Cinematic Underdogs (Paul Keelan / Jordan Puga)

We're back with another Docuseries. Resembling in ways a real-life Ted Lasso, Welcome to Wrexham chronicles the purchase of Wrexham AFC by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny. The Wrexham Red Dragons are a fifth-tier Welsh football club, meaning they sit at the very bottom of the pyramid of professional UK leagues. Thus, the immediate goal of this venture is pretty simple: Promotion. Ryan and Rob certainly have the capital to make a splash. The question is whether money will translate onto the field.

Marketed as an underdog story, Welcome to Wrexham is anything but and with a cynical lens we look at the odd setup of this program. Sure, as the 3rd oldest football club in the world bolstered a small blue-collar town whose fed-up with years of poor results, Wrexham AFC is a team worth rooting for. However, given the deluge of money & prestige immediately put into the club by their Hollywood owners, they become, in some ways, the evil villain of the fifth-tier league.

Fortunately, the series takes a wise approach and democratizes its focus. Sure, much of the runtime is filled with vainglorious self-promotional bits for Reynolds and McElhenney (after all, everything Ryan touches is branded to death). But many episodes give us, the audience, a direct and intimate glimpse into the small, tight-knit Welsh community of Wrexham. We listen to the pub's boorish bickering and drunken bloviation; we learn about the history of football hooliganism; we get an in-depth backstory on the corruption and subsequent cooperative takeover and ownership of the Red Dragons. 

By the end, it's nearly impossible not to cheer on Paul Mullin, Ollie Palmer, and teammates as they claw their way to the cusp of promotion. Even for cynics like ourselves, it's nearly impossible not to feel a bit charmed, instead of vexed or embarrassed, by the team's rise to dominance. It's hard not to forgive Rob and Reynolds, despite their football illiteracy (Ryan literally asks bystanders to explain offsides during a critical matchup at Wembley late in the season). And that's a testament to the power of the world-building. Enjoy some good old-fashioned ranting and rowing as we wildly vacillate between positive and negative overreactions.

This week on Cinematic Underdogs, Harry LaBollita, Nick Morelli, and Aaron White of Feelin Film' join the pod to discuss Untold: Breaking Point. As our third entry into the fantastic Netflix-produced docuseries, this episode chronicles Mardy Fish's poignant rise, fall, & eventual search for equanimity. If you've never heard of Mardy before, you are not alone. For most of his professional tennis career, he flew under the radar, consistently bested by his childhood best friend Andy Roddick. Then, nearing 30, something clicked. Seemingly overnight, Mardy transformed his work ethic (sleeping in an hyperbaric pod, trimming 35 pounds, and practicing militantly), and he career went into supersonic overdrive: shooting straight to the top of America's rankings. 

However, this sudden and precipitous rise came at a cost — crippling Mardy with a severe mental health crisis. He first suffers tachycardia (likely due to psychosomatic stressors) and soon confronts a sequence of paralyzing anxiety/panic attacks. Suffice to say, "Breaking Point" could not be any more relevant to the long-overdue emergence of mental health conversations in the sports world. It is a heartwarming story of friendship and perseverance that tackles many of the issues endemic to this specific sector of American culture: from the unfair pressure we impose on athletes to the inhumane assumption that athletic superstars are somehow impervious to external critique.  

Mardy Fish is clearly not alone in this battle for mental health awareness. Along with Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, and Kevin Love, his story is a stark reminder that we need to look in the mirror and increase our collective empathy toward the mental duress and traumatizing pressure that professional athletes endure. 

Please do yourself a favor and check out Untold: Breaking Point on Netflix, and then supplement your viewing with this wonderful conversation. 

What's happening, underdogs? We're back and now pedaling into a totally new terrain -- covering our first Japanese sports anime, Yowamushi Pedal. Joining us and holding our hand through this episode is David Weinberger of the Shonen Flop podcast. David does an amazing job breaking down the five types of anime (shonen, shojo, seinen, josei, and kodomomuke) and explains why Yowamushi Pedal is derivative and cliche. 

Meanwhile, our unvarnished critical perspective within the world of anime at-large lends us a more charitable view toward the series (which chronicles the evolution of an otaku into a competitive cyclist). Filtering the archetypes and tropes through a narrow and naive lens, we leaned positive -- finding its themes of companionship & dedication quite wholesome and heartfelt and endearing. Sometimes, perhaps, ignorance is bliss. But more often than not, cynicism is wicked fun, too! 

Check out the series on Netflix if you'd like. It was a wicked pop-punk intro and outro & a pastel-hued aesthetic. OR just listen to us revel in a fruitful discussion of sports anime series and their varied rewards. 

Enjoy! Ruff, ruff!

We’ve officially been Bingo-pilled and there’s no going back. Seriously ya’ll, this episode with Bingo-superfan Jed Bookout is bonkers. Completely unhinged. We talk Bingo playing cards, Bingo revolutions, Bingo’s wine drunk slutty dog shenanigans, potential Bingo sequels, Bingo sex-capades, Bingo legacy media, Bingo’s Schrödinger's box theory, Bingo merchandise, and so much more Bingo! 

Enjoy! 

On this episode, Harry LaBollita returns to discuss Netflix's hit series Break Point. Helmed by the same team behind F1: Drive to Survive, Break Point chronicles the world's up-and-coming tennis stars as they prepare and compete on the international professional tennis circuit, including all four Grand Slams and ATP and WTP tournaments. In Season 1, the cast of characters includes Nick Kyrgios (a "bad boy" from the Land Down Under), Matteo Berrettini (an Italian stallion with high ambitions and an equally successful girlfriend, Ajla Tomljanovic) Taylor Fritz (a So-Cal native who overcomes injury to out Nadal in the Indian Wells championship), Paula Badosa (a Spanish model dealing with mental health issues), Ons Jabeur (a Tunisian standout representing an entire continent), and Felix Auger-Aliassime (a Montreal-based wunderkind who just might be the next great).

We focus on a few primary themes: namely, the emergence of mental health crises and the perils of neuroses in the sport. This leads us into a fascinating discussion about the inherent pressures of tennis, the grueling attrition of playing year-round on the pro circuit, the attrition of mental fortitude due to the overwhelming speed of the game, the isolated vulnerability of playing a singles tournament, and the relativistic medley of psychological approaches and philosophies deployed by the various teams in hopes of curbing negative thoughts before they spiral into destructive self-sabotage on the court. We also debate who we think might be the next poster child for tennis as the Big Three (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic) begin to retire or suffer from the law of diminishing returns with age.

Enjoy!

Visceral, gritty, immersive, oversaturated, raw, unfiltered, cynical, decadent, cutthroat: telling from the frequency of descriptors such as these in this podcast episode,  Any Given Sunday is in no way a film for the feint of heart. Oliver Stone's reimagining of a war film on a football field, this film is unlike any other in the genre in that it delves into the dirty backstories and underbelly of the sport is has chosen to probe: the NFL. 

With epic performances by Dennis Quaid, Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Aaron Eckhart, and Al Palcino, to name just a few, Any Given Sunday also serves as a time stamp on a the pop culture sensibilities of the late 90's, and as a marker for what Oliver Stone was up to in a year in which filmmakers went big. Criminally underrated, and marginalized by many critics simply for being about football when it is really is about the rich tapestry of capitalism and greed and insecurity and ambition via the milieu of professional athletics, this is one of the most ambitious and sprawling and aesthetically intriguing sports films ever made. 

Also: we speak about how authentic this film is with J.B. Huffman, a former football player and a podcaster / host on SEC Tavern Talk.

Join your favorite Underdogs, Jordan and Paul, as they deconstruct the definition of chess as a sport, the moral ambiguity of using mental enhancement pills (and how that aligns with other sports controversies involving steroids / substance abuse), and whether or not The Queen's Gambit is a vapid / middlebrow miniseries or prestige TV. 

It is a deeply philosophical conversation that really gets into the tropes of the sports genre - harkening back to many of the quandaries first brought up in the introductory episode of Cinematic Underdogs. 

Finally, don't forget to like / share / spread the Cinematic Underdogs love! A single review on whatever platform you listen upon would make us bark with gratitude! 

 

On this laid-back, throwback episode of Cinematic Underdogs, the boys welcome Every Movie Has a Lesson's very own Don Shanahan to shoot the sh!t about 1977's scrappy rough-and-tumble hockey classic "Slap Shot." 

Pull out a case of Stroh's, or Root Beer if you want to be blasphemous, and get ready to indulge in an hour-and-a-half of locker room movie talk on everything from the amount of F-Bombs in the film, to a debate about which actor exudes Burt Reynolds energy, to drinking in Chicago with Michael Shannon. How do these topics manage to work their way in our conversation? Well, anything goes in locker room talk, and the same could be say for this episode. So get ready strip down, take the hockey gloves off, and lose a tooth or two.   

On this episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we discuss how our memory of The Big Green was upended by our adult viewing experience of the film. Nevertheless, there was a lot to take from this film, despite the fact that it doesn't have the same emotional payoff as other classic Disney 90's Sports Movies. 

In some ways, The Big Green is more politically relevant than ever: dealing with issues of immigration / deportation, the plight of rural America, the urgency for narratives that cultivate self-worth and belief, and the warring biases between cosmopolitan and small-town mindsets. However, despite being an effective underdog film in celebrating the margins of American society, we also critique how The Big Green may be relevant politically, but still comes off as ultimately lackluster due to its  derivative and haphazardly patched together narrative and character development. 

Given the fact that this was a 90's children's classic that sat in VHS boxes on thousands of living room shelves, The Big Green is a uniquely forgotten time capsule that elicits a lot of emotions: nostalgia, annoyance, mild laughs, incredulity, and curiosity. Look past the 0% Rotten Tomatoes score, and the film's perpetual place on the bottom of miscellaneous "best of 90's" lists, and there are a lot of silver linings in exploring this strange Disney release. 

In the wake of Ted Lasso's series' finale, we decided to talk about Apple TV's feel-good sports-themed sensation by covering the show's entire 3 seasons. Painting broadly, we discuss the recurring pattern of gradually inverting character traits & expectations, contextualize the aesthetic choices/references/silliness/garishness within the canon of classic sitcoms, analyze the pavlovian opening credit sequence, debate the subtle 2nd and 3rd season shift toward prestige TV runtimes and overtones, and proclaim our overarching verdict on whether it deserves to endure in infamy or posterity.

Welcome to our final episode on Season 1 of Netflix’s amazing Untold series. This round, we discuss perhaps the most famous subject in the entire anthology: Caitlyn Jenner. Before listening, however, we want to note that the gender dynamics and politics in this episode get unusually complex. We have no issue referring to individuals in whatever manner they prefer. Diversification and differentiation in gender, sexual orientation, and identity are values we fully support. That said, Caitlyn Jenner is a unique case that deserves to be treated on unique terms. Caitlyn herself “deadnames” / refers to her former self as Bruce. She speaks of the past iteration of herself as if he were a separate individual/identity/self — providing intimate insights into Bruce’s inner subjective life while also noting a sense of current alienation from that identity. Our goal was thus less worried about upholding popular dictums or norms so much as respecting the example set by Caitlyn herself. If acceptance is the willingness to treat everyone as they wish, Caitlyn’s particularized identity deserves to be recognized as she defines it — fashionable or unfashionable as her own choices and gender classifications may be. Even so, during the editing process, I noticed a few pronoun mistakes within these parameters. These were mere performative lapses — on-air mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less. We apologize proactively. Pronoun politics aside, Untold: Caitlyn Jenner offers a fascinating character study of a multidisciplinary personality and exceptional soul — a closeted trans woman, a meat & potatoes former midwesterner with a conservative Christian upbringing, a former Athlete of the World. That’s right — Bruce Jenner’s epic Gold medal decathlon performance during the 1976 Montreal Olympics won him the title to trump all titles. Unless, one argues being awarded Athlete of the Year for the courage of coming out as a trans icon is a superior accolade. Both are pretty remarkable, and worthy of our admiration and attention.

Gene Lyons of Shat the Movies joins the pod to talk about Apple TV's bingeable MLS puff-piece Messi Meets America! We also chat about the differences between the USL and MLS, the amazing championship run of the Phoenix Rising, the origins of Shat the Movies, Messi's GOAT-qualities, Gene's Top 5 Sports Movies, and much, much more!

Enjoy!

As an old-fashioned sports biopic, Race (2016) is serviceable. IT is exactly what one might expect of such a film: a sepia-toned, self-congratulatory, anti-fascist/racist flick about Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens, however, is sadly overshadowed by familiar beats and 'sophisticated' cliches in this Focus Features slog. An incredible/preternatural athlete and seemingly charismatic individual, Owens is bogged down by white savior narratives and a syrupy bromance with Ted Lasso himself (Sudeikis, before he made a name for himself on the pitch) as the Ohio St. track-and-field coach Larry Snyder. 

The film also stars Jeremy Irons as Avery Brundage (the sometimes virtuous/sometimes mercenary head of the Olympic committee), Carice van Houten as Leni Riefenstahl (the famous/infamous director & Nazi propagandist who is given a sugar-coated hagiographic treatment), and Barnaby Metschurat as Joseph Goebbels (perfectly insidious and awful in every way). With so many talented actors and powerful historical source material, Race is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It is just exceptionally mediocre and ethically dubious at times when it is most trying to virtue signal and coddle modern audiences with bromides and platitudes.   

As Robert Towne's directorial debut, Personal Best is anything but safe. His commitment to realism is impressive, but the results can be maudlin and melodramatic. This is also a very fleshy/horny film, and at times, it is hard to tell whether the film's rampant nudity is naturalistic, gratuitous, perverted, raw, or an amalgamation of all these qualities. Regardless of how one perceives the film's gaze (which, from reading reviews, is quite polarizing), Personal Best definitely seeks to deglamorize the female body to show its unvarnished beauty, prowess, and athleticism. And it does so with ambitious technical merit. From isolating a drip of water in a sauna, to accentuating the banality of physical exertion by shooting the film in hard/flat images, to creating leitmotifs with car ignitions, there are layers of meaning to every shot.  With so much subtext and subtle experimentation, it absolutely deserves its slot in the Criterion Collection and is equally worthy of a lengthy conversation, as we give it here. Moreover, for anyone studying representations of gender in film, Personal Best can easily be considered a seminal and groundbreaking work (Ebert and Kael, among others, championed it with glowing reviews about its authentic treatment, through style and substance, of femininity and passion). But as a modern viewer, it can feel dated and dry -- despite all the sweat and tears dripping off the screen. Because of our ambivalence to the film -- simultaneously impressive and unmoved -- our dialectic runs in curious circles on this episode, trying to reconcile the contradictions with mixed results. It may not be our personal best, but it is definitely one of our most unique episodes yet.  Enjoy!

