Documentary chronicles turbulent life from early days as gifted teenage midfielder to admission to the PrioryIt’s no great spoiler to reveal that, apart from Gazza’s opening and closing scenes filmed near a Hampshire fishing lake, it is comprised of archive footage. The subject of this two-part documentary, to be shown on the BBC, had been booked to participate in a Q&A after a London press screening on Thursday, but despite being spotted at the venue was a no-show. The appearance of the footballer’s latter-day incarnation proved even more fleeting in “real life” as it was on screen.Paul Gascoigne, we were told, did not feel up to facing the press and had adjourned to his hotel. While there is no suggestion...
A 1984 Italian movie chronicles the tail-end of the innuendo-led era and, though it has a few dated scenes, it helped set an agenda in its own wayBefore Mike Bassett, there was Oronzo Canà. The former was a fictional English football manager, played by Ricky Tomlinson, who was overpromoted into coaching the national team in a 2001 comedy that became a cult classic. The latter: a fictional Italian football manager, played by Lino Banfi, who was overpromoted into coaching a Serie A team in a 1984 comedy that went the same way.Both make up some tiny part of my cultural heritage, and yet the truth is that until recently I knew only one of them well. Neither parent actually cared...
In the Realm of Perfection uses archive footage no one knew existed to chart Superbrat’s failure to win the French OpenA new documentary, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, has been called, in US Vogue, “the best tennis film ever made”. This in itself is not necessarily the greatest praise you could heap on a work of art: it is like calling a footballer “the greatest English left-sided midfielder of the 21st century”. But the writer goes even further and nominates it as “among the very best films on any sport that I’ve ever seen”.That, for me, is a stretch. In the last decade there’s been Senna, Free Solo, Icarus and, if you’re loose with your definition of a...
Steven Soderbergh’s basketball drama probes the fraying covenant between white power brokers and their mostly black labor forceSteven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird, written by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney and available for streaming on Netflix, is the finest movie ever made about the business of professional sports, not for the answers it purports to give about a billion-dollar industry charged by undercurrents of race and politics but the questions it asks. Related: High Flying Bird review – Soderbergh scales new heights on Netflix Continue reading...
Russia’s equivalent of Grimsby Town overcome odds with the help of some powerful friends but crowd-pleasing morality tale is not quite what it seemsThe second-division team from a distant and ill-favoured coastal town are in the cup final. They’re playing in a big stadium against the country’s most glamorous and history-laden club. They go two goals down, and a pall of inevitability settles over the match. But then, suddenly, they start to score. The first goal receives applause. The second gets a cheer. When the third goes in, the place erupts. Related: ‘This debt must be settled’: IAAF extends Russia’s doping ban Continue reading...