EEPHUS***

Writer-director-cineatographer-editor Carson Lund's EEPHUS is a low-key funny, low-key melancholy film about male friendship and baseball. The entire film takes place over the course of a day and in a single location - a local baseball ground where two local rival teams are playing their last match before their ground is lost to redevelopment.  We see them banter with each other as a desultory group of spectators watches. There's low-key shit-talking and some home truths about how far any of them are actually friends and will keep in touch beyond the singular bond of playing sports together.  In the film's final act we see the last holdouts attempt to keep playing, even though night has fallen and they're relying on car headlights to light the pitch. It's a none too subtle metaphor for trying to cling onto something that's lost.  It's a charming enough film but too meandering and ultimately weightess for its running time. But hey, at least I learned what an eephus is, and maybe the gentle, unhurried pace of this film is the point.

EEPHUS has a running time of 99 minutes. It played Cannes and London 2024 and was released in the USA last spring.

MARTY SUPREME*****

MARTY SUPREME is a gonzo caper about a narcissistic arsehole who will exploit everyone and everything to fulfil his dream. The challenge for writer-director Josh Sadie is to make us root for him, and maybe even like him, nonetheless.

Timothee Chalamet stars as the titular protagonist Marty Mauser - an acne-scarred hen-pecked shoe-salesman who dreams of travelling to England to become a champion table-tennis player.  Destroyed in that final by his Japanese opponent, the balance of the film sees Marty try to con and finagle his way into enough cash to go to Japan for the rematch, including but not limited to getting a schlubby put-upon live-at-home man called Dion to produce branded table-tennis balls called the "Marty Supreme", and conning a mafiosi (improbably played by Abel Ferrara) whose dog he was sitting, while also being on the lam from some white hick racists and a psychopathic rural farmer. And that's before we even get to Marty's two love interests: the  woman who loves him - his pregnant childhood friend turned lover played by Odessa A'Zion - and the woman who sees right through him - a faded starlet and trapped trophy wife played by Gywneth Paltrow. 

As that attempt at a synopsis might suggest, MARTY SUPREME is an absurd film, over-stuffed with memorable characters and crazy plot-twists.  It picks you up and takes you on a breathtakingly audacious ride. The running time is long but it never flags, thanks partly to pairing the 1950s setting with a superb 1980s synth-pop heavy soundtrack, just because.  But behind all of its craziness, there's depth.

We are in the mid-1950s, and the world is still recovering from the horrors and bigotry of World War Two. Everyone is shocked that Marty's Japanese opponent is allowed to travel given the recent travel-ban; Marty's good friend and competitor is a Holocaust survivor; and Marty will even exploit his prison camp experience to distract a love-rival.  There's also something to the idea of a film that posits a world of extreme self-actualisation. Marty is the ultimate fake it till you make it manipulative showman, who wants a woman just because she's a symbol of success.  In a weird way his charm is that while he IS manipulative he is also strangely honest.  He just can't help himself from mocking Gywneth Paltrow's heartbroken starlet for sleeping with him. He barely acknowledges anybody's wants and needs above his own, although does seem to have some kind of heavily submerged set of core values. He punches his pregnant lover's husband, saying "shame on you" and seems to mean it. I think he really does seem to see some talent in Dion and root for him.

The only weakness of the film is that Josh Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein decide to give Marty a transformative and perhaps even redemptive moment at the end of the movie.  I think I might have preferred if they had kept him as he was, but I cannot deny that I had an amazing time watching the film nonetheless.  This is full speed ahead, full commitment film-making.  Josh Safdie and Marty Mauser are as one. 

MARTY SUPREME is rated R and has a running time of 150 minutes. It will be released on Christmas Day in the USA and Boxing Day in the UK.

CHRISTY**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 10

Writer-director David Michod (THE KING) returns to our screens with a crisply told and powerful biopic of the first female boxing star in America, Christy Martin.  The directorial style is unflashy but we feel every punch and blow of the boxing matches. But the point here isn’t so much the drama inside the ring as the peril outside of it.  Because in her early twenties, Christy confirms to the expectations of bigoted early 90s West Virginia and marries a man who coercively controls her. He is a man 25 years her senior, her boxing trainer, and a total sleazebag. He lures her into the relationship with false promises of meeting Don King, and the offer of cover. They both know she is gay, and that the world won’t accept her for being gay.  This makes Christy uniquely vulnerable to Jim Martin’s predation. 

Over the course of the film we see Christy train and win, usually with a knock-out punch. When she finally does get that meeting with King she starts earning big and can afford a flashy lifestyle.  The film captures the awful haircuts and shoulder pads brilliantly.  But the pressure from her husband is unrelenting, and while I won’t say more at the risk of spoiling the story if you do not know it, the final half hour of this film is harrowing.

This is a film centred on two superb performances. The first is by Ben Foster, who I have always admired, and last saw in the London Film Festival playing the psychopath Lance Armstrong in THE PROGRAM. If anything, he is even more chilling here. But the performance than really anchors the film is that of Sydney Sweeney. I was first truly impressed by her acting in REALITY, and she announces herself as an actor of real intelligence and sensitivity in this film.  She bulks up with 35 pounds of muscle and is utterly convincing in the ring. More importantly, she manages to capture both Christy’s vulnerability and bravado.  I truly hope the prejudice against Sweeney does not preclude her from awards contention as this is a monumental performance. In the supporting roles, I really liked Merritt Weaver (The Bombing of Pan Am 103) as Christy’s bigoted, insidious mother, and Katy O’Brian as Christy’s boxing rival turned love interest Lisa Holewyne.

