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“What are you going to do with your life?” asks narrator Bill Murray at the opening of “Ballhawks,” a local-color documentary about a local pastime. Mike Diedrich directs and shoots a lustrous answer by portraying grown men with baseball gloves who gather on the streets outside Wrigley Field during Cubs games. He makes his sympathies clear in the understated, bittersweet score by Eric Sproull. Nicely designed graphics place on screen the key stats for each of the seven “ballhawks” who zealously chase balls that fly over the stadium wall. They fumble Diedrich’s softball questions about why. It’s “definitely a distraction from life itself,” admits Dave. Moe testifies: “It’s nothing that’s life-changing or anything, although it’s my life.” Diedrich never doubts them, not even the one, maybe math-impaired, who states he has “eight million things signed by Ernie Banks.” Another actually thinks he should get a lifetime pass to the bleachers by “donating” to their original owner 4,000 baseballs he caught: “I earned it, you know, with the things I’ve done at the park over the years.” Mike Leonard, an NBC Today Show feature correspondent, argues: “Anything with passion is heroic.” Batting practice or grand slam, an out-of-the-park Major League Baseball ball is like life. “Catch something. Hold on to something. And we’re all trying to hold on to something. I don’t think that’s crazy at all,” philosophizes the Winnetkan, who may not mean it when he says, “I hate to get all metaphysical. I think people who laugh at them [ballhawks] are crazy.” 74m. (Bill Stamets)

“Ballhawks”‘ Friday 8pm screening at  Siskel  is sold out; Diedrich and ballhawks will appear. Some tickets are left for screenings Friday 6pm, Saturday 8:30pm, Sunday 5:30pm.
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Todd Hickey and Kirk Ledger’s latter-day venture into direct cinema, “Takedowns and Falls,” documents the 2006-2007 season of the Central Dauphin Rams, a high-school wrestling team in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania hoping for a state championship. The filmmakers say the lineage of inspiration for their film includes “Vision Quest,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Hoop Dreams” and “Spellbound.” Their work holds interest even if it never attains the estimable heights of its documentary forebears: aficionados of the sport are likely to get more from the story than the average viewer. The earnestness of the students, their unspoiled hope, may be the most memorable element. Footage of landscapes and matches shot on 35mm film (along with digital video) is a strength rare in contemporary documentary.  122m. (Ray Pride)

“Takedowns and Falls” opens Friday at Facets. Hickey will appear at Friday-Saturday screenings as well as Sunday at 1:30pm and 4pm. A trailer is embedded below. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1957, the Monterrey Industrials crossed the border into the U.S. and won thirteen games in a row to emerge as Little League champs. For the past fifty years, as many as fifty pitches to make a film about the feat were vetoed by the team, claims screenwriter W. William Winokur. The team took a swing at his, however, and struck out. The first ten minutes of “The Perfect Game” contains an eye-rolling checklist of trite lines, shots and musical cues, even if the last ten minutes yanks happy tears of triumph with its functional cliches. It’s “an underdog story,” points out one of the twenty producers. Storylines include embittered Cesar (Clifton Collins, Jr.), the one-time towel-fetcher and jockstrap-washer fired by a Major League team who finds a new calling as coach of the kids. He shaves, stops drinking and gets sweet on a local señorita with a strict dad. Up north there’s a plucky gal who breaks into the sports beat to cover the story. And then there’s the embittered foundry worker who overcomes his grief for a dead son just in time to cheer his other son pitching the historic game in the title. As in a string of recent sports dramas, civil-rights issues test the mettle of athletes on the road. As a white Texas newspaper editor notes: “the wetbacks winning sells more papers.” Winokur and director William Dear (“Angels in the Outfield,” “Harry and the Hendersons”) take that business plan to heart. With Cheech Marin, Emilie De Ravin, Bruce McGill, Patricia Manterola and Louis Gosset, Jr. 118m. (Bill Stamets)

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Already in production on a new thriller, Clint Eastwood, nearly 80, still impresses with the strength of his filmmaking acumen in the straightforward inspirational drama, “Invictus.” A classically fashioned crowdpleaser, it’s a tale of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), after his release from decades in South African prisons, hoped to start repairing the racial rift after the history of apartheid by encouraging a white rugby team in its mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Matt Damon plays the Afrikaner captain Mandela must convince. The drama is polite but the implications touching. There’s a stirring film to be made with such material, but it’s a marvel that “Invictus” even got financed and distributed through a major studio. Eastwood still has tricks up his sleeve. The climax, bringing sports-crazed fans of both races together, is a modest joy. South African screenwriter Anthony Peckham based his script on “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation” by John Carlin. With Scott Eastwood, Robert Hobbs, Langley Kirkwood, Bonnie Henna, Grant Roberts, Patrick Holland. The title comes from an 1875 poem by William Ernest Henley, apparently much beloved by conservative essayists. 133m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen. (Ray Pride)

