Miracle Monday: Red Army

Alright, I'm like five months late to this party. But when a movie has a limited release and doesn't come to your city, you just have to wait until you find another method by which to watch it. So Red Army premiered in January and I'm writing about it in June. (Finally!)

But now that that's out of the way... since I talked about Of Miracles and Men when it aired, I thought it was only fitting to talk about the other movie about Soviet hockey that was made this year. As in Of Miracles and Men, the Lake Placid Olympics were a pretty small footnote in Red Army. But if Of Miracles and Men did anything, it gave me a very strong fondness for Slava Fetisov, so I happily watched to hear some more from him. And I wasn't disappointed!

The movie starts with Slava Fetisov sitting in front of the camera but speaking on the phone. He hangs up but continues working on his phone while the director begins to talk to him about the concept of the film. It's incredibly awkward and you can tell Slava's just not having it. He says, "I'm busy now, hold on." But the director continues talking and asking questions. And finally Slava, without looking away from his phone, gives him the finger.

The very last clip of the movie cuts back to this interview; the director says "When you die, this [movie] is going to be your legacy!" And Slava, eyes still glued to his phone, says, "I know, I appreciate it. Good guy. I'm lucky to have you." The director says, "We're both lucky, to have each other." Slava smiles and says, "That's even better." He holds his phone to his ear, motions that he needs a few minutes, and then gives a thumbs up.

That, to me, sums up everything about this movie. You might start it thinking Slava's some cold, unfeeling Soviet, but by the end you realize that he's just a normal dude.

Or, well... sort of normal. :P

What continues to stick out to me is that, the more I learn about Soviet hockey, the more I believe that it's truly a tragic story. It's strange to even say that, considering how much those teams won and the staggering amount of success they had. But punctuating the stories of victories and medals are stories of struggles and losses far more significant than those that show up in record books. Slava talked about living rough when he was a kid, in an apartment with three families and no running water. "But I was happy kid. I played game, played hockey." It's truly heartbreaking to know how much he and his teammates loved hockey, and how much they grew to resent it.

The tragedy, really, starts with Viktor Tikhonov, the national team coach. In all of Slava's interview clips during the film, two things get the same negative reaction from him: being asked about Lake Placid, and being asked about Tikhonov. He falls silent, his face goes somber, and he takes a few painfully awkward seconds to gather his words. (When asked about Lake Placid, he eventually chuckles and goes, “You want a story? You got the time?” But when asked about Tikhonov, he just sort of sighs. Pretty telling.) Again, it's strange to say that Tikhonov ruined everything when he's one of the winningest coaches in hockey history.

But when Slava's younger brother was killed in a car crash in '85, Tikhonov offered no sympathy. And when a teammate asked to leave the team to go see his dying father, Tikhonov said no. These moments sort of triggered the thought process of, "why are you suffering so much for this team?" Slava started thinking about losing games on purpose so maybe he'd get kicked off the team and could go play elsewhere. He felt that disrespected as a human being. When he came to Canada and the U.S. with the Soviet national team, he never even thought about defecting. Not even after 1988, when he was being courted by the New Jersey Devils. Tikhonov had told him he'd be allowed to stay and finish the season in the NHL but went back on his promise and refused to let him leave; this is what finally prompted Slava to quit the Red Army team. He was tired of Tikhonov's dictatorial regime and no longer wanted to play for a coach he couldn't trust. He became a persona non grata in the Soviet Union: people he knew stopped talking to him, no hockey facility would let him train there, and the police handcuffed him to a tree and beat him. Really, it's awful to think that something that once made him so happy had turned into such a source of misery in his life.

You really start hating Tikhonov and hurting for all of his players, which is kind of the magic of this movie. All of the players are so completely humanized. There's a good chunk of time devoted to "the Russian Five" -- Slava, Sergei Makarov, Igor Larionov, Vladimir Krutov, and Alexei Kasatonov -- who were kept together as a unit on the ice and spent all their time together off the ice. They're considered the greatest five-man unit in hockey history. Krutov, I have to say, has the most mournful face and just looking at him hits me right in the heart. And then there's the story of Slava and Alexei Kasatonov.

