We've arrived at the series finale of Scoring At The Movies!   We're wrapping up this every-other-Thursday chat show about sports films by digging into Rocky...again. Rocky Balboa is filled with emotion, nostalgia (oh, is it nostalgic!) and many references to previous films in the franchise, not to mention a slew of quirky, Rocky-specific details. It's one of the best of the first 5 sequels as it highlights the lonely ex-boxer struggling mightily with the death of his beloved Adrian....

We're talking about baseball for the last time as Kevin Costner plays a Detroit Tigers pitcher in For Love Of The Game. The film spends about an equal amount of time between the Costner/Kelly Preston love story and him trying to achieve something monumental: throw a perfect game.   We thought the romance had too many tonal problems to take it seriously, although you can't say it was shoehorned in. It's essential to the way director Sam Raimi tells the flashback-heavy story. Even though we...

In our 3rd-last episode, we're talking about a cynical, sci-fi movie about a made-up sport called Rollerball. Norman Jewison's dour 1975 film juggles a lot of balls and comments on many social issues (as Jewison often did in the films he directed), but he didn't draw either of us into his take on a dystopian future. James Caan mostly just mutters and sulks. He's not at his tough-guy best, although at least he and the stunt performers are convincing when they're playing this ultra-violent...

Since we're counting down to our final podcast on June 7th, this represents both our final basketball movie and our final documentary. More Than A Game shows a remarkable amount of archival footage and plenty of behind-the-scenes home videos of LeBron James and his high-school teammates, but did Kristopher Belman ask them any truly hard questions? For instance, were the other 4 guys in the Fab Five jealous about just how rich and successful their megastar friend ended up?  And what's it like...

Chariots Of Fire is one of the most-respected movies we will ever cover, what with all the critical & financial success, not to mention the Oscar for Best Picture. It's just a shame we didn't care more about this true story. All the religious talk definitely didn't help us connect with the material. Ian Charleson runs blissfully for God (except when he won't) while the Jewish character played by Ben Cross runs his heart out, even though he has to fight against quiet-but-cruel...

On the day the 2023 MLB season begins, we're discussing the sequel to one of our favourite baseball movies. Of course, Major League II is pretty much the same film, as the Cleveland Redacteds bicker, stink, bond, then strive to win it all, even though nobody believes in them...again. It doesn't help that David Ward's follow-up to his iconic original doesn't have much new up its sleeve and it's rated PG to appeal/pander to kids. There are also some idiotic screenwriting choices in the big game...

We haven't reviewed very many MMA movies and we certainly haven't talked specifically about a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu film before, but writer/director David Mamet was the right guy to focus on that in Redbelt.   He's a practitioner of Jiu-Jitsu, which also means he might not have always explained the sport as well as he could have. Maybe he was too close to it? While the first half is terrific, Redbelt is overstuffed with plot and has a vast & confusing conspiracy that unfolds during the...

We didn’t hear no bell, so fire up this lengthy episode to hear us share some laughs and express some exasperation about the valley in the franchise known as Rocky V.

Not all sports movies are made the same. For instance, Logan Lucky isn't one.   The car racing is at a minimum in Steven Soderbergh's well-reviewed, but under-seen heist comedy. On the very bright side though, there are plenty of stars and character actors who delighted us. The movie is snappy and funny in an Ocean's Eleven kind of way, which makes sense because Steven Soderbergh directed that series too.   Just like the robberies in the Oceans flicks, there are some holes in Channing Tatum's...

As the Eagles & Chiefs prepare for the Super Bowl and since this is Groundhog Day, we thought we'd repeat ourselves and cover a football movie all over again: The Longest Yard.   Okay, the 1974 version of The Longest Yard was 115 podcasts ago, while we're talking about the Adam Sandler remake today. Critics don't like this take on the Mean Machine very much, but we ranted about the way they often turn up their nose at comedies and remakes. We just think this is the funnier movie of the...

You can throw a pillow at our face or hit us with a knock-out dart (why?!), but also listen to us when we say that The Naked Gun really is a sports movie. About 1/3rd of the film is set at the ballpark with Leslie Nielsen doing what he does best: bumbling his way through somehow solving a tough case. Nielsen plays it straight through all the gags and jokes (often double jokes) that only work if you deliver them the way that he does. Credit to George Kennedy, Ricardo Montalban and Priscilla...

This 1980's relic was the hockey movie we could never find on DVD or streaming, but YouTube to the rescue and we finally get to cover Youngblood.   Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze are convincing on skates and, man, are they handsome. Both play talented scorers who also have to fight their own battles on the ice. On that note, we didn't like the last 5 minutes of this movie, partly because we didn't buy almost anything about the post-game stick joust and then the punch-up. When Lowe isn't dealing...

