Author: MJ-A
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‘A Winning Team’ (2023) is all about love
The Hallmark Channel produces as many as 100 films in a year, and A Winning Team may be its first soccer movie. Like most Hallmark films, it’s also about how love of family plus a little romance pull the lead lady footballer back to a real life.
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‘Khartoum Offside’ (2019) intimate but confusing
Khartoum Offside is Writer-Director Marwa Zein’s first feature length film and has won a number of awards. I just don’t know enough about the film industry to understand why.
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‘Pro in Africa’ (2020) revisits a boy’s dreams
In the documentary Pojkdrömmen, Writer-Director Emil Moberg Lundén tells his own story of his last-ditch all-out attempt to become a pro footballer at age 30. It’s an entertaining film under an hour, as Emil is the anti-Zlatan, an attractive, talented man who comes to question his self-centered goal in the context of third world problems.
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Notes: 2 shorts on Modern Football and a ball
Two of the short films being showcased at the 2023 edition of Denmark’s Shoot! Festival are worth a quick watch or mention.
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Times have changed since ‘Pretty Tough’ (2011)
Pretty Tough sat in my Amazon watchlist for a long time, because it looked like one of those low quality movies that was either exploitative of teen girls or from the Christian network. So I was surprised when I found Pretty Tough to be pretty good, and neither exploitative nor religious.
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‘Red Card’ (2017) – old time Emirati humor
Late one night on Netflix, I found this Emirati football comedy from the UAE (United Arab Emirates). When I started watching Red Card (Kart Ahmar), I was quickly confused. I hadn’t had any exposure to Arab humor, and given how conservatively Islam is portrayed in the media, I had assumed that Arabs don’t laugh much.…
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Review – ‘Senzo: Murder of a Soccer Star’ (2022)
It’s not often that I rate a Netflix Original so low, as usually Netflix has a minimum level of quality. But somehow, the docuseries Senzo: Murder of a Soccer Star got past the QA department. Yeah, it’s a howler.
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‘Hood River’ (2021) captures high school soccer
High school sports often serve as the film setting for a great divide: between rich and poor, Black and White, or urban versus rural. Maybe the greatest high school sports drama is Denzel Washington’s Remember the Titans (2000), where in the racist South, a Black coach and Black and White co-captains unite a newly integrated…
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Review – ‘Hugo Sanchéz: El Gol y la Gloria’ (2022)
This film about Mexico’s Hugo Sanchéz is a little bit different from the deluge of content the streaming era has brought. Some of the worst shows have essentially been reality showcases for celebrity footballers, such as Neymar and Paul Pogba. It felt like these players were isolated narcissists and I ended up disrespecting them as…
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Review – Robbie Lyle’s ‘Football Fans: Under Their Skin’ (2020)
Presented by Robbie Lyle, Football Fans: Under Their Skin gathers together leaders of supporters groups and prominent fans who are all men of color. Some share their childhood experiences in the stands as victims of racism. It is painful to see how those experiences affected them and their parents. And decades on, not only does…
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Narco-fútbol made refereeing a ‘Dangerous Play’ (2022)
Bit by bit, HBO Max has gotten onto the fútbol bandwagon, and so far, they have put some very entertaining productions online. If you are a student of refereeing, narco-fútbol, or sports corruption, you will especially enjoy the documentary Dangerous Play (original title is Jugada Peligrosa) by Director Matías Gueilburt.
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‘Goles en contra’ (2022) – so we never forget narco-fútbol
It isn’t right that how one dies carries more weight than how one lived. Almost 30 years after he was murdered for committing an own goal at WC 1994, the life of Andrès Escobar is portrayed in the Netflix fiction Goles en contra (English title is The Final Score).
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‘Go Now’ (1995) is a tearful slide into multiple sclerosis
I came upon this old BBC TV movie by chance on Amazon Prime. By the description, it didn’t seem like a soccer movie, but it turns out that the first 30 minutes deliver trope after trope of non-league football from the touchline in 1990s Bristol, England.
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Inspiring family friendly ‘La Foquita: El 10 de la Calle’ (2020)
The biopic La Foquita: El 10 de la Calle concentrates on the inspiring rise of the Peruvian footballer Jefferson Agustín Farfán Guadalupe, whose nickname is “La Foquita”. Farfán emerges from the shanty town of Villa El Salvador, where poverty is so deep, that finding enough food to eat is a daily chore.
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Know your history – The Sisters of ’96 (2021)
The Sisters of ’96 highlights an accomplishment that seems to barely register in American soccer history. While the 99ers are now easily recognized as the winners of the WWC 1999, how many know that prior to that, these women won the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta?
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‘King Otto’ (2021) wins your heart
What does it mean to be Greek? King Otto shows us through the initial friction between and then a melding of German and Greek cultures on a football pitch. Combining ambitious German discipline with Greek passion and spirit, the result is an improbable underdog run through the 2004 Euros. Like Morocco’s recent run through WC…
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‘Classico’ (2022) is an enjoyable football French farce
Looking for something a little different to watch? Classico is a cute mash-up of comedy and a little romance in the context of a rivalry between ultra but nice football supporters.
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Fulwell73 hits home with ‘Super Greed’ (2022)
Super Greed: The Fight for Football is the first faithful cinematic telling of the 48-hour debacle known as the European Super League (ESL). It will not be the last. Looking back to Apr-2021, you might recall the Super League with blurry pandemic memories. But because this documentary is from Fulwell73 and Sky Sports, whose business…
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Will ‘Truth be Told’ (2022) set the NWSL free?
Truth be Told: The fight for Women’s Professional Soccer is an ESPN E60 production. The film covers the more visual aspects of the “This guy has a pattern” story that was reported by Meg Linehan and Katie Strang. On Sep-30-2021, the reporters broke open their investigation on abuses by celebrated coach Paul Riley and the…
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Notes: Best and Worst soccer movies in 2022
It’s hard to believe, but even though it was a World Cup year, 2022 was one of my worst years for soccer movie reviews. I can’t blame it on the COVID-19 pandemic, because by Year 3, most of the world developed pandemic fatigue and pretty much threw their masks and self-isolation to the wind.
