Catch, Tackle, or Score a Sports Movie This April!
The Chester Fritz Library will be hosting its next movie night– the last of the semester– on April 21 at 7:00 PM. We will be screening A League of Their Own, the 1992 dramedy that fictionalizes a season in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a short-lived women’s baseball association that emerged when the MLB struggled with conscription during World War II. The movie stars Geena Davis as Dottie Hinson, the reluctant star player for the Rockford Peaches, and Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan, the Peaches’ manager who does not take women’s sport seriously, with Madonna featuring as a taxi dancer turned center fielder, “All the Way” Mae Mordabito. In addition, the Chester Fritz Library will be displaying a variety of sports movies this month, ranging from boxing to auto racing to mountaineering.
Alcoholic ex-minor league pitcher Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) gets roped into coaching a little league team for players too incompetent to be drafted by anyone else. After a humiliating season opener, Buttermaker is overcome by his competitive spirit and recruits his ex-girlfriend’s daughter (Tatum O’Neal) and a juvenile delinquent (Jackie Earle Haley) to give his team a remote shot at victory. (1976, dir. Michael Ritchie, 102 minutes)
Working-class teen Dave (Dennis Christopher) doesn’t know what he’ll do with his life now that he’s graduated from high school. He does know that he loves his Masi bicycle and bicycle racing, becoming an Italophile after he learns that the world’s cycling champions are always Italian. At the urging of his friends (Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley), he decides to challenge the local college boys in Bloomington during Indiana University’s annual track cycling race, the Little 500. (1979, dir. Peter Yates, 101 minutes)
Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) was once a tennis prodigy, but now she coaches her husband Art (Mike Faist), on the cusp of a Career Grand Slam. With Art struggling with age and injury, Tashi tries to boost his confidence by entering him in a Challenger Tour event in New York. To the couple’s surprise, Art must face off against Patrick (Josh O’Connor), Art’s washed-up former best friend and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend. As the match unfolds, so too do the memories of the threesome’s turbulent history. (2024, dir. Luca Guadagnino, 131 minutes)
Buck Weaver (John Cusack) and Hap Felsch (Charlie Sheen) play with the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The pennant-winning Sox are among the greatest baseball teams ever assembled, yet hands-on owner Charles Comiskey (Clifton James) underpays his players and treats them with disdain. Gamblers seize on the players’ demoralization, and one by one, they agree to throw the World Series. When the White Sox unexpectedly lose to the Cincinnati Reds, a couple of sports writers smell a fix and blow the whistle on a scandal that would destroy the National Baseball Commission. (1988, dir. John Sayles, 119 minutes)
1963: the Ford Motor Company’s attempt to acquire Ferrari has failed. To add insult to injury, Enzo Ferrari himself (Remo Girone) lambasts Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) and his company’s racing division. Ford thus hires American automotive designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and his British driver, Ken Miles (Christian Bale), to build an entirely new race car from scratch. The goal: defeat the perennially dominant Ferrari at the 1966 Le Mans World Championship, a 24-hour endurance race. (2019, dir. James Mangold, 152 minutes)
“I don’t train girls,” growls boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to aspiring amateur Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank). Nevertheless, Frankie is impressed by Maggie’s determination and ultimately agrees to coach her after a shake-up at his gym. As Maggie climbs the ranks and approaches a title shot, Frankie develops fatherly affection for her, to be challenged when a sucker punch changes the trajectory of Maggie’s career. (2004, dir. Clint Eastwood, 132 minutes)
Red Army highlights the Soviet Union’s legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team’s captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to outsider in exile. The film also turns a unique lens on the social and cultural transformation of the Soviet Union leading up to the fall of communism. (2014, dir. Gabe Polsky, 84 minutes)
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
The fastest man on four wheels is Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell), one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. Ricky has everything a dimwitted daredevil could want: a luxurious mansion, a beautiful wife, Carley (Leslie Bibb), and all the fast food he can eat. But Ricky’s life hits an unexpected speed bump when he’s bested by gay European driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) and suffers a mental breakdown after a crash. Losing Carley to best friend Cal Naughton, Jr. (John C. Reilly), Ricky must work his estranged father (Gary Cole) to get his life back together. ‘Cause as Ricky Bobby always says, “IF YOU AIN’T FIRST, YOU’RE LAST!” (2006, dir. Adam McKay, 108 minutes)
Utilizing widescreen cinematography, director Kon Ichikawa examines the beauty and drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. Contrary to the expectation to the Japanese government, which commissioned the film, Ichikawa created an expressionistic, rather than journalistic film. Instead of objectively recording events as they happen, Ichikawa and his team lyrically capture the glory, despair, passion, and suffering of Olympic competition. (1965, dir. Kon Ichikawa, 169 minutes)
The year was 1985. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two skilled mountaineers, set out to climb the treacherous west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, which had not been scaled before. Following a successful three-and-a-half-day ascent, Simpson fell and broke several bones in his leg during the descent. With no hope of rescue, Yates attempts to help Simpson off the mountain by lowering him 300 feet at a time. One further misstep places Simpson over the lip of a crevasse. Certain they were about to be pulled jointly to their deaths, the only choice was to cut the rope. This is the story of how Simpson survives that fall. (2003, dir. Kevin Macdonald, 106 minutes)
In 1974, documentarian Leon Gast traveled to Africa to film Zaïre 74, a music festival planned to accompany the “Rumble in the Jungle”, in which late-career underdog Muhammad Ali would contend with the younger powerhouse George Foreman for the boxing heavyweight title. When the fight was postponed, Ali wound up staying longer in Africa. Gast thereby amassed a trove of footage, observing Ali as he trains for one of the toughest bouts of his career while basking in his role as Black America’s ambassador to postcolonial Africa. (1996, dir. Leon Gast, 89 minutes)
Former pro wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is paying the price for twenty years of grueling stunts in the ring and drug abuse outside it. Competing for independent promotions in New Jersey in between part-time jobs, Randy is about to risk everything to prove he has one more match left in him: a re-staging of his famous Madison Square Garden bout against “The Ayatollah” (Ernest Miller). The only people who might stop him are his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) and Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), a stripper for whom he harbors romantic feelings. (2008, dir. Darren Aronofsky, 109 minutes)
