Author: MJ-A
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‘Morris from America’ (2016) is not a soccer movie
Morris from America might come up when you search for “soccer movie”. But even though it takes place in Germany, and is ostensibly about a black American soccer coach, the film is not about football and actually has no football in it except as a visual reference. I’m reviewing the film on my website really,…
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Notes: Best and Worst Soccer Movies of 2018
2018 was a World Cup year, with Russia hosting possibly the most entertaining World Cup ever broadcast. Many producers and creators plan football film releases during a WC year, when interest in soccer is intense. Thus I was pleasantly surprised at the number of films that were shown on cable and streaming sites, as well…
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‘Barça Dreams’ (2015) – the FCB brand begins at home
FC Barcelona is “Més que un Club” – More than a Club. And if you had any doubt, you should watch the documentary Barça Dreams. At 2 hours, this is probably the longest soccer documentary I’ve ever seen. Writer-Director Jordi Llompart covers the club’s history and culture, which has fermented and evolved since 1899. There is…
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‘Yeşil Kirmizi’ (2016) – The many ways Turks oppress a club
The title Yeşil Kirmizi refers to green and red, the colors of Amedspor, a Kurdish team that in 2016 played in the third division of Turkish football. To Americans, that sentence sounds harmless, but in Turkey, four of those words could be inflammatory. To strongman Erdogan’s Turkish government, professing Kurdish ethnic identity is tantamount to…
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Where did ‘United We Fall’ (2014) go wrong?
As viewers, we sort of expect that a mockumentary will play out, as Bob Balaban has described, like “spending time with a bunch of really funny and totally harmless mental patients.” Christopher Guest set a very high bar for mockumentary, and I have no doubt that, when Writer-Director Gary Sinyor outlined his plan for United…
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‘Looking for…’ fanatic football fans (2010-2015)
Post-football, Eric Cantona found a new passion and challenge: cinema. At 30 years old, he unexpectedly retired from football in 1997. Among reasons Eric has cited in retrospect: he was tired of playing the game. However, he transitioned to acting as well as beach soccer, popularizing the sport and managing the French beach soccer team…
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‘Lethal Soccer Mom’ (2018): Not Worth Watching in a Lifetime
The last time I watched a film with Lethal in the title must have been Lethal Weapon 2, 3, 4, or 5. (Is there a Lethal Weapon 5?) I figured Lethal Soccer Mom was a click-bait film that would be a grind to watch.
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‘Takim’ (2015): A Film to Smile About
Writer-Director Emre Sahin and his successful production company Karga7 like to draw stories and real topics from the real world.
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‘The Hooligan Factory’ (2014) – hooligans are funny?
Who knew that soccer hooligan movies are a genre? And that they have been so successful that 2014 was a good time for someone to spoof them? The Hooligan Factory sat in my Amazon Prime watchlist for quite awhile because I assumed it was just another hooligan movie.
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‘Coach Jake’ (2017) pays it forward
With his bald head and authoritative, gnarly New York accent, I sometimes thought I was watching former US soccer coach Bob Bradley. But no, Coach Jake is about Martin Jacobson, an American high school soccer coach who is, in many ways, much more successful.
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In ‘Die Mannschaft’ (2014) teamwork is key
German fans still recovering from the team’s failure to advance at WC 2018 should return to watching Die Mannschaft. It is a nicely crafted love letter to Joachim Löw and the 2014 German National Team. It is a tribute to German football, showing everything the German Federation (DFB) did to optimize the team to win WC…
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Review | ‘After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United’ (2009)
Directors and brothers Christopher and Alex Browne filmed After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United during the 2004-05 season. Almost 15 years have passed since the events were recorded, but judging from more recent soccer movies such as Forever Pure, life has changed very little for Arabs in Israel. Israeli Arabs (Palestinians) remain second-class citizens, and Arabic players…
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‘The Anderson Monarchs’ (2012) all-Black girls team
Soccer decision makers, fans, and parents who don’t understand how our sport works in America should watch The Anderson Monarchs. Writer-Director Eugene Martin captures, in a decidedly upbeat way, the commitment required to sustain a unique, inner city, all-African-American, girls soccer team in Philadelphia.
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‘Shoot’ (2018): an Arab-Arabian football story
Shoot languished in my Amazon Prime watchlist because I assumed it was just another foreign film. So I was quite surprised when I started watching it, and almost the first words on the screen were “The first Saudi-American film”.
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Notes: San Jose Earthquakes stadium articles
I had to clean out my desk and get rid of all my paper files. I found a few stadium-related articles I had saved from 2002-2007. That was a really dark time for Quakes fans. AEG couldn’t get the stadium deal it wanted, so MLS let them move the team to Houston. I wanted to…
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A Costa Rican gem: ‘Buscando a Marcos Ramirez’ (2017)
I was thoroughly enchanted by Buscando a Marcos Ramírez, the first soccer movie I have seen from Costa Rica. In the story, Marcos’ single mom has named him for the popular eponymous children’s book and given him a love of reading. But when she dies, he must move from the simple countryside to the unwelcoming…
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‘L’arbitro’ (2013) absurbly fresh but confusing
It’s such a terrible shame that it took 5 years for a movie like this to become widely available to the American audience. Paolo Zucca’s Italian football film L’arbitro is absurdly fresh and funny, while also being odd and confusing.
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Why was ‘Bobby’ (2016) Moore overlooked?
The documentary Bobby (aka Bo66y) is a tribute film to Bobby Moore, who captained England to its only World Cup title in 1966. The film was produced by BBC and Sky sports presenter Matt Lorenzo to coincide with the 50th anniversary.
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‘Mi Mundial’ (2017) is a cautionary tale
Mi Mundial is a charming Cinderella-like football tale, except this Cinderella returns to the ashes of his old life. This futbol pelicula is based on the 2010 children’s book of the same name, by former Uruguayan futbolista Daniel Baldi. A prolific author of mostly juvenile books mostly about football, Baldi uses much of his life in…
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‘Becoming Zlatan’ (2015) – Always Zlatan
I don’t normally review biographical documentaries, because they tend to be marketing vehicles more than, well, documentaries. Becoming Zlatan (Den unge Zlatan) is an exception and worth your time if you are a fan of Zlatan Ibrahimović.
