History probably will not remember this because he missed earning an Academy Award nomination for the first performance and may again miss out on this one. Still, the physical transformation from Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance as sickly, twisted reporter Lou Bloom in 2014’s fantastically crafted Nightcrawler to the lean, mean, fighting machine Billy Hope in 2015’s Southpaw is remarkable. As people watch either or both of these movies in the future, I think they will fail to remember that he filmed these two movies back to back. But aside from how he changed the physical look of his body for each of these roles, his acting performance in each of these films might be the two best in a career that continues to hit all the right buttons, save for The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I’ll first see Southpaw that the less you know in, the better off I think you will be. So if you haven’t seen it, I will list my overall score of the film here, and I would suggest not reading any more until after you’ve seen the movie or if the surprise factor isn’t something you are interested in. I will alert you when I add spoilers to this review. I would give Southpaw an overall score of 87.5/100.
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Category Archives: Sports
Rush (2013)
Rush is a movie that I thought would be dumb based on the trailer. If produced n the early 80s, I would have been all about it. But with so many sports movies created since then, I honestly feel like there isn’t much that is able to make it feel original. So many sports movies have the “been there/done that” approach. They retell Rocky over and over and over again. On top of that, it’s a car racing movie, which is generally something that doesn’t interest me. Also, it is Formula 1 racing, which I find far less exciting than NASCAR. I’ve never seen a Formula 1 race live, and the experience certainly doesn’t translate on the screen for me…especially the road races. Finally, the name of the movie bothered me. There is already a fantastic movie called Rush that came out in 1991 and starred Jason Patric (he was born to play the roles of troubled police detectives) and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s a small thing, but something that I thought Ron Howard would respect. Despite these factors going against it before the opening titles even rolled, I found the movie to be a great story, quite enjoyable, and well directed.
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Warrior (2011)
When I first saw the extended trailer for Warrior, the first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) movie made into a drama, I thought for the first 30 seconds how stupid the movie WAS going to be. As the trailer progressed, the film began looking more and more interesting. As the trailer ended, I kept waiting to see the “Based on a true story” line because if this wasn’t based on a true story, it looked like a more intense MMA version of Rocky. The trailer gives the entire story away. Two brothers who have grown distant end up facing each other in the championship fight of an MMA tournament. If there had ever been a more predictable trailer, I would be interested to know what that is. Then when I saw that the biggest name in the movie was Tom Hardy (The Drop, The Dark Knight Rises), I was 100% convinced that the film would be terrible and flop in the theater. I was wrong on all accounts.
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The Wrestler (2008)
Darren Aronofsky’s (Black Swan, The Fountain) The Wrestler was my most anticipated movie of 2008. Professional wrestling is my guilty pleasure. I don’t watch it every week, and I never order a pay-per-view (okay, maybe Wrestlemania now and then), but I know what is happening. I also have a few compilation DVDs of some of my favorite wrestlers. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) really is a soap opera in an alternative form. When I first heard a movie coming out called The Wrestler, I figured it would be some lame comedy that made fun of the world of professional wrestling. When I heard that it was not, but was being referred to as not just one of the top 10 movies of the year but the performance of Mickey Rourke’s (A Prayer For The Dying, 9 1/2 Weeks ) career, I knew it was a movie I would see just as quickly as I could. The main problem was that I had to wait forever to see it. It was only filmed in cities like New York and Los Angeles for the longest period. Once it came closer to Washington DC, it was still in just one theater which was not very close to my house. Finally, some two months after dying to see the movie, I got my wish when it came to our local artsy theater. By then, the film could not live up to its hype.
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Hurricane Season (2009)
2009’s Hurricane Season follows the true story of a small New Orleans high school basketball team following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The movie stars Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland, Panic Room) as Al Collins, a driven and resolute coach. His job is to unite eight players who went to five different schools before the hurricane and attempt to coach them through the Louisiana State High School Basketball Tournament. He must mesh the players’ unique personalities and hidden agendas and turn them into a united team with the same goal in mind. And if you already think this movie sounds like 50% of the other sports movies you have seen, I don’t blame you. However, there is one difference. For the players on the team, and many in the city, basketball was all they had to help them temporarily forget about the devastation that ravaged their city.