Seabiscuit review

 Number 960 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2003 sports film 'Seabiscuit.'

Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire) is a jockey looking for a better life in the wake of the Great Depression. Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges) is an industrialist moving on from a tragic accident. Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) is a kindly horse-trainer. What unites these three very difficult characters is the horse Seabiscuit - a racing horse who soon becomes one of the best in the country.

This was a dull film. Partially, because I wasn't interested in the subject matter, but also because there were some structural and character problems. Let's start with Charles Howard. He is initially presented sympathetically. At first, he runs a bicycle shop, but when that business fail, he moves into the automobile industry. It was nice seeing him struggle before he succeeded.

And his successes keep coming, as he marries and then has a son. But then his son *spoilers*

dies in a car accident. Tragedy! Except this moment was completely rushed. We have no time to feel this tragedy as Jeff Bridges quickly remarries. His new wife Marcela (Elizabeth Banks) has little character/personality outside of being his wife. And then he becomes a father-figure to Red Pollard - a young man who was sent away from his family during the Great Depression, in the hopes of finding a better life.

Tobey Maguire, unrecognisable from his Spider-Man role, brings the tragic Pollard to life, except again the tragedy of his character is also underplayed. In the run-up to the "race of the century," Pollard breaks his leg and is told he'll never race again. But no matter, he finds a substitute, and listens to the race on the radio.

There's no long, gruelling recovery or Pollard defying the odds to race once last time. Rather Pollard serenely lies back and accepts it. And I found this to to be a puzzling choice. Our protagonist is removed from the action. Instead, we are cheering on a strange character, when we should really be cheering on Pollard. But Pollard doesn't care, so why should I?

Although Maguire, Bridges and Cooper aren't bad actors, I do think a bad script with structural problems and wonky characterisations didn't do them justice at all.

The World's Fastest Indian review

 Number 326 on the top 1000 films of all time is the New Zealand biographical drama: 'The World's Fastest Indian.'

Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) is an ageing speed bike racer from New Zealand. He travels tot he US to fulfill a lifelong dream: to race his bike on the Bonneville salt flats in Utah.

By all accounts, this is a film that wouldn't interest me. I know that I should review these films with an open mind, but motor bike racing has never been something that interested me. I thought this would be a film that would only appeal to other bike racers, but I was wrong. It was an incredibly watchable film.

And a lot of that is down to Anthony Hopkins' portrayal as Burt Munro. Munro is such a likable character that it's difficult not to root for him. He is charming, jovial and personable. To gain passage to the US, he works as a chef on a small ship. Upon reaching the US, he encounters many obstacles with the local bureaucracy, but he always manages to talk his way out of trouble. He even convinces traffic cops to let him go without a ticket.

He also quickly befriends people who help him on his journey whether this is a transvestite motel clerk or a second-hand car salesman. This pays dividends when the jobsworth racing officials deny him the opportunity to race because he hasn't pre-registered. But the other racers rally around him and he is eventually allowed to race where he goes onto break the land speed record.

The only thing I found weird was how Hopkins didn't speak with a Kiwi accent. Considering this is a New Zeland production that's set in New Zealand and constantly has Munro referencing he is from New Zealand, it was a really bizarre choice. Surely this was some weird director decision as an actor of Hopkins' calibre must be capable of doing a convincing Kiwi accent.

This was an entertaining film. It could have been a tedious adventure that would only appeal to a small audience, but instead it was a heart-warming tale about an old man fulfilling his lifelong dream.