They were best friends, like brothers -- they played together as a defensive pair for their entire lives, grew up together, spent time with each other's families, the whole shebang -- but had a falling-out when Slava quit the national team. Alexei went public and said he disagreed with Slava's decision. (Makarov, Krutov and Larionov stood up for Slava; Alexei was the only one of the Five not to support him.) When the director asked Alexei to tell the story of what happened, he got visibly upset. With only a little more prompting he had tears in his eyes, and the only thing he said was, "Next question." It clearly still cuts very deep for the both of them. Later on they ended up playing together for the New Jersey Devils (awkwardly), but they ARE friends again! And when Slava was the Sports Minister of Russia, he appointed Alexei as the Vice President of the Red Army Hockey Club. (For real, one of my big complaints about Of Miracles and Men was that it never told us if these two ever reconciled. So when I learned that they have, I may have made a noise like a dying animal. Guys, I didn't need all these Soviet feelings in my life.)

I'm very fragile about this. I need a moment.

I also need to mention that this is a phenomenally-made movie. The graphics, the music, the silence, the creative use of close camera shots... it's all really, really excellent. The film opens with a clip of a speech by Ronald Reagan; "In the traditional motion picture story, villains are usually defeated, the ending is a happy one. I can make no such promise for the picture you're about to watch. The story isn't over. You in the audience are part of the conflict." Obviously this speech is from the '80s, but it rang very true here and felt incredibly poignant. Does this movie have a happy ending? It's hard to say, and I still haven't totally decided on the answer.

Miracle Monday: Of Miracles and Men

We're shaking things up a little bit today, friends! In case you're unaware -- and missed my copious amount of tweets about it -- last night ESPN premiered a new 30 for 30 movie called Of Miracles and Men. And you know I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to talk about it, right? ;)

Full disclosure: ever since I found out about this movie, I was very unhappy that it was about the Soviets instead of the Americans. It was billed as being about the Miracle on Ice but from the Soviet perspective, and my reaction was that, well, have we really heard the American perspective? I mean, the "ragtag bunch of misfits who overachieved" narrative has been absolutely beaten to death, and we essentially ignore the individual players behind it. So it felt as though this film was just playing into that; even though the Americans won, we still overlook them in lieu of the Soviets. So I was pretty pissed.

However, after watching the movie, I'm convinced that they advertised it wrong. The Miracle on Ice certainly factored into the story arc (how could it not?), but it was certainly not a movie about the Miracle on Ice. It was about the development of hockey in the Soviet Union, and the men that figured prominently in making it all happen. So it didn't take long for my bitterness to give way to enjoyment.

Guys, this movie is good. The director has said that his goal was to humanize the team that everyone saw as a machine, and if the all feelings I have now are any indication, that was certainly accomplished.

Of Miracles and Men is about Slava Fetisov in the way that Miracle is, essentially, about Herb Brooks. Everything was essentially framed around his experiences and, post-Lake Placid, followed his journey that eventually led him to become the first Russian player allowed to come play in the NHL. And holy cow, did he earn my respect.

I'd read several reviews before the movie premiered, and one of them criticized the director for bringing Slava back to Lake Placid to have him reminisce because it took up time that they could've used to show more archival footage. But honestly, seeing him standing solemnly on the ice in the empty Herb Brooks Arena with audio of the Americans' post-win celebration dubbed over it? That was hands down one of my favorite moments of the whole film. It was so personal, and so poignant, and I think it did more to humanize him than just about anything else. He and his daughter also visited the locker room, and you could almost physically see the ghosts of 1980 there with them. And I dare you not to feel something when he says, "Thirty years later, I can blame myself."

