The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Sports refers to any type of event or game where participants must participate in some form of physical competition either individually or as a team. These can be sports of strength, skill, dexterity or physical endurance.
Almost any sports film discussed here falls into two categories. The first is the familiar sports film trope of The Underdog Wins Out plot where an individual or team enters a competition despite vast odds stacked against them. The other is where they receive some form of fantastical odds in the form of formulas, superpowers, or help from ghosts, angels, aliens, talking horses or vehicles with personalities.
Also discussed here are depictions of sports of the future or in fantasy settings.
Beautiful fantasy where Kevin Costner hears a voice that directs him to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield where dead players to return to life. A genteel fantasy filled with nostalgia for lost Americana and the 1960s
Winning animated film from Pixar based around the appealingly original idea of vehicles having personalities. The idea is spun out with considerable wit and sophistication. Two sequels followed.
One of the inspired delights from Disney’s live-action era, a hit that became the template for their subsequent live-action films. The scenes with flying vehicles and basketball teams are entirely charming.
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he parodies The Matrix et al with Buddhist monks using flying martial arts moves to aid a failing soccer team
Celebrated British horror anthology, which tells five ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. All are strong stories with The Ventriloquist’s Dummy segment in particular having become regarded as a classic
The third of the James Bond films and the point where everything that has been defined as the formula of the series – the gadgets, the villains, the henchmen, the cars, the world domination plots – falls into place perfectly
Musical where an ordinary guy sells his soul to become a star baseball player. Choreographed with exuberance by the great Bob Fosse, including a seduction number that proved controversial for the era
The Wachowskis live-action remake of the anime series is a sublimely madcap confection, a film that is alive with vibrant visuals and all the colours of the rainbow. A box-office flop but glorious, even groundbreaking visually
To accompany their two Matrix sequels, The Wackowskis hired seven anime directors to each make a short film set in The Matrix universe. The results are often quite remarkable
Satiric hit produced by Roger Corman, a spoof of Rollerball, with David Carradine as a driver in a futuristic road race where points are won by running down pedestrians. Also featuring a young unknown Sylvester Stallone
Hong Kong director/writer Stephen Chow is the star of his own highly creative comedy films. Here in one of his quieter films, Chow conducts a comedy take on E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
This came out several months after Happy Feet and has a similar plot involving surfing penguins. Though the lesser film and far more predictable, it is likeable
Animated film spun off from a popular French online gameworld, which had also previously spawned an animated tv series. The results are amiably engaging with a sense of humour that makes the show
Interesting film directed by David Peoples, the screenwriter of Blade Runner, about a post-apocalyptic sports team. This avoids the cliches of the Mad Max film and creates an interesting future background
Stuart Gordon, the cult director of Re-Animator, turns his hand to making a live-action Transformers film way back before anybody had ever head the name Michael Bay
A dense, visually afire film from the great Tony Scott starring Robert De Niro as a sports fan who snaps from the pressures of ordinary life and then stalks baseball star Wesley Snipes
Zombies and soccer! Ok? From co-director of the ferocious French zombie film The Horde, a rather entertaining effort that resembles something of Shaun of the Dead in its comedy approach
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
The Mexican masked wrestler superhero Santo faces Frankenstein’s daughter who wants his blood to perfect her rejuvenation serum in this entertainingly madcap outing
John Carpenter’s sequel to Escape from New York falls too much in the shadow of its predecessor, nevertheless has some effective moments of its own, with Carpenter in particular creating a satiric fundamentalist future
Sequel to Pixar’s Cars. While the original was a cutely appealing concept with a gentle contemplative message, this plays as more of an out-and-out spy caper making a virtue of its international locations
Another of the films from the Mexican wrestling superhero Santo where he and his friend Blue Demon encounter assorted Famous Monsters raised by a mad scientist
The third of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This faithfully replicates the look and visuals of the original comic-books as the two head off to the Olympics
A unique and highly original take on the invisibility film where Olivia Thirlby becomes invisible because people no longer notice her until she meets one person who does
A Disney live-action comedy that puts a Tarzan character on the athletics field for some inspired nonsense
Energetic South Korean attempt to employ the Wu Xia action moves popularised by The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in a high school setting
Before the teen idol phenomenon took over, the original in the massively popular Young Adult series works as an earnest romance where all involved are clearly making an effort to play with a conviction
