Tag: 3 out of 4

Paddington 2

Paddington 2 was probably one of my most looking forward to films for awhile. No, not some big superhero film, or a drama with all of my favorite actors. Paddington. Two.

The first one was just a delight. It was cute, funny, and it felt like the perfect family film. It didn’t help that Europe got it so much earlier than other parts of the world, so I heard about its praise, and I just wanted more.

Who would have thought that a little bear could bring the world together so much? Well, the makers of the first Paddington, I guess.

Family
A successful family film always needs a big family so everyone can relate to someone.

Things are changing in the Brown household. The kids (Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin) are changing their appearances and hobbies, the mother (Sally Hawkins) wants to go on adventures and is training to swim to France, and the father (Hugh Bonneville) is going through a big midlife crisis because he feels old and is missing promotions at work.

But Paddington (Ben Whishaw) is just chill. He is helping his neighbors, making the world a brighter place, and really just finding a place to exist. He does want to get a gift for his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) though, which leads him to a sweet pop up book of London! It is very detailed and it will let her experience London like she always wanted to. But the book is rare, so Paddington will have to get a few jobs in order to pay for it.

What Paddington doesn’t know, is there are others out there that will go to great lengths to get that book, even if it means Paddington ends up in Prison as a result.

Also starring Hugh Grant, Michael Gambon, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, and Brendan Gleeson.

Prison
Jails are just a red herring of course. Or a pink herring.

At the time of writing this review, Paddington 2 has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. And that isn’t based on only 20 or so reviews, it is based on ONE HUNDRED NINETY-SIX reviews! That is almost 200 people who agreed that it didn’t suck. Of course it doesn’t mean it is a perfect film, just everyone found it overall good and gave a positive impression. And that is frankly unheard of in this day in age.

Of course while watching it, I found myself chuckling a few times. Just the generic slapstick portions as Paddington flails about trying to do human things are worth it. The story goes really well together and ends with a lot of the pieces coming together quite nicely.

Most importantly, it is a film with a simple story and that works in its favor. It is slow enough moving that even those younger kids will be able to follow along and enjoy it, while not being too slow or boring for adults. The family was funny enough. And Grant was very good in his role, and at a very good age and time in his career to play something like he did.

It doesn’t resort to violence, it resorts to smarts, and maybe some bonking, but not an all out brawl.

Hooray!

3 out of 4.

Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie

Rethinking Barbie?! How can I rethink a barbie? As a man, with daughters, I am trying my best to make sure my girls are well rounded individuals, exploring many different types of toys and sure, some dolls. I want to make sure they don’t grow up thinking they have to be one type of girl. The girl who plays with dolls, the girl who dreams of being a passive princess, the girl who might just want to be a housewife (nothing wrong with that last one, but it is important for them to know options are available).

So I have never given my girls a barbie doll. Other people have, when people are lazy at gift giving. She still has a ton for absolutely no reason. I say no reason, because why do they need like, 8 barbie dolls? People not thinking give her one every birthday, every Christmas, and sometimes multiple ones, because it is easy to just grab a barbie and send it over. I mean, its a girl toy! Girl toys are dolls, and boy toys are everything else (including different dolls).

It is completely fucked up. But I still went into Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie, letting my mind me somewhat open. Come on, tell my why Barbie is progressive now. Tell me everything I have learned through slight googling in the past is a lie.

See? I am a willing participant!

Barbs
“Couldn’t you have picked a less creepy photo for this review?” No.

This documentary has two goals. One, to give a small history of barbie, to show how it was a trendsetter back in the day (first doll with boobs!), how it didn’t want to be a perfect women archetype, to the eventual feminist backlash. Their idea was to make sure Barbie had all these jobs so that it could encourage woman to live out fantasies and achieve these dream jobs, not just be a homemaker. And of course, modern, modern backlash over its unrealistic proportions and body image notes.

And that is where the other part of the documentary comes into play. Actually trying to change the way Barbie looks and the problems that have come about. You see, they have been trying to change her appearance for some time to better represent more realistic people. But they have had plenty of focus group issues. They have the issue that the model rarely ever changes, and by having a change, that creates accessory issues, and is the change worth making it so they need various sized outfits/accessories for every release? (More expensive for them and the consumer).

