Jesszilla (2023) DOC NYC 2023

I went into this portrait of teen boxer Jesselyn Silva blind. I had loved the short film that played DOC NYC a few years back so this was high on my must see list for the festival. I was not disappointed and completely blindsided by the turn of events in the film.

The film is the story of Silva as she trains for and competes in the boxing tournaments for girls her age. She is a kick ass young woman with a drive that most men don’t have. She is a fighter in the truest sense of the word and watching her compete is so much fun. What isn’t so much fun and kind of shocking is the turn the story takes not long after her appearance in one of the competitions she is diagnosed with cancer. I was not prepared for what happened or how Jess is forced to take a new course in life. Jess being Jess I’m certain this will lead to bigger and better things. (And I hope we get to visit her again in a few years)

I’m not sure what to say. This is just a great film. It’s good time with great people. It’s a wonderful portrait of a young woman

RIGHT TO FIGHT (2023) DOC NYC 2023

RIGHT TO FIGHT is one of the best films I’ve ever seen on boxing. A look at how women’s boxing came to be in the United States and the world is a great piece of filmmaking and historical recording.

Using the tales of the various women (Marian “Lady Tiger” Trimiar, Cathy “Cat” Davis, and Pat “Liberation” Pineda)  who started boxing in the early 1970’s the film charts the lives of the women as they came to find a love in the sport and then had to fight all sorts of prejudices in order to do what they love.

It may sound odd but into the 1970’s there were laws against women boxing. The New York State Athletic Commission forbade women from the squared circle and as such all of the states that copied their rules did so too. No one thought women could box, and many of the women had a struggle to find a place to train. It sounds crazy in todays world where women are draw on some boxing cards and many MMA ones, but it’s the truth and this film shows us how we got from there to here.

What I love is that the film is perfectly drops us into the late 1970s. We get a real sense of time and place. The film tells it like it is with the film using footage of all sorts of men, including many shots of Muhammad Ali saying that women not only aren’t capable of boxing but that they belong in the home cooking dinner (the Ali comments are particularly funny since his daughter was a champion boxer). We get a real sense of what they were fighting against in the ring, and we come to love them deeply because of their F-U attitude toward the authorities who wanted them stopped.

I loved this film so much. I love the story. I love how the film tells us a story that was on the verge of getting lost. I love the craft of the film which feels often like a film from the 1970’s thus enhancing the viewing experience. This is just great filmmaking across the board.

I can’t recommend this film enough.

And it should be noted that this isn’t just a film for fight fans but also for anyone who has ever been told no.

Fight Machine (2022) Fantasia 2022

Paul is a spoiled rich kid turns to body building and boxing after getting his ass kicked. Rob is a working class kid being pushed toward fighting by his father and uncle. Both are being set on a collision course in a bare knuckle ring where the winner is the man who can walk away.

This film looks good, has a great cast (including the always wonderful Michael Ironside) and some bone crushing fights. On paper the the film should be top rank. Unfortunately the film never nails down the right tone and as a result the film doesn't quite work.

This should have been played very straight and very serious. This is a compelling tale about families and friends and the things we do to find a place in the world. The trouble is that director Andrew T Hunt fudges things. Some sequences are played for laughs, Paul getting beaten up is more comedic then frightening. Its made worse by his running away like a small child. Some of the crowd reactions to the fights are silly. Some scenes are played much too lighthearted. This frequent dips into lightness runs counter to the blood and broken bones of the fight scenes. As a result we are never fully invested with the result the tragic ending leaves us nonplussed. I should have been rocked and instead I was trying to deduce what went wrong.

While the film is good on it's own terms, the truth of the matter is that what should have been a four star film is in stead a two and a half one.

Brief thoughts on La Guerra Civil (2022) Sundance 2022

This is a Dazn produced documentary about the 1996 fight that happened when Oscar De La Hoya challenged Julio César Chávez for the championship.

This is a good, if very by the numbers look at the fight that changed the boxing world as Mexican American De Le Hoya fought Mexican Chanvez and rocked the world. It wasa fight that split the Mexican boxing community into Mexican and American as opposed to one banded together community with a love of the fights. Its also the story of the coming back together of the community as well.

The film also takes time to explain the life and careers of both fighters, with a slight preference for De La Hoya who has connctions to the network.

