Tag: Sports films

King Richard (2021)

Richard Williams creates two of the greatest tennis stars ever in this easy-viewing star vehicle

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Cast: Will Smith (Richard Williams), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Oracene “Brandy” Price), Saniyya Sidney (Venus Williams), Demi Singleton (Serena Williams), Jon Bernthal (Rick Macci), Tony Goldwyn (Paul Cohen), Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew (Tunde Price), Danielle Lawson (Isha Price), Layla Crawford (Lyndrea Price)

Sports movies have a very reliable formula. There’s the initial promise, early success, adversity, obstacles, a moment of doubt, a renewal of commitment and a final success. I think it’s fair to say that King Richard pretty much hits all the beats you expect. In fact, its pretty much exactly the film you expect it to be when it starts and doubles down hard on the charisma and charm of its star.

King Richard tells the story of how the Williams Sisters, Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton), took their very first steps towards dominating the world of tennis, as told through the eyes of their father Richard (Will Smith). Richard Williams had been determined from almost the moment his children were born, that he would never stop working (and push them) to build lives that would take them away from the working-class ghetto he grew up in. Teaching himself tennis coaching, from the moment they can hold a racket the girls are coached. But, being working class and black in a white-middle-class sport, Richard must work night-and-day to win professional coaching and playing opportunities for his daughters. Not to mention, struggling to ensure that they don’t forget their roots or get chewed up and spat out by the sport.

First and foremost, King Richard is a showpiece for Will Smith. The part fits him like a glove: Williams a larger-than-life, force-of-“Will” role that feels about 2/3^rds Williams and 1/3^rdSmith. With Williams fast-talking patter, never-give-up determination and absolute commitment to protecting his loved ones, the role plays to all Smith’s strengths. Smith gives a quintessential movie-star performance, which to-be-honest often feels like a Will Smith personality role (the modern equivalent of a Cary Grant performance), but is very entertaining because few people are as good at crafting their personae to benefit a movie as Smith is. Smith is heartfelt, earnest, loveable, sometimes slapable (Note: I wrote that before Smith’s slap-heard-around-the-world was forever attached to his Oscar-winning performance), but always a charming guy you root for.

Which is odd, as Richard Williams is a man with a mixed reputation. He was a demanding, argumentative, often controlling presence who irritated and alienated far more people on the tour than he befriended. Some saw him as a self-promoter, others as a man at times causing problems for his daughter’s careers. King Richard doesn’t shy away from showing these qualities – the awkwardness, the temper, the selfishness, the arrogance – but presents them all in the best possible light. The film is purest hagiography and Richard Williams is always vindicated in all his calls.

Awkwardly the film is also determined to give him all the credit for the Williams’ sisters success. Now there is merit in this – and the script was developed with the sister’s input, so it feels a bit presumptuous to get angry on their behalf. The sisters would never have become what they are if their father had not put rackets in their hands so young and invested hours in training them. Similarly, they would not have been as fully-rounded people without his constant mantra about family, humility and hard work. But also, they did have quite a bit of talent themselves – and certainly they profited from lessons they picked up from the other coaches they worked with.

However, one of the points King Richard is gently making – and it is gently made, as if the film was worried its crowd-pleasing potential might have been affected if it banged this drum too hard – is that Williams had to be a domineering figure because he was fighting against a racial divide in the sport. He feels out of place in the tennis country clubs because he is. No one else on the junior tour is anything other than white and well off. Every coach and trainer is applying methods that have worked for affluent middle-class athletes, without considering any adjustment might be needed for two young women coming from a totally different background.

You can argue the hagiography is partially a course correction from years of the only black father and coach on the tour being denounced as uppity, loud-mouthed, self-obsessed and intrusive. Its still made clear he shares these traits with many other tour parents, but adding to it a massive dose of supportive parenting. There are moments when the film addresses how Williams’ obsession that he knows best might just be starting to run the risk of alienating his daughters: in particular Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor delivers a blistering late speech (which probably got her an Oscar nomination by itself, so compellingly is it performed) where she lays out in no-uncertain-terms Williams many character flaws and damaging behaviours. (Coincidentally the film’s most compelling dramatic scene).

Maybe a bit of hagiography is what we need from a film designed to be an uplifting, triumph against the odds and celebration of one man’s fatherly love and devotion to give his daughters a chance to change their stars. The film is professionally directed by Green and some of the titbits of the sisters early training (throwing American footballs to build service strength among others) is fascinating.

The film is probably at least twenty minutes too long and starts at some points to repeat the same beats again and again. It doesn’t really do anything new and is exactly the sort of film you could predict it being. But it has some good performances, Smith is at the top of his (Oscar-winning) game, and it is an enjoyable, if predictable, feel-good watch.

Invictus (2009)

Morgan Freeman perfectly captures Nelson Mandela in Invictus

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Morgan Freeman (Nelson Mandela), Matt Damon (Francois Pienaar), Tony Kgoroge (Jason Tshabalala), Adjoa Andoh (Brenda Mazibuko), Julian Lewis Jones (Eitenne Feyder), Patrick Mofokeng (Linga Moonsamy), Matt Stern (Hendrick Booyens), Marguerite Wheatley (Nerine Winter)

Sometimes, very rarely, a man emerges perfectly suited to his time and place. Perhaps there is no finer example than Nelson Mandela, who emerged from a hellish imprisonment for 27 years on Robben Island to become the first black President of South Africa. The man who could have sparked – and arguably would have had the sympathy of many if he had – a wave of policies that inflicted the same unfairness and injustice on the white population that they had poured onto the black for decades. Instead he chose reconciliation and forgiveness. Can you imagine many other political leaders saying when his people were wrong – and that as their leader, his duty is to tell them so? Invictus would be triumph even if it all it did was remind us of the vision and greatness of Mandela. Fortunately it does more than this.

Like many modern film biographies, the film focuses on a single moment or point in history to explore in microcosm a complex man and his dangerous times. When Mandela (Morgan Freeman) comes to power, South Africa is a country seemingly doomed to division. The whites fear and resent the new power the black population has. The black population is keen on vengeance after years of persecution. Mandela however knows there must be a new way: the hatred propagates only itself, and for the country to move on it must come together as one Rainbow Nation. But in this new nation, there are symbols that are particularly divisive. South Africa’s rugby team, the Springboks their green and gold colours a symbol of apartheid, are the most visible of these targets.

