SPORTS MOVIES
KICKBOXER (1989)
@710mwpmt‘mem" s tDOWIS? YOU've got to be kidding. Herein lie iii/J
Claude Van Damme wasn't just the king of straight to video, he kicked serious ass, as this no nonsense brawler proved. An absolute classic of its genre.
i/ ' i afar? KINGS (1996) As _ I -. 7 J Mobutu exterminates the population of Zaire, a moustached James Brown sweats out a definitive ‘Doin' it to Death'; Ali and Foreman
pound every ounce of pain and redemption from the pugilist art. WATERFRONT (1954)
HR , j Brando rides his one-
way ticket to Palookaville as a Hoboken Iongshoreman tormented by the night he took a dive in the ring; all the way to his first Oscar.
WHEN WE WERE
ON THE
BULL DURHAM (1988) The first (and best) of baseball films
Kevin Costner would star in, and one
which. under sport flick specialist Ron Shelton’s direction, presented sport as metaphor for life to deserved success.
l- T! TOUCHING THE voro J 1 iizoosi Kevin R“ J MacDonald’s seamless
docudrama uses interviews and restaged footage to replay Joe Simpson and Simon Yates’ return from a seemingly inescapable mountain climbing hell in Peru. SQ (1989) Costner returns
to baseball. Audiences knocked back the tears for an unlikely but satisfying tale of recaptured
dreams and family reunion. Gave the world ‘if you build it, he will come'. (1999) Criticised for
removing the film from the context of boxer and convicted murderer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter’s life still leaves plenty of story and a standout Denzel Washington.
um HOT 19 Mar-2 Apr 2009
FIELD OF DREAMS
THE HURRICANE
OWN “LI
Legolas the boxer? Sexing up carpet
2 some of the worst sports movies ever
ROCKY V (1990) The One
Where It Just Got Stupid. His
brain pulped by Russian machine Ivan Drago, Rocky
displays dim-wittedness above
and beyond the call during a climactic, life-threatening backstreet brawl.
WHEN SATURDAY COMES (1996) Against a backdrop of Hovis ad imagery, middle-aged
i manual worker Sean Bean all of a
} sudden becomes Famous Footballer. Relentlessly Northern, unlikely to the point of wish-fulfilment.
MIKE BASSETT: ENGLAND
MANAGER (2001) Chest- beating cliches,
underwhelming performances and i the same old sorry excuse.
Essentially England at a major
finals then, with Ricky Tomlinson.
ESCAPE T0 VICTORY
(1981) The presence of Pele
can't save this laughably cheesy war film in which POWs, led by
Michael Game and a hilariously awful Sly Stallone, abandon escape plans to beat the Bosch on the football pitch.
DAYS OF THUNDER
(1990) Top Gun in racing
cars. Tom Cruise as maverick rookie driver and Nicole Kidman as the brain surgeon
trying to tame him, chew their way through a terrible script. Guff.
ROLLERBALL (2002) How
the hell did John Die Hard
McTiernan's Rollerba/l remake fail so completely? It's a movie about folk on rollerblades beating each other
up. It takes a special kind of talent to
make that as dull as this.
THE CALCIUM KID
(2004) It's amazing
Orlando Bloom ever became a star with this stinker on
his CV. Lazy, unfunny mockumentary about a boxing milkman.
BLACKBALL (2003) Paul Kaye tries to sex up the world of lawn bowls in a mowe that
8
happily sits alongSide Sex Lives of the Potato Men and Fat Slags as the nadir of British comedy.
FEVER PITCH (2005)
There's nothing too wrong
with this Colin Firth-starring Nick Hornby adaptation. Oh but wait, no football film is complete without some emasculating relationship gubbins, right? Because girls don't like footie,
yeah? Get off. FACTORY (2004)
m. Chelsea FC. Ladflick
speCialist Nick Love. Hooligan-
THE FOOTBALL
mythologiSing author John King.
Danny Dyer. The DVD should have come With a free Ginster's sausage roll
and copy of The Sun.
BLUE JUICE (1995)
I Catherine Zeta Jones and Ewan McGregor have gone
on to respectable careers -
absolutely no thanks to this
bilgewater coming-of-age Britcom
about Cornwall surfers.
BILLY THE KID AND
THE GREEN BAIZE
VAMPIRE (1985) So that's Phil Daniel's in an 80s comic horror mUSICaI based around snooker. What's not to love? Oh, yeah . . . Right.
CHARIOTS OF FIRE
(1981) Vangelis. God.
Cambridge University. Men with floppy haircuts running on beaches. Come back Danny Dyer, all is forgiven!
Contributors: Paul Dale, Doug Johnstono, Henry Northmoro, Mark Robertson and Clalre Sewers