Add to the fact that they don’t want people to think they are pandering to an audience and doing too little too late. They have one shot to try and redefine Barbie so that she has various body types, a task they can’t just do every year in case they mess up. They have to make a statement and they WANT to make a statement.

Strangely enough, this toy redesign happened in 2016 and I really didn’t hear about it at all. There are four different sized barbies at this point, did you know? I didn’t. I remember when they made a lot of hooplah about the different races represented with their barbies, which was a good change, but for whatever reason this redesign was never put in front of my eyes.

I found the whole story to be compelling and it was good to see a company full of people who cared. They cared about the repercussions of their decisions and they wanted to help make the world feel more inclusive. I still don’t think I’d go out of my way to introduce different sized barbies to the kids. My wife told me we actually had different sized ones, so that is how unnoticeable the changes really were.

But this is still a good story of a company trying to do good, and coupling it with a history that I knew nothing about, makes it a compelling story.

3 out of 4.

6 Balloons

I have talked recently on some of my Netflix reviews about how they seem to have a big release of a week and go over hype with their advertisements about the film. You know, so people can watch it. Because they rarely have commercials for their movies.

But they also are now releasing a ton of films without all of the fanfare, and just letting those niche groups find them on their niche recommendation slides.

I think that is the type of idea they had for the movie 6 Balloons. A very simple film, with like two big names in it, neither of which are the “lead”, and a drama.

If it isn’t flash sci-fi action or comedy, they don’t get the big treatment. And that is why I am hear to talk about the film.

CVS
Where the fuck are the balloons at?

Katie (Abbi Jacobson) has a plan and she is going to make it work. No matter what, she has a plan. Her current plan? To throw a kick ass surprise party for her boyfriend, Jack (Dawan Owens)! He is returning from something or another. She is a perfectionist or something. Everything must be right. She can’t trust all of her friends with the basic tasks, because they might do it wrong. Her parents (Jane Kaczmarek, Tim Matheson) are there and bickering, but they wont get in her way.

But there is her brother, Seth (Dave Franco). She heads out to pick him and his daughter (Charlotte and Madeline Carel, twins for legal reasons I guess) up. He is divorced, and has issues, and the current issue is he is high on heroin when getting picked up by Abbi. Drugs are not part of her plan and a big distraction. She is going to have to put him in a rehab place immediately so she can continue with her plans.

Even if the daughter has to see it. Even if he might lose custody. Even if his insurance isn’t going to accept the close place. What? It doesn’t? Shit. That is actually not okay. That is a problem. And she has a party to fix. Fuckin’ brothers, right?

Drugs
Oh hay, homeless crack addicts. What a surprise party!

6 Balloons is not going to win awards. It is not going to be sought after in most circles. Super fans of Dave Franco are not frothing at the mouth to see him in this movie (although honestly, he plays it really well. I blame it on his naturally high looking face). But in all honestly, it is a really solid movie.

At times I wasn’t sure where it was going, and at times I thought it didn’t have a real end goal. Well, I had one idea, but that was me being a movie pessimist and hoping for the worst possible case scenario.

6 Balloons felt like a movie about real people dealing with all too common issues. Not just the addiction problems, but the insurance problems, the having too much on their plate, and just extreme anxieties associated with dealing with your family. Can you just sell out your family to the cops? How much emotional abuse would it take for you to snap? And really, who is to blame for the addiction? Could over bearing parents cause many of these problems in their kids?

It is not a funny movie, but it isn’t fully sad either. If anything, 6 Balloons is just a small idea for a plot, and acted very well by the two leads of Jacobson and Franco. There are worse ways to spend 70 minutes of your time.

3 out of 4.

Tully

Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody are an interesting pair. Together they have created great work, like Juno and Young Adult. On their own, well, Reitman gave us Thank You For Smoking and Up In The Air, both great amazing movies. And uhh, Cody gave us Jennifer’s Body.

So it seems like Cody needs Reitman more than Reitman needs Cody, but generally their work together has been a guaranteed hit. Reitman does have some duds as well, but Cody seems to just be not my taste without him.

Despite all of that, I was excited about Tully. This is their first film together since Young Adult, and it also has the same lead. Really, what I probably should do is rewatch Young Adult again, now that I am older with different mindsets. It might blow me away.

Although I can relate to Tully in some different ways for the same reason.

Body
Everyone knows that you lose any sense of shame after number two.

