Cinematic Underdogs

Enjoy our short, sweet, & trivia-infused live episode, recorded just after a live screening  of The Karate Kid at The Majestic Tempe. The recording includes some audience questions, hot takes, a brief background lesson on where the film exists in the overall trajectory of American-made martial arts movies, and a totally random tidbit about a fitness company called Body by Jake. We kicked...

This is a special one! Welcome to the in-depth prelude to our live episode on The Karate Kid! We discuss this everything there is to discuss about this heartfelt, feel-good classic in a short 1.5 hours. Sure, that's a decent chunk of time. But when you consider there is a podcast in the cosmos that devotes hour-long episodes to every minute of the movie, we  become paragons of brevity & e...

On this episode we are joined by Matt Strohl , author of Why It's OK to Love Bad Movies , to discuss the Sylvester Stallone-led action (with a sports twist) flick Cliffhanger. We discuss why this outrageously fun 90s blockbuster far transcends any one genre and the multiple Razzie awards it undeservedly garnered. Matt's thesis about viewing films charitably and establishing a love for the intertex...

Hello Underdog Nation! We're back and our bark is louder than ever! On this episode, illustrious cinephile & Sylvester Stallone super-fan Lauren Knight joins us to discuss 1981's overlooked Victory (aka Escape to Victory) starring Michael Caine, Pele, and Stallone himself. The fact that this film is not slotted in the pantheon of classic sports movies is downright criminal. Set during WWII, Victor...

Howdy fellow Underdogs!!! We're back with our second deep dive into sports-themed anime! This time we are joined by Matt St. Jack of Anime Talk! and cover Baki, a Netflix series featuring muscular martial artists with sinewy veins, bulging eyes, & bloodthirsty intentions. The narrative focuses on Baki Hanma, a young high-school fighter extraordinaire diligently training to eclipse his legendar...

What's happening, underdogs? We're back and now pedaling into a totally new terrain -- covering our first Japanese sports anime, Yowamushi Pedal. Joining us and holding our hand through this episode is David Weinberger of the Shonen Flop podcast. David does an amazing job breaking down the five types of anime ( shonen, shojo, seinen, josei, and kodomomuke) and explains why Yowamushi Pedal is deriv...

This week Don Shanahan of Every Movie Has a Lesson / Cinephile Hissy Fit joins us to discuss American Underdog. Directed by the Erwin brothers, American Underdog chronicles the inspirational rise of Kurt Warner (Zachary Levi) as he bags groceries, bides his time, slings the football in the Arena league (AFL), and scraps his way back to the NFL. Backed by his equally resilient wife, Brenda (Anna Pa...

On our latest episode, we veer slightly off the post-apocalyptic path in our sci-fi / futuristic sports movie extravaganza to discuss Speed Racer !  Devout Speed Racer fanboy Jed Bookout joins your regular underdogs (Jordan & Paul) to discuss the Wachowski Sisters' singular adaptation of this classic anime entry. We colloquially swerve, meander, and careen as we chat about everything good...

We welcome sci-fi maestro SF Covell on the pod to wax nostalgic about the killer 1975 dystopian thriller Rollerball . In perhaps our most off-the-cuff & critical divisive episode of CU yet, we get heated (Jordan blasphemously claims the nu-metal-heavy 2002 Rollerball remake is better), hairy (discussing James Caan's chest and John Houseman's nose), & hoarse (from praising how kick-ass, par...

Hey fellow Underdogs!!! This week we welcome bak Justin and Joey from The Average Joe’s Movie Club Cast ( YouTube , Buzzsprout , & Apple Podcasts ) to discuss the 1965, swinging-sixties satire The 10th Victim. Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, this futuristic Italian films takes the manhunt, battle royale genre to fashionable extremes. A modish, spy-film adjacent, sci-fi farce...

Welcome to our first true foray into the wide world of a Happy Madison sports movies! No, Home Team is not in the same ballpark as Happy Gilmore . Hell, it wishes it was half as funny and entertaining as The Waterboy . But as champions of the genre and apologists for its formulaic gags and set pieces, we find the silver lining in this half-assed tale of Sean Peyton's post Bountygate comeuppance: r...

This week, your favorite Underdogs get timely & topical -- discussing 2021's National Champions . Directed by Ric Roman Waugh ( Greenland, Angel Has Fallen ), and adapted from a stage play written by Adam Mervis ( 21 Bridges ), National Champions follows star quarterback Demarcus James (Sephan James) and his teammate/friend Emmett Sunday (Alexander Ludwig) as they boycott the national champion...