Driven is a notoriously (and criminally) maligned, high-octane car wreck of a movie you have to see to believe. Tracking the CART open-wheel circuit, Renny Harlan’s adaptation of Sly Stallone's bloated script delivers ADHD-addled thrills from start to finish. This thing peels out at 200+ mph and refuses to let you breath or think — only pulling over to recharge at a few well-timed soapy, melodramatic pit stops.

If you're down for a flashy, jam-packed spectacle of gonzo, over-the-top filmmaking with little emotional or narrative credibility, hop right in! This is the celluloid equivalent of an amphetamine-infused deep-fried Twinkie — reimagined on screen. Sure, it's aesthetically grotesque and undeniably unhealthy. But it's also seeping in salaciously delicious goodies.

Join your fellow Underdogs and our special guest, Michael of the Screen Nerds Podcast, as we celebrate Driven’s absurdly kinetic editing style, Gina Gershon’s sassy denim-donning revision of the femme fatales, Stallone’s pouty-eyed moues, the soundtrack’s smooth jazz flourishes, and Harlan’s over-embellished dissolves.

This is a special one! Welcome to the in-depth prelude to our live episode on The Karate Kid! We discuss this everything there is to discuss about this heartfelt, feel-good classic in a short 1.5 hours. Sure, that's a decent chunk of time. But when you consider there is a podcast in the cosmos that devotes hour-long episodes to every minute of the movie, we  become paragons of brevity & economy. 

So if you're ready to hear us wax on and wax off about crane-kicks, sweeping legs, shower costumes, motorbike gangs, & 80s bangers, you've come to the right place! We gush about Mr. Miyagi's prudence & sagacity, Daniel Larusso's spunk & wiliness, and the grey contours of Johnny Lawrence. We also discuss the socioeconomic divide between Reseda & Encino, the mysterious & untold backstories to Miyagi's oil-derrick compound & lot of classic cars, the connections between The Karate Kid & Rocky, and why this rightfully deserves to be recognized as one of the better sports films of all time. 

Enjoy! 

In preparation for our discussion on "The Queen's Gambit", Aaron White of Feelin' Film and I (Paul Keelan) went on a bender with chess movies. In under a week's span, we both watched "Pawn Sacrifice," "Searching for Bobby Fischer," "The Coldest Game," "Queen of Katwe," and "Computer Chess" (on top of "The Queen's Gambit" miniseries). 

After this whirlwind of research, it quickly dawned upon the both of us that the content stored in our brains would inspire way too much dialogue to fit into a single podcast discussion. Thus, we decided to create extra-special 'chess extravaganza' episode so that we could dissect this eclectic selection of chess films and the sub-genre at-length. 

Moving at a rapid-fire pace—as fast as a game of speed chess—we talk about everything from Toby Maguire's odd portrayal of Bobby Fischer, to the poignant focus on parenting in "Searching for Bobby Fischer," to the idiosyncratic & polarizing curio that is "Computer Chess" (Beware: it is not (I repeat it is not!) a documentary about computers playing chess). 

We also outline the various tropes common to chess films: including the themes of madness, addiction, paranoia, Washington Sq. Park, and Cold War / Soviet vs. US politics that pervade nearly all of these movies. Finally, Aaron and I both rank all of these chess films (with "The Queen's Gambit" included in the mix): separating once and for all the blundering pawns from the promotable queens to-be. 

One of the more succinct Cinematic Underdogs episodes to date, this episode packs a ton of insights and canny commentary that you will not want to miss.  

Enjoy! 

This week, we return to the world of Manga adaptations & join our friend Matt St. Jack of Anime Talk! to chat SK8 the Infinity (you can watch it on Crunchy Roll!). In the episode, we discuss the series' nostalgic tone, ardent-hearted appreciation of skateboarding, controversies surrounding queer-baiting, technical/scientific descriptions of boarding, quirky biblical allusions, and notable popularity. Check it out!

Hello, fellow underdogs! We're back with Matt Belenky — film producer/film writer/film aficionado/Pittsburgh native — to discus one of the best Die Hard clone movies ever put to screen: Peter Hyams' 90's classic, Sudden Death. Matt recently celebrated Sudden Death's timeless charm and Pittsburghian ethos in the Pittsburgh Orbit article Terrorism in Overtime: Sudden Death Turns 25, and he fills us in on all the local details you'll want to hear: the casting of real-life Penguins broadcasting duo Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald as themselves, the story being conceived by  Karen Elise Baldwin (daughter of then-Penguins owner Howard Baldwin, who produced the film), and the strange circumstances in which the hockey game was filmed during the NHL lockout.   

We also talk about how well the film marries action genre tropes with the sports genre tropes, the fast clip at which the deaths pile up and the plotting skates along, whether or not this is Jean-Claude Van Damme's best or most iconic role, the savvy inclusion of the props/backrooms/corridors/interstices of the now-demolished Civic Arena, the hilarious culinary-themed kills (i.e., the death of the Pens mascot, Iceburgh, in an industrial-sized dishwasher), and the stunningly shot stunt work/action set pieces (i.e., the helicopter crashing into the Jumbotron). Oh, and to break the ice, we have a blast breaking down the entire slate of box office releases in late December 1995 (Waiting to Exhale, Grumpier Old Men, Nixon, Dracula: Dead & Loving It, Balto, Four Rooms, Tom & Huck, Cutthroat Island, etc...) — with each of us picking the one movie we'd choose to see if we had only enough allowance to buy a single ticket on opening weekend. 

Enjoy!

On the latest episode, we go back to the basics and cover a newly released yet old-fashioned formulaic sports flick: Hustle. Released on Netflix in 2022, Hustle finds Adam Sandler in a groove. This film sits nicely between his prestige work in Uncut Gems and the juvenile sensibilities we've all become accustomed to expecting from the Happy Madison brand. It is packed full with NBA cameos and call-outs, and delivers its emotional and athletic beats with panache and intensity. 

For a feel-good and by-the-numbers underdog sports flick, Hustle is a winner. Enjoy our conversation as friend and NBA super-fan Juan joins in to chat this refreshing return of The Sandman to fine form as the film's lead Stanley Sugarman. Juan lends the episode a ton of insight on AND1 mixtapes and Anthony Edwards' sassy personality and the fun ways this film played with NBA icons' identities both on and off-the-court. 

It's a fun chat, if we say so ourselves! Thanks of listening! 

On this episode, we continue our Summer Olympics themed sports movie mini-tournament with the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire. An historical drama, Chariots of Fire offers a little dash of everything: an epic Vangelis score, pastoral shots of Scotlands' heath and heather, anti-semitic and anti-Protestant hostilities, and stuffy Cambridge rituals. It is as much about class and social stratification and micro-aggressions in post WWI Great Britain than it is about Olympic running. However, despite its lofty ambitions, soaring electronic backdrop, and Oscar winning accolades, Hugh Hudson's dual biopic may very well be one of the most overrated sports movies and Best Picture winners of all time. That doesn't mean it is not a good or worthwhile watch/listen, though. It just means it is overrated. For more context and depth about our opinions on this matter, check out the latest episode of Cinematic Underdogs!  

The Replacements came out at the turn of the millennium as a strange follow up for Keanu Reeves to The Matrix. Also starring Jon Favreau (in ridiculously aggro / full-throttle mode), Orlando Jones (bug-eyed / timorous / hilarious in every scene), and Gene Hackman (oddly sentimental for the otherwise goofy film), the movie boasts an all-star cast, off-the-wall humor, and a great comeback narrative inspired by a real life replacement team (the 1987 Washington Redskins) that filled in for the players on strike and who won three games at the tail end of the season; many even credit these wins for securing  a top seed and enough momentum heading into the playoffs that the original team, after settling with the NFL and returning, ultimately won the Super Bowl.  

Both silly and serious, absurd and heartwarming, and filled with an all-star but totally jarring 90's soundtrack (Lit, The Wallflowers, The Offspring), The Replacements is a quintessential composite of sports films that dominated cineplexes over the course of the decade that preceded it. Sure, there are moments that come off as borderline misogynistic and slightly racist and just simply in poor taste. During these moments, it is perhaps best to just wince or cringe, and to be grateful for how quickly our culture has changed and matured for the better.

Flaws and spiders and quicksand notwithstanding, the film can be as fulfilling, if in the right mood, as a bowl of hard boiled eggs (shout out to the diet of the Sumo wrestler linesman). With the sound of John Madden broadcasting, a juicy side-plot love story cheesy enough to win over the ironic romantic within us all, some circus-like brawls and melees, and lots of impromptu renditions of "I Will Survive" (accompanied by 400 lbs. dudes line-dancing), The Replacements will shamelessly pull everything out from its dated bag of tricks to win you over. 

Best watched with a six pack and a few sarcastic friends.

The Longest Yard is a total smorgasbord of tones, jokes, and cultural winks, whiffing at laughter from start to finish. We get a jail yard-sized salmagundi of half-baked jokes. Wet Willies. Terry Crewes peddling McDonald's cheeseburgers, fries, and McAssholes. Pegging the refs in the nuts. Dan Patrick cameo as a cop, clowning on Frodo. Goldberg rockin' an XXL jockstrap. Tracy Morgan as a prison yard Ladyboy. Adam Sandler drinking a six-pack during a high-speed chase. Chris Rock riffin' on white guys and Prozac. James Cromwell acting much too prestigiously for a Happy Madison project. Rob Schneider yelling, "You can do it!" as a callback to The Waterboy. Burt Reynolds hired as a nod to the much-superior original. Bob Sapp doing his best Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile impression. The Great Khali looking huge. Nelly, band-aid on his cheek and all. Jim Rome and Chris Berman being themselves, offering tongue-in-cheek color commentary. Kevin Nash, Brian Bosworth, and William Fichtner doing their best as prison guards, trying to infuse redemptive nuance into their villiany. Joey Diaz being chubby, homophobic, and unfunny. Steve Austin being stone-cold silly. Suffice to say, this one wasn't for us. But we do our best to tackle it anyway. Enjoy the smackdown!

Join your friendly underdogs as we chat Bronx Zoo '90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball, Peacock's 3-part docuseries on one of the worst NY Yankee's teams in franchise history. Based around a series of Joel Sherman articles first published in the NY Post, the doc covers everything from the exile of George Steinbrenner to the downfall of Mel Hall. The 1990 season was one for the record books for all the wrong reasons: a train wreck you can't help but to look at, even as you're cowering away.

From a no-hitter that ended miraculously in a 4-0 loss due to a calamity of fielding errors, to Pascual Perez playing backgammon in the Caribbean instead of showing up to Spring ball, to Mel Hall's open relationship and prom date with a teenage girl, to the back-and-forth contract feud between Steinbrenner and Dave Winfield, to the extortion and blackmail saga with Howie Spira (a NY felon, gambling addict, and all around low-life, to Deion Sander's dollar sign antics and terrible batting average, to cougars (yes, the feral felines!) in the locker room, this iteration of the Yanks was a carnivalesque free-for-all that you can't look away from.

Enjoy our recap of this wild tale of shenanigans in the ballpark and beyond!

On the latest episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we welcome Cows in the Field's one & only Justin Khoo back onto the pod to discuss Kon Ichikawa's monumental Tokyo Olympiad (1965). Commissioned by the Japanese government, this subversively playful and poetic depiction of the '64 Olympic games is a tour de force of cinematic techniques: filled with freeze-frames, still photograph montages, image masking, temporal intercutting, rack focus, fragmented close-ups (transforming athletes into abstract figures), smash cuts, animated transitions, Technicolor and black and white shots, shadow / telephoto shots, disruptive zooms, associational edits, and slow motion. 

Instead of venerating Japan's resurrection after WWII, the film concentrates on the game's oddities and idiosyncrasies: an umbrella in the crowd, a pastiche of elderly mens' gullets, a lemon placed on the race track, the food served at the Olympic Village cafeteria. It is also as concerned with the sting of defeat and the despairing fatigue of athletes who faltered as it is with the triumph of victors. Focused on peripheral elements and isolating specific limbs with metonymic humor and wit, Tokyo Olympiad is truly a tribute to the "tiny things that quicken the heart" (to take a quote from Chris Marker's Sans Soleil). 

Praises aside, the tension between the filmmaker and the financiers make for an interesting viewing. Interspersed throughout are orthodox sports moments, sloppy edits, and incongruous bouts of jingoism. Edited down for over 70 hours of footage, the end product feels a bit slapdash and haphazard. Nevertheless, with endless style and panache and a commitment to seeing the aesthetic formalism lurking underneath the hegemonic narrative of competition, Tokyo Olympiad is infinitely engaging and a must see for any fan of cinema or Olympics sports. It is currently streaming on HBO Max as we speak - so there's no excuse not to check it out! If you love art-house moviemaking and unique historical documents, you will thank us wholeheartedly. 

Finally, we apologize for getting to Tokyo Olympics content a month late. We got a bit too caught up watching all the live Olympic action on TV (which we talk about at length in this episode, as well). Nevertheless, for those suffering from an Olympics hangover (as we are) and for those who love experimental / daring avant-garde cinema (this is the first Criterion film we get to cover -- don't worry Rumble in the Jungle, you're still on the docket), this episode is not to be missed!

Season 2 of Untold has arrived and it's more viral than ever! That's right: Our favorite Netflix-produced sports documentary series is officially back! To commemorate the occasion, Aaron White of Feelin' Film joins us to discuss the incredibly bizarre and wacky 1st episode, Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist. 

As a two-part season opener, this jaw-dropping Untold entry chronicles Manti Te'o's miraculous senior season at Notre Dame and the public downfall that resulted when Deadspin doxxed the truth behind Manti's illusory dead girlfriend. This is one of those "you have to see it to believe it" stories, and easily one of the most infamous catfishing incidents in modern times. It also inspired one of our most feisty and tendentious conversations yet. We debate the tricky role of faith in our hyper-deceptive Internet age of (dis)information, the difference between empathy and sympathy, the ethical thresholds of exploring sexuality/identity at the harm of others, the pillars of virtue vs. the pragmatics of cynicism, and whether a gullible adult should be considered culpable for being innocently duped/blindly naive. 

