The Longest Yard (2005)

Winding up in jail after a drunken car crash, an ex-football player and man-generally-making-a-giant-mess-of-his-life Paul Crewe (Sandler) is coerced by the prison warden to coach a football team made up of prisoners, but things become complicated in this remake of the 1974 original when this reluctant coach becomes torn between wanting his ragtag team of prisoners to win an upcoming game versus prison guards (and so redeeming himself after so much failure) and succumbing to pressure from the prison warden to let the prison staff win.

★★★☆☆

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The Blind Side (2009)

In this adaptation of Michael (Moneyball, The Big Short) Lewis' based-on-fact book, a woman (Sandra Bullock) takes in a homeless student, real-life Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), and helps him carve out an education and a future in sport, but while the first half pulls at heartstrings with its Christian saviour story and the second half occasionally amuses with its cameo-laden comedic look at the NFL college draft, what you realise by the end is that Oher himself is missing - a physical presence in the film but little more than a mere shape, a centrepiece for a whole lot of other people's busy-ness and noise around the table.

★★☆☆☆

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The Australian Dream (2019)

I grew up feeling like my disinterest in AFL was a personality defect, but watching this documentary about two-time Brownlow Medal winner and 2014 Australian of the Year Adam Goodes, I had the epiphany that what I hated about football as a kid was the vitriol and terrible behaviour on show at matches, both on the field and off, and the power of this documentary is that it shows what AFL could be and in turn what the country could be, and hopefully the Australians who most need to see this see it when they are ready to listen because it is a message powerfully presented and in a format that isn't able to be interrupted and obfuscated by the obnoxious input of the likes of Sam Newman, Andrew Bolt, and similar turds.

★★★★★

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