Undefeated (Friday, February 17, 2012) (12)

Ever since Hoop Dreams, documentarians have been obsessed with movies about sports teams, particularly ones in inner cities. In the past few years there has been a rash of mediocre ones that have minor interest and bad scripts. Considering this background, Undefeated, directed by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, is a real triumph as it tells a very compelling story of a football team, focuses on a few interesting and exciting kids and uses some wonderful moments to tell a heart-warming tale of success despite poor odds.

This is not a film about a high school team going undefeated over the course of a season, after all, they lose their first game only a few minutes into the film. The title refers more to the concept of not being beaten down and not giving up. It's the philosophy of the team's hero coach, Bill Courtney.

Courtney is a slightly out of shape middle aged white guy who owns a lumber supply company in Memphis. Following his life-long dream of coaching a football team, five years ago he became the volunteer head coach of the Manassas Tigers in North Memphis. Manassas High School was recently rebuilt, so their physical facilities look nice, but the student body comes from very poor families with very little support. The school has a history of being one of the worst football teams in Tennessee for most of the last 40 years, but through hard work and discipline, Courtney has turned them back into a contender.

We follow star linemen O.C. Brown and Montrail "Money" Brown (not related), who are two of the senior leaders of the team, either physically or in effort and drive. O.C. is a typical giant of a lineman who struggles with his grades as he gets interest from many division 1A college football programs. Meanwhile, Money is a great student, but is a bit undersized to play on the line, so he makes up for his physical deficiencies by working twice as hard on the field.

At some point another kid, Chavis Daniels, gets out of juvee, where he spent about two years for assault, and continues to have issues with controlling his anger and his mouth. He gets in fights with coaches and other players and Courtney has to figure out how to use him on the field and how to not give up on him, as that would be a veritable death sentence for the young man.

Formally documentaries are difficult to inject too much style into, as their primary purpose is to explain something. Non-fiction is simply not as expressive and malleable a medium to easily make beauty. There is one moment in this film, however, that is one of the loveliest moments from a documentary I can think of in a long time. It's subtle and was probably the result of a lucky camera man shooting the right thing at the right moment, rather than being scripted by a director, but it's powerful and perfect for a moment. A tip of my cap to the directors for connecting two disparate elements from two parts of a film into one lovely shot.

This film is one of the five nominees for Best Documentary Feature and it would be very deserving of the prize were it to win. It's a very good film, unsentimental, efficient and well made. Considering it probably could have done well just being OK (like so many other recent sports team docs), I consider that a great achievement.

Stars: 3 of 4

Senna (Thursday, September 8, 2001) (78)

A very nice biodoc about the Ayrton Senna, the major Brazilian F-1 driver of the late-'80s and early-'90s. The film shows how he rose up to become one of the world's biggest sports heroes (albeit one that most Americans have never heard of... because F-1 is a dumb "sport") and how his "drive on the edge of sanity" style worked its way into his clashes with F-1 brass. There's a weird non-politics to the film suggesting that Brazilians loved him and his sport during one the biggest economic depressions in that country's history... a bit of bread and circus... er, circuits... (heh heh). Not enough is explained about the rules of the sport, but it's generally works as a good biography piece.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Boxing Gym (Friday, October 22, 2010) (138)

Fredrick Wiseman has a beautiful and incredibly pure documentary approach. He basically turns on a camera in a location in front of whatever he's looking to shoot and captures whatever is in front of the lens. After he's amassed a certain number of hours of footage (normally more than a hundred hours) he carefully edits it, creating a film that is more experiential than necessarily narrative. There is basically no editorial commentary in his works, no directorial voice and whatever dialogue shows up is just what the people in front of the camera are saying, totally unscripted. This is a document in its most raw state.

In his most recent picture, Boxing Gym, Wiseman looks inside Richard Lord's boxing gym in Austin, Texas. We see the passage of several weeks (or months) as people come in to train, either learning to box for the physical workout or training for professional fights. We see men and women, kids, fathers, mother and grandfathers, Whites, Blacks, Latinos. Everything we see is inside the gym (with a few shots in the parking lot where clients run short sprints).

