"More Than A Game," "The Wrestler" Earn Rave Festival Reviews
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"More Than A Game" Receives Rave
Reviews At Toronto Int'l Film Festival |
"More Than A Game," a movie about Cavaliers F LeBron James' St. Vincent-St. Mary High School basketball team, "was one of the highlights" of the Toronto Int'l Film Festival's opening weekend, but it is still searching for a distributor, according to Clint O'Connor of the Cleveland PLAIN DEALER. The film's producer, Harvey Mason, on finding a distributor for the film: "We've had some interest, but there's nothing firm yet." O'Connor notes the film "charts the evolution of James, Dru 'Little Dru' Joyce, Romeo Travis, Willie McGee and Sian Cotton, their setbacks and family struggles, as a prelude to their incredible run ... that culminated in a national title in 2003." The film "explores all five men and their beginnings," and although the film is about basketball, it is "mostly about loyalty and friendship," as it is a "touching, crisply told saga of boys becoming men." James' mother, Gloria James: "It was flat-out awesome" (Cleveland PLAIN DEALER, 9/8). The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's Zeitchik & Kit write "More Than A Game" was "one of the weekend's hottest films." The film "received a huge reception at its Saturday debut, with a number of distributors circling" the film (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 9/8). In L.A., Patrick Goldstein wrote the movie "had a rousing debut." The film, which is being supported by Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records Chair Jimmy Iovine, left LeBron James "in tears after the screening." It "seems to have the star power to transcend some of the normal documentary box-office boundaries." Goldstein: "Talk about good cinematic fortune: One of the kids that 'Game's' director Kristopher Belman followed all those years was LeBron James" (LATIMES.com, 9/7).
WRESTLING WITH SUCCESS: Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," which stars Mickey Rourke in a profile of an aging athlete, won the top prize Saturday at the Venice Film Festival (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 9/8).
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