Motherhood can be hard. You can take my word for it, because I am a father, and I inherently understand all aspects of motherhood. All of it.

Marlo (Charlize Theron) has been a mother for awhile. She has two kids, both elementary, the younger one in Kindergarten and some sort of Autistic. It has been some rough years after he was born. But guess what! She is pregnant again, and older. Surprise! Definitely not planned.

Her husband (Ron Livingston) travels a lot for his job, and is constantly swamped. When he gets home late at night he often just plays video games until he passes out. It is up to Marlo to carry most of the load and she is doing…well, not well. Her brother (Mark Duplass) is actually decently rich though, due to whatever reason. He and his wife (Elaine Tan) want to get her a better gift than normal for her baby shower. They want to give her a night nanny.

A night nanny only shows up at the night, like a ninja. She takes care of the home while the parents sleep, and all of the baby needs that come up. Not the breastfeeding, Marlo would get woken up from that. She is reluctant, but after a particularly bad day, she makes the call, and invites a stranger into her house to do parenting. Oh no.

And then Tully (Mackenzie Davis) appears. An eccentric, strange young lady who promises to make everything better. Not just the baby. Everything in her life.

Pyscho
She devours the essence from old people to stay chipper.

Tully was amusing, and really heart felt. Obviously parents will relate to a lot of what happens, but it isn’t like some parental mystery that non-parents won’t get.It is all obvious humor, just things more relatable for parents.

Theron gives a great performance, and it is something unlike recent roles. She has been all over the place, more so on the badass scale, but now she is on a much more different spectrum. She is an everyday woman, who put on a lot of weight for this role, and nails it.

This might have been the role Davis was born to play. She has always been a bit weird in her films, which isn’t a large body of work at this point, but her weirdness is on fire for this one. She hits all of the right notes. She does have to play this basically magic, Mary Poppins-esque figure, but in a much more modern context, and of course, focusing on the mom and less the bratty kids.

Overall, this is a very weird movie. I actually started to hate it when the final act started. It got better, and it got even weirder than I expected. Definitely shocking, in that regard. But it still finished on a high note.

Great acting performances, a simple story, and some good old fashioned postpartum depression.

3 out of 4.

Trouble Makers (Xiongdi, bie nao!)

This is one of the many reviews that have come out of WorldFest in Houston. Check the WorldFest tag to see them all!

I am happy to say that I chose Trouble Makers (Xiongdi, bie nao!) at the festival. I was debating between it and another movie, and looking for anything to tell me why I should pick one or the other. The description of a sentence look looked humorous, and the fact that it involved twins that didn´t look like twins just made it seem like a comedy. But my book listed it as a modern drama.

So it was between a Chinese Modern Drama, and a Turkish War Drama, which definitely wasn´t funny.

And I am glad I chose this one, because like I imagined, it was actually a comedy and the genre was just wrong. I just wanted to laugh, damn it.

Bros
Especially laugh at others misfortunes.

Zheng Hao (Xiaopan Gao) is a bit of a bad ass. He is a criminal, he is a thief, he has been to jail, and he doesn´t give a fuck. He only gives one fuck, actually. And that is about his brother, Zheng Zhong (Xianchao You). His twin brother, although they don´t look too similar. Some issues with child birth. Zhong is a bit slower, but he is protective of his smaller brother, the brains of the operation.

Either way, Hao finds himself in hot shit after leaving prison when he immediately causes a lot of destruction and has to pay it back.

The good news is that a local station has an idea for a new reality show! It is about bad guys wanting to become good. If they can turn their lives around, get forgiveness, right their wrongs, and do good things (please!) then they will win a big cash prize. Enough to pay off his new debts, and hey, money yo.

So sure, they will put in the effort to do good things, at least originally just for the money. But then Hao starts to fall for the very pretty worker who is putting on the show, Xia Tian Fan (Shasha Yu). It helps. But being good is hard, and they are going to have to change a lot to get better.

Also starring Sam Lee, Samuel Pang, Sky Li, Xi Chen, Ziming He, and Yu Tian as the Steve Perry looking director.

Bald
I mean he looks like Steve Perry when he has his wig completely on. Bald Steve Perry without it.

Trouble Makers was full of laughs, and they came on hard and strong. Sure, it ended on a serious note. Including an excessively long fight scene, but ended up right in the feels and morally strong.