Join us as we combatively sort through some pretty deep questions about pigskin politics, journalistic priorities, sheltered belief systems, the human right to redemption, the social benefits of healthy skepticism, the gracelessness of media dishonesty, and the placebo power of personal fictions. It gets a bit testy, at times, but we never lose sight of our shared goal: the intellectual synthesis and moral edification that can be achieved by recognizing an antithetical opinion. I'm not sure we reached harmonious reconciliation, but we at least openly and respectfully heard each other out. Sometimes, that's enough. 

Enjoy! 

We finish out our football season with another docuseries, jumping back into the world of Untold with Swamp Kings. On this episode, we talk abut what makes college football uniquely special, why this documentary is wrongly maligned, and why it is fairly criticized. In terms of leaving out the dirt on Urban Meyer and his Florida Gators, this four-part series is a head-scratcher — omitting the juicy, salacious controversies one is ostensibly expecting to see. But in doing so, we get another intriguing tale of militant style training camps and college football sincerity. For the Meyer and Tebow hates, this is pure hagiography, and it is. But for those more neutral to the players and subjects of this series, this is a raw look into what it takes — psychologically and physically — to be a powerhouse college football team. 

Howdy fellow Underdogs!!!

We're back with our second deep dive into sports-themed anime! This time we are joined by Matt St. Jack of Anime Talk! and cover Baki, a Netflix series featuring muscular martial artists with sinewy veins, bulging eyes, & bloodthirsty intentions. The narrative focuses on Baki Hanma, a young high-school fighter extraordinaire diligently training to eclipse his legendary father's status as a legend in the world of ultimate fighting. Meanwhile, five ultra-violent death row inmates have escaped in synchronicity and are descending upon Tokyo to take him on. 

*We apologize for the distorted audio & spotty edits ahead of time. I did my best to clean out some feedback the recording picked up, and there's a few clumsy segues as a result. All in all, the meat and potatoes of this conversation, which covers wide-ranging Anime territory (Matt is a veritable connoisseur of the genre!), is hearty and worth your time! 

Thanks for listening and don't forget to like, review, and promote our podcast to your friends and family. We love the support! 

We're back with a classic sports fusion film: Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer! Ashley Naftule (freelance writer, playwright at Space 55, Twitter humorist) joins us to celebrate the zany antics and devil-may-care CGI shenanigans of Hong Kong's slapstick king. It's a truly one-of-a-kind cinematic exercise, relocating Shaolin martial arts to the soccer pitch, and we have an absolute blast singing its praises and investigating its zany and somewhat taboo archetypal/gender dynamics.  Enjoy! 

Matt Belenky joins us for a double feature as we discuss Tony Scott's "The Fan" and D.J. Caruso's "Two for the Money". We talk the decline (or not) of "hack" studio directors, Robert De Niro's unhinged portrayal of a psychopath in "The Fan," and Al Pacino's twilight years as a leading man, among many other box office topics.

Enjoy!

Bilge Ebiri joins the pod to talk Michael Mann's Ferarri! We chat about the film's multidimensional themes, its subtle subversion of conventional sports tropes, and the powerful way its irreconcilable conflicts and philosophical tensions linger long after the initial viewing. We also discuss Bilge's Top 5 Sports Movies and the state of the genre. *A preemptive apologies for the mixed vocal quality. There was a mic issue that caused a postproduction headache.* Enjoy!

On our follow up episode to Indian Horse, we speak at length with the profound and insightful professor Kathryn Mitchell. Kathryn is of Comanche descent and has spent 25 years teaching Native American literature. She offers a bounty of knowledge about the horrific history of America's Boarding Schools, Canada's Residential Schools, and the strength and fortitude of North American indigenous people who have survived the atrocities of colonization. 

We contextualize this deeply edifying history lesson with the poignant and powerful themes of Indian horse, discussing how the motifs of circularity, community, and perseverance in the film reflect the spirit of a people who have retained their culture and ways of life in the face of formidable hegemonic threats. 

This is a very different Cinematic Underdogs episode that you won't want to miss! If interested in watching Indian Horse first, you can check it out on Netflix. It is an underseen and underrated film that deserves your attention and will reward you tremendously. 

Please like, subscribe, or talk trash about us on social media! We are lonely little puppies who love all of your attention :) 

Jed Bookout joins the pod to discuss A24’s early breakout hit of 2024, Love Lies Bleeding: a sapphic, bodybuilding, ultra-violent fever dream of a movie. Set in a scuzzy and sordid 1989 New Mexico setting, and tracking a pair of lesbians turned serial killers by necessity, Love Lies Bleeding is a tonal tour de force evoking the likes of Paul Schrader, Lynne Ramsey, & David Cronenberg. Perhaps the best synopsis of her sophomore entry: Imagine Nicolas WInding Refn directing a Coen Bros script. 

Over the course of the episode, we also discuss Rose Glass’ promising future, Kristen Stewart’s best career performances, the film’s moral neutrality toward ‘roid rage and its juxtapositions between the seedy and the sultry, the unorthodox structural brilliance of Vox Lox, the underrated sub-genre of vagabonds going on vacations in hell (namely, Spring), and the many influences of Love Lies Bleeding’s neo-noirish, black comedy beats.

And yes, we make sure the conversation veers podcast relevant by intermittently debating whether it could be considered a quasi-sports movie, likening it to everything from Black Swan to The Wrestler (although, upon further reflection, Stallone’s arm-wrestling masterpiece Over the Top or the Farrelly Brothers’ bowling romp Kingpin may serve as better reference points).

Enjoy!

On this episode, we leap back to medieval times to cover the anachronistic, rennaisance-era, sports comedy and period piece A Knight's Tale with Seth Troyer, cohost of the Unwatchables pod and director of Vertigo II. Led by the romantic chivalry of Heath Ledger, the poetic panache of Paul Bettany, and some spicy pixie-girl charisma from Shanynn Sossamon, A Knight's Tale is a fun spoof film with literary wit, sportive flair, and a romantic tongue.

We have a blast digging into this anacrhonistic romp featuring a wily bard that goes by Chaucer, a squire-turned-jouster masking his peasant past, a female Scottish blacksmith, a comedic sidekick who loves to use the word "fong" in every aggressive exclamation, and an evil Count Adhemar. Enjoy our conversation of this idiosyncratic, unorthodox sports film!

Enjoying our podcast? Give us 5 stars, tell your friends, and preach the joy of our little underdog podcast!

We're back and we're championing Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby! On this episode, we talk about the satirical underbite of the film's rampant product placement, the sanctity of capitalist spaces, American vs. French tensions in the early 00's, Sasha Baron Cohen's pitch perfect casting, the odd conversion of Walker and Texas Ranger, and the backstabbing innocence of Cal Naughton.

Shake and Bake, baby!

The Dostoevsky allusion in the title of latest Untold episode we cover ("Crimes & Penalties") is apt in more ways than one. Like the hard-hitting Russian novel, this episode about a small-town mafia-run hockey team comprised entirely of goons blurs the lines of orthodox morality. The premise is simple: Jimmy Galante (kingpin of Connecticut's trash empire and the purported real-life inspiration for Tony Soprano) buys his son, AJ, his very own minor league (UHL) hockey team. AJ is a bonafide WWE/The Mighty Ducks fanatic & a former ice hockey enforcer (who's burgeoning career prematurely ended due to a debilitating injury). Equally intimidated and thrilled, AJ does what any 17-year old would do with an expansion team: he molds it after his obsessions, assembling an eclectic ensemble of outcasts, goons, rejects, and ‘heels’.   Known as the Danbury Trashers, AJ's bizarre vision quickly becomes the bane of the UHL and the talk of the town (ultimately, the country, too, after being featured in multiple segments on Sportscenter). Embracing their ethos as a bunch of troublemakers, rabble-rousers, and misfits, the Trashers run amok: turning the ice rink into a three-ring circus of broken bones, dirty equipment pranks, toothless smiles, and the infamously rowdy goading of Section 102. Meanwhile, the owner, Jimmy, keeps the players happy with under the table duffel bags of money, meals at 4 star restaurants, and lakeside estates. By the time the FBI enters the story, we’ve already witnessed extortion, bribery, and death threats all for the sake of beer league hockey. Yet, as wildly irreverent, crude, and notoriously rowdy as the Trashers became, you can’t help but to cheer them on — which is a testament to their unapologetic personalities and lovable underdog ethos. As underdog advocates, we found ourselves won over as well! So, without further adieu, enjoy this fast-paced & inspired free-for-all of an episode where we take turns oohing and aahing about this wildly entertaining and downright insane story! 

On our finale installment of our two-part discussion of "The Queen's Gambit," we really dig into how the coming-of-age narrative at the center of this lovely Netflix Miniseries parallels the key stages of Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey." Tracking Beth's rise to stardom, downward spiral into addiction, regenerative return to her homeland / orphanage, and ultimate ascent to chess supremacy, we celebrate how well crafted and inspiring her story truly is. We also examine the savvy ways in which Cold War motifs, like collectivism vs. individuality, are depolarized and investigated by the countercultural, punk-rock ethos of the late 60s American chess troupe that teams up to support Beth; and we even explore the ways in which traditional gender roles and expectations are refreshingly subverted.

For those who loved this 7-part Bildungsroman as much as we did, you will not be disappointed as we inspect "The Queen's Gambit" with quirky analogies and idiosyncratic lenses. That said, we must issue a quick warning: the sound quality in this episode is subpar, becoming quite tinny, muffled, and echoey at times. Sadly, we recently upgraded our podcast equipment and haven't fully figured out all the controls yet. The audio sounded perfectly solid live, and yet distorted once it was compressed and recorded. We totally blew it on this level, but we are nevertheless proud of the conversation and are just going to stick with what we got. It is still an extremely rewarding listen for those who can deal with lo-fi quality. However, for those with high standards in terms of sonic quality, I'd suggest skipping this episode and choosing any of the others we've previously published!

We promise it'll sound better than ever by next time...when we get to our next MiniTournament of Sports movies focused on perhaps our most beloved sport of all: hockey!

Until then, apologies for the sound, thanks for listening nonetheless, and thanks as always for your continuing support!

What's up, Underdogs!? ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!? Well, you better be because we're back, we're joined by Lou Moon, and we're diving headfirst into a raunchy sports comedy about the wonderful world of WCW wrestling. Yes, that's right: we're powerbombing 2000's puerile cult classic Ready to Rumble! This fatuously fun film is absolutely stacked. It stars David Arquette, Scott Caan, Oliver Platt, Joe Pantoliano, Martin Landau, and an ultra-hot Rose McGowan; it features epic, Slim Jim-inspired cameos from a horde of professional wrestlers (Goldberg, Booker T, Sting, Diamond Dallas Page, Randy Savage, Sid Vicious, Bam Bam Bigelow, Rey Mysterio Jr., and of course, Michael Buffer); and it's written by the king of juvenilia/silly kid-skewing sports comedies, Steven Brill.

What are you waiting for? Grab those dusty spandex, queue up your entrance song, and join us as we perform a tag-team suplex on this hilariously dumb movie, which achieves something rare in Cinema, becoming the equivalent of mixing Red Bull & an Icee. No doubt, this thing is frozen in time - stuck in that strangely boyish space we knew as the late 90s/early 00s. It's one hell of a brain freeze: a serially ridiculous prepubescent buddy comedy with a shit-eating grin on its face. Why are you still reading this? Wipe that Cheshire grin away and get in the damn ring!

Enjoy!

On this bonus episode, your cinematic underdogs join Feelin' Film for a guest appearance discussion on the feel-good, 2023 dad-flick Air. Directed by Ben Affleck, written by Alex Convery, and starring Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Marlon Wayans, Chris Messina, and Chris Tucker, Air is the highly-manipulated backstory of Nike's acquisition of the GOAT Michael Jordan. Giving MJ not only a licensing fee, but also a slice of the residual pie with royalties on each sale, Nike capitulated billions in potential profit to acquire a young, unproven NBA rookie. It was a daring gamble, but one that paid off handsomely as MJ went on to become one of the most lucrative sports figures and brand icons in history. Listen to us debate whether this is a sports movie, celebrate Affleck’s directorial consistency, and praise on of the underdog winners at the cineplex in 2023.

It's Oscars season and so we're back with Matt Belenky to spar with a Best Picture winner: Million Dollar Baby. Starring and directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Paul Haggis a year before he penned yet another Best Picture Winner in Crash, this pugilistic take on euthanasia is a classic tearjerker. It is also a mixed punching bag: filled with melodramatic fetishization of the southern bumpkin archetype, brilliant cinematography, a florid narration by none other than Morgan Freeman (channeling strong Shawshank Redemption vibes), and a plucky Best Actress performance (earned or not) by the always endearing (if not a little cloying) Hilary Swank (to be fair, everyone in this is a maudlin caricature, to degrees). Though nowhere near as bad as we make it out to be (one might say it's more appropriately "between nowhere and goodbye"), Million Dollar Baby received a good old-fashioned beatdown on this episode. If you're in the mood for some Academy Award-adjacent schadenfreude, you've come to the right place. Enjoy!!!

We heard it all. A shameless commercial grab bag. IP overload. Jumbled tech references. A WB universe that makes zero cohesive sense. Lebron, like Jordan, can't act. 

And there is a lot of truth to all those statements. But at the same time, we didn't forget that this is SPACE JAM we are talking about! 

Let me say it again: SPACE JAM!!! You know the franchise where WB execs decided to team up their Looney Toon squad with NBA superstars, and pass it off as a summer blockbuster? The franchise that is truly remembered for R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" more than anything else. 

It IS supposed to be the equivalent of a two-hour McDonald's commercial. It is supposed to be a  craven, impudent form of capitalism. It is supposed to have the nutritional value of a Happy Meal, or a bowl of Wheaties, at best. 

And you know what, for a SPACE JAM film, the sequel isn't merely good: it is damn good. It's Easter Eggs are absurd. It's algorithmic plotline is overwrought. And it's scoring system makes absolutely no sense. 

That said, as a dumb, summertime, candy-coated, rainbow-hued flick that is made to titillate kid's eyes and wink and nod at the nostalgic audience just enough to keep us awake, it more than succeeds! It is a total slam dunk! 

Suffice to say, here at Cinematic Underdogs WE DID NOT drink the Haterade! Not even a single sip. 

