List Price: $19.99 Our Price: $15.99YOU SAVE $4!
Buy it
DVD Miracle (Full Screen Edition)
The miracle about Miracle is that it gets so many details right in telling its 24-year-old story about the historic victory of the U.S. hockey team at the 1980 Olympic Games. It's typical for Hollywood to compromise such period details as hairstyles and fashion when catering to a contemporary audience, but Miracle looks and feels right in every detail, capturing the downbeat mood of post-Watergate America while showing how obsessively determined Minnesota hockey coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) managed to assemble a once-in-a-lifetime team and whip them into a victorious frenzy over their Soviet champion opponents. With sharp support from Patricia Clarkson (as Brooks's wife) and Noah Emmerich (as his long-suffering assistant), Russell grounds the film with a well-balanced combination of aloofness, intimidation, and closely guarded strategy. No doubt the real Brooks (who died in a car accident shortly after filming completed) would have approved. Thanks to director Gavin O'Connor (Tumbleweeds) and the producers of the similarly laudable sports films Remember the Titans and The Rookie, Miracle brings plenty of heart--and historical accuracy--to an old, familiar formula. --Jeff Shannon
This is the real deal. Even non-sports enthusiasts and sports folks who don't care for hockey are going to enjoy this movie. The story stays true to history even to using real hockey players as the 1980 team members. Quite moving
Some Places Good/Other Places Could Be Improved
The basic premise for this movie is solid, i.e., take the 1980 USA Hockey Team win and tell the story. The downside is Hollywood seems to think profanity and violence are essential to ANY storyline. How cliche! Another weakness is the lack of research. Two players from Bowling Green State University were on that team and they are totally ignored. UNH is mentioned in the script, but in reality, that university was not represented on the team.
Herb Brooks, played by Kurt Russell, is supposed to be Mr. Macho so he has to use excessive vulgarity to achieve his goal in the eyes of this stereotypically written script. In practice he resolves a conflict between two rival players by having them beat each other up. Now how logical is that? Again, typical Hollywood writing. The people on the coast should "get out a little more" and see the rest of the world. It's "group think" to the point of being a case study. If you can get past the Hollywoodization of the plot, the reality of what happened can be inspiring.
Where were you.
I remember watching the United States' defeat of the vaunted Russian Olympic hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The Russians were undefeated since 1961. And 1960 was the last year we won the "Gold". The title of the movie is an apt description of the USA upset at Lake Placid in 1980.
This movie shows what it took to mold individuals into a well-coordinated team in just seven months of very hard work. Up until 1980, no team was ever willing to train as hard as was required to defeat the Russian team. Not only is skill on the ice, but actually physical endurance. Our young team of average age of 21 years stepped up to the plate and exceeded that goal.
This movie also shows that you cannot win a team sport by choosing the best players and calling them a team. But that it takes a group of team players working together. This movie brought back all the excitement I felt watching the game. And also let's you see what it took back then to be an Olympic team player. Now we use professional players in so called DREAM TEAMS. Well if you ask me, the 1980 team of amateur athletes that brought home the Gold Medal was the Dream Team. And I wish the Olympics had not evolved as it has.
This is a movie for everyone. You do not need to know about the sport of ice hockey to enjoy it. It is a pleasure to watch people play for the pure pleasure of the sport instead of money. The casting between a season actor like Kurt Russell, unseasoned actors, and actual hockey player was well done. You can tell that the cast and crew paid attention to details. Watch this movie.
You don't need to know anything about hockey to be moved by this hourlong documentary about one of the greatest upsets in sports history: the United States' defeat of the vaunted Russian Olympic hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The film recounts the David vs. Goliath matchup between the Americans (essentially a group of college kids molded into a team by coach Herb Brooks, also the U.S. hockey coach in the 2002 Olympic games) and the Russians, professionals who had won four straight Olympic golds. The story is retold in interviews with the people who lived it, including Brooks and several of the American players, sportscaster Al Michaels (who uttered the title line as the game ended), and key Russian players. Do You Believe in Miracles? is... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 08 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.97 Your Price: $6.97YOU SAVE $8!
Buy it
One of the most rousingly enjoyable sports movies ever made, this small-town drama tells the story of the Hickory Huskers, an underdog basketball team from a tiny Indiana high school that makes it all the way to the state championship tournament. It's a familiar story, but sensitive direction and a splendid screenplay helped make this one of the best films of 1986, highlighted by the superb performances of Gene Hackman as the Huskers' coach, and Oscar nominee Dennis Hopper as the alcoholic father of one of the team's key players. As the drama unfolds we come to realize that many of the characters (including Barbara Hershey as a schoolteacher with whom Hackman falls in love) are recovering from disappointing setbacks, and this depth of character is what makes the otherwise conventional... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Anspaugh DVD Release Date: Released the 29 February 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $10.99YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
With only one major star (Denzel Washington), an appealing cast of fresh unknowns, and a winning emphasis of substance over self-indulgent style, Boaz Yakin's Remember the Titans is, like Rudy before it, a football movie that will be fondly remembered by anyone who sees it.
Set in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971, the fact-based story begins with the integration of black and white students at T. C. Williams High School. This effort to improve race relations is most keenly felt on the school's football team, the Titans, and bigoted tempers flare when a black head coach (Washington) is appointed and his victorious predecessor (Will Patton) reluctantly stays on as his assistant. It's affirmative action at its most potentially volatile, complicated by the mandate that the coach... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Denzel Washington Director(s): Boaz Yakin DVD Release Date: Released the 20 March 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $25.49YOU SAVE $4.5!
Buy it
This 1993 film by David Anspaugh (Hoosiers) is slowly building a reputation as a minor highlight of '90s movies. Based on a true story, Rudy stars Sean Astin as Rudy Ruettiger, a blue-collar kid whose father (Ned Beatty) worships Notre Dame football but who would never dare to dream that any of his sons could be a part of the team. The film is entirely about Ruettiger's ceaseless if sometimes wavering commitment toward that goal, despite tremendous obstacles in physical stature, education requirements, the dismissiveness of coaches, poverty, his father's envy, and endless delays of one kind or another. This is the sort of film that looks back on a life and says the battle was its own reward, not the glory. Astin is very moving as a boy who becomes a man and watches his world... More Info about this DVD Director(s): David Anspaugh DVD Release Date: Released the 26 September 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.94 Your Price: $10.99YOU SAVE $3.95!
Buy it
When it comes to the subject of community, David E. Kelley--the prolific writer-producer behind television's The Practice and Ally McBeal--falls somewhere on a continuum between directors Howard Hawks and Robert Benton. While Hawks's professional characters are bound by a knowledge of how to do what they do even if they don't know why, Benton's people, professional or not, have long ago substituted their own eccentric reasons for that elusive why. Thus we get the kind of in-house, oddball rituals sandwiched between passages of actual work on Ally, and the affectionately entangled personal and professional ties between small-town folks in Kelley's earlier TV series Picket Fences.