But Mandela understood that, to bring the country together, he must ease the fears of the white population that the end of the apartheid meant an apocalypse for everything they held dear. He pushes to preserves the Springboks name and their colours. He gives the team his backing, and enlists Springbok captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) to help him. Because Mandela knows that the approaching Rugby World Cup, hosted in South Africa, is a glorious opportunity to show the world that the nation is solving its problems. And Mandela is shrewd enough to know that sport can bring people together in ways few other things can. Against all the odds, rugby will become the tool he will use to start the nation healing.

Eastwood’s film is sentimental in the best possible way. It presents a stirring true-life story with a simplicity and honesty that never overpowers the viewer or hammers them over the head. Eastwood also allows space to show in small but telling ways how dangerously divided this country is. From the Presidential staff who start packing up their desks the morning after Mandela’s win, convinced the new President will show them all the door (wrong), to the slow fusing together into one team of Mandela’s personal security staff (black) and their colleagues from the secret service (all white – many of whom arrested Mandela’s colleagues in the past). Even liberal whites like the Pienaar’s keep a black maid as a servant, while ANC party members push for a sweeping aside of every vestige of the old regime.

It’s a dynamite environment in which a single man can make a difference. And with a combination of the sort of patience you learn from 27 years living in a small cell, charm and an unbelievable willingness to turn the other cheek, Mandela is that man. While Eastwood’s film allows beats to remind us he is just a man – his difficult relationship with his family gains a few crucial scenes – the film is also unabashed in its admiration for this titan. And rightly so. Mandela’s smile, his humbleness and his determination to both do the right thing and to avoid provocation is awe-inspiring (his white security guards are stunned that he seems not to hear the abuse he is showered with when attending a rugby game early in his Presidency – he hears and sees everything, their black colleagues assure them).

Morgan Freeman is practically a Hollywood symbol of dignity and righteousness – if he can play God he can play Mandela – and his portrayal of the great man is a perfect marriage of actor and subject. Capturing Mandela’s speech patterns and physicality perfectly, he also brilliantly seizes on his character. This is a man who can put anyone at their ease, who humbly speaks of his excitement of meeting Pienaar, who we see putting hours into learning the names and backgrounds of every member of the South Africa Rugby squad. He’s a realist who knows that change needs time, political muscle and sometimes a willingness to cut corners and force the issue – but he’s also a man to whom principle drives all. Freeman’s Oscar-nominated performance is outstanding.

The strength of the film lies in the simple, stirring hope that it derives from seeing the struggle that even small triumphs need. As we see personal relationships begin to grow – from a security team that segregates itself in their office to eventually enjoying a kick-about together – and the growing sense of community in the nation as the world cup draws near, it’s hard not to feel a lump forming in the throat. The film doesn’t overegg this, but allows the moments to speak for themselves.

But it’s also a sport film – possibly the highest profile rugby film since This Sporting Life. The film recreates the drama of that World Cup very well – as well as the intense physicality of rugby as a sport. Matt Damon physically throws himself into it, as well as playing Pienaar with a natural ease carefully allowing his sense of national duty and awareness of being part of something larger than himself to grow (although an Oscar nod is still a little generous). The camera throws us wonderfully into the games, and the film largely manages to avoid the manufactured drama of the game (largely because what happened in real life was often dramatic enough!)

Invictus may not be the most revolutionary film ever made – and catch it in the wrong moment and you might think it was a sentimental journey – but it’s made with a matter-of-fact, low-key charm that I think manages to not overwhelm the heart. Instead it manages to produce a great deal of emotion from its carefully underplaying. With a fantastic performance from Morgan Freeman, it’s a wonderful tribute most of all to a very great man, who changed his country and the world for the better through the power of forgiveness – a power he was able to invest a whole nation with.

The Program (2015)

Ben Foster is the disgraced Lance Armstrong in this functional but insight free biopic The Program

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: Ben Foster (Lance Armstrong), Chris O’Dowd (David Walsh), Jesse Plemons (Floyd Landis), Lee Pace (Bill Stapleton), Guillaume Canet (Michele Ferrari), Denis Menochet (Johan Bruyneel), Dustin Hoffman (Bob Hamman), Edward Hogg (Frankie Andreu), Elaine Cassidy (Betsy Andreu), Laura Donnelly (Emma O’Reilly), Sam Hoare (Stephen Stewart)

In sports there has probably never been an icon who fell so far as Lance Armstrong. Stephen Frears’ film reconstructs the story of Armstrong’s – played by Ben Foster – career, from finding his natural build and ability isn’t enough to win the Tour de France, through cancer diagnosis and recovery and then into his record-breaking run of Tour victories, all achieved off the back of running a comprehensive and professional doping system, and his final fall from grace.

Frears’ film is well-made and stylish and good at capturing the freedom and excitement of professional cycle racing. It’s also a skilled reconstruction of its time period, and a fairly well structured chronicle of events, which it reconstructs from journalist David Walsh’s (played here with a fine sense of moral outrage by Chris O’Dowd) book Seven Deadly Sins. Walsh had written stories for several years questioning Armstrong’s achievements, and Frears’ film puts together the events and testimonies that convince Walsh of Armstrong’s cheating with a documentarian skill.

Where the film fails though is its lack of drama and, crucially, its willingness to use dramatic and creative licence to attempt an exploration of Armstrong’s personality. What drove this cancer survivor to abuse his body with a parade of substances? How did Armstrong balance his passionate campaigning for a cure for a cancer with the lie he was presenting the world of how he didn’t just recover from cancer, he used it as a springboard to become the greatest endurance athlete in the world? Basically, what the film doesn’t really try to do, is get inside the head of its lead character.

