#1 ·
McFarland, USA (2015)
It’s wild how someone who actually knows their way around a camera can take a totally mundane plot—hell, a plot that feels like nothing—and turn it into a solid, maybe even great, movie. I always say if a film doesn't grab me in the first few minutes, I'm out. That was the case here: Kevin Costner loses his job as a high school teacher and football coach because he loses his cool with a player—good intentions aside, he just went off. And since he has a track record of being hot-headed, he gets relegated to some middle-of-nowhere town. So, he packs up the family and moves to McFarland, California—a rural spot dominated by Mexican immigrant farmworkers—just to snag a teaching and coaching gig at the local high school.
Life there offers zero perspective. It’s pure poverty with no hope in sight. Just like their parents and kids before them, the people in McFarland are basically stuck in a cycle of endless labor on the farms. But Costner—blown away by the sheer physical grit of these kids after getting fired following a single football game—manages to pull together seven students for a cross-country team and starts training them for competition. These kids spend all day sweating under the sun picking crops, then they go out and run miles for practice...
What follows is a touching, incredible story based on actual events. There isn't a shred of cheap sentimentality, yet somehow it still had me tearing up again.
As usual, Costner shines as that (both athletic and social) enthusiast who actually believes in people and sees potential where everyone else just sees nothing...
It’s wild how someone who actually knows their way around a camera can take a totally mundane plot—hell, a plot that feels like nothing—and turn it into a solid, maybe even great, movie. I always say if a film doesn't grab me in the first few minutes, I'm out. That was the case here: Kevin Costner loses his job as a high school teacher and football coach because he loses his cool with a player—good intentions aside, he just went off. And since he has a track record of being hot-headed, he gets relegated to some middle-of-nowhere town. So, he packs up the family and moves to McFarland, California—a rural spot dominated by Mexican immigrant farmworkers—just to snag a teaching and coaching gig at the local high school.
Life there offers zero perspective. It’s pure poverty with no hope in sight. Just like their parents and kids before them, the people in McFarland are basically stuck in a cycle of endless labor on the farms. But Costner—blown away by the sheer physical grit of these kids after getting fired following a single football game—manages to pull together seven students for a cross-country team and starts training them for competition. These kids spend all day sweating under the sun picking crops, then they go out and run miles for practice...
What follows is a touching, incredible story based on actual events. There isn't a shred of cheap sentimentality, yet somehow it still had me tearing up again.
As usual, Costner shines as that (both athletic and social) enthusiast who actually believes in people and sees potential where everyone else just sees nothing...