Sometimes the title of a movie tells you everything you need to know about it, but the biggest problem with Sylvester Stallone's arm-wrestling opus isn't that it's Over The Top. Sly underplays, if anything. He's not even as bad as you might expect, nor is David Mendenhall truly deserving of the Razzie he won for playing the estranged "I love you, now I hate you" son. The editing, the direction by Menahem Golan and the screenplay (co-written by Sly) are all atrocious though. Yeah, this is just...

Walter Hill's Undisputed is a gritty boxing movie in which the big fight takes place in prison. There's potential in that concept, right? Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames play the 2 main characters. Hey, that HAS to amount to something cool, doesn't it?   Well, this film could have and should have been vivid and dynamic, but instead it's a disjointed, unsatisfying, anti-Rocky. We couldn't even figure out who we were supposed to root for, mostly because one pugilist is a rapist and the other is a...

Sometimes we cover obscure sports films on this channel. The Winning Season is a prime example. It barely even played in theatres 12 years ago. Since it's another in our recent run of "pleasant experience" movies, it probably deserved at least a little more attention back then. Sam Rockwell is the ne'er-do-well coach of a girls' basketball team in this dramedy that co-stars pre-stardom youngsters Emma Roberts and Rooney Mara. Even though the biggest name in the cast is Sam The Man, this film...

Six Pack is a racing movie starring a half-dozen kids and a popular country singer who had never really acted before. What should've been an obnoxious failure is actually a genial experience with Kenny Rogers doing pretty solid work alongside a young Diane Lane and an even-younger Anthony Michael Hall. All 7 of the main characters get in trouble with the law at one time or another, so this road movie is filled with getaways and clever escapes. Families might enjoy settling in with Daniel...

Rather than covering Six Pack this week as we had advertised, Ryan got caught monologuing about Harold Lloyd's 1925 classic The Freshman. While Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin remain legends a century after the height of their stardom, Lloyd is the sometimes-forgotten clown of the silent era. He's cheerful oblivious in this football farce, a "young" college kid who doesn't realize other students are always bullying him. Lloyd himself and the character he plays here certainly get to prove...

Even though George Herman Ruth is arguably the greatest baseball player of all time, The Babe is not even a good movie, never mind a great one. The problems start with John Goodman, who's a terrific actor, but he's miscast in the titular role of the man-child who started as a pitcher with the Red Sox and then became an outfielder with the Yankees. It also doesn't help that this gregarious, larger-than-life baseball legend is depicted as moody, needy and a sad sack for most of this lifeless...

While the satire in North Dallas Forty didn't make us laugh, Ted Kotcheff's well-regarded film was ahead of its time with how it shows the brutality of football and the price players pay to do something they love.   This is also a movie about cold, hard analytics...and it beat Moneyball to the punch with that theme by more than 30 years. Despite ingratiating performances by Mac Davis and the (supposed) rebel Nick Nolte, Chris couldn't figure this movie out, although we both respected it for...

It must be hard work to have this much fun surfing enormous waves in Maui, but have you tried also working as a maid at a posh hotel?   In Blue Crush, Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake get to do both and, rumour has it, hijinks ensue! At least that's the theory. Director John Stockwell's film has tonal problems and it's also hard to figure out who he made it for. No one can deny though that the surfing is shot very well. We'll let the use of obvious stunt doubles slide,...

After the massive success of John G. Avildsen's first Karate Kid, this even-more-successful sequel has Ralph Macchio & Pat Morita in Okinawa. The focus (oh, that infamous focus) in Karate Kid Part II is on Miyagi and the life he ran away from decades earlier. Don't get hung up on the name of the movie though. Daniel is barely even necessary this time. Although make no mistake, these 2 characters are iconic and the 2 stars are always good in their roles.   Story-wise, this isn't a complete...

Our review of The Great White Hope is a little souffle here in the dog days of August. Ryan recorded a solo podcast several years ago and now we find out what those 3-year-old thoughts were. Howard Sackler's Tony-award-winning play was turned into a meh movie by Martin Ritt that's more about race relations than it is about fisticuffs. At least the film feels brutally honest about race. James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander have white-hot chemistry and were both nominated for Oscars. He's the...

This episode is a change of pace because we're discussing the venerable art of arm wrestling for the first time. Golden Arm is lighthearted fun that emulates Kingpin's zany road trip while also taking some plot elements from The Karate Kid. A jacked-up Mary Holland (the scene-stealing sister in Happiest Season), Betsy Sodaro and the funny supporting cast certainly commit to this nutty material. Are they doing a lot of improv? It feels like it. And they're good at it.   Director Maureen...

Our "Summer Of Quaid" continues, this time with Dennis playing real-life Tampa Bay relief pitcher Jim Morris in The Rookie.   John Lee Hancock has directed many biopics and The Rookie is perhaps his most inspirational.  It's certainly trying to be. Still, the movie just isn't an *ahem​* home run. Disney was in the middle of a successful run of films just like this , but we felt that--for all of The Rookie's merits---the Mouse House simply did it better with Miracle, Glory Road and even...