Instead, the film follows its title: The Program. There is greater interest in the how of this cheating regime, not the why. Now perhaps in real life Armstrong is the shallow, narcissistic bully he often seems here, obsessed with winning at all costs with no moral quandaries at all. But it hardly makes for entertaining or satisfying drama. Foster is a brilliant physical match – and he captures the ruthless forward-drive of Armstrong very well – but this is a film that doesn’t really scratch the surface of what made Armstrong. We never get a sense of his motivations – or really his reactions as the world tumbles around him.

There is a fascinating story to tell here, but it’s almost as if the film is worried about giving this sinner some feet of clay we can sympathise with (to mix a few metaphors). Instead Armstrong is all chilled front and nothing underneath, and his villainy is so central from day one that we get neither a satisfying sense of a hypocrite unmasked nor of a Promethean fall from grace.

Actually, Frears may well have been more interested in making a film where Jesse Plemons’ Floyd Landis was a central character – the devout Christian persuaded to take part in the doping scheme, who becomes Armstrong’s successor only to be immediately discredited in a way Armstrong would not be for years. It’s the tragedy of Landis that really has dramatic potential – a decent man who is well aware what he is doing is wrong, but is too weak to not accept the easy path to glory. It’s this story that has real dramatic potential – and might well have made a better focus for the movie.

The Program isn’t a bad film. It captures the drama of its sport well, and it brings together the events that led to Armstrong’s fall with professional skill. But it’s more of documentary than a drama and to be honest there isn’t much in it that couldn’t be picked up better from actually reading Walsh’s book. There was a lot of potential here – but it needed a film more willing to explore and understand its central character rather than just condemn him as a monster and move on.

Raging Bull (1980)

Robert De Niro takes to the ring in Scorsese’s marvellous Raging Bull

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro (Jake LaMotta), Joe Pesci (Joey LaMotta), Cathy Moriarty (Vickie LaMotta), Nicholas Colasanto (Tommy Como), Theresa Saldana (Lenora LaMotta), Frank Vincent (Salvy Batts), Lori Anne Flax (Irma LaMotta)

On the surface, Raging Bull seems an unusual topic for Scorsese. A sports biopic? For this, the least sports-engaged director in Hollywood? Even in Scorsese’s most masculine works, sports are always noticeable for their absence. But Raging Bull is a masterpiece, a film whose legacy has seen it named as the greatest film of the 1980s, showcasing possibly Robert De Niro’s most famous performance. A brilliant combination of art, searing personal drama and boxing, Raging Bull may not always be the easiest watch in the world, but it’s a scintillating piece of cinema.

Opening in 1964, we see the overweight, ageing Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro) preparing for a comic stand-up routine. From there, the film flashes back to the younger Jake in the ring, with the film following LaMotta’s boxing career. However, the real drama is in his out-of-the-ring relationships, with his brother and manager Joey (Joe Pesci) and his second, younger, wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). LaMotta inside the ring is a bull, a man who can take unbelievable levels of punishment. Outside the ring though he is a fragile, paranoid, self-loathing man with a sharp self-destructive streak, whose envy and jealousy systematically destroys every relationship he touches.

Watching the film, its clear Scorsese knows very little about boxing but fortunately he knows everything about filmmaking. Raging Bull is a marvel, a superbly made and directed marvel. Scorsese’s triumphant decision was to shoot the film in black-and-white (some truly beautiful work from Michael Chapman). This gives the film both the classic, gorgeous feel of a 1940s Hollywood movie, but also allows the boxing matches themselves to take on an almost impressionistic artistry, with powerfully emotive monochrome images. The photography also creates a stark, documentary like sense of reality for the many scenes of domestic disharmony and violence, while later shots brilliantly allow LaMotta (lost in self-loathing and disgust) to almost disappear into the inky darkness of the frame. Raging Bull would be half the film it is, if it was in full colour.

Recovering from a cocaine addiction that nearly killed him, Scorsese was intimately familiar with self-destruction – and its perhaps this that drew him towards LaMotta’s jealousy, possibly the film’s major theme. LaMotta is a self-loathing individual, who sees little value in himself, who treats pummellings in the ring like just punishments and believes everyone is betraying him. It’s one of the finest films about the green-eyed monster ever made. Obsessed with his younger wife – whom LaMotta first encounters at age 15 and whom he marries as soon as she is legal – LaMotta also earnestly believes she is sleeping with every man around. It’s clear that these paranoid fantasies stem from his own disgust at himself, LaMotta’s own conviction that there is nothing of value in him.

It’s this jealousy that really destroys LaMotta, his trigger-happy temper seeing him able to switch on an instant from a calm – but monomaniacal – insistence that he just wants to know the truth about his wife, to indiscriminate violence. LaMotta is an impulsive, excessive creature who does everything to a huge degree, from doubting his wife, to shovelling food into his guts. Scorsese’s camerawork – particularly it’s La Dolce Vitaish love of Cathy Moriarty – reflects LaMotta’s internal dysfunction. It worships Moriarty in the same way LaMotta does, but also reflects his obsessive possessiveness.

All of this is further captured in Robert De Niro’s iconic performance. De Niro won the Oscar for this stunning tour de force. Raging Bull became almost as famous for De Niro’s all-consuming preparation: he trained for months to achieve the physique and skill of a professional boxer (he even entered some professional bouts, winning two out of three). He then went completely the other way, the entire film going on a four month hiatus while De Niro went on an eating tour around Italy to pile on the pounds for the ageing, overweight LaMotta. At the time it seemed like no other actor had gone to such levels.

This focus on De Niro’s preparation sometimes obscures in the mind the genius of the actual performance, as if we have almost been blinded by the training and technique behind it. De Niro’s energy, his fury, his intelligent understanding of the fractured mind of the paranoid brilliantly brings LaMotta to life. So intense is the actor’s understanding of the disgust that lies at the heart of LaMotta’s personality that, even at his worst, the man is never completely unsympathetic. De Niro rages through scenes of jealous outbursts and violence, but he also has a childish gentleness of the man unable to understand the world around him, twice in the film collapsing into bursts of affecting tears. The older LaMotta is perhaps wiser, but just as inarticulate in emotions as his younger version and as unable to fix the damage. It’s a masterful performance, a physical and emotional tour-de-force.

