Eddie the Eagle

Year of Release:  2016
Director:   Dexter Fletcher
Screenplay:  Sean Macaulay
Starring:   Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, Iris Berben, Mark Benton, Keith Allan, Jo Hartley
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  biopic, comedy, drama, sports

Those of you old enough and with long enough memories may remember the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, where Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards became the first British competitor in the ski jump event and spectacularly failed to win any medals and ended up coming in last.  However, he became something of a national treasure and something of a beloved character.

This film focuses on Eddie's dogged attempts to make the Olympics.  Deciding that there is no way to get into the Summer Games he focuses his attentions on the Winter Games and, failing to get into the British team as a skier, despite being quite good at it, turns his attentions to ski jumping.

The film takes a lot of liberties with Eddie's real life.  Hugh Jackman's gruff boozed up coach who reluctantly agrees to help Eddie, is entirely fictional.  However, this is a solid heart-warming underdog sports movie.  It's funny, slight and entertaining.  Even though you know how it all turns out, it still manages to make you root for Eddie.

The film could have been a lot crueller, making Edwards a figure of fun, particularly given his eccentric appearance and mannerisms, but to it's credit it really doesn't.  Egerton gives a good performance as Edwards, almost unrecognisable with Edwards' jutting chin, clenched teeth and peering from behind thick coke-bottle glasses.  Jackman is charismatic as the gruff alcoholic ex-ski jumper  who takes the Eagle under his wing.    

Raging Bull

1980 / USA / 129 minutes

Director:  Martin Scorsese
Screenplay:  Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin, based on the book Raging Bull:  My Story by Jake LaMotta, Joseph Carter and Peter Savage
Starring:  Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci
Genre:  Drama, sports

This film is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of the 1980s and one of the peaks of director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro's careers.  The film tells the true story of champion boxer Jake LaMotta (De Niro) following his career from a hungry up and coming prize fighter in the early 1940s to to a bloated nightclub entertainer in the 1960s.  It details how the violence and rage which made LaMotta such a feared and formidable opponent in the ring, affected his personal life and relationships, in particular with second wife Vicky (Moriarty) and his brother and manager Joey (Pesci), which were coloured by his obsessive rage, sexual jealousy, paranoia and self-destructive behaviour.

LaMotta is never a likeable individual, but he is fascinating and weirdly sympathetic thanks to the astonishing performance by De Niro, in which he attained peak physical form to play the young LaMotta (the real Jake LaMotta on whose autobiography the film is based and who served as an advisor for the film-makers commented that DeNiro was one of the twenty best middleweight boxers of all time). and then famously became hugely overweight to play the older LaMotta.

The film is shot in beautiful black and white with a brief colour sequence about halfway through the film.  Most of the film is shot in the gritty low-key style familiar from earlier Scorsese films, but the boxing scenes are spectacular choreographed and edited and stylishly shot.

A bleak, savage and uncompromising film, it is also a masterpiece.