It was really great to get the reactions of individual players to that loss. As much as they say it was only one loss, that it ended up meaning very little in the grand scheme of things, it still clearly cuts very deep with them. Boris Mikhailov in particular got progressively more agitated the more he spoke about it, and had a little bit of an outburst when he was asked if he'd ever seen Miracle. ("Why would I watch it? I'll watch a good movie! One where I win. Let the American team watch what they did!") And while they were all pretty devastated to not get gold, I wanted to stand up and cheer when Vladimir Petrov said, "To me, that silver medal is still worth a lot. I sacrificed blood for it."

My favorite quote, though, goes to Vladimir Myshkin: "Maybe the gods deemed that day that the Americans deserved their Miracle on Ice." I think this is the first time that I've heard any of the Soviets tip his hat to the U.S. team without a trace of bitterness or "we really should've won, though" in his voice.

That was probably the biggest takeaway: that these guys may have looked big and cold and intimidating, but they were good people. They essentially sacrificed their whole lives to play hockey (to the tune of living in army barracks away from their families for 11 months out of the year), only to retire in their early 30s because they were burnt out and no longer getting enjoyment from playing for the national team. They became an incredibly tight-knit family, rallying around each other and, when Slava was cut from the team in the late '80s, refusing to play at the world championships unless he was reinstated. Slava had opportunities to defect to America so he could play in the NHL, but he insisted on coming over the right way so he could open the door for other players to get there as well. (Seriously, what a stand-up human being.)

Gosh, there's so much more I haven't even touched on, but I need to cut myself off before I go on for a million words, as we all know I'm capable of doing. I do, however, need to mention the word "miracle." Right at the beginning of the movie, Slava says, "In America, people always ask me to talk about the Miracle on Ice. But we made our own miracles. And that's what I want to talk about." I was pretty skeptical about this -- mostly because the overuse of that word does a major disservice to what the U.S. team actually accomplished in Lake Placid -- but honestly? Hearing everything that Slava went through with his coach and his government to try and get out of the Soviet Union and into the NHL, watching him hoist the Stanley Cup in Red Square in Moscow did feel pretty miraculous.

(...I still want a 30 for 30 about the U.S. team, though.)

The Olympics Go Hollywood: Unbroken

Foxcatcher on Wednesday, Unbroken on Sunday. Seeing two new Olympics movies in theaters in less than a week was a pretty amazing thing! :)

Unbroken is the story of Louis Zamperini, a distance runner who competed for the U.S. at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games. He then fought in World War II, surviving a plane crash, 47 days stranded on a raft at sea, and several years in a Japanese POW camp.

Just like with Foxcatcher, I'd been familiar with Louie's story for the better part of a year thanks to my previous job at the USOC. When Louie was named Grand Marshal of the 2015 Rose Parade in May, I posted that story to TeamUSA.org. And when Louie passed away in July, I posted that story to TeamUSA.org as well. That was actually my last day of work at that job, and the very last thing I worked on. So again, while I haven't (yet) read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, I knew a pretty decent amount of the movie's storyline. (Let me just say that it was really, REALLY nice to know that Louie lived to the ripe old age of 97, because otherwise I would've sat through the entire movie wondering when he was going to die. Saved me a whooole lot of stress.)

However, unlike with Foxcatcher, I struggled coming up with things to say about Unbroken. During Foxcatcher, I noticed things like sound design and subtle foreshadowing and was constantly making mental notes of things I wanted to comment on. But during Unbroken, I had none of that mental dialogue. It was an amazing movie so I had no idea why I was drawing such a blank, but in writing this post I had to look up other reviews to try and give myself some kind of inspiration.

Luckily I found one on The Wrap that made sense of everything and clarified why I didn't feel much of a spark:

If I describe the superior craftsmanship of “Unbroken” — the stunning cinematography is by the great Roger Deakins, Alexandre Desplat composed the soaring score — in a way that makes the end results seem more like a convertible than a movie, it’s because the film boasts both sheen and efficiency without always delivering an equivalent emotional impact. It’s easier to be awed or impressed by it than moved.