De Niro also worked closely on the choreography of the boxing scenes, which allowed Scorsese the freedom to shoot these with an imagination and brilliance that had never been seen before. Each fight has its own unique feel, with Scorsese understanding that this sport is a neat parallel for how LaMotta sees life, a series of brutal clashes with pride and self-regard on the line. Scorsese’s fights are elemental clashes – the soundtrack frequently uses slowed sounds to create an animalistic roar.

The camera is frequently thrown into the ring with the pugilist – and LaMotta here is really more of a pugilist than a boxer, there is very little sense of tactics – with low angles and tight camerawork. Scorsese puts the camera – and the viewer – into the ring, making us part of the fights. Every punch and blow carries impact, and this is perhaps the most blood drenched boxing film in history, with the darkened liquid covering the faces of the fighters and dripping from the ropes of the ring. The fights reflect LaMotta’s mood, with one late fight seeming like an almost medieval battle, mist rolling in and the fighters flying at each other with a reckless abandon. There is nothing romantic about boxing here, it’s a grimy reality of violence with a purpose and brute strength, endurance challenges that only the strongest can emerge from.

LaMotta’s confidence and mastery of the ring is contrasted throughout with his lack of nous and understanding in the real world, and his ability to destroy everything he touches. Joe Pesci excels as his supportive brother who realises far too late the uncontrollable anger at the heart of this fighter, while Cathy Moriarty is also excellent as a young woman whose only real mistake is to want to live some part of her own life. Scorsese charts LaMotta’s destruction of both of these relationships, culminating in the washed up boxer pounding the walls of a jail cell weeping and screaming “Why! Why! Why!”, hatred for his self-destruction dripping from every pore.

Raging Bull looks unlike any other boxing film, instead like a perfectly formed art piece, its soundtrack full of classical tunes and its photography adjusting between the beauty of neo-realism and the cold realities of documentary film making. It’s superb, a masterful film, a work of art and also a profound understanding of the destructive impact of jealousy and self-loathing. Showcasing career defining work from De Niro, it’s no wonder this is still hailed as the greatest film of the 1980s and one of the greatest of all time.

Ford v Ferrari (Le Mans '66) (2019)

Christian Bale as maverick driver Ken Miles in the functional but fun Ford v Ferrari

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Matt Damon (Caroll Shelby), Christian Bale (Ken Miles), Jon Bernthal (Lee Iacocca), Caitriona Balfe (Mollie Miles), Tracy Letts (Henry Ford II), Josh Lucas (Leo Beebe), Noah Jupe (Peter Miles), Remo Girone (Enzo Ferrari), Ray McKinnon (Phil Remington), JJ Feild (Roy Lunn), Jack McMullen (Charlie Agapiou)

There are few more exhilarating things than going really, really damn fast. It’s a primal glee that James Mangold’s racing film Ford v Ferrari (or Le Mans ’66 as it seems to be known over here) taps into, roaring with exciting, fast-paced energy lashed onto a good old buddy movie as two plucky underdogs get the chance to overturn the champs and claim the title. It’s the story of any number of sports movies, but it still works here. It ain’t broke, after all.

It’s the early 1960s and the sales of the Ford Company are down: the baby boomers don’t want to be driving the dull, safe cars of their parents. They want something super sexy. Despite his hesitation Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) is persuaded the best way to get that sexy image is to get a racing car – and if he can’t buy Enzo Ferrari’s (Remo Girone) company, then by hell he’ll spend whatever it takes to give Ford the best racing team in the world. Targeting the Le Mans 24 hour race, he recruits retired-driver-turned-designer Caroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to mastermind building a car – and Shelby recruits demanding, prickly, maverick Brit driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) to help him design it and then drive the thing. But what to do when Miles’ blunt plain-speaking and individuality looks like it won’t make him the best spokesman for selling Ford cars?

On the surface Ford v Ferrari is pretty much your standard Sports film. Two teams, an underdog and a champion, a pair of mavericks who think outside the box, the struggle for success – met with initial failure before victory – all told through a familiar structure of brothers-in-arms, obstructing suits, supportive wives at home and plenty of carefully detailed expert recreation of sporting events. It’s a collection of familiar ingredients, but very well mixed together by Mangold (one of Hollywood’s finest middle-rank directors, a sort of heir to Lumet).

The real twist however is that the rivalry is not really about Ford and Ferrari. In fact the film might have been better titled Ford vs Ford. Because the main thing standing in the way of Shelby and Miles isn’t Ferrari – with whom they actually have a rivalry built on mutual respect – but with the bottom-line, sales-first suits who are backing them. It’s a parallel with everything where sales and the buck count more than anything, but you feel Mangold might well have related it most to Hollywood producers. What is Ken Miles, but the genius auteur director who the money-men just won’t trust to churn out the mass-market product they need to lift the share price? Henry Ford (very drily played by Tracy Letts) may have one visceral moment of excitement when placed in the passenger seat of a fast car – but fundamentally he doesn’t give a damn about the sport at all, except how it could help him shift a few more Mustangs.

Shelby and Miles’ struggles are not with the car, the engineering problems or Ferrari – they’re with the Ford VPS (in particular Josh Lucas’ incomparably smarmy Leo Beebe, a corporate man to his fingertips who probably bleeds stock tips) who want a product they can sell, far more than a product that can win. Obstacles are constantly thrown towards Shelby and Miles from their bosses – everything from engine design to race strategy receives a series of notes, comments and instructions from the Ford hierarchy. The choice of driver is most important of all – and they don’t want the demanding Ken Miles behind the wheel of their car. Because mavericks like that don’t sell Mustangs.

As Miles, Christian Bale gives a performance of pure enjoyment. Juggling a version of his own natural accent (which sounds odd – part cockney, part scouse – but works brilliantly) Bale gives the part just the right amount of that peculiar chippy Britishness, that resentment of people in authority, that hostile reaction to the stench of bullshit. Driven, determined but totally unwilling to suffer fools – exhibited almost immediately with him dressing down a prat who isn’t a good enough driver to handle the sports car he’s purchased – Miles is clearly never going to be the company man Ford wants. But with his passion for “that perfect lap”, his determination to work night and day to achieve that and – in a nice change – his warmth for his family and equal decision making with his wife (a slightly thankless part for Catriona Balfe) he’s a character you quickly take to your heart. It’s a great, charisma-led performance from Bale, who also gets nearly all the best lines.

