Stormare is considered too recognizable and better suited to Dion Waiters; Patrick Kilpatrick and Steve Harris are candidates, with Harris’s television recognition qualified. — Van Lathan
Arye Gross is considered recognizable in his own right; The Experts prompts an enthusiastic recommendation. — Van Lathan
Steve Harris receives an explicit choice; his relationship to Wood Harris inspires an imagined role in The Wire. — Chris Ryan
Heat check: Ritchie Coster and Wood Harris receive distinct choices. PTI hosts, Tone Trump and Ricky Conlan are considered; Conlan’s larger role raises eligibility concerns.
Aged best: subtle Rocky homages, including chicken chasing and Kellerman contrasting Balboa’s body shots with Creed’s head shots.
Aged best: Rocky’s reluctant acceptance of training Donnie, especially the restaurant-food unloading and eventual gym arrival. — Chris Ryan
A provocative aged-best nomination praises emotional manipulation: Donnie reveals Rocky’s illness to get Bianca to open her door. The exchange is joking rather than an endorsement of real-world conduct. — Van Lathan
Aged best: realistic YouTube and 24/7 media touches, the large Mickey gym poster, and Coogler’s intimate camerawork in the upside-down kiss and cheesesteak booths. — Bill Simmons
Andre Ward’s career peak is debated against his earlier run and Kovalev fights; this period is only probably when he was most prominent, not a firm film-Apex award.
Aged best: Wood Harris as Duke’s son, with the irony of The Wire’s Avon refusing to train the actor who played Wallace; more Harris is a reason for sequels. — Bill Simmons
Aged best: Stallone was reportedly 69 at release, the same age as Burgess Meredith in Rocky. Donnie calling Rocky Unc is also introduced. — Bill Simmons
Burgess Meredith’s aged appearance prompts jokes about earlier roles and smoking.
Aged best: Conlan’s trainer and his demand that Adonis use Creed’s name; the Kobe-number 24 jacket is admired. Donnie’s fictional Los Angeles upbringing is offered as the reason he would idolize Kobe, whose Philadelphia connection is also noted. — Bill Simmons
Jordan reportedly told Bill he took a real punch for the eleventh-round knockdown at Stallone’s insistence, continuing a franchise tradition; the Leo fight is reiterated as aged best. — Bill Simmons
Aged best: producers taking a chance on young Coogler, and Bianca having an independent, written character rather than the obstructive sports-movie-girlfriend role. Rocky IV’s Adrian prompts a long mocking contrast.
A crypto-world reset is joked about as a potential 10-episode Netflix series. — Chris Ryan
A Netflix version every five years is proposed after seeing David Harbour play Williamson opposite Pacino’s stage Levene. — Chris Ryan
Live televised classic plays with major casts could become annual events or charity fundraisers, following Playhouse 90, Clooney’s Fail Safe and live sitcom recreations. — Sean Fennessey
A longer version is difficult to imagine given the compressed writing, but ten additional deleted scenes would be eagerly welcomed. — Chris Ryan
An all-Black cast could reuse The Wire’s actors, specifically Wood Harris and Idris, whose coded dialogue and burdened masculinity already resemble Mamet. — Sean Fennessey
Harris’s soldier outburst is an overacting candidate. — Bill Simmons
Martin is preferred for repeated heightened scenes, including his Georgetown frustration and disrespect toward his mother; the frustration scene also has an enthusiastic defender. — Bill Simmons
Tupac at his peak and Harris’s later Wire connection have aged well. — Wosny Lambre
Eric Nies’s Real World and The Grind fame makes Montrose an especially 1990s casting choice; his basketball bearing and passing look convincing.
Shep’s twenty-six points in one half in corduroys deserve comparison with famous real basketball performances. — Van Lathan
Kyle’s Michael Jordan Aerial Assault poster is exciting nostalgic decoration despite being judged a bad poster. — Van Lathan
Shep’s fourteen-year grief is both best and worst: it drives the plot but leaves him implausibly unable to function or accept companionship. — Bill Simmons
The Holler If Ya Hear Me trailer is credited with attracting audiences and anticipating later song-driven marketing. — Bill Simmons
The entertaining villains make it possible to root for both tournament teams. — Bill Simmons
The film’s promotional poster is praised. — Bill Simmons
The white big man on Kyle’s team is an enjoyable 1990s type; the idea he is the coach’s son is speculative and challenged by his absence from the school team.
Yellow tape and crowds pressing onto the court convincingly capture New York streetball culture.
Tonya Pinkins’s mother character is praised for fierce vulnerability, firm parenting and a steadying perspective on college ambitions.
The actor who plays Gary Bourdier (as transcribed) is so good in Sons of Anarchy that he reads as two different people; one host never watched that show, Googled him and found crazy facial hair, and had assumed the actor died when Bertier did; the character is who Gary would have become if he had not been paralyzed.
The soundtrack has aged the best: John Fogarty (as transcribed) faded into classic rock yet ended up in twelve movies, any retro sports movie must use Credence (as transcribed); Blue starts singing four times in the first 22 minutes, Julius tells him to shut up in front of the white people, and the film has a Ryan Murphy quality with Marvin Gazebob (as transcribed), James Taylor, the Temptations, Cat Stevens, Sly Stone and Spirit in the Sky.
The Titan Spirit theme, played in the room, makes a host well up; it has been used in countless World Series, Super Bowl and NBA telecasts and at the 2008 Democratic National Convention after Barack Obama's nomination and his victory speech, so the hosts joke that Obama does not become president without Coach Boone, which one host learned only from the research.