The film is basically divided into short chapters, each about six or ten minutes long. They function almost like shorts, with the common theme of boxing. There is no particular plot that pushes the film along. As with a collection of shorts, there are certainly some interesting (if light) parallels that link one sequence to another, but the order is essentially emotional, which is to say somewhat arbitrary and hard to verbalize. Most takes are long, running several minutes each, leading to a very peaceful tone overall.

One of the most interesting elements of the film are the sounds we hear inside the gym and Wiseman's use of the poly-rhythms of the boxers punching bags or trainers' gloves. Boxing training is an act of repetition and we get the wonderful sense of the patterns inside each training routine. It is interesting when the patterns change - when there is a cut from one boxer to another - and how that affects us in the audience. Add to this the sound of electronic alarms letting the boxers know that a certain amount of time has passed and they can move on to another exercise, the film is a percussive symphony.

What makes the film so enjoyable is that the members of the gym form a nice community and all seem like friendly people. It is clear that they come from very different backgrounds, but they workout together on this neutral ground. At one point in the middle of the film, the Virginia Tech shooting takes place. The members gather around one man, who seems to have had a relative in the middle of the action, recounting the story. They are all sober, curious and all have very real reactions. Through this scene, throughout the whole film really, the people seem oblivious to the camera that follows them. This adds a level of real-ness that is hard to capture in our very mediated, reality-TV-based world. This is true cinema verité - and it is incredibly beautiful.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

Racing Dreams (Sunday, July 11, 2010) (72)

Racing Dreams is a nice documentary about three kids who race go-carts on the official national go-cart circuit. Karting, as it's known (please let the red-neck jokes at the door), is the first step up the tall ladder to greater racing fame, culminating in IndyCar and NASCAR.

The three kids are Annabeth Barnes, 11 at the time of filming three years ago, Josh Hobson, 12, and Brandon Warren, 13. Each one of them hopes their success on the kart track will lead to further victories down the line. They race in two groups, one for kids 11 and 12 and on for kids 13. This puts Annabeth and Josh in the same division and Brandon on the verge of being too old for the sport and having to either retire or move up to small-sized stock cars.

But first, they all are teens and pre-teens dealing with typical stuff that kids deal with then. Annabeth is a popular girl interested as much in boys and hanging with her friends as she is with racing. Her friends don't get racing or why she would want to do it - and for awhile she sees the life as a civilian girl to be very attractive. Her parents eat and breathe racing and push her along, but she is also passionate about it and loves the attention she gets as a girl in the driver's seat.

Josh is considered the best student in his school (his vice-principal tells us so), but is a bit of a goody-two-shoes dork solely focused on racing. His sweetness is a bit nauseating (he's so fucking middle-American, I sorta want to hit him), but he means well. He seems to have no interest in girls yet. He spends time at home practicing his very well polished victory interview, studying how NASCAR great Jeff Gordon does it. This kid wants to be the next Jeff Gordon, and he looks like he's moving in that direction.

Brandon is another story entirely. He's a bad boy, being raised by his grandparents while his folks are in and out of jail and in and out of his life. He acts out in school and is very interested in girls (even dating Annabeth for awhile). His family has a limited budget, so despite the fun he's having and his clear talent at the sport, he might not be able to continue purely for financial reasons.

The narrative moves along very well, following the five-race season over the Spring of 2007. There is some good built-in drama (director Marshall Curry probably got a bit lucky with that), some romance and some racing excitement. Curry does do a few annoying things, such as using a looped-in announcer over footage of the race to keep us up on where our stars are, but these things do help to tell the story better (even if such a voice over is a bit hokey).