It does suck a bit of the oxygen from Damon, who plays the straight-man as Shelby who is just as passionate but can (just about) speak Corporatese. With a Texan drawl, Damon does the legwork of the movie extremely generously, quietly driving many of the scenes and handling much of the more emotional arc of the movie. The two actors form a superb chemistry – peaking with a hilarious fight scene, your chance to see Batman clobber Jason Bourne with a loaf of bread (both actors, famous for muscular fight scenes, clearly enjoy a fight scene straight out of Bridget Jones). It’s a bromance that really works – and carries at certain points a genuine emotional force.

Mangold packages this material perfectly – and the racing sequences are brilliantly done, engrossing, speaker-shaking displays of racing, fabulously edited. The film itself is probably too long, and the sections away from the race track are sometimes so familiar in their structure and tone that they sometimes drag a little bit, as if the fierce momentum of the racing scenes can’t carry across to the rest of the film. But with fine performances and expert handling, this is certainly a number you’ll be happy to test drive.

The Blind Side (2009)

Sandra Bullock sets her own rules, campaigning for a better life for a young black man in The Blind Side

Director: John Lee Hancock

Cast: Sandra Bullock (Leigh Anne Tuohy), Tim McGraw (Sean Tuohy), Quinton Aaron (Michael Oher Tuohy), Jae Head (SJ Tuohy), Lily Collins (Collins Tuohy), Ray McKinnon (Coach Cotton), Kathy Bates (Miss Sue), Kim Dickens (Mrs Boswell)

Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for this sweet but unchallenging film, the sort of thing you could have expected to see on TV in the 1990s as a “movie of the week”. She plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a determined and driven woman who adopts and mentors Michael Oher (Quinton Aaaron), a gentle giant of a teenager who has grown up in foster care and who struggles with shyness. Michael has been accepted by his school for his potential skill, but the school can’t cater for his requirements for a less traditional teaching model (he struggles with reading and confidence). All that changes as Leigh Anne pushes for Michael to get the support he needs and encourages him to excel as a footballer.

This is the sort of naked crowd pleaser that will leave a smile on your face – and probably escape your mind after a few days. It’s devoid of challenge and ticks every single box you would expect this kind of rags-to-riches story to cover – the initial struggle, the growth in confidence, the setback, the rebound, the happy ending. It’s all there – and packaged very well by Hancock (heck the film won a surprise nomination for Best Picture).

It’s powered above all by a forceful, larger-than-life performance by Bullock, the sort of “personality” part that the actor has always excelled at (there is no doubt she’s a hugely engaging performer and always has been). Bullock grips the film by the horns and rips through the expected scenes. She’s a glamourous rich woman who isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with the local gangsters! She’s wealthy but she’s still in touch with her roots! She’s beautiful but she wears the trousers in the household! It’s everything you would probably expect, and Bullock can more or less play it standing on her head. She brings all her expert comic timing and exuberance to bear and mixes it with an emotional concern and empathy rarely called for in the romcoms that have made up much of her career. In a weak year (Carey Mulligan in An Education was her only plausible rival for the little gold man) she took the prize.

It’s probably the only thing that The Blind Side will be remembered for, however much most people will enjoy it when watching it. Its story of good triumphant and a disadvantaged young man getting the chance to come to peace with himself and turn his life around, are bound to put a smile on most faces. There are lots of funny lines, and Leigh Anne is such a powerhouse she makes a chalk-and-cheese partnership with anyone she shares a scene with. But it’s basically not got a lot more to it than just showing you a rags-to-riches tale, with a few slight notes of racial tension thrown in (and then barely even explored in any depth). A more interesting film might have taken more note of the differences between the Tuohy’s background and the poverty of Michael’s childhood neighbourhood and the fate of the rest of the people who grew up (none of whom had his advantages). But this is more interested in presenting an unlikely, balsy, champion of the underdog promote his life.

I suppose you could say that this film tells the story of the troubled background and eventual success of a young black man and not only filters all this through the experience of a family of wealthy white people, but also suggests that the chances of a black man achieving this without the support of a white family was practically impossible. But, then this isn’t a film with a political agenda. It’s just trying to tell a charming, uplifting story. Take it on those terms and it’s enjoyable. Try to delve into it any deeper and it will puff up and disappear in a burst of feelgood warmth. But the only reason it will be remembered – the only reason why it even remotely stands out – is as the film Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for.

Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill take on maths and baseball (in that order) in Moneyball

Director: Bennett Miller

Cast: Brad Pitt (Billy Beane), Jonah Hill (Peter Brand), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Art Howe), Robin Wright (Sharon), Chris Pratt (Scott Hatteberg), Stephen Bishop (David Justice), Reed Diamond (Mark Shapiro), Brent Jennings (Ron Washington)

Chances are, if I tell you this is a film (a) about baseball and (b) also about sabermetric economics, I’ll lose a lot of you before a single second of the film has rolled. Which would be a shame in this case, as Moneyball is an entertaining, rather affecting yarn that manages to turn subjects that really feel like they should be impossibly dull into a sprightly against-the-odds drama.

In 2002, Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) has a problem. The As are struggling to pull together a competitive team for the new season, with their best players having been cherry picked away by the larger (and crucially richer) teams, and the money to buy replacements proving incredibly sparse. But after a chance meeting at the Cleveland Indians with young Harvard economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Beane stumbles across another way of building a team. Realising that if he tries to compete on finances with the bigger teams he will always lose, Beane is persuaded by Brand to research player statistics to unearth players undervalued by the big teams. By focusing on specific playing statistics – crucially their on-base percentage – rather than more showy skills, Beane starts to build a successful team, despite the push-back from the more conservative scouts and coaches at the club.