CHRISTY has a running time of 135 minutes. It played Toronto and London and will be released in the USA on November 7th.

ULTRAS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025

Documentarian Ragnhild Ekner’s new documentary ULTRAS is a fascinating and nuanced look at football fan culture. Most of the depiction of football fans in the media shows the hooliganism and violence, even if it’s glorifying it in films like FOOTBALL FACTORY.  Ekner tries to show the more positive side of fan culture - the camaraderie, the sense of purpose, and, more seriously, sometimes the ability to protest an oppressive government.

Along the way we hear from a Spanish woman who finds solace in football after the tragic death of her young son. We see some young Indonesian women who are superfans and lobby for female inclusion in the fandom.  We hear from Polish and Egyptian men who feel that they have no place in the predominant culture and so create their own youth culture.  The best bit was some young men in Eastbourne - a town full of retirees - whose only chance to hang out with other young men is at a local club with a small supporter group.  

Ekner does not shy away from the darker side of football culture.  We hear about intra-fan violence and heavy-handed policing. Some of the Polish fans make the good point that the police are themselves a kind of mob of thugs who like having a Saturday afternoon punch-up - not that different from the fans they are policing. And the Spanish mum talks about having to explain to her son why a middle-aged woman refused to get on a bus with them and a whole bunch of superfans.  She had to explain the perceptions but also the reality of how intimidating a large group of very loud very adrenaline-hyped blokes can be.  Most movingly, the final sequence is a retelling of an horrific example of kettling in a stadium where one set of fans started stabbing the others.  72 people died of their injuries or of suffocation.

Overall, this is exactly the kind of documentary I love. Told with passion but also fairness, taking us into a world we might not otherwise see, full of empathy and insight.

ULTRAS has a running time of 89 minutes.

SEPTEMBER 5*****

SEPTEMBER 5 is a stunning film depicting the horrific and murderous attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. Where Kevin Macdonald's superb and comprehensive documentary ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER gives us all the angles and the whole story, this new film tells the story from the perspective of the ABC sports journalists who were in the Olympic Village.  As it happened, this was the first Olympics that took advantage of satellite broadcasting to bring live coverage to the world.  As a result, this was the first terrorist attack broadcast live to the world - well before Mumbai or 9-11.  And it created both iconic images which are used as live in this film - but also deep moral questions about how far live coverage enables and recruits for terrorists.

As the film opens we are in the dark, claustrophobic ABC sports-room recreated by director Tim Fehlbaum in precise detail.  The journalists hear shots fired and suddenly realise they are in the midst of an attack.  They have to figure out how to wheel heavy camera equipment out to the village to shoot footage of the apartments where the Olympians are being held.  And they have to wrestle satellite slots to broadcast what they have.  In a powerful and pivotal performance, Leonie Benesch (THE WHITE RIBBON) plays a young German journalist who has to become an impromptu translator, listening in to police radio and local news reports.  Meanwhile, the always brilliant Peter Sarsgaard plays the Sports-journo boss who has to wrestle with his home news team who argue that mere sports reporters are out of their depth, and retain control of "his" story.  

There are two iconic and notorious moments. The first is when the journalists realise that the terrorists are actually watching their footage, and can see German cops attempting a rescue operation, because no-one switched off the TV feed to the apartment block. It's then that we get that iconic image of the hooded terrorist looking out of the apartment window and straight down the barrel of the TV camera.  The second iconic and notorious moment is when an ABC journalist (played brilliantly here by John Magaro) chooses to relay an unconfirmed report that all the sportsmen have been released alive and well. He wants the scoop. Simple as. 

Kudos to Fehlbaum, his production team and in particular his editor Hansjoerg Weissbrich, for creating a film of such taut, spare, suspense and high stakes.  The look and feel of it take you right into 1972 and into the fast-paced need for judgment.  It gives you sympathy for real people making tough choices in uncharted territory. Most of all, I loved the way in which the real footage of on-air broadcasts was seamlessly woven into the fictional recreation. So you can see Magaro's character speaking apparently to an on-air presenter and that presenter relaying the information he has been given. It's a masterclass of editorial brilliance.

SEPTEMBER 5 is rated R and has a running time of 95 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and Telluride 2024. It was released in the USA on January 17th and in the UK on February 6th.

CHALLENGERS**

I am giving CHALLENGERS one star for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' occasionally superb electronic soundtrack and a further star for cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cheeky tennis ball POV shot. Otherwise CHALLENGERS is a damp squib of an attempt at a sexy adult relationship drama, replete with hammy dialogue and superficial characaterisation.

All of which is a shame for the multi-talented star Zendaya, who was using the film to rebadge herself from being a Disney child star to a serious actor.  The weird thing is that I am not sure anyone apart from Zendaya thinks she's pigeonholed in that way.  A brave, vulnerable performance in Euphoria put paid to peppy, pretty Zendaya the teen star.  And Sam Levinson's MALCOLM & MARIE gave her a role in an actually fully fleshed out proper adult relationship, playing opposite John David Washington.  Now that was a toxic relationship shown in all its gnarly and credible glory!

So back to CHALLENGERS.  The person responsible for this ludicrously melodramatic film is debut feature screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes.  No-one in a real relationship has ever spoken in the way that his characters speak.  Watching this felt like watching a Bollywood movie or 1980s soap opera. As a result, the relationships aren't credible and the characters struggle to capture one's attention or sympathy.  To be sure, the film tries hard to camouflage its superficiality with tricksy camera shots and a non-linear narrative. But unpick the flash and there's nothing there.

