There’s a lot to celebrate about France right now: they beat back the tide of fascism in their recent elections! They are about to mark Bastille Day on Sunday! (Which might be a good time to revisit my century-long tour of the country’s cinema from last year…)
But, perhaps most importantly, they’ll kick off the Summer Olympics two weeks from now! I’ll be taking in the opening ceremonies from the largest IMAX screen in America (see if it’s playing near you) and getting ready to cheer on the Stars and Stripes.
A brief aside here: I’m often asked what my favorite genre of movie is. I usually shrug it off by saying I like “good movies” irrespective of what form they take. It’s hard to answer! But what I can say with a little more confidence is the genre I often like the least. That’s the sports movie.
This is not to say that I dislike sports movies overall. Plenty of them, particularly ones I saw as a young boy like Remember the Titans, hold a very special place in my heart. The issue that I run into is that sports movies give themselves over to easy formulas and simplistic moralizing, two things that become especially pronounced as flaws when you watch a LOT of movies.
This point of contention was further borne out by doing the research for today’s newsletter, 10 movies across 10 different sports that do something at least slightly novel within the genre framework. A peek behind the curtain of Marshall and the Movies: I usually begin planning newsletters six months or more in advance, especially if the theme is something that requires me to do a lot of research to fill blindspots.
This newsletter took a long time to put together. It was probably the biggest list of films I ever had in the contention pool for inclusion, which naturally resulted in the biggest pile of discards I ever had. Nonetheless, I’m proud of where this ended up and confident that each option below has something more to say than your garden-variety underdog story or another pat reminder of the values of perseverance and hard work.
📣 Bring It On, available to rent from various digital platforms
Yes, we are considering competitive cheerleading as a sport! (There’s more athleticism in it than many sports that get big broadcasting, but we might not be ready to have that conversation.) Bring It On is a great high school movie, too, in addition to following an intense cheer rivalry that forms in the wake of a national competition. But this 2000 film was largely ahead of its time in terms of the conversation it was having around cultural appropriation. As the central beef between the two squads is that a largely white high school stole routines from a predominantly black one, it opens up the door to surprising developments stemming from how race and privilege play a larger role in sports than we’d perhaps like to admit.
🎾 Challengers, available to rent from various digital platforms
If you’ve talked to me in the last 3 months, you had to know this was coming. I’m going to keep this brief because I may yet unleash the many thousands of words bouncing around in my head about Challengers in the form of a long essay. Instead, I’ll offer my theory about the film’s banging score, now a staple of any workout playlist for me. The way director Luca Guadagnino deploys this aggressive synth soundscape within Challengers does more than convey the stakes to the audience. It is the very pulse of competition within the film, activating seemingly out of nowhere when its driven trio of tennis players feels the need to dominate their perceived opponent — especially when it migrates off the court and into everyday life. What makes this film so masterful is that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score provides just the tip of the iceberg in a work deeply obsessed with pinpointing what drives millennial notions of success and perfection.
🚴♀️ The Climb, Starz (and available to rent from various digital platforms)
Like I said: this newsletter was a tough one! The Climb features cycling less as competition and more as recreation for buddies Mike (Michael Angelo Covino) and Kyle (Kyle Marvin). But it makes total sense the way that the bikes play in the episodic tale of their friendship over the years as a proxy for their power dynamic. The cycling trips also provide a means for honest expression, such as when Mike breaks the news that he’s sleeping with Kyle’s fiancé. He deliberately discloses this at a point in the ride that ensures his friend cannot catch up with him, an apt metaphor for the imbalance in their relationship. This clever comedy made up of discrete, immaculately composed scenes is really a joy to watch unfold.
⚽️ Diamantino, Amazon Prime Video
In all fairness, this is a sports movie in the loosest of senses. Diamantino follows Portugal’s greatest soccer star who suffers a disgrace on the world stage when he misses a kick in the World Cup final. He’s distracted mentally by the sight of refugee boats he saw a day before, which expanded his mind to think about a world beyond soccer. Directors Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt have a ball lampooning this dim-witted narcissist as he tries to be a better person — to the great dismay of all those who built up his celebrity. The bigger Diamantino gets, the more they try to shove him in a box. The film quickly goes off the deep end to delirious and delightful effect. Imagine Zoolander for a soccer player rather than a male model with a little bit more political edge to get some of what you can expect here.
🏀 Drive, He Said, Amazon Prime Video
In his piping hot piece of collegiate-based counterculture, Jack Nicholson asks: what if ball isn’t life? That’s the dilemma facing Hector Bloom, a would-be pro basketball player … if he can keep his focus on the game while the turbulent late ‘60s/early ‘70s swirl around him. Drive, He Said is a movie as shaggy and raw as the world Hector inhabits. The messiness can make the film occasionally rough around the edges, but Nicholson (who co-wrote and directed it) makes that feel like a feature rather than a bug. His sports film doubles perfectly as a college film as a young man weighs the meaning of a game against the vastness of life. While Drive, He Said might be something of anti-sports movie, let it be said the basketball action is directed by a true hoops head (never forget Nicholson’s frequent Lakers courtside seating).