Director John Lee Hancock (“The Alamo,” “The Rookie”) writes an uplift drama based on “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” a 2006 book by Michael Lewis about Michael Oher’s rise from the mean streets of Memphis to a five-year, $13.8-million contract with the Baltimore Ravens. Quinton Aaron (“Q” from “Be Kind Rewind”) plays this giant teen as sweet and shutdown. He’s a rescue by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy (Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw, respectively). This well-off couple brings him home, after seeing him walking along a rainy road one night. “Big Mike” goes to the same private Christian school as their daughter. A one-night stay on the couch leads to legal guardianship, better grades, football glory and courtship by college coaches. “The Blind Side” portrays the Touhys as a personable family, except for the obnoxious son played by Jae Head. Bullock appeals as another plucky can-do gal. “The Blind Side” comes soon after the release of “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire,” another account of an African-American adolescent overcoming heartbreaking obstacles. Oher’s story is measurably lighter. Lewis wrote that Oher scored in the ninetieth percentile for “protective instincts.” Hancock increases this to the ninety-eighth. (Who knew the Memphis school system ranked kids by their instincts?) This may explain his stats as a left tackle, thanks to Leigh Anne coaching him that his team is like his new family. The cringe factor is less than you’d expect, although the gradually more graphic flashbacks to Oher’s childhood trauma are cliched. Hancock congratulates the Touhys for their charity and does not get sacked for it. With Lily Collins, Kathy Bates, Ray McKinnon, Adriane Lenox and eight coaches as themselves. 126m. (Bill Stamets)

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Dipping into a few months in the life of small-town Sidney, Ohio in Fall, “45365″ is a luscious, impressionistic essay film, a dream-like patch of cinema vérité (without narration) that’s more trance than nonfiction lockstep. The film’s gentle intimacy and easy access to the town’s citizens and routines may spring from the fact that producer-director-editor-brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross grew up there. Their eyes, however, offer up near-rapturous visuals: this is one of the most beautiful-looking shot-on-high-definition films to come around in recent memory. If every native son could do their patch of land and the weave of interconnection of friends and neighbors this kind of funny, tender, lyrical justice, we’d have all-American storytelling from sea to shining sea. I’d like to see more movies that are this generous and giving. 93m. (Ray Pride)

“45365″ plays Saturday 8pm at Chicago Filmmakers 5243 North Clark, Second Floor.

“These were six of the most compelling individuals I had ever met,” says first-time filmmaker Kristopher Belman of the five African-American basketball players and their coach that he documented for six years. “I wanted to tell a story about friendship.” Four kids in Akron, Ohio started playing together at age eleven. In high school a fifth joined them. Championships, setbacks and comebacks are tracked in home videos from the early years and later by sports channels. One player, LeBron James, draws special attention driving a $55,000 Hummer and making the cover of Sports Illustrated prior to going pro with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He’s also an executive producer here. For all his access, Belman never gets at the bonds between the players. Nor is there much attention to their playing style or their coach’s tactics. Also missing is the context of their off-court lives in school, church, or the streets. With Sian Cotton, Dru Joyce III, Willie McGee, Romeo Travis and Coach Dru Joyce II. 103m. (Bill Stamets)

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“The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon” scribe Peter Morgan provides a no-fuss look at the contentious forty-four-day reign of Brian Clough as manager of the 1974 Leeds United soccer team. Using informative flashbacks, we’re shown that Clough, with the help of partner Peter Taylor, built the lowly Derby County into a contending squad, but how his mountainous ego and overwhelming inferiority complex threaten his career as well as professional, and personal, relationships. He’s earned the job of the country’s top team, but it’s a group of dirty players he loathes and tensions flare. Directed by Tom Hooper (HBO’s “John Adams”), “The Damned United” survives with the endlessly watchable Michael Sheen as Clough and Timothy Spall as Taylor, two men who work as one brain and suffer when separated. Morgan’s script, based on David Peace’s popular nonfiction novel, lightens the mood with weightless humor and an ending as sweet as pie. Easy, breezy cinema. 97m. (Tom Lynch)

“Afterschool special” is usually a putdown, but “Free Style” sports a style that redeems this pre-teen and teen genre effort. Much credit goes to Corbin Bleu (“High School Musical”) for his boy-next-door performance as aspiring motocross pro Cale Bryant. His character touches all bases as a multipurpose role model: he worked two jobs since age 15, delivers pizzas and sells electronics. He impresses the dad of his Mexican-American girlfriend Alex (Sandra Echeverría) enough to earn his restaurant’s sponsorship for the big regional championship. But first Cale tracks down his black dad in Oregon who abandoned his white mom long ago. (Guess who shows up at the big race in the last reel?) Cale is great to his little biracial sister Bailey (Madison Pettis) who’s taunted by racists at school. And he’s great to his motocross pals–except that mean blonde overprivileged competitor with an overpowering dad. William Dear (“Harry and the Hendersons”) directs a screenplay that Jeffery Nicholson and Josh Leibner set in the Pacific Northwest. Clue that “Free Style” was shot in Vancouver: the breakfast cereal on the kitchen table is “Sugar Sweetie O’s” from another shot-in-Vancouver production, Uwe Boll’s “Postal.” With Penelope Ann Miller, Scott Patey, Matt Bellefleur, Tegan Moss and John Shaw. 94m. (Bill Stamets)

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No other competition is quite like a marathon, because no other event in sports puts its elite athletes on the same playing field, on the same day and time, with such a vast and diverse collection of amateurs. Combine this with its intensity and the duration of the preparation, and you have the foundation for naturally rich narrative. “Spirit of the Marathon,” a documentary that chronicles six stories of runners preparing for the 2005 Chicago Marathon, plumbs these advantages, following first-timers, old-timers and the fastest runners in the world, including Deena Kastor fresh off her Bronze Medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and Kenyan sensation Daniel Njenga. Director Jon Dunham—a veteran marathoner—manages to cover these simultaneous stories, unfolding across four continents, with a finesse that belies the project’s modest budget, interweaving a history of the marathon and interviews with the sport’s leading figures, letting the natural narrative of triumph and setback tell the story. Read the rest of this entry »