Zendaya "stars" as junior Tennis ace Tashi whose career is cruelly ended with a brutal knee injury.  She vicariously lives her career by coaching her successful husband Art (Mike Faist) but they have little sexual chemistry.  He hits a bump in confidence and she enters him in a challenger tournament to get some court time, at which point they both run into Patrick (Josh O'Connor - MOTHERING SUNDAY) - a washed-up former peer and lover of Tashi and potentially Art.

The irony is that this is meant to be Zendaya's first headline film, and she has been the star of the red carpet promoting it.  But when you watch the film you realise that she's just the tennis ball that Art and Patrick are playing with. The film is ACTUALLY one about homosocial and potentially homosexual love. The climax thus has actually nothing to do with Tashi at all, but both players falling into each other over the tennis net. Poor Zendaya. She isn't even centred in her own film.

I am coming to the slow realisation that I do not like director Luca Guadagnino's films. But they appear to be critical darlings, certainly since he came to global recognition with CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. I just don't get the hype.

CHALLENGERS is rated R and has a 131 minute running time. It is on global release.

THE IRON CLAW*****

Sean Durkin's THE IRON CLAW is an absolutely mesmerising and deeply moving drama that tells the story of the real life Von Erich family. I had no knowledge of them before this film but apparently they are wrestling royalty, infamous for a much-mythologised series of tragedies. 

As the film opens, we are treated to a black-and-white flashback where the paterfamilias, Fritz Von Erich, is apparently denied his chance to win a title. His revenge is to seemingly raise a large family of boys who are pressured and groomed to win his approval and also win wrestling titles.  The Iron Claw is thus not just his trademark wrestling move, but also the way in which he exerts toxic control over his family, the wages of which we will see play out over the running time.

Zac Efron stars as Kevin von Erich.  It's a performance of great vulnerability and physical prowess that reminded me - inevitably - of Mickey Rourke in THE WRESTLER. Efron bulked up for the role and in the opening shot of him the camera interrogates every vein and muscle on his body. He is a machine created by his father for vengeance. Efron's mournful performance is a career-best and no doubt benefits from what we bring to seeing him on screen. His real-life arc from teen idol to indie darling by way of addiction and body dysmorphia adds a layer of pathos to this role. The parallels between Hollywood and wrestling are painful to contemplate - the extreme body mutilation and pressure to perform - the substance abuse and toxic svenaglis - it's all here.

Next comes Kevin's brother David, played by THE TRIANGLE OF SADNESS' Harris Dickinson. David is the natural showman, more articulate than Kevin, and so finds himself top of his father's preference ranking of his sons - a game that both Kevin and David seem willing to play.

We are in trickier water with the two youngest sons.  Kerry (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White) wants to compete in the Olympics, but his dreams are dashed by the 1980 boycott. He is pulled into wrestling, is good at it, but resents it. White's performance is one of such searing sadness that he barely needs to speak to convey the tragedy of his situation. Finally we have young Mike (Stanley Simons). He's just a kid who wants to make music with his literal garage band. He has no place in the ring, but what father wants, father gets.

All of this feels fairly hopeless and as a study of male toxicity it is. Maura Tierney gets a great scene as the religious oppressed mother who lets all of this happen. And Lily James is impressive in a small role as Kevin's wife. And really it's through her that the film avoids being unilaterally miserable. Because by anchoring in Kevin in marriage, the joy of fatherhood, and the opportunity to be a different kind of man, she gives us a path out of the Iron Claw. There's a scene near the end of this film between Kevin and his sons that made me cry. I don't want to spoil it - but it's one of the most well-earned moments of hope in recent cinema.

Kudos to Sean Durkin for writing and directing such a pellucid, affecting film. I absolutely loved his recreation of late 70s and early 80s small-town America - the music, the clothes, the cars, the garage bands. I loved the cinematography - the apparently meticulous recreation of the fight scenes - and the astonishing performances Durkin pulls from his cast. I do not understand why this film wasn't as big a deal on the awards circuit as THE WRESTLER was all those years ago. It deserves all the plaudits and all the success. And Efron deserves his own version of a McConaugheyssance. 

THE IRON CLAW is rated R and has a running time of 132 minutes. It is on global release.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT**

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is a deeply dull, paint-by-numbers underdog sports biopic about a working class American rowing eight than won Gold at the 1936 Olympics. We don't learn much about them, other than that they are poor and motivated. We know they are poor because is an opening scene the hero (Callum Turner with an absurd and distracting blonde dye job) is putting cardboard inside his shoe. We don't learn much about their coach (Joel Edgerton) who just looks taciturn and unknowable for the entire film. We certainly don't understand why they are so good and what he did to make them that way. And we don't really understand the stakes.   

This was the Hitler/Berlin Olympics but director George Clooney has no interest in showing the real peril of fascist Germany, just as he isn't interested in showing the real tragedy of Depression-era America. Instead, he puts a few Nazi flags up, has a few brownshirts cheer for Germany, and some guy play dress up as the Fuhrer. It's actually so trivialising it's insulting - particularly to Jesse Owens. What we learn from all this is that Clooney doesn't want to get his hands dirty in the period.  