Hear why we think Space Jam: A New Legacy is an absolute blast in this episode, and listen to us debate about whether it trumps the original or not! 

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and talk shit about our podcast wherever you engage. 

That's all for now, fellow Underdogs! Toodaloo-Fruitaloo!

Co-founder / cohost of Feelin' Film and writer at This is Patch, Patrick Hicks is a bonafide sports movie lover. His passion for the genre is resonant and inspiring to hear, and this episode is stuffed wall-to-wall with great insights on everything from being oversaturated with content to the future of movie theaters to the emotional beats in sports movies that can get even the most stoic among us to shed a tear. 

Patrick also has a long history of ebbing and flowing with his appreciation of and apprehensions towards Chariots of Fire. He adores it for all the right (and fascinating) reasons and also has a very mature take on its shortcomings. Providing the much silver lining we needed after singularly critiquing it on the last episode, Patrick's charitable and infectious appreciation of the Best Picture classic offers a refreshing perspective. 

Enjoy!

For our hundred and first episode, we are back with the classics. Baseball classics to be precise! Join us as we discuss 1989’s hit sports comedy Major League and 1993’s hit kids’ sports film fantasy Rookie of the Year. We also talk about the disappearance of Pauly Shore, the growing fervor around 90s spy/thriller film revivalism, box office gems from the time of both releases and debate the merit and trickiness around deeming anything an instant classic. It's a long episode but you can split it into two distinct listens!

On the latest episode, we continue to explore the long-form format of docu-series by tackling HBO's Hard Knocks: Training Camp w/ the Detroit Lions. Sure, it's classifiable as Reality TV, but when it comes to getting an in-depth, behind-the-scenes, all-access look at the ins and outs of running a professional football team, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more illuminating source than the first and longest-running sports documentary series in TV history. 

Produced by NFL Films and narrated by Liev Schreiber (a tidbit neither of us were privy to during the recording and were both undeniably shocked to learn), the flashy series feels shackled by some of its dated/vestigial stylistic traditions. The narration, aping David Attenborough's Nat-Geo style of zoological/anthropological objectivism and wonder, feels oddly at ends with the subject matter - somewhat dehumanizing the players and team. Fortunately, the voice-over framing device is seldom applied, and outside of its gaucheness, the show shines. 

Detroit & its eternally underperforming, down-and-out Lions offer a riveting subject matter. The team/season is helmed by the imposing yet affable presence of Dan Campbell, and led by spirited personalities, including Jamaal Williams, who's passionate post-practice speech about the previous year's abysmal record went viral for good reason. Another standout is Aidan Hutchinson, the darling 1st round draft pick who knocks it out of the park with another viral bit: a spunky, training camp performance of MJ's "Billie Jean."

What makes this season particularly riveting is the focus is largely on players on the cutting block still trying to make a name and earn legit, 6 or 7-figure paycheck. Instead of spending time with Swift and Goff, this pre-season look at the Lions details the ups and downs of those seeking the last spot on the depth chart - Craig Reynolds (the RB3, maybe RB4 with an older brother in jail), Obinna Eze (the Nigerian), Malcolm Rodriquez ("Rodrigo"), David Blough (the 3rd string QB), and Kalil Pimpleton (the juggling, super speedy, but butterfinger-hands slot receiver). 

Witnessing these players practice, prepare, and put it all on the line during pre-season matches elevates the otherwise meaningless games. For an outsider, preseason football is but a glorified practice - a chance for football teams to workout the kinks. But for players on the cutting line, each snap is a tryout - a matter of keeping their job or getting sent packing home or to another team's practice squad. For sports fans who care more about the existential dynamics of the humans behind the pads, this element couldn't be more riveting. It made the season more profound and pathos-filled than any in-season glimpse at x's and o's could ever hope to be. 

Starring Rick Moranis, Ed O'Niell, and a very young Devin Sawa (so young, in fact, he had not yet proliferated the cover of Teen Bob), there are few other kids' based 90's sports films as quintessentially 90's as the little gem: Warner Bro's 1994 entry, Little Giants. 

Produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by the man who brought you Homeward Bound & Halloweentown, inspired by a 1992 McDonald's Super Bowl commercial, featuring cameos by Emmitt Smith and John Madden, and based upon a budding sibling pee-wee football rivalry (the fraternal foes here are the coaches) in the small Ohio town of Urbania, this film is as about American as apple pie. 

The only non-Disney entry in our bracket/cluster/tournament of movies about underdog pre-teens who valiantly triumph over evil (whether that invidious force appear in the guise of The Hawks / The Knights / Iceland /  Tony Perkins / Shitty Dads / Eden Hall Academy's Varsity Squad), the Little Giants is a worthy inclusion: a seminal kids' film from this wickedly rich decade of the genre. 

Revolving around familial conflict, the culture of bullying, and the obnoxious stereotypes of gender-based prejudice, Little Giants exudes a realism and naturalness that feels fresh, and yet it still makes sure to pile in all of the usual juvenile antics for a welcoming bevy of laughs: including snot bubbles, concussions, go-kart races, pratfalls, crappy / eclectic equipment choices, milquetoast warriors, and chubby kids who hide food in unlikely places (a PB&J in a football helmet) / torment their environment with hilariously puerile bouts of unstoppable flatulence. 

So get a PB&J yourself and perhaps a roll of toilet paper to toss around with a friend, and treat yourself to our very personal breakdown of this incredibly nostalgic film: a dissection that is hopefully as brilliant and elaborate as the ingenious Annexation of Puerto Rico trick play. Plus, enjoy a mid-episode interview with Michael Visy, a fellow Little Giants enthusiast, a lifelong NY Giants fan, and a co-host from the wildly charming Michael Scott Guarantee Podcast (https://www.buzzsprout.com/908746). 

We're back to the basics this week, covering Charles Stone III's "The Underdoggs," starring Snoop Dog, Mike Epps, and George Lopez. This is a film we've been barking for: a kids' centered sports movie in the vein of The Might Ducks, Little Giants, or The Big Green, only raunchier. Filled with direct callbacks to each of movies (including a scene where a Hummer arrives on the football field just as Emilio Estevez infamously had his limo driver park on the ice, an Annexation of Puerto Rico-inspired trick play, and an asthmatic kid with an overbearing, neurotic mom a la the nose-bubble dweeb in Little Giants), The Underdoggs fills like a giant homage to his 90s predecessors.

For what this 90-minute comedy offers, we found it a success. As most know, boys are a puerile bunch. They curse, they say dirty jokes, they're rowdy. The Underdoggs leans into this reality, and it does so with winks that let us know that the kids sports movies we grew up loving still have a niche place in the culture today. Sure, the dramatic beats and attempts at poignancy feel rushed and hasty (lost in the glib pastiche of surface sentiment and elision by way of meta winks), but The Underdoggs' rehashes the tropes and archetypes we know so well at the same time, reviving this little subgenre with blunts, runts, and unfiltered glee.

Enjoy!

Matt Belenky joins the pod to breakdown Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, a breakout 2024 hit about a steamy tennis threesome. We discuss Zendaya's star power, the nuanced dynamic of the film's central love triangle (in comparison to other love triangle movies: Vicky Christina Barcelona, Yu Tu Mama Tambien, The Dreamers, Bull Durham, etc.), Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's thumping and ecstatic electro score, how this fits into the pantheon of great tennis movies, Luca's incremental acclimatization to shooting suburban America, the refreshing arrival of an adult romantic/sports drama with palpable buzz and fervor, whether the film is kinky/erotic or a giant marketing tease, and the use of tennis as a sublimated metaphor for sex.

Enjoy!

On this episode, we invite Mikey from Screen Nerds Podcast (an avid Tennessee Titans superfan since their arrival in Nashville) to discuss the return of Untold with "The Muder of Air McNair." Part crime-doc and part sports-recap, this episode felt vexingly conspiratorial and disjointed. We break down why we feel it is one of the weaker entries in the docu-series and wonder if it's an anomaly or a harbinger of things to come.

We also chat about the never-ending slate of 2024 streaming content, from Netflix's Receivers to HBO Max's return of Hard Knocks with the Chicago Bears. There is certainly no shortage of content available to whet our appetites for another dramatic season of America's most beloved sport, the NFL.

Enjoy!

On this episode of Cinematic Underdogs, Jordan Puga and Paul Keelan are confronted with a film that exists on the threshold of the podcast's dedicated genre: should Heavyweights be considered a sports film at all? Beyond this dilemma, we are also perplexed by the assortment of tones and sensibilities in this strange curio. Produced, created, distributed, and marketed by Disney as a kid's comedy, Heavyweights veers into foreign territory and is certainly not the expected lightweight fare that its brand name is so famous for. The reason for this incongruity is plain and simple: Ben Stiller's character Tony Perkins.

A sociopathic fitness guru celebrity without a shred of compassion in his overzealous, caloric-obsessed brain, Tony Perkins is a riot from the moment he steps onto the screen: disrupting the otherwise hackneyed screenplay of a misfit group of obese kids enjoying a summer camp with similarly built peers. Zany, intense, unpredictable, and hard to pinpoint, Heavyweights is anomalous in almost every way one chooses to look at it. And that is what precisely makes the film so irresistibly intriguing, flaws and all. 

So grab a sub sandwich, a glass of wheatgrass, enjoy our dialectic about a film that has slowly attracted a cult following, and decided for yourself: is Heavyweights an overrated or an underdog entry into the universe of 90's Disney Kids Sports Movies?

We’re back with our friends Aaron & Patrick from Feelin’ Film to talk 2023’s underdog sleeper hit of the year, Blackberry: a riveting, fictionalized biopic detailing the rise & fall of the now-infamous phone. Equally funny and thrilling, Blackberry taps into the spirit of Fincher’s The Social Network or Boyle’s Steve Jobs. It is filled with amazing performances and panache—appropriating Nat Geo-style long-lenses (a stylistic riff stolen from D.A. Pennebaker’s The War Room), leaning into faux-documentary comedic beats (Christopher Guest films, The Office), celebrating the by-the-bootstraps/punk-rock ethos of indie filmmaking (Primer, Slacker, Clerks), and heavily stylizing itself with erratic camera shifts and short, snappy, WanderCam pans (which approximate a sense of eavesdropping on tense, anxiety-inducing affairs). It’s also a topical cautionary message about the dangers of unchecked greed and myopic business decisions, and in this way it resembles the recent slate of streaming mini-series documenting market-driven folly (The Dropout, WeCrashed, Fyre Fraud, etc.).  

Although it is only tangentially affiliated with sports (there is a fairly prominent side plot involving an attempt to purchase an NHL team), we felt like this would be a perfect companion piece to our conversation on Air. Both films track the origins of a culture-altering IP, showcasing the competitive ferocity of entrepreneurialism. Both films also examine the ways cutthroat business acumen, team camaraderie, rivaling companies, and creative playfulness clash, dictate, and shape the way technology and commerce operate. Yes, to call this a sports movie would be disingenuously lenient, even for our criminally lax standards. But sometimes it’s good to question genre boundaries, as trespassing outside stringent confines can help delineate and expand one's understanding of the immanent tropes, archetypes, leitmotifs, and structural parameters that can't be compromised.

We are still in the thick of football season and back with an episode on Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the New York Jets, or The Aaron Rodgers Show as we called it. Hear us discuss our likes, dislikes, and takeaways from this season. Next episode — and our final pigskin themed docuseries for the kickoff of football season — will be Untold: Swamp Kings.

Please share, rate our pod, and share some more! Enjoy!

With technology and mathematics continuing to replace the human workforce, the relevancy of "<I>Moneyball<I>" far supersedes the baseball park. Nevertheless, while the plot of this Oscar-nominated film can feel numerically engineered at times, it never forgets its more sentient roots as a veritable sports movie. With statistically-driven montage sequences, an ecstatic portrayal of the Oakland A's record breaking twenty-game win streak, and the depiction of a ragtag team replete with unorthodox personalities, "<I>Moneyball<I>" balances its heady & arithmetical proclivities by adding all of the classic sports tropes we've come to love in this traditionally 'feel good' genre.

From the opening shots of the Oakland A's forlorn front office to its moody final close-up of a General Manager's staring straight ahead with bittersweet tears outlining his eyes, "<I>Moneyball<I>" is much more emotionally complex than your ordinary baseball flick. Written by Steven Zaillian ("Searching for Bobby Fisher") and Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network"), directed by Bennett Miller ("Capote" / "Foxcatcher"), and starring Brad Pitt (playing Billy Beane) and Jonah Hill (as Peter Brand), the film is a truly ensemble effort: with each member of the all-star roster pulling their weight. Even the smaller roles in the film—from Phillip Seymour Hoffman performance as the beleaguered A's coach Art Howe to Chris Pratt's performance as an aging catcher relocated to first base—fill in the margins of "<I>Moneyball<I>" with the necessary layers of subtext and texture the film needs to drive its philosophical home. 

Recognizing the impact and moral weight that these players give the film, Jordan Puga and Paul Keelan analyze the many philosophical and ethical predicaments that are provoked by the growing popularity of SABRmetrics in baseball and beyond:

Have we become too consumed with empirical data and lost our instinctive human edge? 

Was Billy Beane's all-in bet on the hypothesis that OBP trumps all other factors the predominant factor in spurring the Oakland A's toward their miraculous turnaround season? 

And if the money is simply reallocated to overpaying GM's and sabermetricians in the aftermath of the growing prominence of this practice, has anything really been circumvented or changed? 

These are big-time questions, and "<I>Moneyball's<I>" ambivalent ending—leaving the viewer stewing and pensive at best—serves as the ideal catalyst for meaningful discourse: providing a ton of existential pickles to be scrupulously parsed and pondered over. 

-

As always, thanks for listening! 

Please follow us on Twitter (@CinematicUnder) or Letterboxd (Search: Cinematic Underdogs, or just click on this link https://letterboxd.com/synemastehsia/)! 

And don't forget to subscribe, review, and like the podcast via whatever platform you are listening to it on. 

 

We're back and chatting about yet another excellent episode of Netflix's Untold series. This time, we enter the purgatory to discuss the insanely tumultuous highs and lows of Christy Martin's boxing career and personal life in Deal with the Devil. The title itself is quite revealing: it overtly hints at the Faustian bargain Christy made by marrying her wickedly abusive/controlling real-life trainer/promoter/coach Jim Martin. It also obliquely acknowledges the fact that she not only entered into a partnership with this devilish figure, but that she "dealt" with him: even surviving Jim's very visceral attempt to take her life. 