The director is also the star of this movie, and he has officially directed and been in only one movie, this one. It is an extremely impressive feat for a first timer, and honestly, I feel like a liar just typing that out. It is truly hard to believe.

This is a slap stick movie, with subtle gags, non subtle gags, and sure, just pure misfortune going to our characters. It did have some other interesting aspects, like a scene where four clearly Chinese individuals were in brown make up to act like Indians. And you know what, I am not an expert on Chinese/Indian relationships, but I am sure that is totally fine, although it wouldn´t fly at all in America.

This film has a lot of energy and surprises, tackling its own satire on the reality television fads going across the world strong for some decades now.

3 out of 4.

Time Trap

This is one of the many reviews that have come out of WorldFest in Houston. Check the WorldFest tag to see them all!

Time Trap is one of the few science fiction movies to come out of the festival, at least full length ones. The shorts usually have a good number of them, but it is harder to get it to the full film length, usually for budget reasons.

Sci-Fi as a genre doesn´t have to be more expensive than other genres, it just can be if they go heavy on the effects and future technology. Also, last year I watched a Sci-Fi movie there and it made my worst of the year list. That one was Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter, which the title practically promised would be terrible.

But Time Trap looked like it would keep itself small scale, maybe go for a good story over dazzling CGI, and it the description made it seem like a man and his harem going out to find a missing person.

group
Almost a harem, turns out the Furby character was a boy.

Set in the modern day, we start with Professor Hopper (Andrew Wilson, of the Wilson family) scaling the caves with his dog, looking through a weird book, and finding strange sights in the cave. You know, like people being in them and not moving. Natural stuff. Originally he was out there looking for a van of lost hippies from decades before, but due to these strange occurrences, he is going to check them out alone and not bring his two graduate students Taylor (Reiley McClendon) and Jackie (Brianne Howey).

Welp, two days later, the professor is still gone. No one has heard from him, he isn´t answering his phone, and time to panic. Taylor and Jackie know where he went roughly, and have decided to look for him. They bring along Cara (Cassidy Gifford), who likes Taylor, because she has access to her dad´s nice truck. Cara has to bring her younger sister Veeves (Olivia Draguicevich), and they also bring along Veeves´ friend, Furby (Max Wright), for some reason or another.

Needless to say, when they get to the caves, they start to explore, start to spelunker, and shit gets weird really quick. Like they are trapped. In time.

Cave
Everyone looks like a really realistic statue in pictures. Or like they are trapped. In time.

I went in expecting the worst, and left pleasantly surprised. As the movie unfolded, I started to write down potential plot holes that might occur, or questions that were maybe going to be left unexplained, but the movie handled them all. I also am generally worried about anything in a movie that deals with time (especially time travel (and no, this movie isnt really time travel)), but it still handled it very well. It was consistent, it was cool, it was fun, and it was a bit scary.

The good news about casting young people in a movie is that they often will act like young people in scary situations. The cast did a fine job of reacting to their surroundings and showing appropriate emotion. None of them really stood out as rising about the rest, but I will point out that it was a great idea to make the cast relatively intelligent. They weren´t constantly tripping over themselves to run away while scared. They knew science things, questioned the weird, knew technology, and trusted each other.

The story is also relatively entertaining. The hole they are digging in that cave just keeps getting deeper and deeper and it seems like there will never be a way out. It is very hard to predict where they are going with the story and it does reach a satisfying conclusion.

Time Trap is a simple story with big ideas and expanse. It is a really great idea for science fiction problem, while relating it to mythology of the past at the same time. Definitely worth a watch in the future.

3 out of 4.

Blaze

This is one of the many reviews that have come out of WorldFest in Houston. Check the WorldFest tag to see them all!

Opening the festival was Blaze. Now, last year the opening film was LBJ and about a famous person I actually heard about before, with bigger names attached, and a goddamn amazing director.

This one is about a vague country star who never reached his full famous potential, died pretty young, and is directed by Ethan Hawke, who has not done a lot of directing.

This is a good film for a biography, because I would rather learn a shit ton about someone who I haven´t heard everything before. Biographies should actually teach us about new people things. That is, assuming their story is actually worth hearing. I´m looking at you boring biographies about famous people that are just…well, shit.

Woods
Oh cute, matching outfits with no one around to say its cute.