Instead he creates a film that is book-ended by a sappy grandpa-grandson bit of nostalgia; that is forever bathed in twinkling sunlight; and where the hero's girlfriend forever has perfectly styled hair and no character or lines to speak of.  This is dull retrograde film-making of the worst kind, and all the more embarrassing because CHARIOTS OF FIRE figured out how to inject emotion, stakes and modernity forty years ago.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 123 minutes. It was released in the USA on Christmas Day 2023, and in the UK on January 12th.

STRANDED (2007) *****

In 1972 a charter plane carrying a Chilean college rugby team crashed into the Andes when the pilot made a navigational error amidst a heavy snowstorm. These were rich medical students who lived by the sea and had, many of them, never seen snow before. The atmosphere on board before the crash was one of high jinks and festive jubilation. This ended abruptly with the crash. The pilots soon died, the back of the plane had been sheered off, there was very little food, and the radio told them the rescue had been called off. Faced with certain death, this group of Catholic college boys were rallied by two things - the leadership of their team captain who rationed their food with discipline and fairness. And then the profound decision to cross the taboo of cannibalism in order to survive. For some, this was a challenging but rational decision - these were men of medical science after all. But for others, with a deep Catholic faith, it was a sin that could damn them, and it needed to be justified in terms of an act of consuming the Eucharist. 

Gonzalo Arijon's documentary, made 35 years after the accident, is a triumph of film-making. He has access to many of the survivors and their family members and reconstructs the events through their testimony and some recreations. They are candid about their emotions at the time and in retrospect. We hear grown men describe almost dying - slowly through starvation - and suddenly when an avalanche buries them alive. We see the pain on their faces and in their voices when they discuss the need to eat their friends.  We see the deep care taken to respect the dead, and to be honest with the rescuers for the sake of the families.

The result is a film that is by turns moving and dramatic.  Despite knowing the outline of the story I was again and again taken aback by the men's candid insights and resilience. Truly this is a story of the importance of friendship, camaraderie and the willingness to survive.  I was left with nothing but admiration for the men.

STRANDED has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Sundance 2008 and can be viewed in full on YouTube.

NYAD***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 8

NYAD destroyed me in the best possible way. It made me laugh, it made me crush on Jodie Foster, it made me sit on the edge of my seat and my heart-beat race, it made me cry ugly happy tears. This is a movie that is just to well put together, so compelling, so engaging, full of such wonderful characters, that I did not want it to end. I am Team Nyad. The only slightly sad thing is that as much as I suspect Annette Bening is using this as her shot at an Oscar, the actor who steals every scene is Jodie Foster.

Bening stars as Diana Nyad, a real life champion swimmer whose dream was to swim a hundred miles non-stop from Cuba to Florida through shark-infested water. That dream eluded her in her thirties, but pissed off at turning sixty and being written off, she decides to make another attempt. The film makes it clear that Nyad is not short of ego and that kind of ruthless selfishness that makes winners win, but it also makes it clear that marathon open-water swimming is a team-sport.  Nyad, for all her stubborn egomania, is beloved. Most of all, by her multi-decade best friend and partner in crime Bonnie, played with swagger, charisma and great fun by Jodie Foster.  

As we follow Diana in her quest, we are always aware of the dangers and the stakes thanks to clear and crisp direction from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin.  They beautifully weave in flashbacks and audio from the real, younger Nyad, explaining the physical and mental challenge of ocean swimming, and make us feel part of her ramshackle team of navigator, captain, shark and jellyfish experts.  The result is a film no less compelling than the directors' previous Oscar winning documentary film FREE SOLO. The idea of having documentarians fictionalise this story is inspired because it so beautifully takes the best of the both formats. I cannot recommend the resulting film highly enough, if for no other reason that to see Jodie Foster have more fun on screen than I have ever seen her have.  And just to see older women succeed, and female friendship and excellence celebrated. 

NYAD is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 121 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2023.  It opens in the USA on October 20th in cinemas and on November 3rd on Netflix.

GRAN TURISMO**

There's an essay to be written on what happens to spiky independent directors who sell-out to dumb franchise movies, cf Ben Wheatley's MEG 2 and Neill Blomkamp (formerly of the superb DISTRICT 9 and CHAPPIE) helming this piss-poor piece of product merchandising.  It's hard to see anything of Blomkamp's political satire and visual artistry in GRAN TURISMO. Instead, we get a painfully tired, cliched, nakedly commercial, underdog sports film about a sim racer turned actual real life racing driver, based on a true story.

There are many flaws with this film, and a ham-fisted script is the largest one. Second, we have a cast basically phoning it in (that's you David Harbour), or playing it one shot shy of a camp Bond villain (Orlando Bloom). But the real problem is that the racing doesn't excite. I love a bit of F1 and have watched many an autosport movie. It says a lot that you can stage scenes at some iconic tracks - not least the beast of the Nurburgring - and not set my pulse racing. I think the problem is that Blomkamp doesn't distinguish between sim and real racing. In fact, he does the opposite. He makes real racing feel like sim-racing by adding on visual trackers and taking away any real life feel for track noise and atmosphere. When I watch a racing movie, I want to feel the heat, the sound, the the tension, the stakes. I want to smell the burning rubber.  This film gave me none of that.

Still, I am awarding the film two stars. One for its young lead actor Archie Madekwe who puts in an earnest and compelling central performance. And one for the comedy value of seeing real-life F1 Principal's wife and ex-Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell uttering the immortal line "these lentils are nice".

GRAN TURISMO has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release.

