Soccer Movies

Go ahead, but please, not in this thread. People can't find anything in it as it is. I'd rather not clutter it up with product placements.

 

Soccer Movie: Playing for Keeps - 2012

The plot: retired and penniless Scottish soccer star moves to small town to reunite with his 9yo son and soon-to-be-remarried ex-wife and ends up coaching son’s team on the way to becoming a responsible adult male and finding a new career as a sportscaster.

Gerard Butler is as charismatic as ever and gets to speak in his natural Scottish accent. The soccer play is pretty good; it is clear that the U10 players all know the game. Butler put in “a bit of training” so that he could handle the ball and do tricks a top player would be expected to do. In the closing scenes, Jessica Biel gets to play, and she shows soccer is her sport.

The film got bad reviews, and its background gives clues on how this happened. Playing for Keeps was Gerard Butler’s second soccer movie and a project he took on in 2009, when it was originally a baseball story. The producers (13 are listed) got Italian director Gabriele Muccino, whose reputation pulled in an all-star cast to fill character roles. Under apparently some Hollywood business pressure, the film—which Muccino originally saw as a melodrama of the “Pursuit of Happyness” type—ended up being sort of a comedy with a lot of horny soccer moms making demands of Coach Butler and his fabulous abs.

Director Muccino, whose English is barely understandable, wanted this movie to be about the father-son relationship, as is his vein. In his view of the story, the availability of money and sex in the town are barriers to Butler’s growing up, and it is a challenge he must overcome to build a relationship with the son he hasn’t seen for 5 years. This lofty theme comes from a director who has 3 children by 3 women.

The more soccer movies I watch, the more I wonder how Hollywood can possibly be a business! At $35M, this is the second-most expensive soccer movie ever made. While the comedy is enjoyable, the film is confusing to watch. I saw it during its theatrical run, and at one point, I asked my buddy if we were in the wrong theater, because I thought the movie was supposed to be a comedy.

I thought it was interesting that the players wore AYSO jerseys but AYSO was not in the credits. I assume the soccer mom sex drove them to disassociate from the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032755/
Streamable on netflix

This was the 100th soccer movie I’ve watched and reviewed. Whew!

 

Soccer Movie: Heleno (2011)

Information about Heleno De Freitas is scanty when compared to Garrincha or Pelé. He was born in 1920 and predated Brazil's success on the world stage. He won no trophies for Botafogo, he played in no world cups, and so there is no film of his play. While he scored many goals, little can be gleaned about his ability or his impact on the game. Instead, his legend centers around his bad boy behavior, night life, many affairs, mercurial temperament, and his eventual spiral into insanity, brought on by untreated syphilis as well as ether inhalant abuse. He died at the age of 39 after being institutionalized in an psychiatric hospital at 32.

It seems strange to me that given little info, the director could have gone hog wild and written whatever story he wanted, but instead, he chose to create an artsy-fartsy B&W film, with the star losing 12-28 pounds in order to look sick at the end of filming. But with very little soccer, little sex, or even for that matter, much of a story, it is obvious why, after playing in a bunch of film festivals, the film went straight to DVD and netflix.

Like most inconsequential films, its backstory is more interesting. I wondered why Heleno refused treatment for his syphilis. It turns out that penicillin treatment at that time was very new. He would have had to endure 8 days of intramuscular penicillin shots every few hours, and the procedure was so new, a cure was not guaranteed. On top of that, after the first year of infection, syphilis can be latent for as long as 15 years or even forever and thus not physically apparent. I also found one article in portuguese that speculated that Helano was bipolar. All of these factors could explain why he could ignore a syphilitic infection.

It was also interesting to learn that ether abuse started around that time because of Carnaval. As a prank, people would mix ether with perfume and shower others with the ice cold concoction. Ether's easy availability established it as a mainstay for inhalant abuse amongst Brazil's impoverished youth, which it remains today along with glue and other chemicals.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1720114/
Streamable on netflix. In Portuguese with english subtitles.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0354595/

 

The Football Vagabond with George Quraishi (August 2013)

The founder/editor of Howler magazine, George Quraishi has published a trio of 7-minute videos about Greek football and its fans. The first two episodes are as artful as the magazine he debuted this past year. The 3rd episode is a little lean, but all are worth watching if you'd like to learn a little about the passion of Greek football fans and the inability of players to get paid.

• Episode 1 - The Derby of the Eternal Enemies - Olympiacos v. Panathinaikos. A little history of the intense fan rivalry and between fans and police.

• Episode 2 - Love & Money. Meet Peter Philipakos, a Greek-American who played in Greece, including short stint for Olympiacos. Recently retired from soccer, he talks about how difficult it was to get paid. A few reporters also talk about match-fixing and corruption in Greece, where an Athens team typically wins the league every year.

• Episode 3 - Saloniki - Aris & PAOK. Quraishi examines the fans of Aris and PAOK, two teams in Thessaloniki, the only other city besides Athens that has ever won the league. An interview with Emmy Voutsa, the General Secretary for Aris (where Eddie Johnson & Freddy Adu played for a bit), gives you an idea of the financial issues.

All the episodes are on KickTV.

 

KickTV hosts a Films & Documentaries Channel (2012)

I guess I'm behind the times. Apparently KickTV kicked off this Films & Documentaries channel around June-2012. It's somewhat in association with the Kicking + Screaming Soccer Film Festivals. In association in this case means that K+S gives them a few suggestions of what KickTV ought to stream. But they haven't posted very much: "FC Barcelona Confidential" and "The Ref (El Arbitro)". Here's a list of trailers screened at a past film festival.

 

It took me a long time to do this, but I put all my soccer movie reviews on a wordpress website, so that it is easier to find a review. Please take a look! I won't be updating this BigSoccer thread with more reviews.

SoccerMovieMom.com​

Thx for reading my obsessive compulsive vanity project!

 

I posted a review of "This is Not a Ball (2014)" at

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/this-is-not-a-ball-2014/​

 

I posted a review of "Gregory's Girl" (1981) at

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/gregorys-girl-1981/
​

Maybe the upcoming vote for Scottish independence drove Amazon Prime to stream this movie...

 

I posted a review of "Fondi '91" (2013) at

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/fondi-91-2013/​

 

Posted two more reviews at

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/category/documentary/
​

"Downtown Dawgs" is about the homeless world cup. "Futbol Violencia S.A." is about the violence that pervades the clubs in the AFA Argentine Futbol Association.

 

Posted soccer movie review of "The Beautiful Game" at

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/the-beautiful-game-2012/​

 

Just posted a review of "Kicking It", the 2008 documentary of players at the 2006 Homeless World Cup. This was one of the first soccer movies I reviewed, and this version is more substantial.

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/kicking-it-2008/​

 

Coincident with the 26th anniversary of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster, I've posted a review of the ESPN 30 for 30 film "Hillsborough"

http://www.soccermoviemom.com/hillsborough-2014/​

 

Reviewed "Believe", Brian Cox's third turn in a soccer movie.

• http://www.soccermoviemom.com/believe-2013/

 

Reviewed "Bad Parents", a 2012 dark comedy that refreshingly portrays the humorous side of bad sports parenting (that is, if you can laugh at yourself). Unfortunately, the last 30 minutes of the film aren't too good... but judge for yourself, it's on netflix.

• http://www.soccermoviemom.com/bad-parents-2012