Christy Martin's story is truly one-of-a-kind. Hailing from a small, backcountry mining town in West Virginia, she becomes a worldwide phenomenon after a bludgeoning, broken-nose performance on a Tyson card at MGM Grand. Soon, she's being picked up by late-night TV shows, placed on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and promoted by Don King. She also ends up playing a homophobic heel (despite being a closet lesbian), becoming addicted to cocaine, and getting into a life-or-death scuffle (replete with stab wounds, gun shots, and battered skulls) with her furious husband/boxing coach. 

Described as having a stone chin, Christy's resilience and stamina is unrivaled. She is a fighter in every sense of the word and this episode is a testament to the wild, admirable, and unbelievable story of her life: both inside and outside of the boxing ring. 

Enjoy! 

This extra-special episode of Cinematic Underdogs welcomes Juan — former track star walk-on, unabashed Steve Prefontaine super-fan, and current rockstar psychology PhD student at ASU.  Studying the intersections of exercise & dieting (among other factors), Juan is teeming with the type of esoteric insights we cherish so much on the pod: offering a uniquely immersive, heady, and self-reflexive perspective and all around good vibes.  Discussing everything from the logistics & phenomenology of competitive running, to the tenuous conjectures & over-localized correlations we tend to make between what we eat and how we perform, to the larger-than-life persona of our boy Pre, this conversation is for anyone as titillated as we are by the subcultural nuances of collegiate running, biometrics, and the dire economics of amateur athletes.  Mostly though, we debate the merits of 1996's Without Limits vis-à-vis 1997's Prefontaine: exploring the commensurately incisive & elusive mythology of an iconic young man from Coos Bay, OR, whose impassioned devotion to running inspired these indelible biopics and so much more. 

On the very first episode of Cinematic Underdogs, Jordan Puga and Paul Keelan discuss, debate, and circumscribe the scope of what their podcast will focus on: sports movies.  What exactly defines a sports movie? Is it the setting? Is it simply any film with an athlete or a sports franchise in it? Are skateboarding movies sports films? What about chess films? The Big Lebowski? Ace Ventura? 

The outline of the podcast is also established: Cinematic Underdogs will entail monthly clusters (Adam Sandler sports movies, female-centered sports movies, chess movies, etc..) in which Jordan and Paul will debate the merits and compare and contrast films within similar sub-genres within the broad scope of "sports films". Finally, they go over a few of their favorite sports films going into the podcast and discuss some of the tropes, curiosities, and ambitions they hope to pursue through cataloguing and analyzing at length a new sports film each week.  

Whether it was due to its criticism for being Oscar-bait, or Will Smith's valiantly manufactured but still awkward Nigerian accent, Concussion never really got hold of the cultural zeitgeist. A slick legal and scientific procedural, filled with tons of exposition and salacious exposés about the damning evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and the iniquitous cover-up antics of the National Football League (NFL), Concussion is a smooth way to cram in a cognitive overload of information.

Sure, it is a bit syrupy; and sure, the dialogue feels stilted and manufactured for most of the movie. But as an indictment of how corporate America will shamelessly shield the truth from its employees and customers, even at the detriment to their physiological well-being, the film is as timely as ever. If anything, it is pretty amazing to note how little of a dent Concussion and the controversies around CTE made on the thick skulls running and celebrating the NFL. Nevertheless, as incriminatory as this synopsis sounds, we do our very best to empathize and consider the arguments of all sides while unpacking the pros and cons of this somewhat predictable but also easily digestible little guy vs. big corporation entry into the canon. 

This week Don Shanahan of Every Movie Has a Lesson / Cinephile Hissy Fit joins us to discuss American Underdog. Directed by the Erwin brothers, American Underdog chronicles the inspirational rise of Kurt Warner (Zachary Levi) as he bags groceries, bides his time, slings the football in the Arena league (AFL), and scraps his way back to the NFL. Backed by his equally resilient wife, Brenda (Anna Paquin), and her family, Kurt proves to everyone that persevering against all odds can pay off.

It is not difficult to deduce that this film fits our podcast's overarching theme to perfection from the synopsis and movie title alone. Yet, we can be a finicky bunch, and sometimes are the most critical toward film's that hit closest to home. On this episode, we discuss the sweet spot for making biopics when the iron is hot, the odd and unfair dismissiveness toward secularized Christian cinema, and the real possibility that Kurt Warner would have never become a Super Bowl winter and league MVP if he hadn't polished his skills in the ultra-kinetic AFL.

Hear us debate the merits, demerits, and sort our varied opinions on this lovably subtle faith-based underdog story today! Ruff, ruff!

On our latest episode, we discuss Karate Kid 2 with the prolific and ever-insightful Gene Ching: layman disciple of the original Shaolin Temple, former publisher of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine, sword/weapons guru, and resident Cobra Kai expert on Den of Geek. Alongside Gene, we tackle everything that works and doesn't work in the second installment of the Karate Kid canon -- reflecting on the film's genre shift from sports tropes to kung fu tropes, deriding its moments of egregious cultural appropriation / misrepresentation, and celebrating the charms and silver lining within this much-maligned sequel. 

Sure, Karate Kid 2 may not be the greatest entry in the franchise but it still offers a fun journey back to the homeland of Mr. Miyagi -- giving Daniel San and its 80's audience a rare glance into Japanese life and culture. From its So-Cal beginning to its rousingly ridiculous Okinawa death-match finale, Karate Kid 2 covers a ton of territory, touching upon the ethics of legacy, regret, pacifism, romance, loyalty, eco-harmony, and owning up to one’s past. We do our best sorting it all out. 

The 100 Foot Wave is truly must-watch TV for anyone who appreciated big wave surfing. Following Garrett McNamara and his lifelong quest to catch the world’s biggest wave, the 1st season tracked his dual romantic elopements—both to his wife, Nicole, and to Nazaré, a small Portuguese port town where he stumbles upon an undiscovered swell of mythic proportions. 

Season 2 picks up in the decline of Garrett’s dominance, chronicling his transition to family life and his maturation into a mentor figure. It also tracks the monstrous swell created by Hurricane Epsilon, the ramifications of COVID-19 on surfing, and the emerging big-wave parvenu, an endearing cast of relatable characters: Andrew "Cotty" Cotton, Justine Dupont, Antonio Laureano, Michelle Bouillons, Kai Lenny, CJ Macias, Lucas “Chumbo," and more. This niche community of big wave surfers is inspiring and likable, conquering extraordinary feats on the surf board with stupefying temerity and tenacity.

This episode, covering the 2nd season of HBO’s Emmy-winning docuseries The 100 Foot Wave has sat in the vault for quite some time. We were hoping to record the 1st season and release it first, however, fate keeps interrupting those plans, so the time has come to finally let this ride free (before the box office talk that kicks off the episode feels too outdated).

Thus, without further ado, the time has arrived for us to let this totally rad conversation hang ten. Join Michael Burgett of Screen Nerds Podcast and I (Paul Keelan) as we work backwards from the sophomore season, waxing awestruck about our amazing watching this gem of a show. And don’t fret: our episode on the sublime inaugural season will emerge when the oceans calm and the swell is ready.

We're back and we're pile-driving into the dark, messy history of the WWE/WWF. Under the ownership of the polarizing Vince McMahon, wrestling went from feudal territories to cable TV mania. We examine the dueling identities of its greatest promoter, trying to unpack the Vince McMahon/Mr. McMahon split personality. You also want to tune in if you're interested in a nostalgic celebration of all the eras of the WWE/WWF, including the Attitude era, the Ruthless Aggression era, as well as the WCW vs. WWE heyday where every Monday night Raw and Nitro squared off on cable TV (giving everyone a reason to flip back-and-forth between USA and TNT).

Enjoy!

On this very special bonus episode, Paul geeks out with the ever entertaining Jed Bookout (Twitter / Instagram: @jedbookout) as Jed enumerates and extrapolates upon his top seven sports films of all time. Jed's list is tailor-made for cinephiles, straddling the eclectic margins of the genre: a celebration of genre-defiant game-changers like "<I>Speed Racer<I>" & "<I>Shaolin Soccer<I>" & "<I>The Wrester<I>" to name just a few.

From here, we segue into a fruitful discussion revolving around Jed's favorite Soderbergh films (spanning from "<I>Magic Mike XXL<I>" to "<I>Sex, Lies, & Videotape<I>" to "<I>Out of Sight<I>") before finally delving into some intriguingly hot takes on "High Flying Bird": likening moments in the 2019 Netflix film to everything from John Ford's "<I>The Searchers<I>" to Sidney Lumet's "<I>Network<I>" to Spike Lee's "<I>Bamboozled<I>" the snappy, dialogue-heavy style of Aaron Sorkin's works.

Do not let the title of this episode fool you. A comprehensive overview of quirky / under-appreciated sports movies & Soderbergh's immense oeuvre, the conversation dribbles all over the court in the best possible way! 

Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe / like Cinematic Underdogs on whatever platform you are using! 

Welcome to the latest episode of Cinematic Underdogs (Or should I say, Cinematic Underska? Or is it Cinematic Under Sophisti-Pop? Perhaps Cinematic Under-Christian Jangle Pop?)...

Whatever cinematic multiverse you choose to join us in, you're welcome to a frothy treat! We're joined by ska and sophisti-pop connoisseur Oye Oye Estaban for a look back at BASEketball, the 1998 sports parody directed by David Zucker (Airplane, Naked Gun, Scary Movie) and starring two of the 90's premier enfant terribles, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creaters of South Park, duh).

So get out that hemorrhoid cream and get ready for some soapy psyche-outs, hot takes on ska, Real Big Fish fandom, breakdowns of "Beer" (the song, of course), and analytic tangents on the now-obsolescent juvenilia of a bygone era, because we're coming in hotter than Jenny McCarthy buffing the lobby.

Enjoy!

We've finally found our home on the putting green and covered Happy Gilmore, the seminal millennial sports comedy classic that largely inspired us to start this podcast.

If you love Happy, Chubbs, Shooter, Subway ad placements, hockey shenanigans, and the rest of the 90s Happy Madison crew as much as we do, then you've stopped by your happy place!

Grab a pitcher of beer and gallop that horse-y around your own personal heaven cause you've hit jackpot! And stay tuned, because Happy Gilmore is the first in a bracket of Sandler vs. Ferrell sports comedies coming your way this spring and summer!

Cheers!

Welcome to yet another zany podcast episode dedicated solely to shooting-the-sh!t about a classic hockey movie! This time we discuss the 1986 film "Youngblood" with Justin Peterson of The Average Joe's Movie Club Cast.

This is largely forgotten 80s film is truly a product of its time: drenched in sweat, synth-music, and montage sequences. It is basically "Dirty Dancing" and "Flashdance" on ice. Homoerotic, melodramatic, and starring a trio of beloved Hollywood hunks—Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, and Keanu Reeves—this has all the makings, even 35 years after it premiered, to be a sleeper hit and a sudden cultural phenomenon. 

Its heyday will come, we are sure of it! No, it's not a masterpiece. But it's pretty damn entertaining, and hilariously horny too. And thats why its  renaissance in the cinematic zeitgeist is due to arrive. When? Who knows! Maybe this episode get the puck flowing...

Finally, if you are not a bot, but a real life human (or humanoid, whatever you prefer in this cyborg age) listening to this, get that hand out your nose and press like, or better yet, write us a comment praising how brilliant, charming, funny, and handsome-sounding we are. It's the least you could do you slothful consumer—yes, we see you in your rooms and cars decaying away. Go ahead and make that entropic energy a bit more useful, and be Cinematic Underdog puppets. We'll never repay you. 

We welcome sci-fi maestro SF Covell on the pod to wax nostalgic about the killer 1975 dystopian thriller Rollerball. In perhaps our most off-the-cuff & critical divisive episode of CU yet, we get heated (Jordan blasphemously claims the nu-metal-heavy 2002 Rollerball remake is better), hairy (discussing James Caan's chest and John Houseman's nose), & hoarse (from praising how kick-ass, paranoiac, & stylishly cynical this mid-70's flick can be). Rollerball is definitely an underrated gem (ignore Jordan's opinion) and listening to SF Covell relish while reminiscing on decades-old memories of shouting and screaming at a screening during its initial theatrical run is all the proof you need to know that sports films don't get much more immersive & visceral than this. With its dreamy interludes, extravagant zoom shots, surrealistic sense of ecological/corporate foreboding, and prescient narrative digressions, sports movies don't get much weirder and savvier than Rollerball either. It's a cinematic curio well worthy of our combative and kinetic conversation. Enjoy! And don't forget to like, rate, chirp, and spread our shit -- our doggie doody is hot of the press and calling your name!

On this episode we are joined by Matt Strohl, author of Why It's OK to Love Bad Movies, to discuss the Sylvester Stallone-led action (with a sports twist) flick Cliffhanger. We discuss why this outrageously fun 90s blockbuster far transcends any one genre and the multiple Razzie awards it undeservedly garnered. Matt's thesis about viewing films charitably and establishing a love for the intertextuality of genre systems perfectly aligns with our own mission to admire the nuances within cinematic formulae. If you are a kindred soul who also loves to celebrate unfairly overlooked & maligned genre entries, this episode is for you! 

On this episode, we briefly flip the script* and begin our Post-Apocalyptic Sports Movie Series with David Webb Peoples’ Blood of Heroes. 

Starring Rutger Hauer (Sallow), Joan Chen (Kidda), Vincent D’Onofrio (Young Gar), and Delroy Lindo (Mbulu), this one-of-a-kind sports film is criminally overlooked. A strange fusion of Mad Max sensibilities and underdog sports movie tropes, Blood of Heroes delivers a surprisingly feel-good story about a ragtag troupe of amateur athletes who drift around and survive by playing Jugger against rivaling tribes in the barren Australian wasteland.

Jugger itself is a fascinating invention: a fully-realized yet fictionalized sport that sort of resembles lacrosse or field hockey, only with a dog’s skull as the ball, makeshift shields & steampunk-esque gear as equipment, and spiky Q-tips & lacerating chains as choice weapons of carnage. Combining physical dexterity with bludgeoning brutality, Jugger is as gritty and unforgiving as the harsh and rugged Outback.

