Continuing the trend of biopics with A-list actors that perhaps aren’t interesting or important enough to warrant such a big-budget production, the Timothée Chalamet-led Marty Supreme (Dune, Beautiful Boy) is among them. The story is based loosely on a period of American table tennis player Marty Reisman’s life. If you’ve never heard of Marty Reisman, you aren’t alone. He lived a very unremarkable life, one that is far from the kind of role that would require one of the best working actors to spend time on during the peak of his career. This wasn’t a story about the Marty Supreme. This was about creating a character that Chalamet could lead to his first Best Actor Oscar win, which I believe will happen.
Category Archives: Sports
The Smashing Machine (2025)
You’ll remember it for the acting. Dwayne Johnson (San Andreas, Fighting With My Family) and Emily Blunt (Sicario, A Quiet Place) deliver a pair of Oscar-worthy performances in Benny Safdie’s (Good Time, Uncut Gems) raw and unapologetic The Smashing Machine. Based on the true story of Mark Kerr, a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter who entered the international Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) circuit in the late 1990s, The Smashing Machine chronicles Kerr’s first professional fight, his early success in Japan, his personal struggles with opioid addiction, and the ups and downs of a volcanic, often toxic relationship with his girlfriend, Dawn (Blunt).
F1: The Movie (2025)
If after watching the trailer for F1: The Movie, whether it be be at the theater, on a streaming service, or while you’re watching YouTube and you say to yourself, “That movie looks like it’s the Top Gun movie, but on a racetrack,” you wouldn’t be far off in your assessment. If you combine that feeling with other racecar or other inspirational sports movies, you’ll have the formula that makes F1: The Movie. Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave, Oblivion) directed Top Gun: Maverick, so drawing similarities between the two films isn’t a stretch. Top Gun: Maverick was my favorite movie of 2022. It was a masterclass in storytelling, as well as what you could do with a production budget of $170+ million. That’s what makes it such a shame that F1: The Movie, with a budget exceeding $250 million, felt like nothing more than a retelling of better racing movies, which had smaller budgets, were more original, and offered stories and characters that we genuinely cared about. F1: The Movie felt like a propaganda movie to entice viewers to follow Formula 1 racing.
For Love Of The Game (1999)
I first watched Sam Raimi’s (Spider-Man 2, A Simple Plan) For Love of the Game in the fall of 1999. It was the day after Virginia Tech defeated Clemson at Lane Stadium on ESPN’s Thursday Night Football. My dad had come down for the game. The day after, we went to see the Kevin Costner-led (A Perfect World, Field of Dreams) baseball drama. I’m a sucker for films that seamlessly incorporate flashbacks to advance the story better. For Love of the Game did just that, perhaps, at the time, in a way that I hadn’t seen before. 23-year-old me left my viewing thinking that it was one of the top 10-15 movies I’ve ever seen.
61* (2001)
HBO (now Max) has been producing its own feature-length films since 1982, averaging 10-15 releases each year. Most of these films have little to no marketing behind them, nor are they distributed by a major studio or star A-list actors. With very few exceptions, these films go mostly unseen. However, there have been exceptions. These include The Normal Heart, Bad Education, Live from Baghdad, and Behind The Candelabra. Perhaps HBO’s most celebrated and widely received original movie is the Billy Crystal-directed (Forget Paris, Mr. Saturday Night) 61*, chronicling the 1961 single-season home run chase between New York Yankees teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.