Blaze Foley (Ben Dickey), or Michael if you knew him before he was trying to become a famous singer, had a soul that was built for telling stories. These stories were generally musical in nature, which made it a good thing that he also could play that guitar. He had a life of growing up with song, thanks to his family being part of a traveling family band.

The story that we hear about in Blaze is his whole adult life’s tale. About how he met his future wife, Sybil (Alia Shawkat), a Jewish actress who appreciated the woods as much as this large cowboy. In fact, they lived in a shack in the woods for several years rent free, living off the land and no electricity.

We get to see him moving to the big cities with the intention of selling his tunes and making it famous in the country music scene. Including leaving his wife behind to tour with a friend (Josh Hamilton) in an old truck down the south. And also their move to the bigger city of Chicago to tackle the blues crowd, since he figured his music was sort of country and the blues, given how sad they all were. We also get to see him get a record contract, and coincidentally, let that all go to shit as well.

This is all juxtaposed with his final concert, which was recorded life, the day before he was shot and killed protecting a friend.

Also starring Wyatt Russell, Sam Rockwell, Charlie Sexton, Steve Zahn, and Kris Kristofferson.

Truck
Life is like being on the back of a truck. You know, fast and no seat belts.

Blaze is a slow burn, which is not what the title implies. Blaze implies a film where everything happens quickly and maybe even burns out, well before it should have. Which is a good metaphor for Blaze the person. But is it a metaphor if its his name? I don´t know how hyperboles work.

The film telling the story interlaced among big moments, early moments, and still ending with the natural ending was a great choice. Getting to hear his ¨friends¨ tell stories about his life provided a great tool for exposition, and the fact that the rest was presumably based on his wife´s book of his life gave it a very personal touch.

As a music fan, I can say it was a bit of a low point for me. I never was really engaged in the many songs sung, as they were all so slow and soulful, and felt more akin to background music while the stories unfolded. Hard to change the music if it is based on a real source though.

Overall the story just felt okay to me. The reason it ended with such a high rating though was due to the acting, especially from Dickey and Shawkat. I don´t actually know Dickey from anything else, but he transformed into this Blaze character, along with all of his imperfections. It never felt like an actor, it just felt like this artist I was completely unaware of.

Blaze is well acted, and tells the story of someone you also likely don´t know. It is debatable if it is a story that needs to be told, but hey, they told it anyways.

3 out of 4.

Andre the Giant

André the Giant is a man who lived up to his stage name. A giant was he, his disease for us to enjoy.

He wasn’t always giant. He grew up normally, but it was discovered in his later teen years. He grew up in a small French village, but once he became large, he got into smaller wrestling leagues around the world. Like Japan, where he was big in Japan. Eventually, he made it to the USA, and the rest is history.

Andre the Giant is a documentary that not only tells of the career and life until his death of Mr. The Giant, but also the rise of wrestling in the United States, the rise of the McMahons, and the rise of cable TV.

All of these stories intersect and tell a complete picture of America and wrestling over the decades.

ATG
And they all loved him for his big shoes.

It still yet tells an even bigger picture than all of that. This documentary questions what it means to be a legendary entity, to be a real life tall tale, still before everything was shared across the world. All we have now about Andre are his clips and the stories his friends have told about him.

Featuring commentary from some of his friends and coworkers, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Hulk Hogan, Rob Reiner, Robin Wright, and Vince McMahon.

Overall, I don’t think this is a documentary that you will only enjoy if you like wrestling. I haven’t liked wrestling in a long time, but the stories make it worth it.

Andre had a big heart. He touched a lot of lives. And shit, there is not a lot you can say in analysis about this documentary.

3 out of 4.

The Titan

In the future, Netflix will release an original movie every day. Some might be great, some might be terrible, and some you will never fucking notice, because you are not their demographic, and it will be hidden behind all your The Office rewatch suggestions.

The Titan is one of their bigger releases that they want all audiences (outside of their special kids accounts to see), because they put money into this one, damn it! We got effects, make up, and big stars.

Hey, do you remember Sam Worthington, from Clash of the Titans and Avatar? Basically the biggest name in cinema. They had enough money to pay him!

Water
If a movie involves water, it makes 20x more. Just ask James Cameron!

In this future world, everything sucks. Life is fucked. War and explosions and poverty. Earth is basically dead on arrival. Their only hope is to abandon all hope and find some other planet or place to live.