Film spinoff from tv’s The Munsters, a likeable knockabout farce featuring the original cast
Japanese film about teams that engage in combat tournaments with hordes of Smurf-like creatures. This spends too much time on its high school drama cliches but eventually finds the dementia of its concept at the climax
Shinya Tsukamoto returns to the repressions of his earlier Tetsuo: The Iron Man in this frenetic, ultra-violent work about a downtrodden salaryman who reconnects with life by allowing himself to be beaten up in the boxing ring. This feels like Raging Bull remade by David Cronenberg
Obvious but likeable attempt by Disney to replicate the success of Mary Poppins with Angela Lansbury as a good witch taking a group of children on a series of nonsense adventures
Rather witty little Troma release about a killer lawnmower hunting people at a golf course that in its last half becomes an hilarious parody of Jaws
Third of the original Herbie the Love Bug films from Disney. This is an amiable effort that takes place at a car race across Europe and sees the return of Dean Jones, plus has Herbie fall in love
One of the better films from Santo the Mexican wrestling superhero, quite an atmospheric work where Santo and his friend Blue Demon faces Dracula and his werewolf acolyte
Classic work of dystopian SF set in a future where an ultra-violent sport has been created to pacify the masses
Fourth of the Harry Potter films and one that feels much more seamless and sure of itself as a story. The problem is the absurd contrivation of J.K. Rowling’s weak story that wheels out every sports movie cliche in the book
Warren Beatty co-directs/stars in a remake of the afterlife film Here Comes Mr Jordan. Amiably lightweight but this was over-praised at the time, inexplicably receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture
Film about robot boxing that leaves no sports movie cliche untouched, nevertheless works effectively on all the right emotional cues. Capably made, with good effects and the cute kid steals the show
Oddball German comedy in which a toy table footballer magically comes to life and becomes a star soccer player
This was the first of Disney’s Herbie films about a Volkswagen with a life and mind of its own. Not quite as good as the sequels, this still has a charming silliness to it
One of the original Hollywood afterlife films of the 1940s light fantasy boom, twice remade, most notedly as Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. Amiable and likeable while avoiding any deeper issues
TV movie revival of Disney’s Herbie films and one of the better sequels, playing around with the concept and even adding a Herbie origin story
One of the films featuring the Mexican masked wrestler Santo. A rehash of Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax with Santo facing a mad waxworks curator who is using human bodies as exhibits
Film about a pair of magical soccer boots, so centred in its local sports culture that it is unlikely to have much appeal outside of its Manchester setting
An amiable venture into the light fantasy films that were popular during this era., Here angels come down and intervene to aid a baseball team on a losing streak
This is the most famous of the Santo films, one that evinces an often crudely effective poetry out of its assemblage of B movie elements as he goes up against a vampire priestess and her minions
One of the wacky inventor live-action comedies Disney made in the 1960s, a sequel to The Misadventures of Merlin Jones where Tommy Kirk variously adopts a chimpanzee and tries to sleep-coach football jocks
A variant on It’s a Wonderful Life where James Belushi gets to live the life he never did due to missing a key baseball homerun
Animated film based on the popular comic-books co-directed by the comic-book’s creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo,. This is disappointingly weak animation that substitutes slapstick cartoon gags for the comic’s more sophisticated humour
Police procedural with Roy Scheider as a detective tracking a serial killer who strikes on the nights of big baseball games
The second of Disney’s Dexter Reilly films with Kurt Russell as a teen genius who invents an invisibility formula
The 24th film from DreamWorks Animation – the studio that once offered a reasonable challenge to Disney is now starting to slip into the bland formula of competitors like Blue Sky. While passable, this feels like a film substantially lacking in originality and where you can predict its every move
Since Michael Bay retired from the series, The Transformers films have been looking for new directions. This ventures into animation to tell a Transformers origin story
Very strange French SF film about a futuristic truck race
Another videogame adapted film, this has almost entirely been conceived around a series of slick fight sequences and little else
This lamely updates I Was a Teenage Werewolf to the 1980s high school, strips all horror elements and has Michael J. Fox’s transformation be regarded as an instant injection of cool. The result was a surprising hit
For reasons not clear to me, Space Jam is considered a classic. Now we get a sequel that updates it to the present featuring a different NBA star LeBron James
This adapts one of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novels but the book is sidelined to become an Arnold Schwarzenegger action comic-book on the oft-used theme of a future where people compete in televised gladiatorial games
Based on a Pepsi commercial, this brings NBA star Michael Jordan and a host of Looney Tunes characters together in a basketball game. A cute idea not very well developed.