This week on Cinematic Underdogs, Harry LaBollita, Nick Morelli, and Aaron White of Feelin Film' join the pod to discuss Untold: Breaking Point . As our third entry into the fantastic Netflix-produced docuseries, this episode chronicles Mardy Fish's poignant rise, fall, & eventual search for equanimity. If you've never heard of Mardy before, you are not alone. For most of his professional tenn...

Now this is a wicked fun episode. Will Johnson of Cinephile Hissy Fit joins the pod to geek out on Joe D'Amato's 1980's Italian post-apocalyptic cult classic Endgame: Bronx Lotta Finale! The film is a wild pastiche. It begins as a battle royale TV game-show and morphs into a story of a gruff antihero named Shannon (Al Cliver) leading a telepathic mutant (Moira Chen), an oracle-child archetype, and...

On this episode, we briefly flip the script* and begin our Post-Apocalyptic Sports Movie Series with David Webb Peoples’ Blood of Heroes .   Starring Rutger Hauer (Sallow), Joan Chen (Kidda), Vincent D’Onofrio (Young Gar), and Delroy Lindo (Mbulu), this one-of-a-kind sports film is criminally overlooked. A strange fusion of Mad Max sensibilities and underdog sports movie tropes, Blood of Hero...

The Dostoevsky allusion in the title of latest Untold episode we cover ("Crimes & Penalties") is apt in more ways than one. Like the hard-hitting Russian novel, this episode about a small-town mafia-run hockey team comprised entirely of goons blurs the lines of orthodox morality. The premise is simple: Jimmy Galante (kingpin of Connecticut's trash empire and the purported real-life inspiration for...

We have finally finished our Summer Olympics Sports Movie marathon and are excited to begin our much anticipated deep dive into Untold, a riveting Netflix Docuseries created by Chapman and Maclain Way. To kick off this riveting docuseries, we welcome the consummate podcast maestro and perennially insightful Aaron White of Feelin' Film for an in-depth discussion of Malice at the Palace.   The...

As Robert Towne's directorial debut, Personal Best is anything but safe. His commitment to realism is impressive, but the results can be maudlin and melodramatic. This is also a very fleshy/horny film, and at times, it is hard to tell whether the film's rampant nudity is naturalistic, gratuitous, perverted, raw, or an amalgamation of all these qualities. Regardless of how one perceives the film's...

On this episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we bring you Justin and Joey from The Average Joe’s Movie Club Cast, which can be found on YouTube , Buzzsprout , & Apple Podcasts . Joey & Justin are mega sports movie fans, and so for this episode we discuss their top five all-time faves (including everything from Bloodsport to Rocky to Field of Dreams to Days of Thunder ), some honorable mentions...

As an old-fashioned sports biopic, Race (2016) is serviceable. IT is exactly what one might expect of such a film: a sepia-toned, self-congratulatory, anti-fascist/racist flick about Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens, however, is sadly overshadowed by familiar beats and 'sophisticated' cliches in this Focus Features slog. An incredible/preternatural athlete and seemingly charismatic individual, Owens is bo...

On this special episode, we welcome Raj Maitra to the podcast to talk about the niche albeit electric sport known as Ultimate Frisbee. Raj has played Ultimate at a professional level (even appearing on ESPN) and now coaches a local team in Minneapolis. He is also an old, close friend of Paul's from a summer they both spent studying abroad in Cambridge (carousing about the hallowed halls of Cambrid...

In our last episode on Prefontaine , your fellow Underdogs breakdown the 1997 film starring Jared Leto, Ed O' Neill, and R. Lee Ermey.  Enjoy!

This extra-special episode of Cinematic Underdogs welcomes Juan — former track star walk-on, unabashed Steve Prefontaine super-fan, and current rockstar psychology PhD student at ASU.  Studying the intersections of exercise & dieting (among other factors), Juan is teeming with the type of esoteric insights we cherish so much on the pod: offering a uniquely immersive, heady, and self-reflexive pers...

On the latest episode of Cinematic Underdogs, we welcome Cows in the Field's one & only Justin Khoo back onto the pod to discuss Kon Ichikawa's monumental Tokyo Olympiad (1965). Commissioned by the Japanese government, this subversively playful and poetic depiction of the '64 Olympic games is a tour de force of cinematic techniques: filled with freeze-frames, still photograph montages, image m...

Co-founder / cohost of Feelin' Film and writer at This is Patch , Patrick Hicks is a bonafide sports movie lover. His passion for the genre is resonant and inspiring to hear, and this episode is stuffed wall-to-wall with great insights on everything from being oversaturated with content to the future of movie theaters to the emotional beats in sports movies that can get even the most stoic among u...