Blue Chips
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Movie Reviews of Blue Chips
Movie Review: Great Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a great movie.The price was a good value also.Service was great an all around good experience with purchase.Movie Review: The other side of collegiate athletics
Summary: 4 Stars
Being involved in collegiate and high school coaching, I tend to go back and watch this film from time to time to remind me of what sports is all about. If you're a coach, it's about your devotion to your program and to your kids that you coach. It's the job, it's the challenge. It's the same as teaching a class of Math or History to a bunch of kids. The point is to teach them to become better at what they do and to also make them better on everything outside of the game itself.
If you're a ballplayer, it's about your devotion to the game and to yourself and to your team. You're as good as your team and it is up to you to understand the philosophy being taught in the game. The game doesn't just teach you about becoming a better ball player. The game teaches you about leadership, teamwork, decision-making, and responsibility. Whether you succeed at the game or not, you succeed in all other aspects involved.
Blue Chips is about how critical it can become at times to make right decisions at all levels of athletics. Whether you're the president of the college, the athletic director, a booster, a coach, or even a player, the decisions you make can have considerable effects and consequences for the overall integrity of the sport, your school, and career. Without going into too much detail about the movie, Blue Chips deals with under the table financing of high school players by boosters and people close to the college, in hopes of wooing these standouts to sign with the program. All levels of the program are involved in this true-to-life tale of deception, greed, and moral judgment.
I will disagree with other reviewers about the cast. I will argue that to tell the true story of this side of collegiate athletics, it would be normal to use actual athletes that were "larger than life" at the time. Overall, a good movie to watch if you enjoy the sports genre.
Movie Review: Probably the best sports movie ever
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a very good basketball player, let's get that straight right off the top, but this movie is as close as you will ever get to capturing the essence of top shelf hoops. Odds are that you will never get to see me play hoops in person, so I would go for this DVD. There are several things I look for in a great movie and this one includes all of them.
1. Superstar actors- Nick Nolte answers the call here. Nolte is a whacked out hippie who, through a witness protection program, ends up coaching a college basketball powerhouse. He is as intense as Bo Pelini on a pixie stick binge after losing to Kst at home. He is totally believable as a big time college basketball coach. The play he draws up in the Indiana game, an alley oop with time running out to Leon Boodeaux(Shaquille O'Neal), would totally work against a Bobby Knight coached team. I thought Dennis Hopper was awesome as the assistant with issues.
2. Hot chicks- I love Katie Holmes and you do too. She is totally awesome in the movie as Penny Hardaway's girlfriend. How Penny deals with Katie's pregnancy along with running the point of a fictional basketball team shows his true range. How he did not get an oscar nod after this performance is still debated to this day at your house.
3. Great supporting cast- Matt Nover has always been an A list hollywood star and this film cemented him as one of the top leading men out there. You really feel like he is not going to Western unless his dad gets a tractor. You want his dad to get that tractor, you NEED his dad to get that tractor. Well, I'm not going to spoil it for you but his dad gets the tractor. You kind of get mad at Matt Nover because you feel he is responsible for the program getting in trouble, but his speech at the end about the problems his uncle dealt with growing up in Central Tennessee kind of makes you feel for the kid.
4. Sunny weather in the background- There are several points in this movie where the sun is out. If it is raining all of the time, no one really feels that good about things. If you put some sunshine in equation, life is just better. This movie features the sun on more than one occasion.
5. Livestock- There is a point in this film where you see a cow. That can't be all bad.
6. Bobby Knight- Bobby Knight plays the basketball coach of Indiana University in this movie. You really believe he is a coach in this film and not just a reality TV star like he is now. What is Bobby Knight? Warm and adorable as always.
Overall, this movie sums up college athletics more than anything I have ever seen. The booster guy named happy is kind of a dork, but the lesson learned here is that if you have money you get what you want. That is totally true. Combine my bankroll with my looks and you quickly see why the deck is stacked against you. I'm the final four and you are Barry Collier's NCAA tournament history.