[...] There are powerful moments in “Unbroken,” to be sure, but it also feels like the kind of generically grand-scale movie that five other directors could have made in exactly the same way. 

 BINGO.

Really, the movie was great. The cinematography really was gorgeous (seriously, some of those silhouette shots made me swoon), the cast was phenomenal, and if you've seen the last Harry Potter movie you know Alexandre Desplat can compose a score that makes me weep. And there were moments that had me hiding my face or biting my nails or absolutely awe-struck. But as much as I adored Louie, nothing made me cry. The only time I got weepy was at the very end, when viewers learn what happened to Louie and the other cast of characters after the war. (Honestly, when they showed footage of Louie running in the torch relay before the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympics... let's not even talk about it. *sniffles*) But that was me crying about the real Louie. Movie-Louie didn't get me all that emotional, which SHOCKED me. Things jumped from brutal moment to brutal moment and I spent more time wincing and cringing than anything else.

The resemblance was pretty impressive, though!

Those POW scenes also went on for a very long time, but I guess that's sort of the point, though. For a long time, Louie's life was nothing but torture and nearly being worked to death, after spending a month and a half on a raft in the middle of the ocean. It would've been incredibly hard to have more diversity in those scenes, and the movie did do a lot with very little. I knew one of Louie's raft-mates died during the ordeal but didn't know which one, and I spent the entirety of that portion of the movie trying (and failing) not to get attached to them and absolutely dreading what was going to happen.

I also wasn't entirely sure what to think of Louie's pre-war life being told in flashbacks. I don't think that style particularly added to the storytelling; in my opinion, it would've been just as effective if it had been told linearly. However, I did love how some of the mantras Louie's brother told him while he was training became relevant to him in an entirely new way during the war. "If I can take it, I can make it" and "a moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory" certainly took on whole new meanings while he was being beaten. It was a really cool way to sort of see the power of sport. Obviously most of the credit goes to Louie's incredible strength of personality, but would he have had that mental stamina had he not become a runner? Sport gives a lot of people strength in other aspects of their lives, and as a sports fan, I really enjoyed seeing Louie revert back to his basic training principles to get himself through his toughest times.

If nothing else, this movie gives you a really good sense of what Louie was all about. As a runner, he was known for his strong final kick and made headlines at the Olympics for his blazingly fast final lap, despite not medaling. He was the same in the rest of his life: he never gave up. He knew how to roll with the punches and somehow managed to stay relatively positive through all of it. He was unequivocally the leader of the group on the raft, and was singled out for abuse at the POW camps but retained his fighting spirit all the way through.

Louis Zamperini was truly a special, one-of-a-kind human being. If for no other reason, see this movie out of respect and appreciation for him and everything he went through. Unbroken might be missing some emotional impact, but it's a beautiful movie and a phenomenal tribute.

The Olympics Go Hollywood: Foxcatcher

FINALLY. Foxcatcher was released on November 14th but only in select cities, and over a month later it finally made its way to one theater in Colorado Springs. So on Christmas Eve, I decided to be the ultimate Jewish stereotype and see a movie before getting Chinese food for dinner. :)

Foxcatcher is the story of Mark Schultz, a wrestler who competed at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics. After '84, he's in a pretty bad place and ends up moving onto the Foxcatcher Farms estate to train under John du Pont, a mentally unstable sociopath. Entwined with Mark's story is that of his brother Dave, also an Olympic wrestler, who eventually comes to live at Foxcatcher as well.

The movie was released at the same time as Mark's autobiography and is essentially based on the book. Though I haven't read it, I've been familiar with Dave's story for the better part of a year now. At my last job with the USOC, one of my tasks was to post our video content to TeamUSA.org; one of the videos I posted was about Dave, and as I'd never heard of him before I decided to watch it. Let me tell you, I almost fell off my chair when I learned about his story.

So if you watch that video, that's most of the background info I had going in. I'd read reviews of the film here and there, so I knew a little bit more, but not too much. Either way, I went in knowing that this was not going to be a feel-good movie. I knew I'd probably be super creeped out and maybe a teensy bit traumatized.

