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Joe Swanberg recommended Hoop Dreams (1994) in Movies (curated)

Hoop Dreams (1994)

1994 | Documentary, Drama

9.5

(2 Ratings)

Movie Favorite

"For the early part of my life, I was almost exclusively interested in sports (basketball in particular). I wanted to play professional basketball, and I really couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life. My love of the game never quite recovered after viewing Hoop Dreams near the end of eighth grade. It exposed something fundamentally flawed about organized athletics. I still tried out halfheartedly for the high school basketball team, but when I didn’t make the cut, I never looked back. My obsession switched almost overnight from sports to films. I wound up, coincidentally, studying film at Southern Illinois University, where Steve James had studied almost two decades before. The school hadn’t changed much, and I had many of the same classes and professors that he did. I have gotten to know Steve over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever told him that he might be responsible for leading me from sports to films."

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Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (1966) in Movies

Sep 6, 2020

Fourth St Trinian's film is a knockabout farce which has not aged at all well. Crooks hide the loot from a train robbery (such things were topical at the time) in a disused building, which is then taken over by St Trinian's school as their new premises. Can the villains retrieve the swag without anyone noticing?

Notably pragmatic (to the point of ruthlessness) in pursuit of its gags: there is shotgun satire of politicians, civil servants, the private school system, and various topical issues (there are some very dodgy jokes about immigration and racial minorities). Even more cartoony than a Carry On film, and increasingly frantic as it goes on, it does have a remarkable cast of well-known faces from British films of its period, but the jokes are thinner on the ground than one might hope for given the talent involved. Has a certain historical interest these days but it's awkward to watch as much as entertaining.