Summary: THE LONGEST YARD sees ex-professional footballer Danny Mehan behind bars on an assault charge. When he realises that his fellow inmates and prison guards are still mad at him for fixing a match, he tries to get back into their good books--and save his own neck--by throwing a football team together... COACH CARTER tells the inspirational true story of a man who returns to his old school to coach a struggling basketball team. Despite transforming the team into a force to be reckoned with, Carter decides to bench the entire squad when he learns of their less-than-stellar academic performance... BAD NEWS BEARS sees foulmouthed booze hound Morris Buttermaker agree to coach a Little League team for the paycheque. Unfortunately for him, he is lumbered with the league's most inept players. Gradually, Buttermaker's determination pays off and he manages to turn the Bears' luck around, resulting in a championship showdown with the Yankees...

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Mean Machine

British soccer star Vinnie Jones stars as--no big stretch--a former soccer star named Danny "Mean Machine" Meehan who gets arrested for drunken assault and sent to prison for three years. Behind bars he finds himself embroiled in web of prison politics, caught between a governor with a gambling problem, a crime boss who lost a lot of money on a game that Meehan lost, and a motley crew of surly prisoners and guards with grudges. It all culminates in a soccer match between a team of guards, led by a hard-nosed warden, and a team of convicts, led by Meehan. Mean Machine is a remake of the Burt Reynolds movie The Longest Yard and the plot is pretty sure-fire; it's hard not to get caught up in the tensions of the big game. Plus, the comical game commentators give the movie a good jolt of humour. --Bret Fetzer

Coach Carter

Based on a true story of the man who locked his boys out of the gym until they focused on their schoolwork, this by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser holds together because a steely Samuel L. Jackson refuses to notice the parade of clichés he's trumpeting (the dialogue sticks to platitudes like, "Success in here is the key to success out there"). Coach Ken Carter (Jackson) takes over an unruly team of Richmond, California basketball players and teaches them how to play--and behave--like champions. His plight, which pits him against an uncooperative school board and parents who've given up hope, holds some interest, but the film is too concerned with giving us a Big Game every twenty minutes or so. The teens all have the spark of life in them (including pop star Ashanti, who features in a surprisingly well-handled teen pregnancy subplot), though the film's plodding familiarity means it's never really rousing, adding up to simply a good-natured amalgam of Stand and Deliver, Hoosiers, Dangerous Minds, and even Dead Poet's Society (one of the tougher players actually recites some inspirational poetry).--Steve Wiecking

Bad News Bears

In a fitting follow-up to Bad Santa and Friday Night Lights, Billy Bob Thornton makes the most of the remake trend in Bad News Bears. He's just the right guy to inherit Walter Matthau's role from the original 1976 version about a lousy Little League team baseball team coached by a curmudgeonly drunk, and the original team of misfits has been updated (but not upgraded) to an ethnic mix that includes an Indian math whiz, a pair of Latino twins, and a paraplegic kid who doesn't play until the final championship game. It's a little sad to see a talented director like Richard Linklater doing an unnecessary remake, but his experience on School of Rock made him the obvious choice to mine comedy gold from the collision of Thornton and a batch of unruly, prepubescent kids (including Sammi Kraft, an all-star Little Leaguer in the role originated by Tatum O'Neal). With Marcia Gay Harden and Greg Kinnear in supporting roles, this isn't family fare (the potty-mouthed kids deservedly earned a PG-13 rating), but Thornton's easygoing presence makes it worthwhile for anyone who's not too attached to the original version. --Jeff Shannon

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Release Date:	October 6, 2008
Runtime:	334 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 9639
Keywords:	News, English, Bad, Bears, Carter, Machine, General, Coach, Mean, Drama
Genre:	Drama