Boy, did I hit THAT nail on the head. (This is going to be long, because WOW do I have a lot of feelings.)

Let me start off by saying that Foxcatcher is incredibly well done, in all aspects. It was a little bit slow at times, but everything was really on point. I had read various criticisms that some of the details weren't correct and that the timeline was slightly off, but as someone who didn't have an intimate knowledge of the details nor the timeline, nothing the movie did felt wrong or strange. I did know that the very end of the movie skipped ahead almost eight years in the blink of an eye and didn't indicate that at all, but I don't think that harmed the integrity of the story. The timing of that final event was fairly irrelevant.

The actors' transformations were absolutely mind-blowing. I didn't see Mark Ruffalo on screen; he WAS Dave Schultz. Steve Carrell was phenomenal as John du Pont, and I was really surprised at how convincing Channing Tatum was as Mark Schultz.

Real (left) vs. fiction (right). Check out the image source for more side-by-side comparisons. It's crazy.

I was also amazed by the sound design, which sounds really snooty and isn't something I ever thought I'd say... But this was a very quiet film. There was a whole lot of silence, and a lot of information was conveyed nonverbally or through very few words. The score was also incredibly fitting; on one hand it sounded innocent, but on the other it was dark and ominous. So when the score faded away into silence -- wow. It was powerful. And CREEPY. The movie starts off with old, grainy footage (that I think was actual footage of the du Ponts at Foxcatcher in the '20s or '30s) set to this sinister music. It was a great way to set everything up; horseback riding and groups of dogs and high society all look nice, but there was this decidedly menacing undertone.

In terms of the story, I was surprised at how it didn't really portray Mark as a hero. He was incredibly flawed, and you got the feeling that he was his own worst enemy. He had a knack for making bad choices; he had very low self-confidence and self-worth; and he managed to sabotage his own success every single time. He wasn't a bad guy, so I was rooting for him to just make better decisions and think more highly of himself! It was almost painful to watch du Pont take him under his wing, because he knew the exact things to say to get Mark's loyalty; "the great Mark Schultz" and "you're more than Dave Schultz's younger brother," etc. Mark was an easy target. Dave, on the other hand, was the far more sympathetic character even though he had far less screen time. He was popular, happily married with two kids, successful, a beautifully caring person, and on and on and on. I spent most of the movie wanting to see more of Dave, which is, sadly, kind of fitting. A huge source of angst in Mark's life was Dave's shadow, and how everyone shunted him aside because of how beloved Dave was. I felt vaguely guilty that I was doing that very thing.

(Note: the following contains spoilers, so if you want to read the book or see the movie without knowing what happens, don't continue! But if you watched the video embedded up top, you already know what happens.)

I appreciated how guns were a running theme throughout the movie. John du Pont ordered himself what looked like a tank, and flat-out refused to accept it because it wasn't equipped with a machine gun. He brought a handgun into the gym at one point, and fired at the ceiling for no real reason. There was a scene with du Pont shooting target practice with police officers, and there was a very poignant moment that was just a close-up of his face with the sound of gunfire in the background. Great foreshadowing. Another running theme? Foxcatcher was in Valley Forge. So there was a pretty heartbreaking juxtaposition of the estate with the shadow of thousands of deaths. Soldiers died there while fighting for their country, and Dave died there having also fought for his country (as an Olympian).

When it came to Dave's death, even though I knew it was coming, I felt physically ill waiting for it and then watching it happen. His murder was so pointless, and the whole movie was spent making you fall in love with him... so watching him die the way he did was absolutely devastating. I'm still pretty crushed.

My biggest complaint about the movie is how it ended: Dave was killed, Mark was shown doing some MMA fighting, and that was it. Dave and Mark's relationship was such a huge part of the movie, and I felt cheated that we never got to see Mark's reaction to Dave's death. It's like there were five minutes of film that were chopped off at the end. There was no real resolution, and I left the theater still reeling from Dave's death. (So hey, maybe that's the point.)

