Reviews of Undefeated 2011
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A really nice watch.
At one point, a tear jerking moment is played out a bit too long, I'd say, but over all a very compelling, heartwarming movie which flies by so fast, although an almost 2h runtime. -
A paint by numbers sport picture, if this we're a narrative film. As a documentary it is much more compelling to feel for the individual narratives of the coach, O.C., and Money that are focused on most prominently.
Very nice work by the filmmakers, hits a wide range of feelings.
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A documentary about the struggles of a high school football team in West Memphis. It starts off strong, listing the various issues (mostly shooting-related) the coach and the team have had to deal with in the first couple of weeks in the season, setting it up to be an interesting, issue-driven documentary that could tell us a lot about the intersection between class, race and sport. But when the team wins a couple of games and looks like it has…
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Undefeated may be a documentary, but it plays like a great film. The men and women who put it together really know how to make a good story.
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You know what the best bit about American football is?
The bit on John Madden Football '92 on the Mega Drive(or Genesis if you are from the US and you name the console wrong) when the ambulance comes onto the pitch the help injured players
First down!
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On surface this probably looks like a documentary you've seen many times. I think this film is above and beyond most underdog stories (the academy apparently thought so too). Its so well made. It flies by at an incredible pace and manages to keep you engaged and caring for most of it's run-time. A lot of this can be attributed to the main coach who is very good. He carries a lot of the weight of the film with dialogue…
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After finishing Friday Night Lights (which you should all totally watch, if you haven't already), I felt empty, and needed something similar to fill that void in my life, if only for a couple of hours.
In came Undefeated, a fantastically inspiring tale of a high school football team and how their coach turns them around from a bunch of losers to a winning team despite all the odds being stacked against them. (A plot not too dissimilar from that…
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Outstanding... After Senna, One Night In Turin and Fire In Babylon, here's another exceptional documentary based around a sport that I have little to no interest in. However, what is interesting, as with the films named above, is the human aspect of the stories.
Character, character, character... I loved it! -
Great story, tightly edited. Good general lesson for young adults about the team not the self.
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Amazingly effective film. Perfect pacing and score. I wish we could've spent a little more time with some of the other players on the team, but it's still extremely well done. As many people have said, it's basically a real life Friday Night Lights during the East Dillon years, which is to say it's some truly inspiring people making the most of some seriously heavy life situations plus football. And it's great.
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This documentary actually brought tears to my eyes on occasions! I'm hard pressed to find a doco that has done that in quite some time.
I'm always skeptical about how much of this is real, or how much is put on for the cameras, but you know what, it seems pretty damn genuine to me.
Some of the character arcs are fascinating to watch, and this documentary plays almost like Remember the Titans (minus the overly racist white people).
Anger,…
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As a native Memphian, I could be biased. Then again, it won an Oscar, and I doubt many (if any) of the Academy voters are from Memphis. Anyway...
I loved everything about this film. It tackles so many subjects--race, class, public education, inner-city battlegrounds, unflinching servitude, love, time, hope, hopelessness--that it could have been a failure for trying to tell too many stories. Instead, it tells all of them perfectly. I was surprised at how much I loved it.