From the Rough

I'm a sucker for "based on a true story" sports movies. Love 'em. This one tells the story of Catana Starks, the first black woman to be the head coach of a men's college golf team. Starks was the head coach at Tennessee State University. And in those last two sentences I have captured literally everything the movie gets factually correct about this story - Starks's name, her school, and her historical significance. It gets EVERYTHING ELSE COMPLETELY WRONG. I don't know that I've ever seen a "based on a true story" sports movie miss so many other details before. They shift the time from 1980 to present day. They change ALL the people. They make up schools. They Starks getting static for "failing" after ONE WEEK ON THE JOB. They have TSU winning a national title in their first season. And you know what? None of that would matter if the movie itself were any good. It's not. It's terrible. The golfers are a mishmash of stereotypes and caricatures. The storylines are cliched to the max. The dialogue is just awful and was clearly written by somebody who knew nothing about golf ("when I'm a golf player" being one egregiously bad example). The acting is terrible. The golf scenes are terrible - in one, a guy strikes his putt and it's clearly at least a foot to the right of his line and then they cut to the ball rolling straight in. Ugh. So, yeah, this sucked. 1/10.

Mirage Men

What if a lot of UFO hoaxes and "coverups" were actually disinformation spread by the government itself? This movie sort of tells the story of Richard Doty. Doty was apparently an Air Force guy who was involved with one Paul Bennewitz. Bennewitz lived near an Air Force base in the 1970s and noticed some strange stuff - stuff he thought were UFOs. He started filming things and contacted the Air Force. Doty was assigned to feed disinformation to Bennewitz and apparently somehow convinced him that aliens were invading. Or something. And Doty's actions apparently drove Bennewitz crazy and ruined his life. And this movie covers some of that. And there's maybe a good story to be told there. But it's structured in such a terrible, confusing fashion that you'll have no idea what's being talked about most of the time. And so much of what's being talked about is such obvious nonsense (Doty actually claims to have seen a film of "a live alien sitting and talking") that the film loses all credibility. If you want a movie that shows the UFO crowd to be a bunch of crackpots and lunatics, this one does the trick. I was hoping for more than that. Not a LOT more than that but wanted a little something. 1/10.

Houdini

Man, what a mess this was. I can't even imagine the discussions that went into writing this. "OK guys, we're gonna do a mini-series on Harry Houdini, one of the most amazing and fascinating characters of the early 20th century. He lived an incredible life, was world famous, STILL is world famous, and did all kinds of remarkable stuff. But forget all that. LET'S JUST MAKE STUFF UP INSTEAD!" Good grief. Adrien Brody is Harry Houdini, the world-renowned magician and escape artist of the early 20th century. And he does a tremendous job of looking the part. He is in incredible shape - kudos to him. But...man. They mangle just about every detail of his life, altering stuff for no apparent reason (having Houdini jump off a bridge into icy water for his famous escape instead of being inside a crate as actually happened), or just making stuff up (putting Houdini into an affair he never had, making his wife a pothead, and so on). I suppose it's appropriate this was done by The History Channel - they long ago abandoned their dedication to actual history and truth, so this fits right in. What a joke. 3/10.

The Fall

Agent Scully plays Stella Gibson, a tough, cool high-ranking detective with a penchant for one-night stands, who has been placed in charge of a case review (and later task force) investigating what turns into a serial killer. Fifty Shades of Grey guy is Paul Spector - the serial killer. This is a Netflix original series produced in cooperation with the BBC and takes place in Belfast. The entire show is very dark, often disturbing, understated, and very compelling. Spector is charismatic, able to charm women into doing whatever he wants. His 15-year old babysitter practically throws herself at him, is real close to figuring out he's the killer and he is able to draw her onto his side by NOT seducing her. His wife lies for him. Etc. Meanwhile, Gibson is inquisitive, probing, dedicated but realistic. The show obviously revolves almost entirely around the search for Spector but there are other stories going on as well. This is good stuff - really creepy, well-acted, and dark. There's only a handful of episodes on Netflix (11 total covering the only two seasons made so far) but they're really good. Check it out - 8/10.

Red Army

Red Army tells the story of Soviet hockey greatness through the eyes of retired superstar Slava Fetisov. Fetisov had a remarkable career playing for Red Army before eventually being allowed to travel to North America to play in the NHL. He's now Minister of Sport for Russia. The movie features a number of great interviews from Soviet players and officials, including a former KGB guy. Fetisov generally comes off well here except at the very beginning where he's pretty rudely ignoring the director and flips him off. Overall, the movie tells its story well but... there's really now around the fact that much of the impact of Red Army has been blunted by ESPN's release of their 30 For 30: Of Miracles and Men, which covered a lot of the same ground, a few weeks ago. In fact, ESPN's piece is arguably the better movie, covering more ground (it goes back to the start of Soviet hockey, while Red Army starts in the late 70s) and in more detail. The two movies complement each other well and it's worth seeing both BUT, if you're going to see just one, see the ESPN film. Red Army also, for whatever reason, decided to make a confusing mess of the little montage they did of the Miracle on Ice. Clips are shown super-zoomed in, out of order and generally just in a very confusing fashion. Makes no sense. Gripes aside, this was very good anyway. 8/10.

Foxcatcher

Steve Carrell is John DuPont, the crazy DuPont heir who murdered wrestler Dave Schultz. Channing Tatum is Mark Schultz, Dave's brother and author of the book on which the movie is based. The casting here is very solid and Carrell, in particular, shines in his role. Unfortunately, the movie itself is a mess. There's so many factual distortions, changes, and flat-out creations that it's hard to take the movie seriously. And I don't mean stuff you'd only know if you knew the story intimately. I mean stuff like having the wrestlers in the movie (in 1988) watching a UFC fight from 1996. And then you get the bigger things - creating scenes with DuPont shooting a gun inside the gym, having Mark & Dave training together at Foxcatcher (they didn't), and a million other things. And, like the book, the movie suffers from too much Mark Schultz. It's essentially the story of him when it really needed to focus more on DuPont and Dave Schultz. In the end, this is a pretty good movie with some terrific performances but some really, really glaring issues, too. 7/10.

Whiplash

his is a movie full of great performances in search of a great movie to put them in. JK Simmons is Terence Fletcher, a ruthless, maniacal jazz instructor at the top music school in the country. Miles Teller is Andrew, his newest student. What follows is something of a rehash of An Officer and a Gentleman with Fletcher berating Andrew, throwing stuff at him, throwing gay insults at his classmates, and generally just being a jackass. Then there's a conflict and a resolution. The end. Oh yeah, along the way we get a throwaway diversion with the girl at the movie theater, some wasted scenes with Andrew's father, a "My music is as important as your sports" scene with Andrew's family, and a whole lot of drumming. Simmons here is off-the-charts. Incredibly great. Intense, angry, maniacal, instructive, the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, the movie itself is really just a rehash of stuff we've seen before, told in a not-particularly-unique way. It's a good movie but nowhere near the tour de force it's been hyped as. 7/10.