Denzel tossing the banana to the opposing coach always gets a laugh with his little smirk, and the hosts marvel that he carried a banana in his pocket all game.
Ray the Racist is a perfect villain who does not just hold racism but loves it, stalking shirtless around the locker room as if he might kill somebody; he is a made-up character, and a certain short, strong-chinned type of actor is cast for the over-the-top racist, which Matt Damon transcended in School Ties but Burgess Jenkins did not.
Kate Bosworth plays the racist token wet-blanket girlfriend who still looks great in every scene and comes around to Julius at the end; the hosts debate how many days later Julius and she would get together, with one saying never because of Gary, another saying within a week, and Ray the Racist judged the better match for her.
The racists are power-ranked: Gosling's dad screaming at Yost is a number one seed with racism from eight angles, the racist coach, the brick thrower, every opposing player and the assistant coach who walks out of the diner leaving Yost with the bill.
Being attracted to Kate Bosworth here is ruled a no because she plays a high schooler, though everybody in the film is eight years older than high school; the final picks are the Titan Spirit theme, with its arc from sports telecasts to the Obama election, and the cast, which got more famous yet still feels like these characters rather than Avon Barksdale or the Gone in 60 Seconds guy; the gulf between Denzel and the second most famous person in the 2000 cast is gigantic.
If Emma and Ray had a kid, the hosts guess he would be one of the tiki-torch people, a legacy Klansman buying rifles at Walmart.
The first five minutes and opening credits are liked for setting everything up and introducing a whole bunch of people, which is actual work; the funeral opening tips its hand that somebody dies and you forget it completely until the string is pulled at the end, though the players look like they aged far more than a decade, with Wood Harris in a bald toupee.
The end-of-film updates make almost everyone a municipal employee, and the cemetery walk is called a rip-off of Saving Private Ryan from two years earlier.
Julius and Gary yelling at each other, with the 'I'm going to get mine' and 'attitude reflect leadership, Captain' exchange, is nominated: it makes you care about both of them before you know whose side you are on.
The Gettysburg speech is nominated as unreal, manipulative and yet an incredible coach move; the film came out right before one host reached high school and every coach then wanted to be Coach Boone, denying water; coaches could make up stats, as Boone does with his older brothers.
The 'I don't care if you like each other, but you will respect each other' speech is given to a staff every year by one host, and it leads to the practice where the team finally comes together with 'left side, strong side', after which, the next morning, racism is over, until the bus drop-off shows it is not.
Donald Faison's Petey being switched to defense, the comeback, and Sunshine trying to buy everybody dinner at the segregated diner are nominated; the diner scene is called exceptionally well done because Ronnie Bass's 'I didn't know' against Petey's 'I told you' is smart commentary on how white people receive what black people are telling them.
The Boone and Yost confrontation about coddling, with 'the world don't give a damn how sensitive these kids are, especially the young black kids', is paired with the diner as two parallel moments that hold up, still real in 2019, and the only scene where the two coaches are not just trading 'worry about your offense'.
Rev getting hurt and Ronnie Bass coming in is a really good minute and a half, with the 'when I was 15 I lost my mother and my father in the same month' speech; the soundtrack introduced one host to rock music such as Credence and Fogarty (as transcribed) at twelve, and Sunshine throwing a defender over him is called arguably the best block in sports movie history, with the Samoan lineman's block in Innecessary Roughness (as transcribed) offered as a rival.
The last 80 seconds of the championship game are riveting to one host and awful and inexplicable to another: up four with a minute twenty left, the team runs a play, the runner fumbles, and like Hoosiers it is a sports-movie trope; the final play pairs up every white-black relationship at once, with Ronnie blocking for Rev and the two daughters in the stands, which the hosts joke led 37 years later to President Obama.
Yost's 'you were the right man for the job' and Denzel's 'you're a Hall of Famer in my book' close two hours of movie, and the hosts would gladly trade a real Hall of Fame induction for Denzel saying it, suggesting he go on Cameo for 50,000 a message.
The locker room mama-joke scene with Lou Elastic (as transcribed) is a massive one: Bertier is serious at first, then realizes it is a mama joke, Sunshine kisses him, Gosling dances in his own world, and Ray is overwhelmed by the progress and has to get out of there.
Asked for the most rewatchable scene, the pick is 'left side, strong side': it gives goosebumps every time, texting ten people 'left side' gets seven 'strong side' replies, and Gettysburg into that practice is a strong five and a half minutes; smaller favorites are Denzel arguing about the veer with his daughter over game tape and Julius visiting Gary's house, where a cop praises him and he lifts the mom, since the film is built from one-minute vignettes rather than ten-minute scenes.
Denzel calling Bertier and Ray the Racist Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in front of everyone, clapping all by himself, is so much fun it should have been added to the most rewatchable scene.
Nominees are Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris and Andre Ward, with the PTI hosts named winners for an in-universe Apollo Creed legacy segment ('Oh, I don't know, Tony').
Another suggestion is the actor playing Leo's father, heard as Richie Costa, also of True Detective season two, who looked related to Leo, played by real fighter Gabriel Rosado; 'That'd be my vote.'
Asked next, a panelist picks Rashad: sports-movie cutaways to people watching are a flaw in nearly every sports movie, with Secretariat's race montage the best exception, but her fired-up reaction during the fight makes it worth it. — Wesley Morris
Another panelist did not vote for Rashad because Apollo's wife from Rocky IV was not brought back, hoping that actress at least auditioned. — Bill Simmons