And their best shot is the planet Titan. Because Titan has water, and water is the key to their life. But they know that humans cannot survive on their own on Titan. They are going to be developing some drugs for people to take to alter their biology a bit to survive on that watery sphere. You know, like a bigger ability to be under water. Normal stuff.

The facility to train these soldiers on the mission is probably in the nicest part of the country! They have places to have fun, good houses, and food. Lt. Rick Janssen (Sam Worthington) and his family (Taylor Schilling, Noah Jupe) are one of the families coming in to create a better world for their son, and hopefully escape off of this hell hole. But they are not telling the participants the full truth of their mission.

Also starring Tom Wilkinson, Agyness Deyn, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Corey Johnson.

Aliens
Like balding, yuck!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect with The Titan. I went in blind as I often do with these random Netflix movies that pop and demand my attention. I chose it because it was that specific day and I needed something to have on while I graded papers. Simple as that.

The Titan has a slow build of mystery attached to it. Just what are they going to do to prepare these people for life on another planet? How will they change? And what side effects will they learn along the way?

We get some pretty intense scenes as our “Not Sam Worthington” characters start to drop out of the program for one reason or another. When the reveals start to happen they definitely feel worth it after the build up. The ending itself is very intense, unlike the rest of the film, and I still found myself guessing at how it would end.

The Titan is relatively unique with its execution and goes places other movies don’t go. You know. The moon Titan.

3 out of 4.

Borg vs McEnroe

What is the deal with this surge of tennis movies? This year we have Borg vs McEnroe, at some point there is that documentary Love Means Zero, and last year had the Battle of the Sexes.

But it isn’t just a two year trend. Don’t you remember two years ago, that HBO miniature film? It was called 7 Days in Hell, and that one was a parody piece and about fictional rivals. Somehow that 45 minute feature led executives to put out two real tennis match movies relatively close together. Are people just running around buying out the rights to intense matches?

Then before this gets to the point of no return, then can we get someone to quickly film the Isner-Mahut match from a bit ago? That would be a marathon film if any. And don’t fill it with flashbacks. Start with the match. Then give us the night time breaks to get some other characters/story/anxiety in there.

What
The real reason for the film is to create this hair.

Set in 1980, history in Wimbledon was about to be made. Björn Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) was the sexiest man alive, if sexiest man alive meant extremely skilled at Tennis. How can Borg, only 24, be the greatest Tennis player? Well, when he was 23, 22, 21, and 20, he won Wimbledon. That is four times in a row. And no one had ever won it five times in a row. Could he be that first person? He is young, he is strong, he is accurate. And hey, he keeps his emotions in check. He is so goddamn stoic, before, after, and during matches, he is like a robot. They went on to name the Borg hive race in Star Trek after him due to that personality.

So what is stopping him? Well, a younger up and coming athlete, John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf), who, like all great rivalries, was basically the exact opposite. He was 22 at the time, American, and like America, he was rash, angry, and people didn’t like him across the seas. He was a firecracker, he yelled at the judges, he unnerved his opponents and was a thorn in the professional tennis world.

And they would meet at Wimbledon. If Borg wins, he makes history. If McEnroe wins, it dawns a new era of primadonna shit head tennis players.

What world do we want to live in!?

Also starring Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, and Scott Arthur.

Yes
Really they are both rock stars if you think about it.

I have a general fondness for Tennis movies. I really can’t imagine one I really disliked. To be fair, outside of the ones I tagged up there, the only ones I remember right now at Wimbledon itself and…that’s it. And I liked Wimbledon.

It is a sport that definitely allows itself to be filmed in a way to really show the struggle between two athletic individuals. It doesn’t focus on nameless team players that are just background bodies, or shenanigans. Just playing some tennis balls.

Both LaBeouf and Gudnason give very strong performances as people with their own issues to deal with. The use of flashbacks really worked in this movie. We got a lot of flash backs for Borg in particular, to see how he developed into that type of player and why (hint, some bad stuff happened). And similarly, what McEnroe had to deal with, even as one of the top players of the world, how he never seemed to get his respect.

I kept the truth of the ending a secret from myself, which paid off big time. Real stories are cool, and they are better if you don’t know the final outcome.

Definitely a solid dramatic tennis movie. I’m talking acrylic court solid here.

3 out of 4.