LOS ANGELES: There are many films in the basketball world, and most of them are pretty terrible. They are corny or too well-being, they have celebrity appearances awkward or they try to wedge into a novel at home. But some of them get the sport - and people who play it - all right.
With March Madness on us, what are five of my favorite movies of basketball. Your support will probably look different.
You will notice the omission of "Hoosiers," which is not an oversight. Yes, this is the norm for movies basketball, but it is too obvious, and has long felt like an outsider stereotype manipulation. Gene Hackman is always great, but sorry, the slow clap does not play here, I cringe just thinking about it.
"Hoop Dreams" (1994): Steve James documentary "on a pair of young inner-city Chicago who aspire to the celebrity basketball is both vast and intimate. James follows the ups and downs of Arthur Agee and William Gates about five years, encourages us to root for them by depicting them exactly as they are, we can get to know their families, their playgrounds, their neighborhoods. It is both inspiring and moving without trying too hard to be either, and it's much more exciting in its melodramatic twists than any realistic script. Not only one of the best basketball movies ever, but one of the best documentaries ever.
"He Got Game" (1998): Young Ray Allen just does well here, showing that the ability of pure shooting and holding his own opposite a beautifully under-Denzel Washington. Allen had only been in the NBA a few years at that point and had never played in a movie before, but notes the challenges of some highly charged scenes as the nation's top high school prospect, who struggled not only with the decision of this college to play, but also with the return of her father in prison. Writer-director Spike Lee, the world's most famous New York Knicks fan, you can actually see the game played, he did encumber with a camera and frenetic cuts unnecessary.
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