GHOOMER****

The underdog sports movie genre gets a new entrant with GHOOMER - a must-watch film for cricket fans. The stunningly beautiful Saiyami Kher stars as Anina, a hard-working, talented batter who is the victim of a hit-and-run car accident on the eve of making her debut for the Indian ODI team.  Anina survives but without her right-arm, and understandably becomes suicidal at the thought of losing her cricket career. This is where Abhishek Bhachchan's alcoholic, brutish, Paddy steps in.  He too was frustrated by injury and lost his Indian test career, and tells Anina she can indeed rescue her career by retraining as a left-handed spin bowler (ghoomer).  He trains her himself, with brutal, harsh methods that nonetheless work and lead to a deeply emotional, rousing finale. 

What I like about this film is that it by and large avoids schmaltz in every aspect except the final cricket scene. Anina is strong and largely silent, and we see the hard work taken to retrain.  The love story with her childhood sweetheart (Angad Bedi) is downplayed and his character is very much seen as a side story to her rehabilitation and success.  Anina's dad is proud and supportive but it's her sensible and intelligent grandma (Shabana Azmi - deadpan, superb!) who is her real coach, mixing her smoothies, scoring her matches and telling her not to trust in superstition.  And thank goodness the film does not attempt to give Paddy a redemption arc, or to hide his unpleasant, brutish character.  This is not just in respect to Anina but also to Rasika (Ivanka Das), Paddy's adoptive trans sister.  He isn't nice. He doesn't become nice.  He doesn't magically get sober.  The focus of our interest and emotion is thus Anina and if I cried at the final fifteen minutes of this film it was entirely in admiration of her strength and courage, as portrayed by Saiyami Kher. And that's as it should be.

While Kher is clearly the breakout star here, and Azmi is the the backbone of the film, I have to say that this is Bhachchan's finest performance since GURU. I would love to see him tackle more challenging, dramatic material not he back of this. 

The resulting film is one that is a must-watch for cricket fans, and indeed comes complete with endorsements from Tendulkar and a cameo from Bishan Singh Bedi. I can't imagine it would be easy to follow without some knowledge of the game.  But given that knowledge, how wonderful to feel so engaged in this truly inspiring fiction.

My only issue with the film is the way that Rasika's character is used to soften Paddy's character. Is it really fair to have our one trans character have no real life of her own other than to serve her brother, and show that he does have a sympathetic side?  Or maybe it's refreshing to see a trans character without her gender or sex life be the centre of the plot? Either way I was pleased to see the representation. 

GHOOMER has a running time of 135 minutes and is rated 12A. It was released globally on August 18th.

FINDING MICHAEL***

 

I am obsessed with books, podcasts and films about summitting Everest.  I am the obverse of an action-adventure extreme sportsperson and maybe that's why I find the psychology of needing to pit yourself against nature fascinating. What drives these people to go into the "death zone", where life cannot be sustained without supplemental oxygen, in such numbers that they cause contagion on the slopes, litter it with refuse, and ultimately - tragically - dead bodies?

FINDING MICHAEL is the latest addition to this body of work and takes a new angle of focussing on what happens to the families left behind. In this case, that of Michael Matthews, who perished on the way down from the summit, twenty years ago. His little brother's interest is piqued by a photo sent to them in 2017, of a body that could be Michael.  Should he go at great expense and danger, leaving behind his wife, children and newborn baby, to try and get the body back?

The journey is one of discovery but not in the way we think it will be.  The brother, Spencer Matthews, who was only ten with Michael died, is discovering the kind of man his brother was, and the journey he went on. We see a stunning trek up to base camp, we visit the same temple where Michael and Spencer take blessings, and camcorder footage from his fellow climbers on his way up. Some subtle and sensitive editing puts the two journeys side by side.

There are three almost unbearably sad moments in a very sad film throughout.  The first is when very early on at base camp, the sherpas tell Spencer that the photo isn't of his brother at all, but of an Indian climber. But they send up climbers and drones anway to comb the slopes.  The second  moment was when Spencer looked at the last photo taken of his brother, already struggling for oxygen, already dying, just before he started to climb down. The last was when Spencer diverted resources from finding his brother to helping bring down the body of a dead sherpa so that his family could have closure, and seeing their wailing grief.

The journey is worth it for Spencer's greater discovery of his brother but comes at a cost: reopening the wounds of grief of his mother and sister. It's also somewhat problematic to me that he is willing to pay people to put themselves in danger on the small chance of recovering a dead body.  And yes the resources are then diverted to help someone else, but only on the conditional that Michael is not found. It made me wonder in what sense both summitting on commercial climbs, and then the entire project of this film was one of wealth and entitlement. And yet one supposes that the industry - and employment - exists because of these people.

At any rate, I really enjoyed the film: it was both moving and thought-provoking. The cinematography is very special - with beautiful vistas of the mountain - and the way in which the editors step through the process of going up for lay-people to understand was really well done.

FINDING MICHAEL has a running time of 100 minutes and is streaming on Disney Plus.

MCENROE****

MCENROE is tennis legend John McEnroe's raw, honest and ultimately uplifting account of his own life and career, as directed by sports documentarian Barney Douglas. 

Douglas made his name with a couple of cricket documentaries and applies his deeply empathetic and well organised interrogation of the psychological pressures of elite sport shown in THE EDGE to the world of tennis. The result is a captivating mix of archive footage and contemporary interviews with McEnroe and his kids that reveals a troubled perfectionist, fully aware of his mistakes and yet still open to love. That hopefulness and honesty takes this way beyond a typical sports documentary and into the realms of basic life advice from a guy who's seen a lot and lived to tell the tale.