Spanish-Argentinean animated film about the miniature players of a table football game come to life. The animation is not the high-end quality of most theatrical releases but passable; everything plays out to to fairly predictable sports movies cliches
The third in a popular series of films about a Little League baseball team, this involves a time travel element
Sequel to Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor that only unimaginatively shuffles around the same elements and lacks the inspired touch of the first film
The much-anticipated sequel to the Gal Gadot starring Wonder Woman is a highly divided success, partly due to an inane plot centred around a magic wishing stone
A comedy in which Ray Milland is cast as a chemistry professor who becomes a baseball star after inventing a wood-repelling chemical
The second in a surprisingly popular series of comedies about Francis the talking mule, this involves Donald O’Connor and Francis in a series of hijinks set around horse racing track
The idea of a horror film set around US football leaves you scratching your head – the two don’t seem to go together. Produced by Jordan Peele, this comes out somewhere between Any Given Sunday and The Neon Demon
Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl
Remake of Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor where the charms of the original are buried under an excess of twee – where the professor now gets a cute robot assistant and the flubber becomes sentient
For the most part, this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
A popular Hong Kong hit in its day where a schoolgirl gains a ghostly scholar as an invisible companion, resulting in a series of slapstick sequences. Several sequels followed
The second of the Harry Potter films and better than its predecessor. Chris Columbus has his tendency to overblown effects more in check but that does leave the film more dependent on J.K. Rowling’s contrived deus ex machina plotting
The first of the Harry Potter films. The first is the weakest and lumbers due to being placed in the hands of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus who allows visual effects wow and simplistic emotional cues to dominate
Claymation film from Aardman Animations that is in effect a prehistoric comedy like The Flintstones or The Croods mixed up with a sports film, but is Aardman’s slightest work so far
Disney live-action comedy with Peter Ustinov as the ghost of a resurrected pirate who comes to the aid of an ailing collage track team
Kid’s film that comes with a rather slight gimmick in which a Bigfoot is befriended and persuaded to join the high school basketball team
Another of the weaker sequels that Pixar seem determined to churn out. This lacks the fun among the anthropomorphic vehicles that its predecessors had with a hardly inspiring story about its hero feeling old and over-the-hill
Japanese film clearly inspired by Battle Royale that has a wonderfully appealing premise where a high school baseball game that has been turned into a deathsport
A Russian SF film about humans who have been selected to participate in an intergalactic sports tournament. This feels that it has been construed as an anti-Alita: Battle Angel and has some stunning design work
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film is a genre filled with gore, madcap combat moves, bizarre bio-mechanoid transformations. This concerns itself with a game of baseball that has become a blood-drenched combat sport
Inside Out, set around the personified emotions in a girl’s head, was one of the breaths of fresh air among Pixar’s slip into terminal sequelitis during the 2010s. Now it gets its own sequel
Disney remake of the old light fantasy film in which angels step in to aid a losing baseball team. This is pitched to family audiences and holds a surprisingly ardent evangelical message
The second of Abbott and Costello’s outings with Universal’s Famous Monsters. The usual numbskullery is boosted by some excellent invisibility effects
This is the Bollywood version of E.T.. That is if one can imagine an E.T. with singing, dancing and romantic scenes. A simplistic but popular hit that spawned several sequels
What was once a planned James Cameron adaptation of a manga about a cyborg girl is now brought to the screen by Robert Rodriguez but it is hard to say what an underwhelming disappointment the result is
Utterly insipid family film about an orphan kid who is given a magical set of sneakers that turn him into a basketball star who is “like Mike [Jordan].” Little more than a glorified commercial for the NBA
Head-scratching animated oddity from Disney that adapts the talking animal fairytale only to throw in a series of bizarre plot elements that end up as an alien invasion story
A Disney Channel film where Ryan Merriman discovers that he is the child of leprechaun parents. A mad pastiche of Irish culture, related to the earlier film in name only
Remade, the 1975 dystopian film about future sports is stripped of any of its big message (even of its future setting) and is turned into no more than a formulaic action film
This borrows the basics of Rollerball and concerns a futuristic sports game played aboard hoverboards. Cocky player Dean Cain decides a showdown with terrorists must be settled over the outcome of a game
This was a revival of Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug films. Here it becomes a vehicle for Lindsay Lohan who is cast as a racing driver but is missing all the cute charms the original films had
From the top wrestling superstar in the world in the early 00s to movie action hero to being dressed in a pink tutu with fairy wings, it is hard to believe that Dwayne Johnson’s box-office star would have ever recovered from this family film embarrassment that sees him cast as a fairy
WolfCop found an appeal with its amusing title premise. Here the principal talents involved have reunited for a sequel, although the feeling is more that they have done so solely because the first film was a success
The third of Disney Dexter Reilly films in which teen inventor Kurt Russell creates a super-strength cereal
From the director of Tron, an animated film produced to commemorate the 1980 Olympics, a series of skits with various talking animals participating in different Olympic sports
Death Race 2000 was a hit for producer Roger Corman. It was remade minus the satire as a straight action film with Death Race; here Corman remakes the original (albeit very cheaply) and restores the satire
Thriller with Michael Madsen as a detective searching boxing clubs for a serial killer. This has one of the most inanely ridiculous scripts one has seen in some time
Schizoid film – on one level a National Velvet-like story in which Hayden Panettiere trains a zebra to enter a horse race; another in which the animals and insects crack one-liners and make poop and pee jokes
Exceedingly lightweight effort about Marlon Wayans’ ghost brother aiding their basketball team, which proves as predictable as one expects
Hong Kong cinema specialises in a type of frenetic, high-energy slapstick. This – a romance set around a swimming competition in which the girl thinks she has been blessed by a water god – is not one of the more inspired
In this rather shabby effort, Santo (in the sixteenth of his 52 films) takes on invaders from Mars whose entire plan seems to hang on the need to have to defeat Santo in the wrestling ring