As I said this is a very good film, which unfortunately is premiering   at the Sundance film festival where is is suffering by comparrison. That said I am looking forward to seeing this again.

Highly recommended for doxing fans.

Everything But Fear (2021) Queens World Film Festival 2021

Lovely portrait of Francisco Mendez , Owner of Mendez Boxing, who passed away last year due to covid.

The film is a loving remembrance of a man who loved boxing and wanted to bring it to as many people as he could. He left his beloved Mexico and moved to New York where his gym, Mendez Boxing , a couple of blocks from Madison Square Garden, became the place where champions such as Oscar DeLa Hoya, Laila Ali and Mike Tyson, trained when they had a fight in NYC.  

There is very little I can say about the film beyond see it and this film needs to be longer. There is enough here that this could easily be expanded into a feature (assuming you can get everyone to tell all their stories)

For information on both the virtual and in person screenings 

Virtual - 6/30:: https://queensworldfilmfestival.org/june-30-2021-queens-world-film-festival/ 

 In-Person- 7/3 : https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/5142041

Lennox Lewis The Untold Story (2020)

Lennox Lewis The Untold Story was originally scheduled to premiere at Tribeca earlier this year. When it was announced I instantly emailed the PR firm and asked them if Lennox Lewis was going to be available for interviews. The announcement was so far ahead of the festival that I caught them off guard.  They may not have been ready for  someone to want to see a film about Lennox Lewis but I damn sure was ready. As a long time boxing fan I can honestly say that Lewis is one of the greatest fighters I have ever seen. When he was at the top of his game no one, not even the likes of Mike Tyson could best him.

The film about Lewis may seem rather calm and sedate, however like the man it is about there is way more going on than meets the eye. Covering his days from growing up in London to his move to Canada (he left before the riots that tore the city apart) that introduced him to boxing on through his march to conquer the boxing world, where he is one of the few people to retire as a unified champion of the world (he held all the championship belts of all the boxing organizations).

To be completely honest I went into the film expecting it to be big and loud and showy like so many other boxing films. Instead what I got was a quiet film about a man who shook the pillars of heaven. Lennox never had to be big and showy, and this film explains why, Lennox was and is the real deal. Lennox didn’t have to show off, he just had to show up. In order to make that happen he chose to work with the  friends who got him where he wanted to go. He trusted them to keep him grounded and the result was a man who went to the top of the boxing world and stayed there.

What surprised me was that while the film initially seems like a straight forward look at Lennox’s boxing career, it actually begins to open up with little details that quietly paint the life that goes on around him. From the way he kept his friends close, to how his mother cooked for him at training camps, and on to bits of his personal life, it’s all there. There was a moment somewhere in the last half hour when I suddenly realized how much information was coming our way. I loved how the film  quietly just let us know everything we needed to know. The result is a film that quietly grows in stature.

How will this film play for someone who doesn’t know about Lennox Lewis? I think quite well. I think the film nicely explains who Lewis was as a champion and is as a human being.  While I think that the construction of seeming to focus on Lewis’s career may keep some at bay at first, I think by the end they will fall in love with the film and the man.

Highly recommended.

And a quick shout out to Dr Dre who provides some killer narration. Given in a low key, dry manner, I had to replay a couple of lines because I loved how his delivery added power and humor to much that he was saying. It truly helps make the film as good as it is.

Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1974) NYFF 2020

 

William Klein's portrait of Muhammad Ali is a mixed bag. 

Looking at the circus around his fights with Sonny Liston before jumping to The Rumble in the Jungle almost a decade later.  The film seeks to put it all into some kind  of context, sadly time and tide has moved beyond the this portrait. 

While the first half of this film about the Liston media circus is very good. Even with all of the recent docs on Ali, we've never really gotten a good look at the then Cassius Clay like we get here. Certainly we don't get a look at everything around him and the fight that we do here. Its wonderfully eye opening because it's material that is a portrait of a time made with out decades of rethinking.

The problem with the film is the second half on the Rumble In the Jungle, his s1974 fight with George Foreman.  That fight has been the subject of numerous other and better films including When We Were Kings which transcends being a boxing film to be something greater.

In the end this is a good film, not a great one.

This will play better if you haven't seen a lot of films on Ali.