Long story short: it's an amazing movie, you should definitely go see it, but don't expect any warm-fuzzies!

Olympics Movies That Should Definitely Be Made

It's really no secret that I'm a rather big fan of Olympics movies. (Let's ignore the fact that I still haven't seen Chariots of Fire...) And I've been excited to see Foxcatcher for about six or seven months, when I first learned about Dave Schultz. But there are two problems: Foxcatcher isn't in theaters in Colorado yet (don't even get me started), and it's bound to be a dark, twisted, creepy sort of movie. But seriously, just reading about John du Pont makes my skin crawl.

This seems to be a fairly common thing in Olympics movies. I mean, just in the handful I've seen there's been a whole lot of death, and Unbroken (which comes out on Christmas!) sure isn't going to be any happier. It was this revelation that made sense of why I'm so into Miracle -- not only does it involve absolutely zero deaths or torture, it's a movie that's well-done and almost entirely factual. Obviously Hollywood took a few liberties, but you can watch Miracle and get a pretty solid idea of how things actually happened. This, too, is surprisingly rare. Cool Runnings? Sorry, guys. It's based on a true story but needs to be taken with a huuuuge grain of salt.

Basically, I'm just not thrilled with my selection of Olympics movies. I mean, is it so much to ask to watch a movie that's both accurate and not depressing? Apparently it is. But if you throw a rock at the Olympics, you'll hit a story that's worth making a movie about. It's literally a goldmine of movie material. Here are some Olympics movies that Hollywood definitely needs to start developing ASAP!

1. Dan Jansen. How this guy's story wasn't immortalized on the silver screen within days of the Lillehammer 1994 Games coming to an end, I will never understand. In 1988 he was the favorite for two speed skating gold medals. But on the day of his first race, his sister died of leukemia, and he fell in both of his races. He came back for the 1992 Olympics and again finished out of the medals, but in his final race at the 1994 Olympics, he was finally able to win the gold medal that had eluded him for so long. But not only that... he took his victory lap holding his baby daughter that he'd named after his sister. I mean, come on! You don't even need to take any creative license with that! It's a story that involves heartbreak and success AND wraps itself up in a neat little bow! Do you want to start writing the screenplay, or should I?

2. The Dream Team. While I'm a total sucker for an underdog story, I still think the greatest team of all time could easily be turned into a great movie. There was plenty of interesting stuff going on in that team dynamic, and a movie could easily become more of a character study than anything else! I mean, Patrick Ewing (from Jamaica) and Larry Bird (a white guy from a teeny town in Indiana) became best friends. Magic Johnson was battling HIV and trying to maintain alpha male status over Michael Jordan, who wasn't taking too kindly to that. And then there was Charles Barkley, who's enough of a character to carry an entire movie by himself. Now, tell me you wouldn't watch that!

3. The Magnificent Seven. Again, who in Hollywood is sleeping on this one? That first "team that overcame the odds and beat the Russians" movie did pretty well, right? Well, this has all the same elements (right down to the slightly crazy coach!), but this one would involve girls in star-spangled leotards and the self-sacrificing heroics of Kerri Strug. But there was drama even before the Olympics, as Shannon Miller and Dominique Moceanu were both injured during Olympic trials but were named to the team anyway. So many storylines! So much potential!

4. Apolo Ohno. I might be biased, since Apolo is my dude, but I would love to see a movie about his life. He was a really rebellious kid from a single-parent household that essentially ran away from home to avoid going to train seriously. And he then went on to become the most decorated American winter Olympian in history. Again, there's not really much creative license that has to be taken there. It's one of those underdog stories that people tend to salivate over.