Yes it’s the backroom side of sports, the boardroom politics and business dealings, that come to the fore in this film. But rather than bore, it actually zings along very effectively due, in no small part, to some cracking trademark rat-a-tat dialogue from Aaron Sorkin (polishing a script by Steven Zallian), which elevates conversations about percentages and statistics into something so entertaining you don’t even notice you barely see any actual playing of baseball.

But then the film comes into shape because who hasn’t wanted to be the visionary, to be the one who tells a stuffy room of old-timers that they are out of date and hell fire I don’t care what you say we’re going to do it the new way or be damned? Based on Michael Lewis’ book, written in heavy collaboration with Billy Beane, the film may well (as some have claimed) play up the conservative prejudices of the follow-your-gut scout and coaches (in particular its portrayal of coach Art Howe as some sort of lumbering dinosaur) but it does make for some damn fine scenes.

And there is a point in there that these coaches feel – perhaps slightly justifiably – that their experience is being disregarded in favour of burying your nose into an online almanac. Crucially, they are proved right (although the film plays it down) when they identify one of the Beane’s signings in advance as a party-hard troublemaker. The film also shows that, while numbers help recruit the players, what actually makes them perform is Beane’s reluctantly taking on the mantle of man-management: talking to the players, explaining what he is doing and motivating them personally. While it’s a film about pushing the boundaries, it also takes moments to show that we can’t junk everything that’s past to build our future.

Moneyball largely manages to make scenes like this dramatic, which is pretty damn good going

A lot of this comes out of Beane’s own personality. It’s a gift of a part for Brad Pitt, who is excellent, mining the deep vein of loneliness and isolation in Beane, whose past is littered with regrets and mistakes. His own baseball career flamed out after early promise, due to his inability to adapt to a higher level of play (Brand wins Beane’s trust by telling him that, based on statistics, he would have picked him very late in the draft not first). It’s an experience that gives Beane a ready-made scepticism for “gut instinct”, but also explains his own unwillingness to get to know the players who (if he needs to) he’ll need to trade in an instant for the good of the club.

Pitt gives Beane this inner sadness, but also a level of warmth fired by competitive zeal. He’s unable to watch the games (so driven is he to win) and he treats his negotiations with other teams and managers with the sort of no-holds barred testosterone that you’d expect he played with. He’s a passionate man who loses his temper and has no time for fools. But he has a deep love for his daughter (of course!), keeps on good terms with his ex-wife and understands deep down that making life decisions is based on a lot more than money.

This also adds a level of bravery to his decision to fly in the face of decades of baseball knowledge – get this wrong and his head will be on the block. This brings added tensions to heated discussions with scouts, frenzied phone calls to secure at the right price the most statistically advantageous players, and clashes with coaches about how to pick a team that has been selected for very specific skills. It adds a human element and guts to the drama.

With super dialogue, a fine performance from Brad Pitt and some good supporting work from Jonah Hill as the (semi-fictionalised) numbers-guy slowly building in confidence, Moneyball has more than enough to recommend it. Sure not much concession is made to baseball muggles, but there’s more than enough heart and drama here to overcome the lack of explanation of how baseball works and what these percentages actually mean – the fact is it works.

I, Tonya (2017)

Margot Robbie triumphs as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Margot Robbie (Tonya Harding), Sebastian Stan (Jeff Gillooly), Allison Janney (LaVona Golden), Julianne Nicholson (Diane Rawlinson), Bobby Carnavale (Martin Maddox), Paul Walter Hauser (Shawn Eckhardt), Caitlin Carver (Nancy Kerrigan), Bojana Novakovic (Dody Teachman)

In 1994, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) is the bad-girl of ice skating. From a working-class Portland background, with a domineering mother (Allison Janney), she struggles to be accepted in the upper-class world of ice skating. After some success, including becoming the first American ice skater to complete two triple axel jumps, she constantly finds success undermined by her own failings and indiscipline, and the influence of her wastrel, abusive husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan). When competing with rival Nancy Kerrigan for a place on the 1994 Winter Olympic team, Tonya encourages her husband to send Kerrigan threatening letters to put her off. What happens instead is an attack on Kerrigan that breaks her knee – and the fallout will have devastating consequences.

I,Tonya is much more than a film about an attack on a rival skater. Tonya (in the film) complains that the event (which she claims to have had so little to do with) has overshadowed her whole life, but that’s not a mistake the film makes. The film is instead a brilliant deconstruction of class and media in America. Tonya struggles in the world of ice skating because she comes from a working-class, trailer-trash background. This leads her to grow up with several chips on her shoulder, aggressively acting out against judges and fellow competitors, because she wants to belong but never feels she does. In a country that likes to pride itself that it doesn’t have the sort of class system the UK has, it’s a striking commentary on how Tonya completely fails to escape the impact of her poor, violent background – and uses it as a justification and excuse for everything that happens to her in the film.

Her background also makes it every easy for the media to cast Tonya as a villain, first as the difficult punk of ice skating, later as the Machiavellian arch schemer of a vile plot. The worst part of this is – like the reality stars of the 00s who would follow her – Tonya feels she needs to keep playing a role in order to “stay in the public eye”. In turn, the media – largely embodied here by Bobby Cannavale’s delighted media commentator, who gleefully recounts every key moment of the film in a smug series of talking head interviews – keeps the pressure on, puffing her up into whatever it requires her to be to fill a 24 hours news cycle. It’s surely no accident that the film ends with camera moving away from Jeff’s house, while news of OJ Simpson’s arrest plays on the television.

And why does Tonya fit herself into this role? Because, the film suggests, she is a victim who has confusingly absorbed her victim status into her personal relationships and self-value. Treated appallingly be her domineering mother, and hit constantly by her worthless husband, Tonya clearly believes that she is personally of very little worth. If she is so used to being an angry, raging punchbag at home, is it any wonder that she settles into that role publically? To the extent that, throughout, Tonya constantly sidelines or pushes away the more supportive people around her, like Julianne Nicholson’s (who is very good) dedicated coach.