Movie Review: Again, Nolte Lives the Role
Summary: 3 Stars
There's one thing that puts Blue Chips one star above my usual 2-star rating for a guilty pleasure -- Nick Nolte! He absolutely rises above what is a disappointingly predictable script by Ron Shelton (Bull Durham) with mostly pedestrian direction by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist).
The explosive, and ultimately comical opening scene in the locker room sets the stage for Coach Pete Bell's competitive demons to vie with his better angels for dominance where winning means everything -- big time collegiate basketball. While all the characters here seem to be drawn from all-too-familiar stereotypes, especially the slimy and corrupt alumni booster (J.T. Walsh) and the young recruits from relatively poor backgrounds (Shaquille O'Neal, Anfernee Hardaway, and Matt Nover), Nolte makes the role of Coach Bell singular in every way. Along the way we meet the likes of ex-NBA great Bob Cousy as the equally torn college athletic director as well as Coach Bell's friend and confidant; along with the likes of former players Larry Bird and Marques Johnson in fictional roles, real-life college coaches Jerry Tarkanian, Bobby Knight, Rick Pitino, and others.
I suppose what leaves a cynical taste is the utter lack of scruples displayed by so many, but especially the under-privileged parents of two of the recruits; they're more-than-willing participants in what Coach Bell feels he has to do in order to compete, making the whole exercise feel too legitimate in a "real world" sense. While the coach agonizes, the parents and recruits readily acquiesce. Still, Nolte strikes the right tone in it all.
Blue Chips is a film worth watching for its methodical, and in Nolte's hands, entertaining depiction of college basketball recruiting. Mary McDonnell as the coach's ex-wife makes an attractive, intelligent, but unwitting anti-foil to Nolte's various schemes to push the letter of the rules just a little bit further, helping him procure the team that rises above the mediocre and reaches the sublime.
While the second half of the story is mostly predictable and the message of redemption heavy-handed and contrived, the ending in the playground does indeed resonate. It's a good rental for an evening's entertainment for those who enjoy relevant sports movies, and especially for those who like seeing Nick Nolte play a role to the hilt.
Movie Review: What happened?
Summary: 3 Stars
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. In the `70s, director William Friedkin was at the peak of his powers. The one-two punch of The French Connection and The Exorcist made him a force to be reckoned with. And then, he made Sorcerer, a critical and commercial failure. His industry clout disappeared as fast as he had acquired it. Studios did not want to deal with his inflated ego and hard-headed pragmatism. Other than the excellent, To Live and Die in L.A. Friedkin has made one forgettable film after another through the `80s and `90s. On paper, Blue Chips must have seemed like a good idea. Team up Friedkin with a Ron Shelton (responsible for one of the best sports films ever, Bull Durham) penned screenplay to create a hard-hitting expose on college basketball. So, what happened?
Friedkin doesn't seem all that interested in the basketball sequences, shooting them in the standard way that we have seen on TV instead of trying something different, like employing his trademark you-are-there cinema verite which would have captured the intensity of a live game, much as Oliver Stone did in Any Given Sunday. Friedkin seems more interested in the off-court mechanics: the wheeling and dealing needed to get raw talent from high schools to their college without a rival school stealing/enticing them away and Bell wrestling with his conscious. This is when the film is at its strongest and most interesting.
Blue Chips is fine until its conclusion when it suddenly loses its freakin' mind when a guilt-ridden Bell tries to redeem himself at a post-game press conference. It just doesn't seem believable-especially when this scene is followed by a staggeringly na?ve, it-starts-with-our-kids message that is way too preachy. It betrays what the film has been saying up to this point: that no one seems to play for the love of the game anymore. Everybody wants something - money, a house, a car, or a job. Ultimately, Blue Chips is about an honest man who sells his soul, who gives into overwhelming pressure to get what he wants and who loses his way. Friedkin almost pulls it off and the sudden, pat ending makes one wonder if he originally intended a more downbeat ending only for the timid studio to impose a more positive conclusion. In doing so, they've alienated the audience who was with them up until that point.