5. Jesse Owens. Um, hello? He's THE American Olympic hero. Look up any list of the greatest American Olympic moments, and 90% of the time, the Miracle on Ice will be #2 and Jesse Owens will be #1. He was the black man that beat all of Hitler's Aryans in Germany. Pretty self explanatory. But as if we need another reason, he also happened to befriend one of his blonde German competitors, Luz Long, who offered Owens in-competition advice and then finished second to him. So not only was Jesse Owens beating the Germans, he was making friends with them. Talk about giving Hitler the finger!

6. Dick Fosbury. I absolutely adore Dick Fosbury, and his story is probably one of the most unique and compelling I've ever come across. He was a high jumper that literally revolutionized the technique used in his sport... simply because he couldn't do it the accepted way. Like, he was a very bad high jumper, so he said "screw it, I'll get over that bar however I can." So the Fosbury Flop was born, and he broke all sorts of records and won an Olympic gold medal. And nowadays, every single high jumper uses the Fosbury Flop technique. AMAZING.

Hollywood, take note: a movie doesn't have to be fabricated or depressing to be awesome. But until you start realizing that, I'll just watch Miracle another million or so times. (And, uh, I should probably get around to Chariots of Fire!)

The Olympics Go Hollywood

How on EARTH is it May already? What the heck? Pretty sure we skipped March and April, and mother nature still seems to think it's January; it's currently snowing. But either way, the calendar tells me we're now five months into 2014, and I'm still doing pretty well with my New Year's resolutions. I got a job (for the time being), I'm working out more, I'm reading regularly, I get up in the morning like a grown-up, and I've flossed every single day (woop woop for no gum disease!). But for the longest time, I was majorly slacking on #7 - "put leisure time to good use."

After the Olympics and Paralympics ended I had plenty of leisure time... but what was I doing with it? Not watching sports movies like I said I was going to, that's what. But then I happened to mention my desire to expand my Olympic movie repertoire to Brandon, my boss (the same one I called dude, if that gives you an idea of our relationship), and suddenly he's showing up to work with DVDs for me to borrow! Seriously, only one of the movies below belongs to me. So basically, this post could be called "Darci raids Brandon's Olympic movie collection." And it just so happens that they all divided nicely into two weekends, and two Olympics. :)

Munich: I knew going in that Munich is NOT the kind of movie I seek out and enjoy. Call me crazy, but I tend not to like watching people get killed in various violent ways. However, this movie is very highly regarded, and while I can't say I'll watch it again, I can say that it was really good. Avner and his crew were secret agents assigned to kill the people responsible for the massacre of the Israeli Olympic team, and the longer they were under cover and killing people, the more and more paranoid they got. By the end, Avner had spiraled so far into his paranoia that he could barely function. And as the movie ended, I found myself sitting in my otherwise empty apartment and wondering if someone wanted to kill me. They get into your head, these psychological thrillers!

While seeing the Israeli athletes get taken hostage and murdered was a wee bit traumatizing, I did like learning a bit about the aftermath. Munich is not entirely factual, but everything I know about the Munich Massacre is about the day itself. I knew basically nothing about what happened next, or if Israel retaliated at all. So learning that much was pretty interesting, even if I do have to take everything else with a grain of salt. But if it's good enough for Cool Runnings, it's good enough for Munich.

Without Limits: I had zero expectations going into this movie. I knew nothing about it other than its subject, and judging by the DVD cover I figured it would be pretty bad (I mean, look at it!). But I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it! It follows distance runner Steve Prefontaine from his high school days up through his death. I didn't know all that much about Pre beforehand, other than that he (spoiler alert?) finished fourth in Munich and (spoiler alert?) died really young, so it was really cool getting to hear about the kind of impact he ended up having on track and field in the U.S. He also seems like a pretty interesting character. Considering his final record didn't fall until 2012 (holy craaap), I have to wonder what he could've accomplished had he not died so young. There was, of course, a love story subplot, but I didn't totally hate it. They really loved each other but it was far from all sunshine and rainbows. The girl actually had a personality! It was refreshing.