The movie opens with a puppy fat teenage McEnroe full of ambition and driven by a father who comes across as a bit of a nightmare.  He blazes into the elite world of tennis but is cold-shouldered by Connors - something that only drives him further.  Surprisingly - charmingly - despite his on-court antics he forms deep personal friendships with his heroes of tennis cool, Vitas Garuleitas and the near-silent Bjorn Borg. The best testament to that friendship is that the publicity-shy Borg agrees to be interviewed in this film.

McEnroe doesn't hide the conflict of those years: and what it was like to dominate tennis but to do so at the expense of a friend who then took early retirement because he couldn't cope with the defeat. It's still regretful that we missed potentially years of on-court rivalry, and one senses that McEnroe never quite recovered from not having Borg as a foil.

Meanwhile, in his personal life, McEnroe married Tatum O'Neil, hoping that their shared celebrity would lead to empathy.  But few marriages survive addiction and infidelity and both Mack and his kids speak honestly about the self-destructive behaviour on both sides.  

The great news for Mack is that while his tennis never really recovered, a second marriage to rock musician Patti Smyth gave him a second chance at being a husband and father, and it genuinely feels like he's in a good space with his kids now, and insofar as he's a man at peace with himself, he is that. For someone to come through tortuous elite sport, addiction, and a brutalising divorce and get to this place of honesty and acceptance, is really hopeful and makes for an inspiring film. 

MCENROE has a running time of 104 minutes.The film played Tribeca 2022 and is currently available to rent and own.

KING RICHARD***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 10

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green's KING RICHARD is an uproarious, crowd-pleasing, but not completely hagiographical biopic of Richard Williams: coach and father of Venus and Serena. The film succeeds because of a tightly structured and powerful script from first-time screenwriter Zach Baylin. It also benefits from powerhouse performances from Will Smith in the title role (taken as read) and scene-stealing Aunjanue Ellis as Richard's wife Brandi. What emerges is a complicated picture of a complicated and imperfect family that somehow, against all odds, raised a Wimbledon winner AND a GOAT. 

As the film opens, Richard is trying to persuade various rich tennis coaches to invest in his daughters, who he has been raising according to his programme to create prodigies. He works them hard, both in tennis and school, because he wants them to avoid being mired in poverty and drugs like the rest of Compton. The threat of violence is ever-present.  Richard tells us how he was beaten up by white men as a kid. His eldest daughter is threatened by local gangs (foreshadowing her real life tragic murder).  We see Rodney King being beaten up on TV. So Richard's desire to create champions is commercial and callous. He clearly states it could've been any sport and that he literally bred the girls for greatness. But at a very basic level, it's not about money but sheer survival. 

Which is not to say that Richard is perfect. He's clearly egotistical, stubborn, a self-publicist and a tyrant. He drives not one but two coaches mad. He drives his wife Brandi mad. And in one of the most powerful moments of the film's second half, she absolutely lets him have it with details of his life that made the audience both gasp and applaud her.  But at the end of the day, whatever he did worked.

That said, it wasn't actually just what HE did. And this film cleverly both sets up the self-made myth of King Richard before deconstructing it. Brandi powerfully argues that SHE was AS influential in raising and indeed coaching the girls as HE was, and provides a powerful role model of a hard-working black woman. As a result, this film partly cuts off one of the criticisms that was brewing in my mind as I watched it: that for a film about two female tennis stars, their three sisters, and their mum, it was kinda weird to centre the only man in the story.  The entire point is that this is what Richard does, and what the women have to fight against. 

I can't say enough about how joyous this film was to watch in a packed auditorium.  Every argument, every tennis success, every tense game had us all on the edge of our seats. The film left me with an even deeper understanding of, and admiration for, these iconic sportswomen and everything that they have achieved.

KING RICHARD has a running time of 138 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released on Netflix on November 19th. 

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN**** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 8

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN is the latest in a long line of heart-warming but slightly cheesy British comedies set in the post industrial decline of Britain in the 1970s and 1980s - think BRASSED OFF and THE FULL MONTY. In each one, a factory or a mine or a shipbuilding yard is undergoing mass redundancies or full on closures leaving its working class men out of jobs and searching for something to rebuild their self-esteem.

This film features Mark Rylance as the real life Maurice Flitcroft, who decides to take up golf when redundancy looms.  He can't afford the clothes or clubs so his best mate nicks them for him. And he can't afford the membership fees for the golf course so sons raise money by, I kid you not, disco-dancing. And when the snobs at the local club still won't let him in, he practises in local parks, local beaches, and even on the golf course, breaking in at night. Finally, he enters the British Open. Of course, he isn't good enough, so his supportive wife just ticks the box that says "professional".  When Flitcroft predictably fails, he gets a lot of media attention which embarrasses the tournament's officials, but is absolutely undeterred. And that's what makes this film so funny and so cheering. As Flitcroft explains to Seve Ballesteros - failure is just something to learn from! And "practice is the road to perfection".

There's something contagious and irresistible about Mark Rylance's cheerfulness and Sally Hawkins loving support.  Everyone loves an underdog, and seeing Flitcroft's sons pop into dance moves on the 18th hole is just joyous. And yes, there might be moments of doubt and embarrassment, but in the end this is simply a story of good decent people having a but of fun and poking the eye of the snobs. I laughed out loud throughout the film, and even shed at a tear at a well-earned emotional payoff. There's nothing not to love about it. 