The brilliant, genre maestro SF Covell joins us for a riotous conversation of this soon-to-be anointed cult-classic. In addition to an illustrious career spent preaching the potency and power of sci-fi, western, dystopian, and Shakespearean texts on college campuses, Covell is also a bonafide bard (effortlessly turning everyday musings into thespian poetry) and a self-published author. You can find his latest novel (a postmodern/fanfic triumph!) Gatsby’s Revenge on Amazon today!

*Going forward, we are going to switch things up from time-to-time — jumping between concurrent themes/mini-tournaments to make sure we stay fresh, upbeat, and always on our toes!

We're back and this time we brought both Justin & Laura Khoo of Cows in the Field on the pod to discuss the 2006 cult sports-comedy classic Nacho Libre. Little did we know that this movie holds a truly special place in the Khoo's hearts (you'll have to check out the episode to hear exactly why). In addition to anecdotal associations, we get down to the nitty-gritty on what makes this such an indelible movie. We chat about the artisanal needle drops, the meticulous costume design and visual craftsmanship, the unique tonal blend of childlike silliness (fart jokes) and hipster cleverness (including satirical jabs at Catholicism), the endlessly quotable one-liners, the hilariously off-putting accents, the comedic mastery of Jack Black's eyebrows and inflections, and the overall feel-good timelessness of this endearingly ridiculous tale about a monastic cook clandestinely pursuing a career as a Luchador to subsidize field trips for the orphans.

So go snatch some eagle eggs, nurture your mystical powers, and get ready to enjoy our conversational smackdown on everything there is to know about Nacho Libre. And always remember: It is fun to wrestle. A nice pile-drive to the face; or a punch to the face; but you cannot do it because it is in the Bible not to wrestle your neighbor.

Part II of our official breakdown of “The Last Dance” is here and it doesn’t disappoint. 

In it, the Underdogs talk the latter half (episodes 6-10) of ESPN's comprehensive look at Michael Jordan’s iconography and the Chicago Bulls’ epic run in the 1990s.

Nothing is left on the cutting room floor here as we waltz through all the juicy gossip at the heart of this doc: touching upon gambling addiction, impromptu WCW Nitro appearances, incinerated haikus, managerial backstabbing, flu games, the “Space Jam” basketball summer camp, practice fistfights, premeditated slights, and temper tantrums.

Don’t forget to like / subscribe / review our Podcast on iTunes / Spotify / where you stream / listen to it. 

Most of all, enjoy!

We're back and joined by Mike Harris (director of Your Heart is a Dark & Rotten Place) to discuss Robert Altman's meandering buddy-comedy, California Split. Chronicling two gambling addicts as they bet on virtually everything (horses, poker, pick-up basketball games, boxing) and hang out with an amicable pair of hookers, Altman's cult-classic is both seductively charming while also a deceptively dark look into a seedy and niche American subculture.  We were honored to have Mike's input on this episode. Mike introduced me to The Long Goodbye, Short Cuts, and opened me up to the treasure trove that is Altman's oeuvre in college. He's an infectious champion of many of Altman's films, and thus the perfect guest for any listeners looking for an entry point to Altman's idiosyncratic sensibility. Fitting for the topic at hand, we flow freely throughout this shambolic  episode, digressing into long discussions on everything from Altman's unique cinematic techniques to Godard's love of tennis.  It's a rollicking, rambling good time! Enjoy! https://shermanoaksfilmfestival.com/

On the latest episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we chat about Gran Turismo, Neill Blomkamp's rousing, kinetic, feel-good hit racing flick released at the tail end of the summer box office rush in 2023. Much more than a video game IP-grab, Gran Turismo is an unbelievable true story about a young SIM-racer, Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe), who is chosen to compete at an academy and become a real-life racer.

Much like Yann's transition from simulation gaming to actual racing, Blomkamp showcases his versatility, adapting a screenplay that is packed with heartwarming albeit cliche sports tropes and mainstream beats. Glossy and tidily packaged, the film uses platitudes to achieve an high-octane pacing that hits a lot of beloved sports movie beats.

All the actors are on their A-game. David Harbour plays a has-been racer turned mechanic who begrudgingly plays a mentor with a tough outer shell that slowly melts away. Orlando Bloom plays Danny Moore, an entrepreneurial maverick who concepts a madcap marketing ploy to turn SIM-racing GT gamers into professional racers. Geri Halliwell (yes, of the Spice Girls) plays a supportive mother who cooks lentils. Djimon Hounsou plays a blue-collar ex-soccer playing father who worries about Jann's future and chides his son for excessively gaming.

Mixing tragedy with inspirational zeal, and commenting on the symbiotic nature of digital/virtual SIM-racing and physical/analog race car driving, Gran Turismo has enough heart and subtext to satisfy one's emotional and intellectual needs. It's narrative is filled with spoon-fed exposition to maximize mass-appeal and some of the story beats are predictable and manipulatively rearranged, but overall it does the trick, creating a film that entertains and motivates in equal measure.

Enjoy our episode as Mikey from Screen Nerds Pod joins us to celebrate and champion this underdog of a movie (which is now streaming on Netflix!).

Spearheaded by Steven Soderbergh's resourceful / expedient directorial ingenuity (producing a gorgeous motion picture from nothing more than an iPhone & some affordable stabilizers / lenses), Tarell Alvin McCraney's lean screenplay (seething with a biblical heft and a savvy subversiveness toward the capitalistic status quo), and a crackling cast (led by the smooth and silky André Holland, playing the ever clever sports agent Ray Burke), "High Flying Bird" is a disruptive game-changer on many levels. 

Released directly onto Netflix—and bypassing just about every buffer / middle-man possible—the production of this film nicely mirrors the core message of the movie: preaching the power of intellect & cunning in circumventing the hegemonic powers that be. Sure, the aforementioned streaming service is a hegemonic power in its own right; but in many ways, a film like "High Flying Bird" would hold a very small probability of being made if it sought out funding & a platform in the superficial movie-scape of modern Hollywood. 

Leading by example, "High Flying Bird" thus showcases just how invaluable the schemings of a sharp mind can be in terms of bringing the big boys (whether that be the NBA or major studios / producers) to the negotiation table. With zingy dialogue, a taut / melodious pace, and a few unexpected twists that boast the rewards of outsmarting one's adversary in the internecine marketplace of modern capitalism, there is not a boring or vapid moment to spare.

Devoid of excess & superfluity, "High Flying Bird" is truly a feat of economic filmmaking; and though sports are never directly depicted in action, the philosophical, fiscal, and even spiritual elements of what it means to have a love for the game—and what it means to position oneself in a way that demands and earns respect from the game that has been placed "on top of the game"—are ever palpable: sermonized onscreen from the pulpit of pointed cynicism and adroitness. 

Suffice to say, if you have not yet seen this film, do not let "High Flying Bird" burrow too deeply into the catacombs of Netflix's bizarre algorithm; and as always, it is recommended that you watch "High Flying Bird" first if you do not want key plot developments to be spoiled. 

Finally, if you enjoy the podcast, please like / subscribe / share the word with your friends!! And we look forward to seeing you again when we publish our final episode of this segment of sports movies (the "Behind the Scenes" sub-genre), which will analyze on the recent classic, "Moneyball".

Happy New Year!

Hello Underdog Nation! We're back and our bark is louder than ever! On this episode, illustrious cinephile & Sylvester Stallone super-fan Lauren Knight joins us to discuss 1981's overlooked Victory (aka Escape to Victory) starring Michael Caine, Pele, and Stallone himself. The fact that this film is not slotted in the pantheon of classic sports movies is downright criminal. Set during WWII, Victory is the story of a ragtag group of POWs who are propositioned to play a propagandistic soccer match in Paris against their Nazi occupiers. The purpose of the game is to showcase German superiority; for the fascists, things don't go according to plan.  John Huston gives the film an elevated air (infusing many scenes with the gravitas of golden-age Hollywood movies), while Stallone's boyish charisma animates the margins with humor, action, and a goofy panache. If you can imagine a mash-up between The Longest Yard & The Great Escape, you'll have a pretty darn good idea of what to expect.  You can rent Victory on Amazon Prime for a meager $2.99. It's well worth the price. But first, prime yourself for this once-in-a-lifetime cinematic experience (maybe hyperbole, maybe not) by listening to our rollicking fun conversation. Enjoy!

We're back and chatting Captains, yet another underrated Netflix docuseries. This 8-episode journey chronicles the heartbreaking lows and glorious highs of 7 international captains as they lead their country's squad through qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Mikey from Screen Nerds Podcast joins the conversation and we have a blast discussing the doc's diverse cast of characters and cultures. (Given a few vague references, it will be helpful to know this episode was recorded the same day Argentina knocked Croatia out of the World Cup in the semi-finals)

Following the chosen leaders of Vanuatu (Brian Kaltak), Lebanon (Hassan Maatouk), Brazil (Thiago Silva), Jamaica (Andre Blake), Gabon (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang), and Croatia (Luka Modric), Captains offers an intriguing investigation into the varied qualities that define leadership. It also provides an inspiring, in-depth look into the political and economic hardships endured by these resilient figures. Each captain had to overcome immense challenges on their rise to the world stage -- growing up as a refugee, a wartime expatriate, a poor kid in the favelas, an islander with minimal resources, etc. 

Each of these captains display an uncompromising love for the game and a gratitude to represent their country. They also lead in wildly different ways. We found the juxtaposition of their respective roles and personality traits to be existentially riveting, and highly recommend this series to anyone interested in not only the World Cup but sports psychology in general. We hope you enjoy our conversation. 

From #MeToo indictments (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to scientology scandals & Covid-19 fulminations on set (Tom Cruise) to excessive plastic surgery (Renee Zellweger) to fading into cultural irrelevance (Cameron Crowe) to a tragic death due to breast cancer (Kelly Preston) this year, pretty much everyone involved with “Jerry Maguire” (except for Regina King & some smaller bit characters—Jay Mohr / Bonnie Hunt / Jerry O'Connel) has aged neither smoothly nor gracefully.

Nevertheless, as  children of the nineties and proud fans of the self-indulgent romanticism of Cameron Crowe flicks, this little film about an unhinged sports agent, a midlife crisis, and the difficulties of confronting the tumultuous daily battles of adulthood in a cutthroat world never ceases to win over even our most cynical, irony-oriented hearts.

Between the flamboyant antics of Cuba Gooding Jr’s Rod Tidwell, the headstrong composure of Regina King’s Marcee Tidwell, the kinky feistiness of Kelly Preston’s Avery Bishop, the earnest quixotism of Renee Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd, the obligatory cuteness of her son Ray’s loquacious asides about head sizes, and the manic vulnerability of Tom Cruise’s clearly unstable Jerry Maguire, Crowe’s outstanding web of characters undoubtedly live on as one of the most quotable, histrionic, and memorable ensembles from the decade of cinema where Blockbuster Video dominated the industry.

So pull out those dusty VHS tapes from your closet, toss on this obliquely holiday-related movie, enjoy its maudlin majesty, and then listen to our in-depth discussion on everything about there is to say about this film—from the generic music choices to the overtly plastic metaphors to why the swooping sentimentality of its biggest moments still works.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe / like this podcast on whatever platform you are enjoying it on! 

No need to show us the money—a simple click will do!

Marc Dottavio of Unwatchables joins us to discuss Martin Scorsese's 1986 The Color of Money. A legacy sequel to The Hustler, this pool-hall classic incorporates all of Scorcese's usual obsessions, stylistically and thematically, in very sly ways. The whip pans, snap zooms, time-lapse sequences, needle drops, and gritty mise-en-scene nicely complement the slow-burn tempo and 8-ball sequences, setting the tone for a cunning exploration of authenticity and integrity in life and sport alike.

Often overlooked in discussions surrounding the filmographies of Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, & Martin Scorsese, The Color of Money is a complex character study within a neorealist milieu. It is filmmaking that deserves to be celebrated as one of the best of its decade: both raw/unvarnished & filled with directorial flair, frigid & impassioned, literal & filled with subtextual layers (including a meta commentary on weaponizing the power of observation & acting).

We kick off the pod with a topical discussion on how we'd compare The Color of Money's 3 Academy Awards nominations (for Best Supporting Actress, Best Art/Production Design, & Best Adapted Screenplay) to the 2023 Oscar nominees (we recorded on the eve of the 95th Academy Awards ceremonies). It's an insightful conversation, illuminating the ways the zeitgeist and even the industry's definitions of these awards can evolve over time.

Enjoy!

Starring Mark Walhberg, Greg Kinnear, and Elizabeth Banks, and tracking the unbelievable story of Vince Papale - a Philly bartender and substitute school teacher who somehow earned a spot on one of Dick Vermeil's late 70's Philadelphia Eagles teams -  Invincible has all the ingredients to be a bonafide feel good underdog sports movie. 

Unfortunately, something went afoul with the recipe of cliches on display here as the film came up bland and lacking in flavor. Detailing the unpalatable qualities of Invincible, we discuss Disney's sugar-coated depiction of the economic woes of the late 70's, the diluted depiction of the iconically vulgar Philly fanbase, how much more tangy the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia spin-off episode of the film is, and just the overall lack of sport's movie 'feels' that left us more craving for something less neutral, lackluster, and unsatisfying.  

Enjoy our short, sweet, & trivia-infused live episode, recorded just after a live screening  of The Karate Kid at The Majestic Tempe. The recording includes some audience questions, hot takes, a brief background lesson on where the film exists in the overall trajectory of American-made martial arts movies, and a totally random tidbit about a fitness company called Body by Jake. We kicked off the discussion seconds after the packed theater erupted in roaring applause for the 1984 classic! The energy is palpable! Enjoy!

Ivan Reitman's "Draft Day," our first foray into a group of films that illuminates the behind-the-scenes worlds of sports, is an absolute winner. Written by the playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman, this film is a lovely moral play. Filled with complex characters, the film centers around Kevin Costner's Sonny Weaver, the GM for the Cleveland Browns, and follows him from the moment he puts on his suit's cuff links until the annual draft comes to its nightly conclusion. 

Beleaguered from all sides by imbroglios and conundrums - a mistress / co-worker (Jennifer Garner) who is pregnant and wants to get the verdict on whether to have the baby or not, an owner (Frank Langella) threatening to fire Weaver if he doesn't make a "splash," a head coach (Denis Leary) who is combative and headstrong about the players he wants, a current QB (Tom Welling) struggling for job security, a mother (Ellen Burstyn) who wants to spread his late father's ashes on the Browns's practice field (apropos, given it is named after him - he was, after all, the former Browns coach),  and a trio of primary prospective players (Chadwick Boseman / Josh Pence / Arian Foster) who all have different blemishes, flaws, skills, and character traits - Sonny endures a day for the record books.  