The film handles this range of complex psychological and social themes with aplomb. In a neat touch, the film acknowledges that the events of its narrative are so controversial that everyone in it has a different view. The film is framed through a series of talking head interviews with the leading players (played by the actors) twenty years on. Each of them tells a contradictory version of the story and around the “incident”. The film, bravely, gives some weight to all these viewpoints. It’s brilliantly handled, as we see certain scenes from the perspectives of different characters, which makes them much easier to relate to. Gillespie also has a lot of fun with the film leaning on the fourth wall – frequently characters turn to the camera mid-scene for a few words of commentary, sometimes to stress a point, other times to deny the thing we have just watched ever happened.

The eclectic and dynamic storytelling works an absolute treat, and Gillespie gets the tone absolutely right. While dealing with serious themes, the film is also blissfully funny. Much of the fourth wall humour is brilliant. While taking the characters seriously, the film is also written with a real dark wit. And (once you remind yourself that Kerrigan’s career was not seriously affected by the attack), the build up to the scheme itself, and the feeble cover up, is hilarious. Everyone in the chain of events is stupider than the person above them. Tonya is no genius, her weak husband is a clumsy fool, his friend Shawn an idiotic fantasist, the men hired to attack Kerrigan almost unbelievably stupid. The inevitable crumbling of the plot is hilarious in its disintegration.

It works as well because of the strength of the acting. Margot Robbie is superb as Tonya. She fills her performance with empathy for Tonya, but never lets her off the hook – Tonya never takes responsibility at any point for anything she does. Robbie gets the balance just right between the “little girl looking for love” vulnerability of Tonya, mixed with the bitterness and rage that always lurks just below the surface. She acutely understands the messed up psychology of someone who has been treated badly by everyone around her, and then finds it impossible to form a healthy relationship with the world.

On Oscar-winning form, Allison Janney rips into the sort of part that must have (rightly) looked like a total gift on the page. It’s a scene-stealing role: Harding’s mother is a foul-mouthed bully whose every other line is a zinging put down or resentment-filled burst of cruelty. Janney, however, keeps the part real: there is always a sense that somewhere in there, she genuinely feels she is doing what’s best for her daughter, even if her methods are completely misguided. Sebastian Stan is equally good as Tonya’s weak-willed, not-too-smart husband and Paul Walter Hauser is hilarious (as well as a remarkable physical match) as Shawn.

I, Tonya is a very smart, very funny piece of social satire mixed with tragedy. While being very funny, it’s also sad and rather moving. It has some terrific acting in it and is directed with confident, but not overly flashy, aplomb by Gillespie. As a commentary on the media it’s well judged, and as a look at the impact of class at America it feels fresher than ever.

Rocky IV (1985)

Sly Stallone takes on the towering Dolph in Cold War ending boxing fable Rocky IV

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Cast: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa), Talia Shire (Adrian Balboa), Burt Young (Paulie Pennino), Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed), Dolph Lundgren (Ivan Drago), Brigitte Nielsen (Ludmilla Drago), Tony Burton (“Duke” Evers), Michael Pataki (Nicolai Koloff)

By 1985, Rocky Balboa had come from behind to overcome adversity through sheer willpower no fewer than three times. We’d seen him come from obscurity to fight Apollo Creed, lose his money, fight Creed again, win, get shamed in the ring and lose his belt and trainer on the same night, then come storming back to beat Mr T. We’d had training montages aplenty as, for every major fight, Rocky needed to learn how to box in a new way. We’d seen him take punishment like nobody’s business in the ring as better opponents pummelled him before coming up against Rocky’s iron will. So in Rocky IV we got… well, more or less exactly all that. Again. But in Russia.

The ideas had gone, the inspiration had tanked. There was nothing new to do. Rocky IV is a very short film – and it could easily be shorter again if the padding had been removed. Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) takes on Russian uber-fighter Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in the ring in a charity match. Drago is a mountain of Soviet athletic engineering and he beats Creed so badly, Creed dies. In Rocky’s arms of course. So Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) does what a man has to do – he’ll fly to Siberia and he’ll fight Drago on his own turf, all to avenge the memory of Creed. And for American pride. And along the way he’ll only go and get the Russians to rethink this whole Cold War thing.

Rocky IV is so painfully short of ideas, you’ll feel like you’ve seen it even before you’ve seen it. In fact, at least 10 minutes of it you have. The film opens with essentially a complete recap of Rocky III, including the closing scenes of that film. Later Rocky goes driving to the airport. Along the way he hits the radio in his Lamborghini (the product placement in this film is shockingly crude) and listens to the whole of No Easy Way Out by Robert Tepper, while the film plays a montage that recaps all three of the previous films. The scene might as well end with the title of the song appearing in the bottom left hand corner like an old MTV video. (Stallone’s rolodex was obviously well thumbed, as James Brown later pops up to deliver a rendition of the whole of Living in America.) This sort of stuff pads the plot absurdly.

Either side of that, we have two long training montages comparing the homespun honesty of Rocky’s training with the naughty, doping inspired, technological training of Drago. But then this is not a subtle film. Any film that opens with two boxing gloves – one American, one Soviet – flying towards each other and exploding isn’t exactly pulling its punches on the subtlety front. The political commentary in the film is laughably naïve, from Creed’s inane chatter about American pride, to the laughable depiction of the Soviet officials as distant Bond villains, to Rocky’s closing speech after his victory (spoilers) with its infamous “If I can change, you can change!” refrain. Did the makers think they were putting a hammer to the Berlin Wall here or something?

Most of the rest of the film moves between padding and the bizarre. Almost every single scene ends with a freeze frame, possibly one of the most clunky visual devices you could hope to see. Stallone as director focuses his camera with such loving intensity on his own chiselled frame that it’s almost a sort of camp classic. Some of the conversation and physicality between Creed and Rocky is almost laughable in its inadvertent homoeroticism.

Then there is plenty of dumb stuff as well. I’d totally forgotten this film showpieces a robot servant whom Rocky’s brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young) spends most the film treating like a hen-pecking wife. This robot is a bizarre sci-fi addition to the story, which seems to have walked in from a different film.

The fighting when it comes is pretty good, I’ll give it that. Yes literally everything in the boxing ring is so predictable you could write it down in advance, but as always there is something quite moving about watching Rocky take such punishment to emerge as victor. Heck even the Soviet crowd start chanting his name (take that Cold War!). But it’s fine. Drago isn’t even a character (he doesn’t even really have any lines), but that doesn’t really matter as its Lundgren’s size and strength that sells the show (he towers over famously titchy Stallone).