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN has a running time of 102 minutes. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

ONE MAN AND HIS SHOES - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 7

Yemi Bamiro's documentary is a kinetic, well-constructed and insightful look at the marketing genius of Nike to find a young Michael Jordan and turn him into a global brand. Rather than marketing an entire basketball team with a sneaker aimed at active athletes, Nike marketed an individual and aimed at the wider urban i.e. black youth market.  They were targeting kids with little money and no real stake in the American Dream with a brand that personified achievement and excellence and, indeed, rebellion. For sure, it was useful that the NBA banned its first shoe. But Nike marketing execs had the balls to lean into that and get Spike Lee to direct some cutting edge black and white ads that leant into the Air Jordan's coolness.  Is it the shoe? Or is it Mike?   And thanks to Spike Lee, being a sneakerhead became a thing.

On the way, the documentary shows how the Air Jordan became one of the most must-have products of its time, with queues for the new editions reminiscent of how Apple markets its iPhones today. In a sense, Nike set the template for brilliantly successful marketing campaigns. The darker side is that poor urban kids were robbing each other for their trainers, and apparently this trend of violence continues today. 

I was with the documentary right up until the final ten minutes. I loved the access to the key Nike executives at the time, and I loved Jemele Hill* - a phenomenal sports writer and cultural commentator - as a talking head. But I missed some things. It would have been cool to get a Converse marketing exec on to explain how they felt seeing Nike just blow them out of the water in the early 90s. And it would've been cool to get Michael Jordan himself. Of course that wasn't going to happen because the final ten minutes criticises Jordan heavily for not being a political activist or at the very least for not publicly commenting on the violence committed to steal Air Jordans.

Now this took me back to my viewing of ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI... earlier in the festival where Leslie Odom Jr as Sam Cooke powerfully argues that if the aim of the civil rights movement is respect and economic freedom, well Michael Jordan leads by example. He doesn't have to do anything else.  On Nike, I just feel that you can't criticise a company for doing what it SHOULD do - maximise sales.  Where the criticism lies, for me, is the wider societal systemic issues and personal family structure issues that lead to young kids having a) access to guns b) such little self esteem that they think sneakers are worth killing for and c) such a lack of family values being instilled to know you don't rob and kill someone for sneakers.  Indeed, Jemele Hill speaks to the second point very effectively indeed. 

ONE MAN AND HIS SHOES has a running time of 83 minutes. The film was released on TV in the USA in June. It is currently playing the BFI London Film Festival 2020.

* Fans of The Wire should check out her podcast that deep dives into that show episode by episode alongside Van Lathan - The Wire - Way Down In The Hole.

LE MANS 66 aka FORD V FERRARI

I absolutely loved LE MANS 66 - a superbly made character drama centred around a beautiful friendship played out against the world of motor racing, where the "pure" fans are up against the soulless commercial users.  

The film stars Christian Bale as Ken Miles - a true pure racer. He's one of those people born with the talent to really understand a car and to be able to test it and improve it through sheer engineering knowhow and hard work.  He's also a totally unglamorous Brummie, with an inability to play the corporate game and bullshit people.  As much as I loved SENNA and all the glamour of racing, there's just something wonderful about seeing a guy who's not conventionally gorgeous or charismatic do just as well through sheer talent.  I didn't know I needed a hero who was a cheeky sweary Brummie constantly drinking a cup of tea.  But I did.  And it's just so delicious hearing his old-fashioned swearing - and his sheer joy when he races the perfect lap. God only knows what American viewers will make of Miles calling his son a "dirty stop out" or singing H-A-P-P-Y though.  And the scene where he comes off the track at Le Mans to be told his cup of tea is waiting and to hear him respond "thanks Chaz" is just a thing of brilliance!

Miles' friend and colleague is Carell Shelby, played with an almost Clintonesque drawl by Matt Damon.  He was at that point the other American to have ever won Le Mans, and when forced to retire for health reasons, he created a boutique sports car manufacturing company.  Shelby is everything Miles isn't - charismatic, able to schmooze corporates, but both share their true love of racing.  We never doubt that they truly love and respect each other, and that they bring out the best in each other. It's a pleasure to be in their company.

The conflict comes when the bankrupt Enzo Ferrari, the third pure racer in this film, refuses to sell his company to Ford because he knows they'll put commercial interests above racing.  So Henry Ford II, in a fit of pique, decides to create a racing team to beat Ferrari at Le Mans just to humiliate Enzo Ferrari. He doesn't actually give a shit about racing and neither does his oleaginous side-kick Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas).  In fact, they are so obtuse that when Ken Miles finally gets to Le Mans, and manages to get a wondrous four lap lead on the field, they actually ask him to slow down so that all the Ford cars can finish together! It's a truly humiliating thing to ask, and shows an utter disregard for Miles' achievement.  Bizarrely, it's the man who we think is going to be the villain of the piece at the start - Ferrari - who literally tips his hat to Miles, out of appreciation of his artistry.

