Writer-director Lauren Hadaway makes her bold and gripping feature filmmaking debut with “The Novice,” set in the competitive world of collegiate rowing. (She based the story on her experiences on the rowing team at my alma mater, Southern Methodist University, Go Mustangs.) The sound design is exquisite and Isabelle Fuhrman...
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Reviews
Breakfast All Day Podcast: A La Carte With Dan Shaughnessy
Dan Shaughnessy is a legendary sportswriter, author and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He’s also a really old friend of ours, someone we stay with whenever we’re in Boston, which we did recently. This time, I also had the pleasure of sitting down with him for a...
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Breakfast All Day Podcast: A La Carte With Howard Bryant
Howard Bryant is a longtime sports writer, author and ESPN personality, but he’s voraciously knowledgeable (and opinionated) about a wide variety of topics. He’s also a lovely, quick-witted guy and a joy to talk with, and I’m always happy to see him when he visits Los Angeles from his home...
Read moreRevisiting Ice Castles
If you were a little girl in the 1970s like I was, you probably loved “Ice Castles” and watched it a million times — whether or not you’d ever actually set foot on the ice yourself. You know that aspiring figure-skating champion Lexie Winston (Lynn-Holly Johnson) is going to take...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — 4 Minute Mile
All the underdog sports-movie cliches are in place in this drama about an aging, alcoholic track coach who trains a troubled but talented sprinter to run a mile in four minutes. And yet there’s an efficiency of storytelling, and Richard Jenkins elevates the familiar material simply by showing up and...
Read moreDraft Day
Summit Entertainment Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and sexual references. Running time: 109 minutes. Three stars out of four. “Draft Day” reminded me a lot of “Moneyball,” understandably. Both are about the behind-the-scenes, stat-based wheeling and dealing that go on between big-league professional sports teams — number crunching rather...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Rush
Alonso, Ben and I are feeling sexy, ’70s-style, in our review of the Ron Howard racing flick “Rush.”...
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