Rocky IV is predictable hokum, that offers precisely zero surprises and must have taken a wet weekend to write. Its bizarre robot sub plot, matched with the endless music videos, montages and flashbacks to old movies, shows that the well was pretty much dry by the time this film came around. But you know the formula still sorta works, and you still cheer as Rocky turns an epic pummelling into triumph. Carl Weathers is pretty good, Creed’s death is as strangely affecting as it is totally ludicrous (never in a million years, by the way, would either of the fights in this film be allowed to continue) but Rocky IV’s okay. And of course it ended the Cold War.

This Sporting Life (1963)

Rachel Roberts and Richard Harris excel in brutal kitchen-sink drama This Sporting Life

Director: Lindsay Anderson

Cast: Richard Harris (Frank Machin), Rachel Roberts (Margaret Hammond), Alan Badel (Weaver), William Hartnell (“Dad” Johnson), Colin Blakely (Maurice Braithwaite), Arthur Lowe (Slomer), Vanda Godsell (Mrs Weaver), Jack Watson (Lennox), Harry Markham (Wade), George Sewell (Jeff), Leonard Rossiter (Phillips), Anne Cunningham (Judith)

The British New Wave of the early 1960s embraced working-class stories. They centred on chippy, confident, crowd-pleasing working-class young men (it was always men) from regional towns, doing blue collar work, thumbing their nose at the establishment and fighting to find their own way. This Sporting Life takes a similar route – but its central character, Frank Machin, is a furious, resentful and selfish man, who seems hellbent on destroying everything he touches. Unlike Arthur Seaton or Billy Fisher, he’s hard to like – and the film hits as hard as scrum of rugby players.

Frank Machin (Richard Harris) is a miner turned professional rugby player – not that he has any love for the game (“I only enjoy it if I get paid for it!” he contemptuously states). Machin is an articulate brute of a man, a pugilistic whirligig of resentments, barely expressed or understood desires, and a deep-rooted and chronic insecurity that cries out for love while pushing it away. He’s in love with his landlady, widowed mother of two young children Margaret Hammond (Rachael Roberts). They begin an affair of sorts – but it can barely survive her trauma and Machlin’s self-destructive rage.

Lindsay Anderson’s films are notable for their anger and bitter satire, so it’s no surprise he directed the least crowd-pleasing, angriest angry-young-man film of all – or that This Sporting Life killed the genre. The film is a series of hits, aimed far and wide, from the deference of the players to the owners who treat the clubs like playthings (the “amateur fair play” British attitudes to sport from the patronising owners gets a kicking), to the hypocritical judgemental attitudes of the working class. Even its romantic story features two characters so unable to engage with or understand their feelings that they only really seem able to communicate fully when raging at each other.

Anderson’s new-wave, kitchen sink aesthetic creates a film that feels like a series of battles. From Machlin moving in local clubs to visiting the home of creepy closeted club owner Weaver (a smooth and unsettlingly cruel Alan Badel), whether rebuffing the advances of Weaver’s wife or at a Christmas party, he always seems ready for violence. The rugby matches are filmed like mud covered fights, with players piling into each other like sledgehammers. Even the “romantic” (and I use that word advisedly) scenes between Roberts and Harris feel like conflicts (they frequently tip into nerve-shreddingly raw emotional outbursts).

Anderson’s film takes everything you expect from the Saturday Night and Sunday Morning expectations and amps up the danger, anger and tension. Machlin barrels through scenes, conversations and relationships in the same way he charges through the rugby pitch. The whole film is a sharp warning of the danger of unrestrained masculinity, pushing all softer emotions to one side. Machlin wants so desperately to be a man that everything must be a battle, at all times displaying his most manly qualities. The tragedy is that you can tell there is a far more sensitive and intriguing personality below the surface.

All this comes together in Richard Harris’ searing performance in the lead role. His career break – he won the Best Actor award at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar – Harris was possibly never better. He’s a brooding force of nature in this film, utterly convincing as a man who bottles up his feelings until it is way too late. He hits out at everything, but you feel he is really running scared from the vulnerability in his own personality. With children, Machlin is tender and gentle, but with adults he is unable to express his feelings. His emotions for Margaret are based around suggestions of a need for a mother figure, sexual desire – and a desire for an answer to the emptiness he feels in himself. Harris is like an Irish Brando here, a marvellous, emotional, dangerous, brutal figure.

Rachel Roberts (also Oscar-nominated) is just as good, giving another extraordinary performance (to match the similarish role she played in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) as Margaret. Grieving her husband, terrified of commitment, aware of her own position, as incapable in her own way of expressing her emotions and feelings as Machlin is, Margaret is as much a damaged and combative character. Roberts’ performance suggests years of disappointment and struggle behind the eyes, and she has a rawness and humane anguish in her scenes with Harris that sear the eyeballs. The scenes between these two are difficult to watch but engrossing.

The film is stuffed with excellent performances. William Hartnell is heartbreakingly tragic as the closeted talent scout who spots Machlin, only to be dropped by the new star. Colin Blakely is excellent as Machlin’s more grounded and engaging teammate. Vanda Godsell is the face of female corruption as Weaver’s sexually possessive wife. Arthur Lowe (who went on to work with Anderson several times) is very good as a stuffy but shrewd board member. All of this is beautifully filmed in black and white, with an urgency mixed with flashes of impressionistic grimness.

Anderson’s film, though, is primarily a working-class tragedy, about a man unable (until far too late) to really understand what he wants. Why is this? Because of failings in himself, but also failings in his upbringing, where qualities of self-understanding and expression are not encouraged, where pressure is placed on men to be men, where class and stuffy attitudes look to stamp out any real sense of self-knowledge. It’s an angry young man film that is truly, really angry. No wonder it flopped at the box office. But no wonder it lasts in many ways better than other films from this genre. It feels like a film that wants to say something, that has an urgent message. And it has at two extraordinary performances.