the California Department of Corrections. Once the California state champ for his weight class, Hutchens was poised to enter into a lucrative professional boxing career when he came home to find his woman in bed with another man. Hutchens beat the paramour to death and was sentenced to life without parole for the murder. While in prison, he continues to ply his trade, doing his time and beating up on the boxing champions from other prisons around the state. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Undisputed”

Stallone Month: Creed

Here it is — the end of Stallone Month. Sly isn’t in the lead role in this last film, but there isn’t a better set of bookends for this month than Rocky and Creed.

Creed, from 2015, is a spinoff of the successful Rocky series. In a surprising change, Sly did not pen the screenplay for this film. After having seen all the Rocky films, it’s clear that not only is Rocky Sly’s opus, it’s also his most personal character. The lovable meathead aspects of Rocky are pure invention, but all the motivational stuff — the pronouncements about hard work and not expecting any handouts — that’s all Sly. Rocky was the vehicle Sly used to share his worldview. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Creed”

Stallone Month: Rocky Balboa

Rocky V was supposed to be the last Rocky movie. In it, Rocky is robbed of all his money by an accountant, and he has to retire from boxing due to brain damage. His final fight, and there is always a final fight in a Rocky flick, took place on the streets in front of Mickey’s gym, where it all began. It was meant to wrap the story of Rocky up with a nice little bow. In that, the film did its job, even though the mediocre quality of the film left some fans feeling a little let down. But, by the mid-2000s, Sylvester Stallone was feeling nostalgic, and along came another sequel, sixteen years after the last. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Rocky Balboa”

Stallone Month: Driven

Driven movie posterWhat a putrid, rotten mess of a movie. I was really hoping before I sat down to watch this movie for Stallone Month that it was not as bad as I remembered — that time had distorted what I recalled being one of the worst films I have ever seen. As it turned out, this memory was a reliable one. I hate this movie. I haven’t hated a movie this much since I reviewed Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. In fact, this movie joins the short list of films I absolutely despise.

Driven, from 2001, was a passion project from Sylvester Stallone. Apparently he had been doing extensive research on the sport of motor racing while working on draft after draft of this film’s screenplay, and I can’t see any evidence of that. There are objects in this film that resemble racecars and people dressed up as racecar drivers, but that is where similarities with the actual sport end. Sly took the look and feel of a sport and jettisoned all else in order to shove it into a stupid and flimsy narrative. Oh, and lest Sly take all the blame, this flick was directed by Renny Harlin, and features some staggeringly inept performances from Sly, Burt Reynolds, Gina Gershon, and someone named Kip Pardue. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Driven”

Stallone Month: Rocky V

If Rocky IV is peak Rocky, then Rocky V is the story’s nadir. Whereas Rocky II was but pale imitation of the first film, Rocky V is caricature, its characters in many ways reduced to cartoon versions of those with which we have grown familiar. Mostly this is down to Sylvester Stallone. He was the one who ditched Rocky’s lovable lunkhead persona in the previous two films. But now he’s back, and poor. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Rocky V”