This is a very nice and clean movie - well cut and very polished. It's nice to get a look at kid sports stars in such an intimate, honest way. The focus is not really on their parents, but there is a certain level of "stage parents" pushing their kids too hard that is unavoidable with a work like this. Still, it is clear that the kids are having a great time doing what they love, which is a lot of fun to watch - very fresh and honest.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Kassim the Dream (Saturday, November 28, 2009) (174)

This is a small documentary about Ugandan boxer Kassim Ouma who fled to the U.S. after being trained as a child soldier in the civil war in his homeland. The first half of the film shows his training and some of his fights as a young professional boxer in America (still fighting today). He has sheer talent and drive and lots of potential to become a great champ, though his attention is somewhat broken up by the riches that come with his success.

The second half of the film shows him going back home to visit and re-connect with old friends and loved ones. After working with the Ugandan embassy in Washington to get his visa (which was complicated by the fact that the rebel leader in whose army he fought is now the president of Uganda and Ouma has spoken out against his regime), he makes the trip there as a returning hero. Once there he finalizes some loose ends and visits his home village he goes back to the training camp where he learned to kill.

Overall this is a nice movie with a good soul. Ouma is a charming man clearly haunted by his past, but doing well to make a better life for himself and his family. The main problem with it, though, is that director Kief Davidson loses track of the narrative and we end up with two very different movies - one about boxing and one about African child soldiers - with no real historical or stylistic connection between them. He could have cut back and forth between the two narratives and used his achievements in the ring as a foil for the misery he felt as a boy. Instead, we get two unrelated movies that are each less powerful and rather boring.

As I watched the second half of the movie I was reminded of another documentary from earlier this year - My Neighbor, My Killer, about the community truth and reconciliation trials following the Rwandan genocide. In that film, the powerful human message is amazing, but the filmmaker doesn't cut or structure the film in a way that makes for an interesting movie. With that one, I felt that I wanted to like the story (I wanted to love it, really), but I couldn't because it didn't tell an efficient story. Similarly with this one, the story is amazing and Ouma himself is lovable, but I can't help but feel unfulfilled with the result onscreen.

As a sociological case study this is a powerful story, but as a cinematic experience it leaft me somewhat cold. I love the shots of the boxer in an African village street with hundreds of kids clamouring to see him and touch him (reminiscent, of course, of the great When We Were Kings - and now Soul Power, from this summer), but such a set-up is somewhat superficial and trite at this point. I wanted more of a psychological journey from where he started to where he is now. Sadly, I didn't get that at all.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

More than a Game (Saturday, October 10, 2009) (144)

LeBron James is a totally amazing athlete and public persona. His basketball skills are unquestionably amazing and he is easily the most charismatic and dynamic athlete in America today - and one of the most marketable of all time. He is at once not too political or 'urban' for white folks, and also not too safe and Floyd Patterson 'yessir' for black folks. Clearly his decision to skip college rubbed many in the establishment the wrong way, but when you see him play now, that's easily forgotten.

This documentary, More than a Game, follows LeBron and his four high school basketball teammates from their pre-high school AAU team through their three Ohio state high school championships. We see mostly home video footage of the early games and then local and national television coverage as they the team grows up and gets more famous. There are interviews with the players and coaches in the present day looking back on their high school careers (now only six or seven years ago).

This is a interesting movie, because it would be very easy to only focus on James and his amazing ability on the court, but rookie director Kristopher Belman does a very good job of showing the other guys too. In fact - the way it's put together, it seems that in the early years, LeBron was not necessarily the clearest talent on the squad. But soon enough, of course, he separates himself from the other guys as the best player and the most photogenic and sellable.

The best thing that can happen to a historical documentary like this are some true-life writerly twists in the story. There is a wonderful suspense added to the film when the team loses the championship its junior year, or when LeBron is suspended for taking gifts during his senior year.

I would have loved a little bit more analysis about what happened to these guys after high school - that they either didn't go to college or they did go to college or they skipped college and why these things happened. It would have been interesting to get some thoughts from LeBron about why he wanted to forgo college ball and play in the NBA and what it meant to him that he knew he was going to play for his almost-home-town team (he's from Akron, so Cleveland is very close by). Yes, that might have been a different movie, but it would have been a slightly more complete ending than what we got (which was some simple titles about where they all went).

Stars: 2.5 of 4