Reviewed at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival

Sports documentaries can often dazzle you with their statistics, but the first numbers to pop onscreen in Billy Corben's Broke are astonishing: according to Sports Illustrated, 78 percent of all NFL players are broke within three years of their retirement. The NBA's numbers are barely better: 60 percent of all pro basketball players are out of money within five years of stepping off the court. It's hard to jibe these numbers with those that follow, in a quick montage of former athletes divulging the amounts of their contracts and bonuses. The story is the same: "And then I went on a splurge."

Corben's film (created for ESPN Films, which aired his exc...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

No single entity is producing more great documentaries these days than ESPN Films (here's where I throw in the required mention of their 30 for 30 series), and no filmmaker is directing more great documentaries than Alex Gibney (whose recent output includes Casino Jack and the United States of Money, Client-9, and a se...Read the entire review

Reviewed at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

And ESPN Films has done it again. Renée, as with the best films in their brilliant 30 for 30 series, is ostensibly a sports documentary, but it is about much more than the playing of a game. Director Eric Drath profiles Renée Richards, the female tennis contender who was revealed, in the summer of 1976, to have been born Richard Raskind. A doctor, father, and amateur tennis player, he underwent surgical sexual reassignment...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

I've never been a sports fan, but I never miss an episode of 30 for 30, ESPN's anniversary series of original sports documentaries by filmmakers of note. The resulting docs have been of such high quality that they've made the festival rounds and even seen some limited theatrical playdates; Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist's The Two Escobars, an ambitious dual biography of Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar and Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, is one of the best to date.

The title characters weren't related, but they were connected. Pablo, "the world's richest criminal" (he was listed in Forbes) was heavily involved in Andrés' team, the Atlético Nacional; he used it as money laundering operation, cleaning his ill-gotten drug gains. But he was also a fan (we're told that he saw the team as a toy to play with, and would fly players in to his ow...Read the entire review

I've never been a sports fan (I can't abide the notion of putting aside three hours for a football game when there are still Altman movies I haven't seen), but I never miss an episode of "30 for 30," their anniversary series of original sports documentaries by filmmakers of note. There hasn't been a bad one yet; highlights have included Albert Maysles' Muhammad and Larry, Barry Levinson's The Band that Wouldn't Die, and Kirk Fraser's Without Bias. Add to that list Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist's The Two Escobars, an ambitious dual biography of Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar and Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

THE MOVIE:

Spike Lee's new documentary, Kobe Doin' Work, is a great movie for sports fans and a passable one for the rest of us; when it was over, I was still ready for a new Spike Lee joint. Make no mistake, it does what it does very well--presumably as well as it could possibly be done. What may come into question is whether it needed to be done at all.

When I heard that Lee was doing a documentary on Kobe Bryant, my eyebrows raised; he's proven himself a skilled documentarian over the years, particularly in dealing with social issues (4 Little Girls, When The Levees Broke), and he'd taken on a potentially controversial sports figure before, in the excellent Jim Brown: All American. Much to my surprise, Kobe Doin' Work doesn't even mention his notorious 2003 sexual assault case (later dropped by Colorado prosecutors). In fact, the film ends with ...Read the entire review

"There it is, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is burning." - Howard Cosell.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Yankees magical 1977 season, ESPN adapted Jonathan Mahler's Book, Ladies And Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, into an eight-episode mini-series last year. Premiering last July, the Bronx Is Burning starred Oliver Platt, John Turturro and Daniel Sanjaya and documented the turbulent summer of 1977 in New York City. Mainly focusing on the relationship between Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, team manager Billy Martin and new acquisition Reggie Jackson, there are also plot threads involving the NYC mayoral race, the Son Of Sam hysteria and a blackout that crippled the city.
...Read the entire review