Leap (2020) - Movie Review

Considering two of my favourite films so far this year have been Chinese efforts, I figured it’d be worth diving into that creative pool once again with this sports biopic about the Chinese women’s volleyball team. And ignoring whatever easy jokes I could make about that particular choice of sport, the film itself presents it in pretty visceral fashion. When their coach says that they need to "shed blood, not tears", he really isn’t kidding, and their physical exertion combined with the sound mixing (that ‘thwack’ as they make contact with the ball is weirdly satisfying) starts the film on solid ground.

Eddie The Eagle (2016) - Movie Review

Even though buddy cop action films may hold the crown for the most widely recognised clichés, they still don’t hold much of a candle to the oddity that is the inspirational sports movie. The wide-eyed innocent of the genre family, it walks this weird divide where it is often based on actual events and yet is easily one of the most fantastical forms of drama (or dramedy, as a lot of these turn out) out there. Don’t get me wrong, films like the Rocky series show that gritty realism is just as welcome in this sector of filmmaking… when they aren’t inserting helper robots and Russian super soldiers into the narrative, that is. We’ve even looked at a few of these before like Paper Planes and last year’s update of the Rocky canon with Creed; between them, we have a pretty decent spectrum of what could be expected from a film like this. Needless to say, this is very much in the former category this time, but maybe that need not be such a bad thing. This is Eddie The Eagle.

Foxcatcher (2015) - Movie Review

I have a certain fascination with actors who are able to transform themselves for a role. Be it through method, heavy make-up work or however else, it’s very interesting seeing what an actor is willing to do for their craft. One of my personal favourite examples of this are Christian Bale in The Machinist and Batman Begins, where he turned himself into a real-life Billy Halleck and emaciated himself for the former and then bulked up to play Batman in the latter. As much as I would hate to be that man’s stomach during all that, I have to give credit where it’s due for pulling that off. I bring this all up because, given the majority of posters I saw of this movie before going to see it myself, this film seems to be banking on the transformative role Steve Carell has in it. One look at the barely-recognisable Carell and I can’t say I blame them. But did it pay off?