Tag: coaching

China Sea
(Kinų Jūra)

Director – Jurgis Matulevičius – 2025 – Lithuania, Taiwan, Poland, Czechia – 96m

*****

A former champion kickboxer whose career has been destroyed by his poor anger management attempts to find direction in life – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

World champion kickboxer Osvald Gurevicious (Marius Rapsys) has it all, but unfortunately is a bit too full of himself, accidentally clobbering a woman who is standing in the wrong place during a bar room brawl. We see him at the height of his success, playing an opponent in a tournament in Japan, but we never see the incident which destroys his career. Instead, he goes on TV back in Lithuania explaining that it was all a terrible accident which he regrets, but sadly that doesn’t seem to cut any ice.

Discussing the situation with his coach (Marius Misiūnas), he resolves to make the best of the situation by opening his own gym; his coach, however, isn’t sure that Osvald has what it takes and suggests he work at the gym as an assistant to see if he has a feel for coaching. Among Osvald’s new kickboxing charges is the promising Angelika (Samantha Drilingate), who he helps to learn how to defend herself in the ring when she comes in one day with a massive torso bruise from a bar fight that got out of hand.… Read the rest

Tags 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Critics' Picks Competition, abandoned dog, abuser, accident, ageing mother, anger managment, attack, Baltic, Baltic States, Baltic unease, bar fight, bar room brawl, birthday party, blood, borrowed money, boxing, boxing ring, bruise, bully, career destroyed, China Sea (Kinų Jūra), coach, coaching, corpse, Critics' Picks Competition, culture in crisis, Czechia, direction in life, dog, dream in ruins, drugs, extended family, floating corpse, flowers, former champion champion, gangster, gangsters, gym, haze, identity loss, immigrant, innocent bystander, Jian Huang, Jurgis Matulevičius, karaoke, keep moving forward, kickboxer, leak blood, Lithuania, losing your identity, Marius Misiūnas, Marius Rapsys, marriage proposal, near-darkness, PÖFF, PÖFF 2025, PÖFF 2025: Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF 29, PÖFF 29: Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF: Critics' Picks Competition, Poland, professional fight, proposal, propose, regret, rejection, restaurateur, ring, romance, Russia, Samantha Drilingate, second chance, self-defence, self-destruct, Severija Janusauskaite, Sonia Yuan, sport, sports movie, swimming pool, Taiwan, Taiwanese, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2025, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2025: Critics' Picks Competition, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Critics' Picks Competition, television, therapy, therapy class, therapy exercise, torso, training, TV, Ukraine, underpass, Vaidotas Martinaitis

Features Live Action Movies

Hard Miles

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 31 May 2024
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Director – R.J. Daniel Hanna – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 108m

****1/2

A youth facility social worker takes a group of troubled young men on a transformative team bicycle ride – out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, September 2nd

Day-to-day life is one thing after another for Colorado medium-security correction school staff member Greg Townsend (Matthew Modine). He is in court defending, failing to get the court to see one of his charges as a human being rather than someone who committed an offence. Leaving, he finds someone has stolen his bicycle (it later gets found by the police, having sustained only minor damage). He is fielding calls from his prison-incarcerated brother about their father, who is in a care home and may not have much longer to live, and with whom Greg has not had contact for years. He is at the school, pulling boys apart as they attack each other for the most trivial remark.

However, not everything is about work and family responsibility. Greg is a cycling enthusiast, and is looking forward to taking his booked holiday of a week or more off cycling 1 000 (well, 762) miles to the Grand Canyon. Except that his boss Skip (Leslie David Baker) wants him to fill in that week, which Greg isn’t going to do.… Read the rest

Tags 1 000 miles, 762 miles, APB, backers, Based On A True Story, bike shop, care home, charity, coaching, Colorado, convict, correction, court defending, crutches, cycling, cycling enthusiast, Cynthia Kay McWilliams, Damien Diaz, desert, eating disorder, end of life, family responsibility, fathers and sons, funding, funding crisis, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Greg Townsend, high altitude, holiday, incarceration, Jackson Kelly, Jahking Guillory, landscape, leadership, leg injury, Leslie David Baker, Matthew Modine, medium-security, minibus driver, offence, offender, peloton, platoon team work, prison, R.J. Daniel Hanna, roads, school, Sean Astin, sheriff, Sierra Nevada, speed, sponsor, staff, theft, troubled young men, troubled youth, true story, US, Utah, wind resistance, work, workshop, youth offender, Zachary T. Robbins

Features Live Action Movies

If Only I Could Hibernate
(Baavgai Bolohson)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 April 2024
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(Baavgai Bolohson)
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Director – Zoljargal Purevdash – 2023 – Mongolia, France, Switzerland, Qatar – Cert. 12a– 96m

****

A gifted Mongolian boy is torn between providing for his siblings and pursuing his studies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

Teenager Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh) lives with his mum and his three younger siblings in the yurt district of Ulaanbaataar, Mongolia’s capital city, their father having long since disappeared. Mum (Ganchimeg Sandagdorj) is illiterate and struggles to find work, and there is much antagonism between her and Ulzii, who is going through the school system his mother never experienced and took money from his summer job to buy sneakers before giving the remainder to his mum, who needs it to buy coal for their yurt’s stove to keep the family warm in severe, subzero wintry conditions. Sometimes it’s all too much for their mum, who often gets drunk at night.

In class, Ulzii is the star pupil at physics, often completing complex equations using solutions his teacher wouldn’t expect from anyone less than two years older. His teacher (Batzorig Sukhbaatar), finding a prodigy on his hands, starts to coach him to do well in the National exams in order to win a free university scholarship to study physics, which the boy wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.… Read the rest

Tags alcoholism, Battsooj Uurtsaikh, Batzorig Sukhbaatar, bunk off school, capital city, chop up wood, city and countryside, coach, coaching, coal, complex equations, cut down trees, Davaasamba Sharaw, dependents, drinking, drunk, earning money, eldest child, exams, family, fuel, Ganchimeg Sandagdorj, gifted, heating, illegal job, illiterate, logger, Mongolia, mothers and children, National exams, Nominjiguur Tsend, physics, play truant, pregnant, prejudice, prodigy, pull out of the school, responsibility, scholarship, school, school system, schoolboy, seeking work, siblings, sneakers, star pupil, student, subzero, summer job, teacher, teaching, teenager, Tuguldur Batsaikhan, Ulaanbaataar, unemployment, university, university scholarship, Winter, yurt, yurt district, yurt’s stove, Zoljargal Purevdash