Reviews of soccer movies and football films
Soccer movie or football film about hooligans
When this Netflix original first pops up on your TV, the upper left corner warns “sex, nudity, language, smoking”. That warning is also an able synopsis of this Italian hooligan movie.
Continue reading “‘Ultras’ (2020) sex nudity language smoking and mindless threatening”
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.
Continue reading “‘The Hooligan Factory’ (2014): Who knew hooligans were so funny?”
After The Football Factory, I swore I wouldn’t watch any more Hooligan movies. They seem to be a genre of violence, sex, and drugs, with a little bit of football as context. As in, we gotta go to a West Ham game on the way to the violence, sex, and drugs we are going to do.
And I don’t understand why it’s always West Ham hooligans.
Continue reading “In the Hooligan genre: ‘White Collar Hooligan 3’ (2014)”
Thinking of going to WC 2018? Watch Russia’s Hooligan Army. It may change your mind, especially if you are British and male. This BBC TV documentary starts with news footage of the Russian hooligan attacks at Euro 2016. Then, it turns the spigot on full blast in sensationalist interviews with Russian supporters group leaders, who crow over their victories and ready their members for the next round on the home soil of WC 2018.
Continue reading “‘Russia’s Hooligan Army’ (2017) is painfully real”
After suffering the mindless violence of The Football Factory, I was reluctant to watch Green Street Hooligans. But what a surprise– Hooligans completely sucks you in.
Continue reading “I liked ‘Green Street Hooligans’ (2005) even if Brits did not”
The Firm was an episode of a BBC TV series in 1989. A young (30 years old) Gary Oldman stars as Bexie — a middle class father, real estate agent, weekend soccer player, and the boss of a hooligan gang.
Continue reading “A young footballing Gary Oldman in ‘The Firm’ (1989)”
I almost never watch war movies or dramas, but watching the 2004 British movie The Football Factory was like watching a war movie without weapons.
Continue reading “‘The Football Factory’ (2004) makes war without weapons”