Filled with dramatic last-second negotiations, witty dialogue, and lots of interpersonal revelations that offer insight and poignancy, "Draft Day" is gripping and unpredictable and always well written. With comedic aspects (Rick the intern!), a realistic romance (grounded by the always wonderful Garner), and in-depth explorations of all that goes into the draft, this film earns the viewer's respect and attention. Intermingling real life NFL personalities, and lots of references to classic NFL trivia, "Draft Day" does a spectacular job of interweaving its fictitious world with the real one: creating an end product that feels both elevated yet mostly credible.  

On this episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we bring you Justin and Joey from The Average Joe’s Movie Club Cast, which can be found on YouTube, Buzzsprout, & Apple Podcasts. Joey & Justin are mega sports movie fans, and so for this episode we discuss their top five all-time faves (including everything from Bloodsport to Rocky to Field of Dreams to Days of Thunder), some honorable mentions (Varsity Blues, Any Given Sunday, Baseketball, Fever Pitch, etc...), the greatest tearjerker (Rudy) and laugh-my-ass-off (Happy Gilmore) sports movie moments, & finally, in solidarity, we knight Kevin Costner as the GOAT of the genre. IF you love sports movies on a broad scale, this one's for you!

On this episode, Sarah Curci and Juan Hernandez join the pod to talk about the rise of Track & Field as a sport, and more specifically, how its uptick in popularity nicely coincides with teh arrival of Netflix's latest docuseries, Sprint, which follows Noah Lyles, Gabby Thomas, Fred Kerley, Marcell Jacobs, Sha'Carri Richardson, the Jamaican trio (Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson, and Elaine Thompson-Herah), and many other elite speedsters as they prepare for the 2023 World Championships in Budapest.

Collectively buzzing from the highs of 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, we also share some of our favorite moments: celebrating everything from Trinity Rodman's exhilarating OT goal vs. Japan in the quarterfinals, to Mando Duplantis' WR pole vault before a crowd of 80k cheering fans, to the camaraderie of Fiji surfing. We also champion the unexpected flurry of American medal performances in Track & Field during these Olympics: citing Stanford standout Grant Fisher's breakout bronze in the 5000m & 10000m, Cole Hocker & Yared Neguse's thrilling podium finishes in the 1500m, Quincy Hall's mad dash in the 400m, and on and on.

We hope ya'll enjoyed the '24 Olympics as much as we did; and if you became overnight diehard fans of all things Athletics like us, you'll not want to miss this episode!

Enjoy!

We're back with our Adam Sandler vs. Will Ferrell mini-tournament/bracket and covering the overlooked sports comedy, Semi-Pro. Chronicling the travails of Jackie Moon (Ferrell) as he tries to get his flailing minor league team, the Flint Tropics, promoted to the NBA, Semi-Pro is very much a byproduct of its era.

Filled with bear wrestling, stoner humor, bantering broadcasters, a cuckolded super-fan, a classic 70s soundtrack, lots of funky callbacks to blaxploitation films, and even more cameos, Semi-Pro is definitely a laugh a minute outing. Unfortunately, much of its humor felt played-out by the time of its release, causing it to bomb at the box office and signal the end of Ferrell's silly, man-child reign of 00's studio comedies.

On the pod, we discuss the comedic range (and lack thereof) of Ferrell's comedic career, his off-screen persona and presence in the sports industry, the ways in which Semi-Pro feels like an all-star mixture of tired/reused gags, and the ways in which it would have fared better if it came out earlier in his heyday. We then debate whether the film's veteran brand of dumb-bro humor should've been retired by its release or whether it offers the charm and humor of a comeback sports comedy, even if it arrived in theaters a few years past Ferrell's prime.

Enjoy!

On our latest episode, we veer slightly off the post-apocalyptic path in our sci-fi / futuristic sports movie extravaganza to discuss Speed Racer! 

Devout Speed Racer fanboy Jed Bookout joins your regular underdogs (Jordan & Paul) to discuss the Wachowski Sisters' singular adaptation of this classic anime entry. We colloquially swerve, meander, and careen as we chat about everything good & bad about the film, including its over-the-top DayGlo color palette, Matrix Resurrections adjacent anti-corporate messaging, white-washed cast, use of vanguard digital camera techniques & technologies, pitch-perfect verisimilitude of childlike sensibilities, sugar-high/candy-coated pacing, controversial accusations of animal cruelty, and boundless imagination. 

Like the opening sequence in which Speed daydreams about racing by designing a flip-book of the Mach 5 zipping at hyper-speed, the Wachowskis' adaptation simulates the untainted wonder & unbridled creativity of cinema in a way that few blockbusters have captured before or since. You won't want to miss our celebration of why Speed Racer is so well-worthy of its place in the unofficial pantheon of modern cult-classics.  

Enjoy! Ruff Ruff!

Now this is a wicked fun episode. Will Johnson of Cinephile Hissy Fit joins the pod to geek out on Joe D'Amato's 1980's Italian post-apocalyptic cult classic Endgame: Bronx Lotta Finale! The film is a wild pastiche. It begins as a battle royale TV game-show and morphs into a story of a gruff antihero named Shannon (Al Cliver) leading a telepathic mutant (Moira Chen), an oracle-child archetype, and their troupe to safety. Filled with ninjas, blind assassin monks, radiological wastelands, and gratuitous nudity, Endgame is the cinematic equivalent of a 13-year-old boy's wet dream. Chatting about everything from Italian exploitation cinema, to the evolution of the NFL QB, to the artistic pulse & pragmatism that drives second-tier/low-budget movies, to Will's all time sports movie favorites (Any Given Sunday, White Man Can't Jump, He Got Game), this is an episode for sports fanatics and cinephiles alike!  Enjoy! 

Join us for a very special episode of Cinematic Underdogs where we welcome Warren P. Sonoda, the director of one of the funniest sports comedies you have probably never heard of: The Puck Hogs!  The Puck Hogs is not only a well-constructed sports film, but also a criminally underrated hockey flick that should be required viewing for anyone who has ever laced up a pair of skates inside a musty, sweaty locker room in an aging hockey rink. From its savvy script to its energetic style and pace to its DIY heart, there is so much to like about The Puck Hogs. Sonoda's use of the handheld camera and minimal lighting techniques make the movie’s dingy settings — the strip clubs, dive bars, and rundown hockey rinks — feel like something you might find in any town where over-the-hill degenerates hang out and nurse their aches after a beer-league tournament. Utilizing a clever mockumentary framing device that creates a pseudo-anthropological angle into the silly subject matter, Sonoda, along with the writer Eric Lunsky, work wonders: conveying the raw and unabashed humor that comprises this groups’ shared ethos so genuinely that it earns The Puck Hogs a spot on our “first line” of go-to hockey movies. The film’s ragtag group of over-the-hill yet lovable losers are perfectly constructed characters that seamlessly occupy the film's dingy settings. Each player on the team is idiosyncratic, painfully ordinary, and flawed. They all struggle with everyday problems (well, sort of), ranging from psychological impediments (a phobia of Girl Scouts and chasing pucks into the corner boards), to failed relationships (with the captain’s fiancé marrying the villainous Lance after a hockey tournament made him tardy to his wedding ceremony), to infertility (and the struggles of copulating whenever a wife’s hormonal watch detector goes off), to unsavory careers (an ophthalmologist who wants to be a porn director), to inept children (a Russian goalie who is distraught over his son’s flawed goalie technique). Yet, despite all of these obstacles, neuroticism, and setbacks, the Puck Hogs still find a way to fall ass-backwards into the tournament championship. Don’t let the prospect of a happy ending scare you away though — this movie isn’t in any way filled with sappy, feel-good, underdog cliches (At least not without a wink and sense of irony!). Instead of asking the Puck Hogs players’ to elevate above their immature obsession with holding onto juvenile habits, the film wholeheartedly celebrates the futile absurdity of their vulgar and puerile antics.  Due to tight schedules, Warren literally Zoom-bombs us at the 33-minute mark (so jump ahead if you prefer to get right to the juicy conversation at the center of this episode). Talking about everything from the current state of Canadian cinema in the world where imperialistic streaming giants rule the game, to hanging out in a Vegas suite with Flava Flav, Lou Diamond Phillips, and MC Hammer, to shooting The Puck Hogs in under two weeks, Warren constantly emanates undiluted enthusiasm and love for the world of independent filmmaking. His resume is insanely prolific, and his passion always shines through in whatever he does. To hear him elaborate on his career and share some funny anecdotes and backstories was a pure pleasure, and we are confident you will enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoying recording it! 

On this special bonus episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we have the always sincere, insightful, & poignant Don Shanahan (https://www.everymoviehasalesson.com/ — Twitter: @casablancadon) on the podcast. If you are looking at the running time, your eyes are not lying: we dauntlessly enter Joe Rogan territory, enthusiastically chatting for nearly 3 hours. Don’t let this be intimidating though: you won‘t want to miss a single second of this ever engaging conversation that touches upon how auteurism, film criticism, American politics / socioeconomics, the shifting nature of popular mores, & the rise of technology is changing the landscape of sports / sports movies. Ultimately, our focal point is the 2011 film “Moneyball”, but this podcast episode far transcends the goings on of baseball diamonds / stats sheets—swinging at huge societal & existential questions. 

To those of you who are inclined to jump around in search of certain topics, we’ve provided a cursory chronological breakdown of the episode below so that you can fast forward to segments that sound most appealing.

Enjoy!

0:00 Introduction / The Often Unrecognized Art of Film Criticism

We talk about film critics we idolize, the immense intellectual demands & productivity of the profession, & our own habits / regimens in regards to watching films.

23:30 Tree of Life Debate: Pretentious or Earnest Masterpiece / What If Terrence Malick Made a Sports Movie?

We discuss Don’s “Hot Take” on Terrence Malick’s polarizing “Tree of Life” as he posits that highbrow cinema, like overpriced whiskey, can be gratuitous overkill & repulsively off-putting.

34:45 Creatively Versatile vs. Redundant Auteurs

We deliberate and enumerate those auteurs who repeat themselves with each film, those who have a handful of narratives they recycle, those who reinvent themselves with every feature film.

45:45 Don’s Top-5 Sports Movies: Rudy, Field of Dreams, Rocky, Slap-shot, The Sandlot 

While discussing Don’s top five sports movies of all time, we repeatedly dive into the greater context of cinema and auteurism: debating the ethical pitfalls of inaccurate biopics, the gradual conflation of documentary & fiction filmmaking, the redemptive quality of directors who return to their aesthetic roots vs. those we believe still need to, the sad state in which cancel culture infantilizes our individual prerogative to engage with art with intellectual autonomy, & the most carnivalesque barfing scene ever (hint: chewing tobacco is involved).

1:28:15 The Powerful Life Lessons, Nostalgic Allure, and Socioeconomics of Sports/Sports Films

We discuss the rise of a mercenary ethos in pro sports, the decline of blue collar sensibilities, & how the capitalistic narrative of sports in real life has affected sports movies.

1:39:15 The Negative Consequence of Politics Pervading Sports

We discuss sports as a cathartic release valve that traditionally brought people together, & how the heated intrusion of politics into the national pastime is detrimental to our collective psychological health & civic sense of togetherness. We also discuss the need for social programs that employee ex-athletes & serve underprivileged youth.

1:47:00 Moneyball

From here on out, we discuss the relevancy of “Moneyball’s” themes within the greater framework of American society and the MLB. Do the mathematical strategies / concepts behind “Moneyball” work? Is Billy Beane a hero or anti-hero? Was he successful or a failure? Should we rely on statistics instead of human intelligence / intuition? How do we adapt as data upends human skill, rendering us obsolete? Tune in to find out!

On this very festive Christmas special, we debate whether Jack Frost (1998) could be categorized within the sports movie genre, celebrate the phony performances by Henry Rollins and Michael Keaton, recite Roger Ebert's iconic/scathing review of the Jim Henson's snowman suit, and discuss the entire canon of holiday-centered sports films (A Christmas Fumble, A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, and A Karate Christmas Miracle pretty much sum up the extent of this paltry subgenre). We also each handpick a yuletide-sports films to cover in the future, and determine which film we'd see in theaters the weekend of Jack Frost's release, on December 11th 1998.

Untold: Johnny Football represents an iconic era of college football, and offers an astute examination of one of the most immature quarterbacks to ever win a Heisman Trophy, Johnny Manziel. An affable, perennial partier, Manziel was notorious for his off-the-field antics and partying. He played the game with the same freewheeling sense of intuition and exigency he seemed to live, transplanting his unhinged frat boy personality onto the field. He also transformed the Texas A&M program into a powerhouse over the course of a critical two year stint, pulled off a ridiculous heist to get drafted in the 1st round of the NFL draft, and  became a mythic bust for the Cleveland Browns.

In the episode, we discuss Johnny’s wild shenanigans, the WTF moments of the documentary (his father faking a cardiac arrest, his friend planting a story about a false oil inheritance to deflect attention from under-the-table side hustles that violated the NCAA, his infamous bender in Vegas), and our letdown that the doc didn’t press Johnny harder with pointed, direct questions about his insane life of drugs, celebrities, and debauchery. For those who know nothing about Manziel, this is a great place to start. For those who’ve been fascinated by his mythic downfall, this is a bit too broad and breezy. Nonetheless, it’s a great conversation starter on one of the most stupefyingly immature yet likable athletes of the 21st century. 

Enjoy! 

In anticipation of Super Bowl LVII, we're back with a follow up to our episode on Hard Knocks: Training Camp w/ The Detroit Lions, this time tackling Hard Knocks in Season: The Arizona Cardinals. This is easily our most sporty episode yet. As always, though, we transfer the narratives on the field into the world of celluloid dreams. Quite literally: To break the ice, we enumerate the stories and moments from the 2022-2023 NFL season we each think might one day translate fluidly to the silver screen. Purdy, Brady, Hamlin, & Wilson all make our cut (for very different hypothetical movie genres). Finally, after confabulating wild movie premises of our own, we dig into main event and discuss the AZ Cardinal's grueling, abysmal, train-wreck season, marred by motivational apathy, nonstop injuries, and serial underachievement.  