🏈 Friday Night Lights, Starz (and available to rent from various digital platforms)
Wow, did this movie change on a recent rewatch! (Amazing what happens when the main characters are younger, not older, than you.) Friday Night Lights is an entirely different movie to me now, one that’s not about a blanket valorization of Texas high school football culture as it appeared to me at age 13 or so. This is a no-holds-barred look at the consequences of putting the responsibility of carrying an entire town’s morale on the shoulders of teenage boys. The main characters in this film deal with deeply adult dilemmas the likes of which they do not possess the maturity to handle with the dignity they deserve. Director Peter Berg finds the grace in their grittiness, however, by showing what a ladder up the sport can be into manhood. For those with the fortitude to climb it, of course.
🤼 The Iron Claw, Max
I have never seen a more accurate depiction of Texas sports dads than Holt McAllany’s Fritz Von Erich in The Iron Claw, and I spent most of the movie cringing in recognition. (To clarify: not of my own, who graciously accepted that I inherited things like his great eyesight but not his varsity letterman skills.) As I wrote in my review for Slant Magazine last year:
“Fritz maintains a domineering presence in the lives of his sons both emotionally and financially. His silent but nonetheless swaggering machismo makes him the ultimate Texan sports dad, obsessed with fulfilling his own unachieved aspirations by extension through the achievements of his sons. His actions don’t advance the Von Erich name forward as he thinks they do, instead trapping them in an intergenerational cycle of loss that the family dubs their ‘curse.’”
Director Sean Durkin understands the way sports can get tied up in familial legacy and intergenerational struggle like no film I’ve ever seen before, and it makes the central tragedies of The Iron Claw land with an even more forceful death blow.
♟️ Queen of Katwe, Disney+
Sure, Disney’s Queen of Katwe largely follows the framework of their inspirational sports movies. But it’s the how of Indian director Mira Nair’s filmmaking that supersedes the what in this triumphant tale of a Ugandan chess prodigy. The film is less about dramatic reversals of fortune or epic journeys; instead, Nair is more concerned with how circumstances and biases can prevent such success stories. The biggest obstacle in the way of 10-year-old Phiona’s realization of her potential is a surprising one: her mother, Harriet (Lupita Nyong’o). A widow forced to support several children by selling maize in the slums of Kampala, she is justifiably hesitant to authorize her daughter spending time on chess. If the pursuit of master status does not pan out, then Harriet views the loss as a frivolous waste that does nothing to prepare Phiona for making a living like her. Inequality, not another chess player, is the real enemy in Queen of Katwe, and it makes for a more daunting foe.
⛷️ Slalom, available to rent from various digital platforms
The athlete-coach relationship plays a central role in most sports movies, with the leadership figures often breaking down their pupils to unlock some newfound reservoir of strength within. To get to that point, they often blow past traditional boundaries put in place to protect young people (see: Dr. Larry Nassar). That potential for abuse takes dramatic form in Slalom, a gripping drama following a young French skier Lyz (Noée Abita) who receives mentorship and more from her predatory coach Fred (Jérémie Renier). Co-writer and director Charlène Favier masterfully illuminates how easy it is in the pursuit of excellence to rationalize unacceptable physical intrusions and mental manipulations.
🥊 The Survivor, Max
I was hesitant to believe that Barry Levinson, the Oscar-winning director of Rain Man (and the reason we have Sam Levinson), was going to turn in something better than a made-for-TV biopic dreck with The Survivor. The logline lends itself to all the hoariest cliches: Ben Foster’s Harry Haft survived Auschwitz by boxing for the Nazis, and then he makes it to America where he continues fighting. Yet thanks to Foster’s soulfully subdued performance, a marked contrast from his usual roguish rascals, it’s something more resonant than a Wikipedia page drama. Justine Juel Gillmer and Alan Scott Haft use Haft’s boxing career as a means to explore the intergenerational transmission of violence, especially at a cultural and religious level for the Jews and Germans. There’s much more to chew on intellectually than initially meets the eye, even if the film does hit quite a few of the expected markers of its genre.
I’m back on the Stream It Or Skip It beat for Decider! I gave an enthusiastic stream it to This Closeness on MUBI, a more tentative stream it to Harmony Korine’s AGGRO DR1FT, and a skip it to recut Quibi series The Stranger on Hulu.
I was very much on the Longlegs beat for Slant Magazine this week, filing both the review as well as interviewing director Oz Perkins and star Maika Monroe!
Paid subscribers also got this essay breaking down an element of Nancy Meyers’ movies that deserves more attention than her kitchens:
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
This was a great 101 on indie film financing using Horizon as an example case:
Not to be too morbid, but here’s a great piece honoring the late Robert Towne (legendary screenwriter of Chinatown) as refracted through the prism of an interview gone wrong, an experience to which I can relate all too well:
The New York Times’ Alissa Wilkinson also provides a touching tribute to the recently departed Shelley Duvall (gift article) that gets at what in her story captured public interest in recent years.
But on a more optimistic note, here’s a life-giving talk with Nicolas Cage in The New Yorker … conducted by none other than Susan Orlean, the author who set the events of Adaptation. in motion!
An exciting peace piece coming next week.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall