Year: 2023
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Notes: Best and Worst soccer movies in 2023
The internet along with the pandemic changed the entertainment industry, and for creators, the last couple of years were the Golden Age of Streaming. In order to win more subscribers, streaming companies funded massive amounts of content. At the same time, the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso and the rise of American soccer players helped…
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‘The Ultimate Goal’ (2017) — inspirational behind the scenes
English footballer Dan Metcalfe has been the soccer coach to the stars of Hollywood, choreographing the soccer action and training the actors for many films such as Will Ferrell’s Kicking and Screaming and Amanda Bynes’ She’s the Man. In The Ultimate Goal, Metcalfe advances beyond an accessory role and adds Writer Director and Producer to…
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‘La Hija de Dios’ shows Maradona as a family man (2023)
I’m not sure why I watched the docuseries La Hija de Dios. I had resolved not to watch any more Diego Maradona films, and I was also put off by the title —The Daughter of God. But the 3-episode series popped up on HBO Max, and it was short, just 138 minutes total. So I…
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Female footballers in a story that is ‘Forever’ (2023)
The Swedish film Forever is the most authentic soccer movie drama I have seen. It should appeal to female footballers everywhere, as a realistic story they have experienced in some form directly or indirectly. The producers were looking for new ways to portray football on the screen, and they scouted all of Vastra Götaland to…
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Pentecostal football makes good in ‘Prophetess’ (2021)
Prophetess (also spelled Prophe+ess) is a comedic premise with a lot of dramatic situations from one of Nigeria’s most popular new directors, Niki Akinmolayan. I think the comedy is supposed to be a farce with exaggerated situations, but I was never quite sure. In fact, there were so many things going on that I had…
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Steve Zahn is perfect in ‘Gringa’ (2023)
First of all, spoiler alert — nothing terrible happens in Gringa. I had hesitated to watch this movie because I thought it was going to be a depressing trope about failed lives and relationships. But instead, Gringa is about second chances — the chances we give ourselves to recover, and the chances we give others…
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Briana Scurry can’t save ‘High Expectations’ (2022)
It would be a cheap joke to say that I had high expectations for the soccer movie High Expectations. Actually, I had pretty low expectations, given that I had recently seen one of Kelsey Grammer’s Christmas movies. But Kelsey is not the problem in this drama, it’s pretty much everything else — except him and…
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A long farewell to ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3 (2023)
Ted Lasso Season 3 was great and satisfying. All the stories were tidily wrapped up. The dialog was often amazing. Ted’s monologues were inspiration exemplified. The football was better. The writers explored new themes and got knee-deep in immigrant and LGBT issues. But Season 3 of Ted Lasso was a little different for me than…
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‘The Queenstown Kings’ is mildly entertaining (2023)
The Queenstown Kings is a lengthy and busy story, where 3 men as father, son, and stepfather enact so many plot points, they are almost too numerous to count.
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‘Ultras of Egypt’ (2018) – when revolution fails
Ultras of Egypt is one of those powerful films where, I watched it in the beginning of the pandemic and it made me so sad, I couldn’t write the review. The filmmakers interview participants from the Arab Spring of 2011, who refer to the 18-day protest in Tahrir Square as The Revolution.
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Review – ‘Higuita: The Way of the Scorpion’ (2023)
René Higuita is the kind of guy that Writer-Director Luis Ara would greatly appreciate. Higuita is a man who rose from poverty to celebrity but who knows the value of life, friendship, and passion for the game. In Higuita: El camino del Escorpión, his story is told in a well-orchestrated arc that gives you a…
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Have a laugh with ‘The Outcasts’ | ‘El Matareed’ (2023)
Before The Outcasts, aka El Matareed, Egypt had a pretty long history of funny football films. While much of this film is silly and over the top, I actually watched it twice and enjoyed it both times. The performances are entertaining, and the storylines are more complex than you initially think. In fact, for Egypt,…
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The Golden Goose – ‘Messi Meets America’ (2023)
When MLS announced Messi was joining Inter Miami FC, I admit I opposed the idea. Messi’s coming to MLS would be a black mark against and devalue his career. It would be the perfect encapsulation of MLS as a retirement league, I thought. Of course, Apple and MLS knew better, and it turned out that…
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Sadio Mané at his best in ‘Made in Senegal’ (2020)
Sadio Mané: Made in Senegal was originally meant to be a short video clip, but his boy-makes-good story was so compelling, the filmmakers turned it into a feature film. We learn how Mané grew up in a small village in Senegal, where farming was the only future available to children. Little Sadio though, was determined…
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‘The Champions’ (2018-2023) is funny and clever from Bleacher Report
The Champions popped up on HBOMax (currently known as Max) recently, and I was a little confused by the context of this brilliant animated series, i.e. where did this come from? Originally created for the Bleacher Report by comedic writer-producer Andy Haynes, this was a web series on Youtube, mirroring the Champions League (CL) from…
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‘Soccergate’ (2021) shows how justice is denied
Soccergate (aka Footballgate) is Episode 3 of the Netflix series Bad Sport , but it provides disappointing coverage on the 2006 match fixing scandal commonly known as “Calciopoli”. I learn something from almost all the documentaries I’ve reviewed, and it is only a very few that leave me with so many questions that I am…
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Review- ‘Black and White Stripes: The Juventus Story’ (2016)
Directors Marco La Villa and Mauro La Villa say that this film is about fathers and sons and how football unites generations and allows them to relate to each other. The twin brothers worked on this film for 10 years, after their father, a life long Juventini, passed away without ever attending a Juventus game.
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‘Super League: The War for Football’ (2023) deserves an Emmy
Having already reviewed Fulwell 73’s feature-length film Super Greed (2022), it took me a long time to get around to watching the 4-episode mini-series Super League: The War for Football. After all, how much more does anyone care to learn about a bunch of billionaires for whom football is strictly business. But Oh, what a…
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Wave away ‘The Hand of God’ (2021)
Writer-Director Paolo Sorrentino has credited Diego Maradona for inspiring him, and in his semi-autobiographical The Hand of God, we discover that Sorrentino’s fandom saved his life. But this is not really a soccer movie.
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A Liverpool to remember in ‘The End of the Storm’ (2020)
At the end of the season, English clubs typically issue a compilation of highlight videos. But at the beginning of the 2019/2020 season, Liverpool felt they had a good chance to win the EPL. So they recruited James Erskine to follow the club season-long and work on a documentary, somewhat along the lines of the…