The lackluster display on the field turned so dour, in fact, it took its toll on HBO's show. Noting the gloomy moroseness of each successive episode, we end up in a caustic discussion over whether Hard Knocks in Season: The Arizona Cardinals might be best viewed as an unintentional workplace farce or a tragicomedy. On this line of thought, we have a grand old time nitpicking the depressing details and sporadic silver linings from the season, which include Kyler's conspicuous absence, Kingsbury's bro-chic MTV Cribs-style mansion, JJ's boyish enthusiasm and lovable personality, Budda's unflinching tenacity/affable sibling rivalry, Hopkin's resilient mother/artsy sensibility, and the endless carousal of random, washed-up QBs emerging in the starting lineup every week.  

If you're in the mood to listen to lots of football chatter with some heady thematic extrapolations, you've found the perfect tailgate background noise to toss onto the car radio. So open up a big bag of Lay's potato chips, throw back a few cold ones, and enjoy some goofy Pre-Game bantering before the Big Game!

A bonus episode consisting of two separate interviews of Jordan & Paul on The Average Joe's Movie Club Cast. We discuss or movie tastes, preferences, and habits. Enjoy!

This week, your favorite Underdogs get timely & topical -- discussing 2021's National Champions. Directed by Ric Roman Waugh (Greenland, Angel Has Fallen), and adapted from a stage play written by Adam Mervis (21 Bridges), National Champions follows star quarterback Demarcus James (Sephan James) and his teammate/friend Emmett Sunday (Alexander Ludwig) as they boycott the national championship less than 72 hours before kickoff. Like other behind the scenes sports films we've covered (High Flying Bird, Draft Day, etc), the film is a savvy and cynical take on the economics of sports. 

Tidily scripted & sufficiently nuanced, Mervis' adapted screenplay questions the ethics of the NCAA and collegiate programs, which exploit athletes -- cashing in on the multi-million dollar revenue stream without paying college athletes for their contributions (beyond a scholarship, that is). In doing so, the play-turned-film sharply examines the multiple tiers of college football, including: the coaches (J.K. Simmons as James Lazor & Lil Rel Howery as Ronnie Dunn), the donors (Time Blake Nelson as Rodger Cummings & King Bach as Taylor Sheridan), and the NCAA figures (the commissioner Jeffrey Donovan as  Mark Titus and Uzo Aduba as Katherine Poe). There is also a key subplot with Coach Lazor's wife (Kristin Chenoweth as Bailey) and a philosophy professor named Elliott Schmidt (Timothy Olymphant).

With so many moving parts, the film can feel a bit overstuffed and forced at times. It left us more ambivalent than any other film we've done thus far; please note: ambivalent is not the same as indifferent. We felt a lot about this film: as roused by its stirring speeches as we were turned off by its melodramatic flourishes. Fortunately, by the end, what starts off seeming like a very one-sided exploration of this complex issue turns out to be anything but that, as new layers and perspectives prove the debate is not as black-and-white as it may initially seem. 

Enjoy listening to us struggle to make sense of its blurry moral shadings on our latest episode! And don't forget to like, share, and spread the Cinematic Underdogs love around town! 

On this special bonus episode, Mikey from Screen Nerds Podcast  joins the pod to discuss the timely 2022 Netflix docuseries, FIFA Uncovered. Dropped just before the World Cup in Qatar, this sprawling doc exposes the decades of corruption (wire fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, bribery) staining FIFA. For those who love true crime/in-depth investigative journalism, this might be right up your alley. 

Declared as the World Cup of fraud, the takedown of dozens of FIFA officials by the FBI stunned the world. FIFA Uncovered digs behind the scenes and gets to the bottom of these indictments. We hear from whistleblowers, former FIFA presidents, financial assistants, widowed spouses of incriminated officials, smarmy Qatari ambassadors, journalists/novelists who've covered this scandal, and countless other relevant individuals. The doc also takes a deep look into the use of the World Cup as an act of sports-washing and the way geopolitics and soccer/futbol politics clash behind closed doors. 

Our conversation even delves into the ethical hypocrisies and latent xenophobia surrounding the entire scandal and the western world's tantrum re: the 2022 World Cup being hosted by Qatar. Now is as good of a time as any to reflect on FIFA. The festivities may be over and Messi may be nestled snugly in bed with the World Cup between both arms, but you can bet those slimy FIFA representatives behind the entire pageantry are undoubtedly scheming already: thinking of novel ways to circumvent the system and pocket their next big paycheck. 

Enjoy! 

Our resident sci-fi/dystopian sports film expert, SF Covell, returns to discuss the grind-house, b-movie classic Death Race 2000. Our convo quickly turns as unhinged & unruly as the movie -- traversing all kinds of detours and unexpected landscapes! 

We discuss how the film oddly parallels the Herbie franchise, Around the World in 80 Days, Rat Race, Mad Max: Fury Road, and countless oddball, race-based, cinematic escapades. We compare the film's ultraviolent westward trajectory to American Bloodsport, our Frontiersman Mythologies, & Manifest Destiny. We vehemently disagree about the quality of Stallone's acting. We wax nostalgic for the pre-Zoom days of watching trash movies with friends. 

Beers are chugged, expletives are hurled, passionate interruptions run amok, and no take is safe on this wild and crazy episode for the ages. Enjoy! 

Hello everyone! 

If you enjoyed the last Cinematic Underdogs podcast episode on "Jerry Maguire", and were craving just a little more content on what is inarguably one of the most iconic 90s flicks, today is your lucky day: here is a bonus, heartfelt thirty-minute interview with J.B. Huffman! On this special episode, we manage to cover some totally new territory about the film, and deconstruct the characters' arcs—thematically, tonally, and emotionally—from an entirely different perspective.

Don't forget to subscribe / like on whatever platform you listen on! 

Thanks, enjoy, and happy holidays!

On this episode, we talk about the rise of Jake Paul in the ring. From a YouTube hellion and obnoxious Influencer to a boxing star, Jake Paul has become one of the truly improbable sports transformations of the 21st century. He may be polarizing and milage varies greatly on his likability. But as a celebrity committed to a sudden calling after a quarter life crises and cultural cancellation, Jake Paul is a pretty remarkable figure, who has only proved himself time and time again as a formidable contender against a ragtag albeit talented group of ex-MMA fighters and seasoned athletes. 

Is this a puff piece? If the ubiquity of Prime drinks is any indication, the Paul brothers’ trademark self-mythology and promotional acuity is all over this thing. And there’s no doubt the Jake Paul has some warranted behind-the-scenes stains on his past — along with some overblown controversies. He’s played the heel, the villain, the antihero, and the problem child for years, making a killing out of marketing himself as the person people want to see being pummeled in the ring. What’s crazy is that the opposite happens, repeatedly, putting the likes of Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, the Fury family, and Dana White on blast as they’re forced to chew their words, eat crow, and watch in awe. 

Whether you’re frothing at the bit to see where Paul’s boxing career goes next or prefer to hate watch one of Influencer culture’s prime public enemies, there’s no denying that the entertainment factor is off-the-charts. He may be a douchebag, a shameless self-marketer, a chauvinist, or whatever, but he’s also chosen a wise venue to pursue: a space of pugilistic primality where one’s moral shortcomings and social pretenses are stripped away by the savage ferocity of sparring and spectacle. Carrying the dying sport of boxing on his bulky tattooed back, Jake Paul is a bleach-haired pug with a rabid will to power. He’s as American, for better and worse, as an acidic apple pie smashed straight to the jugular. 

In this episode, Jordan Puga and Paul Keelan delve deeper into The Mighty Ducks trilogy, geeking out the world of Gordon Bombay and his quack attack. We compare and contrast the pomp and pizazz of D2, which is set in Los Angeles and features the iconic Iceland team as the primary rival, with the juvenile pranks and mopey adolescent moodiness of D3, which finds the Ducks back in Minneapolis at Eden Hall Academy (a fictional, prestigious prep school). 

More importantly, these films allow us to unpack our nostalgia for childhood and the 1990's: summer days playing roller hockey in the streets, our admiration for some of the great NHL players of this era, our love for the snacks and slang and pop culture references of the time, and our enjoyment in rewatching unforgettable scenes and reciting entire lines from this often absurd and silly albeit always cherished trilogy.

The Mighty Ducks may have dated awkwardly, but our love for it still soars high in the sky and glides along the ice: embedded in knuckle-pucks, flying-v's, Fulton's deathly slap-shot, and Goldberg's timely farts.

On this episode, we compare and contrast two docuseries on American Gladiators released in 2023: Muscles and Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators (Netflix) and The American Gladiators Documentary (ESPN/30 for 30). American Gladiators was always one of our favorite TV programs from childhood and we had a blast recounting our memories of the toys, the ‘roided up gladiators, the madcap fun of 90s Trash TV, the exploits of the athletes bodies for meager pay, the scab-like underpinnings of the series (which gets aired every time there’s a picket-line), and the dubiously murky origins of this gaudy, ostentatious product of pop entertainment. Enjoy!

Welcome to our first true foray into the wide world of a Happy Madison sports movies! No, Home Team is not in the same ballpark as Happy Gilmore. Hell, it wishes it was half as funny and entertaining as The Waterboy. But as champions of the genre and apologists for its formulaic gags and set pieces, we find the silver lining in this half-assed tale of Sean Peyton's post Bountygate comeuppance: returning to small-town Texas to coach his estranged son's hapless peewee football team.  

Part kids-focused sports film and part tale of redemption and penitence, Home Team's tone is about as unreliable as a pee-wee football field goal kicker. Luckily, for us, the wild misses are more entertaining than anything. And we milk Home Team for every ounce of humor and wit it gives us -- celebrating Kevin James' surly pout, Rob Schneider's bohemian/vegan schtick, and the wild antics of side caricatures (the rambling bus driver, the nosy hotel attendant, the drunk assistant coach).

Enjoy!!!

On this very exciting episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we welcome a very special guest to the pod: Feelin’ Film’s very own Aaron White!

Given that Feelin’ Film is itself an amazing resource for passionate sports movie conversation, and a formative influence on the genesis of Cinematic Underdogs, Aaron's guest appearance on the podcast is a very special one. 

Over the course of our heartfelt discussion about movies, podcasts, and sports in general, you will get an inside scoop on the origin story of Feelin’ Film, Aaron’s impressive regimen that allows him to watch a ton of movies, and also his favorite five (well, sort of five—you’ll see) sports films / tv series of all time! 

In the episode, we swoon over an epic and diverse array of powerhouse sports movies (including “Free Solo,” “Warrior,” “Creed,” “Rush,” “Miracle" and “Happy Gilmore,” to name just a few), and ultimately cap the episode off with an in-depth analysis of what we loved and didn’t love so much about Netflix's breakout hit, “The Queen’s Gambit.”

Aaron is a true aficionado of the sports film genre, and his enthusiasm is utterly infectious. This is definitely one episode you will not want to miss!

For those who would like to hear a particular topic described above, there are three distinct segments:

Start - 45min — the origin story of Feelin’ Film  

45min - 1:43min — Aaron’s Top 5ish Favorite Sports Films of All Time

1:43 - Finish — "The Queen’s Gambit"

Finally, if you are enjoying the podcast, please share it, like it, add it, subscribe to it, and comment on whatever platform you are engaging with Cinematic Underdogs on!

You can also find us on Twitter, Anchor, and Letterboxd by clicking those hyperlinks, or just by searching for 'Cinematic Underdogs' on each platform!

On this special edition episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we cover the first half (episodes 1-5) of our first Wild Card Flick: "The Last Dance"! 

Given that "The Last Dance" is a sports documentary series and thus veers outside of the realm of feature films (it is actually not even a flick, come to think of it), your friendly Underdogs will be the first to acknowledge that we outright broke an explicit rule outlined in the introductory podcast: that we would not deviate from the insular domain of 'cinematic' sports movies. 

But for Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, and the superlative 1990's Chicago Bulls dynasty, an exception felt more than warranted: all rules were made to be broken anyways, right? 

Even more integral to our decision to go renegade with this episode was the craze surrounding "The Last Dance" after it was released on ESPN at the start of the pandemic, in late April 2020. Without any live sports to occupy our restless energy, and claustrophobically confined to our houses (piled ceiling high with toilet paper and surgical masks), this documentary was expedited with the same zealous celerity that drove companies like Pfizer to so swiftly concoct, test, patent, and manufacture the Covid-19 vaccine. In a similar vein, the Powers-That-Be knew that sports addicts like ourselves needed an antidote, and so they offered us this addicting 10-part documentary that quickly became the cynosure of the digital 'water-cooler' squabbles:

• Was MJ a megalomaniac? Should we trust the hagiographic aggrandizement of himself, given that his production company had the rights and last word on the editing of "The Last Dance?"
• Should athletes be praised solely for taking a route of political activism, or can the stance of apolitical neutrality itself be a moral virtue? 
• Was Jerry Krause fairly portrayed in the documentary as being the squat, bumbling, evil overlord?  
• Did Scottie Pippen get screwed over by his lowball contract, or did he simply not know his own worth when negotiating? And did Pippen get screwed over again by being marginalized in this documentary? 
• Were the Detroit Pistons the dirtiest team of all time?

These are just a smattering of the many controversial contretemps that we cover, squeezing out countless juicy subplots from the almost 10-hour running time of the immersive exploration of basketball greatness and high-stakes drama in "The Last Dance." 

Finally, if you enjoy the Cinematic Underdogs podcast, please share it, like it, add it, subscribe to it, and comment on it wherever you are engaging with it. 

You can also find us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/CinematicUnder) or Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/synemastehsia/) by clicking those links or just searching for 'Cinematic Underdogs' on the websites.  

A quick side note: this episode's audio admittedly oscillates between hi-fi & lo-fi. Due to a buzzing microphone, lots of post-production techniques had to be implemented to silence the feedback. Fortunately, with some help from tutorials on YouTube, our raucous 2-hour celebration of "The Last Dance" was salvaged. That said, when listening you will likely notice conspicuous shifts in sonic quality. Our advice is simple: think of it as no different than how "The Last Dance" leaps between grainy footage of old NBA Playoff clips and glossy interviews with the now retired Bulls players & coaches / the bevy of other cultural icons & talking heads (Obama / Justin Timberlake / ESPN analysts). What truly matters is that the content of our conversation is absolutely discernible, and our conjectures, nostalgic riffs, and playfully combative debates are as fully fleshed out as ever.

Enjoy!