Irrelevant But Awesome

Alexa:  I’m not the biggest sports fan, but I couldn’t help becoming invested in “The Battered Bastards of Baseball.” I love a good underdog story, and the Portland Mavericks have a pretty inspiring one. It sounds like the plot of a feel-good sports movie rather than reality: Hollywood star launches independent baseball team with a roster of has-beens and players who never got their chance to shine, but they prove their worth through unconventional methods. But the fact that it’s a true story makes it all the more compelling. As a documentary, the movie is good, not great. It’s a bit one-sided (independent baseball = real baseball, MLB = soulless corporate greed), but it does a solid job of capturing the era and conveying the significance of this rag-tag team’s success. The team’s story is stronger than the film itself, and fortunately that story is the centerpiece here without a lot of bells and whistles around it. If you enjoy a good Cinderella story and sports nostalgia, “T...

Alexa:  I was all about “Tropic Thunder” when I first saw it in college, and I’m happy to report that nearly 10 (!) years after its release, the movie holds up. Sure, the Tivo joke is a bit dated, but its biting critique of Hollywood is as on-point as ever. “Tropic Thunder” was released in the middle of a heyday for R-rated comedies (think “Knocked Up,” “Superbad,” “The Hangover”), but it cranks the genre up to 11, so to speak, by incorporating ample action and satire. The cast is replete with Hollywood archetypes, from the troubled comedy star looking for a comeback to the rapper-turned-actor who just wants to be taken seriously, but the movie humanizes them beyond that superficial layer. Perhaps the film’s greatest punch line is the fact that Robert Downey Jr. actually received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of an ambitious white method actor who darkens his skin to play the platoon’s black sergeant. It seems Hollywood wasn’t in on the joke about the lengths self-seri...

Alexa:  One of my favorite movies from our Summer of Netflix series a couple of years ago was “The One I Love,” a strange little movie from director Charlie McDowell and writer Justin Lader that evolved into so much more than I expected. So naturally I was intrigued when their next film, “The Discovery,” bowed at Sundance earlier this year. I’m a sucker for smaller, subtler sci-fi movies so this one hits a lot of my sweet spots. And while I think the more intimate “The One I Love” is ultimately the more effective of the two, “The Discovery” still offers plenty of intriguing insights about the human condition set against an unusual backdrop. The titular discovery refers to scientific proof that an afterlife exists, that our consciousness actually exits our body and goes to another plane when we die. The revelation sparks mass suicides as people become desperate to experience whatever lies ahead in the next life. I won’t spoil exactly what that is, but it presents some thoughtfu...

Alexa:   Well, it’s official guys. “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” is no longer the worst movie I’ve seen as part of our Netflix series. I knew nothing about “Nerdland” going into it but expected it to resonate at least a little given Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt’s involvement. But instead this movie tries to say a lot without saying much at all. At its heart are an aspiring actor and screenwriter whose dreams of Hollywood success haven’t flourished as their 30th birthday approaches, so they decide to pursue fame at any cost by trying to become viral sensations. All the while they’re surrounded by images of consumerism, gratuitous violence and preposterously proportioned shallow women. I love a good raunch comedy and a well-crafted reflection on pop culture, but “Nerdland” fails at both. It fancies itself a clever commentary on a superficial, hypocritical, fame-obsessed society, but instead it’s crassness for crassness’ sake and reeks of self importance. Ultimately, it embodies...

You can’t really write a review about a Marvel movie being good anymore. At this point that’s pretty much expected. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the fifteenth theatrically released movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they’ve all had at least some amount of critical success to say nothing of commercial success for the fra nchise as a whole. So it doesn’t really mean anything at this point to say that Guardians was good, that much is expected at this point. The natural thing to do would be to compare this movie to the first Guardians of the Galaxy from 2014, but that doesn’t seem very fair either. The first movie was a crazy, off the wall idea of a movie. Something that (at the time) looked like it was going to be Marvel’s riskiest move to date, and most of the audience went into it with little to no expectations. This time around, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is probably the most anticipated movie of the year (except perhaps for Star Wars VIII ) so it’s not going ...

Alexa:  I consider myself a Star Wars fan (though not to the same extent as my fellow IBA writers), but I must admit I knew nothing about David Prowse prior to watching the documentary I Am Your Father. When I think Darth Vader, I think James Earl Jones. Prowse is an interesting character, and it was intriguing to view the original Star Wars trilogy through the lens of someone who was so central to the action but whose face was never shown onscreen. That said, I found much of the documentary’s narrative off-putting due in large part to one of the filmmakers, Marcos Cabotá. Typically, I find the most effective documentaries are the ones that let the subjects tell the story. But Cabotá makes himself a part of the story here, serving as a frequent talking head and detracting from the insights of those who were actually present during filming. I Am Your Father is a one-sided approach to Prowse’s story – Cabotá makes it clear he thinks Prowse was the victim of a grave injustice by...

Alexa:  It’s no wonder John du Pont and the wrestling team he sponsored at his Foxcatcher Farm have been the subject of multiple documentaries, books and an Academy Award-nominated film. It’s a story that begins with athletic excellence and camaraderie and ends in inexplicable tragedy, with a successful wrestler’s life cut short by the man who championed his talents for years. The real-life events are more compelling than initially depicted in the Netflix documentary “Team Foxcatcher,” which chronicles du Pont’s interest in the sport, the launch of Team Foxcatcher, du Pont’s increasingly erratic behavior and the murder of Olympic gold medalist Dave Schultz. The film is essentially one part sports documentary and one part true crime saga, and the narrative feels a bit tentative and clunky during the former. But the filmmakers seem to settle into their element once the focus shifts to du Pont’s bizarre tendencies, the team’s growing discomfort and Schultz’s death. At that point ...