This film succeeds because everything about it is just right.  The script - from Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, Jason Keller and director James Mangold - is perfectly constructed and rooted in authentic relationships and emotions.  For sure, the racing scenes are exhilarating and beautifully recreated. You can almost smell the petrol coming off the screen. But all this would mean nothing if we didn't absolutely care about Miles and Shelby.  It's also not a film that allows us to have easy one-dimensional portraits. As I said, Ferrari starts off as a rude tricksy tyrant but ends as just a kid who loves cars and truly appreciates them. Henry Ford II - who for the most part is a corporate arsehole - has a moment of almost childlike wonder at a car and an almost pathetic wish that his daddy had seen the GT40. Characters with smaller roles seem real and rounded.  Miles' wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) is supportive but strong and no-nonsense, with a real generosity of spirit.  And the acting is uniformly good. Bale should get all the awards, but I even loved Damon. There's a quiet moment near the end of the film where he's deeply distressed. He gets into a sports car and revs the engine. The sound of the engine is soothing to him - a car addict.  It's both terrifying and necessary. There aren't any words - it's all on Damon's face.  This is good stuff indeed.

LE MANS 66 has a running time of 152 minutes. The film played Toronto, Telluride and London and was released in the UK and USA this weekend.

THE EDGE

Barney Douglas' documentary THE EDGE is an indispensable watch for ardent English test match cricket fans with impressive access to the main players in one of the most successful but also controversial period's in the team's history - its rise to top ranked test team in the 2009-2013 period and then the acrimonious fall out with its star player Kevin Pietersen. The problem it that the film never asks the difficult question of its interviewees, and allows them to set their own narrative. Perhaps this was the price of gaining access, but ultimately it makes for quite a frustrating viewing experience for those of us truly fascinated by the fracas, who've read all the autobiographies and followed by long-running psychodrama intimately.

So - for example - we have Jonathan Trott being hugely brave and honest, discussing his nervous breakdown during the 5-0 whitewash in Australia during Mitchell Johnson's epic series in 2013.  This is fantastic documentary stuff. But wouldn't it have been even more insightful and hard-hitting, had Douglas not asked Andy Flower (interviewed elsewhere) to talk about what he felt management did wrong in not picking up the signs of his mental stress earlier. I saw him in the hotel lobby the day before the match at the Gabba and as a manager myself, I would never have let him come into any form of work, the state he was in.

Or when Stuart Broad talks about turning to James Anderson and seeing Trott in despair - why not ask why they as senior players who'd played with him so much, hadn't done more. Or even pick up the accusations Kevin Pietersen made in his autobiography that they - with Swanny and others - had created a toxic bullying culture of younger players (and himself). Is it enough just to let Broady deny he made the KP parody account? Why not ask Strauss and Flower why more investigative action wasn't taken?  

Maybe when interviewing Monty Panesar, who speaks of stress eating alone in his room, they could've asked him - or Steve Finn - what is was like to be a young man in that dressing room,  or the dressing down you'd get if you dropped a catch. Why not interrogate further the idea, lightly alluded to, that Monty felt he'd become a figure of fun, not taken seriously by the crowds or his team-mates. 

And as for Kevin Pietersen, who likes to depict himself as a bullied outsider, why not ask why he feels he was singled out. After all, it was a cosmopolitan team - why not ask what he feels he did to contribute to that. Did he feel he deserved special treatment?

So the movie is good as far as it goes, and adds to the increasing voices of players telling their sides of the story.  But the inability to have the interviewees cross-examined, or even interact with each other on screen and debate some of the thornier issues, is a real problem.  

In terms of production values, this movie has come on leaps and bounds from Douglas' first effort, WARRIORS. The score in particular is superb as the animation inventive.  Both add energy to a film that's basically a bunch of talking heads, and in general you have to say that Douglas helps to make a complicated story concise and clear.  I could've done without Toby Jones somewhat hyperbolic narration though.

THE EDGE has a running time of 95 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language. It is available to rent and own on streaming services in the UK. 

DIEGO MARADONA

DIEGO MARADONA is the latest doc from Asif Kapadia - the film-maker behind the superb SENNA and AMY.  Once again he uses the same technique - curating a collage of previously unseen video and audio to give an overarching narrative about an icon's inner life.  He doesn't insert himself overtly into the doc in the way that Nick Broomfield or Michael Moore do - but his thesis is very present, conveyed through his editing and shaping of the material. In those prior docs, Kapadia created a villain - Alain Prost and Amy Winehouse's dad. In this one, he creates both hero and villain in Diego and Maradona - the charismatic super-talented slum kid who made good - and the cocky, cocaine-fuelled adulterer who imploded.  It's an effective duality but leaves other factors unexplored. Because Maradona's life - unlike Senna or Amy - allows us a window into two particular social issues which are as fascinating as he is. The first is the racism and classism of Italian society that allows northern football fans to call the Napoli fans black cholera-plagued scum. The second is the influence of the mafia on Napolese life.  These intersect in Maradona, because he was bought for a record sum by Napoli - the poorest club in the poorest town in Italy - bankrolled by the mafia who then courted Diego and gave him cocaine and women. They also intersect because Diego sympathised with Napoli and for a time embodied all its best hopes because he too had been called all the names, treated as scum, and could become their avatar.  I wanted to hear more about these issues and felt that Kapadia was either reluctant or unable to explore them further. And I feel that this is because he was over-concerned with using his treasure trove of unseen Napoli football footage, and remains resistant to using talking heads to provide social context.  The problem with this approach is that for all but the most ardent soccer fan, watching footage of 1980s seria A football isn't that interesting.  And second, that I left the doc wanting more - unsatisfied despite sitting through a 2 hour doc.  That said, it's still a film worth watching for the occasional flashes of Diego's charisma, and the joy of seeing him teach his daughter how to swear at the Juve fans. 

DIEGO MARADONA has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Cannes and Sheffield 2019. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in the USA on September 20th.