My main complaint is the fact that the movie didn't make clear the passage of time. You know that time has gone by, but the only indication of that is Pre's slightly longer hair and the sudden appearance of a mustache. Have we just skipped ahead several months? A year? And then, unfortunately, there was the utter predictability of Pre's death. Even if I hadn't known it was coming, the absolutely heinous foreshadowing all but told me it was going to happen. He was literally counting down to his death. Alas.

Uh, hi, my name is Darci and I'm obsessed with Lake Placid 1980. Is there a support group for this? (Also, Miracle is obviously mine. And it is not new. But if you thought I'd have a Lake Placid movie weekend and wasn't going to include Miracle...)

Lake Placid, An Olympic History: This baby both started and ended with a song from the Miracle soundtrack. ;) I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't psychopathically in love with Lake Placid and/or the Olympics (like myself), because it's very much a documentary; lots of history. But considering I own a book on the very same subject, it was right up my alley. Anything that talks about Eric Heiden and the Miracle on Ice is a winner in my book. It was also cool to hear about all the Olympians from Lake Placid; apparently there's been at least one at every single Winter Olympics. Pretty impressive. OH, and I learned that the bobsled track I took a ride on was the exact one used at the 1932 Olympics!

Miracle On Ice: Do I even need to explain how excited I was to watch this? I randomly found it for sale on the same website that gave me DVDs of the actual 1980 Olympic hockey games (aka a veritable wonderland of glorious things). I'd read conflicting things about this movie -- which was, by the way, a made-for-TV movie released in 1981 with a limited budget and production schedule. Some said it's better than Miracle, some said it's crap, but what really got my attention were the reviews that said they wished it could be combined with Miracle. That it showed a ton of what Miracle left out, and the two together would've been the perfect movie.

After seeing it for myself -- and cringing, flailing, and cackling -- I totally agree. Miracle On Ice + Miracle = pretty perfect.

Most of my reaction comes from the fact that I know a whole heck of a lot about this team and its stories, and there's a TON that Miracle doesn't even touch. Miracle On Ice shows the guys getting their invitations to training camp, arriving at the Colorado Springs OTC (YAY!!! And it looks like it was actually filmed here!), finding out that they made the team, etc. So that was pretty glorious. We also got to see how the players' agents and lawyers factored in, and more of Jim Craig's relationship with his father, and more Mike Eruzione storylines than I ever thought I wanted. And more players got slightly bigger roles in Miracle On Ice than they did in Miracle, which was awesome. But with all that came stuff that Miracle included that Miracle On Ice (very, very unfortunately) left out. There's actually surprisingly little from before the Olympics that directly overlapped.

Most of my other complaints are related to the rushed production and the fact that it's a typical cheesy '80s movie. The hockey was slow and clunky (and when they used real game footage, they didn't make it blend in very well), the Boston accents were really thick and really fake, Karl Malden was 20 years too old to play Herb Brooks (and Steve Guttenberg as Jim Craig? Really?), and some of the writing/dialogue/acting was just... yikes. Holy bad.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and this boils down to the little details that were included that only an... uh, slightly overzealous fan such as myself would appreciate. I mean, Rob McClanahan talking about geopolitical absorption (and Jack O'Callahan responding with total snark)? Hello, flawless. Mark Pavelich wearing flannel, playing guitar and being late because he was fishing? Be still, my fangirl heart! The vote for team captain coming down to Mike Eruzione and Buzz Schneider? Yes, thank you. Dave Christian getting called Koho? A+. But MOST IMPORTANTLY... Ken Morrow had a beard. *standing ovation*

It's glaringly obvious why Disney wanted to make Miracle despite the previous existence of Miracle On Ice, and I myself see Miracle On Ice as more of a supplement than a stand-alone. Kind of like fanfiction; oftentimes questionably executed, but gives you stuff you wish the original had included. So, yes, if you smush Miracle On Ice and Miracle together, you'd have one fantabulous movie.

So this was a good first step in my endeavor to watch more sports movies! I do still need to see Chariots of Fire, though. Whoops. Are there any others that you think are must-sees? Recommendations are always appreciated! :)