 "Still We Believe" | 2007-04-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: ACE4L6200S8TN |
| This documentary has the drama and comedy of any Oscar-winning fiction. I never could have withstood the trauma of watching this film if we hadn't won within my lifetime. BTW, if you're a fan of Manny (and I am), he's a featured player. |
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| "our wounds" | 2006-10-10 |
| - Reviewed By davidabaer |
For Red Sox fans, 2003 was the year that we finally understood that our world is an evil place.
It was the anteroom to 2004's glory. It was purgatory, a furnace of affliction. It was the sum of all our fears. For a moment, when we could not summon the strength to look away from the horror, it seemed that we had descended to hell. Momentarily, Dante was a sportswriter for the Globe, all was darkness, and the unbearable screaming just wouldn't stop.
STILL WE BELIEVE follows an endearing coterie of fans through the season of our hopes, one that would end in venerable BoSox fashion by a spectacular sequence of crashing and burning. Grady Little would be exiled to North Carolina, his given name rarely pronounced in New England after his American League Championship Series decision to allow a stubborn Petey to stay on the mound when his arm clearly needed a shower. Dan Shaughnessy would memorably label him 'He Who Shall Not Be Named', a verbal refusal to acknowledge the hapless tool of Satan that he became on that terrible night in the Bronx.
It's odd to watch this move again after the Exorcism of 2004, when Evil unexpectedly ambushed those Yankees, the planets shifted in their orbits, and Red Sox Nation had to adjust to the psychological impossibility that we had won it all.
One senses the eventual redemption of these hapless 2003 fans, a bright light on the horizon that they themselves could not yet see.
We did win it all. Life is worth living.
2003, like 1978 and 1986, became one more mile in the Forced March that led us to Paradise.
No-mah, now a Dodger, still rocks.
Enough said. Let's not think about 2003 any more. |
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| "Makes You Feel at Home" | 2005-03-26 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
This movie is 100% Red Sox, which all their characters except Jim Connors lives right outside of Boston. Living two states away from New England and being a die -hard Red Sox fan stinks. The fans in the movie make me feel right at home and I forget I'm not in New England.
This movie is also good because it portrays Nomar Garciaparra as the player he is. This past season has made everyone forget how good, talented, and nice the man is. One of the charcters, Jessemy Finet talks about Nomar and then Nomar talks about how wonderful, Boston and the Red Sox are. It signify's him the the fan favorite: not Pedro, Manny, Tek, Damon, or Lowe;just Nomar.
While the movie just isn't the same now that they won, it's still my favorite. Can't wait for the sequel this year! |
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| "AWESOME!!" | 2004-12-19 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| This movie is awesome!! I love it and it is a must have for any Sox fan. It's about the ups and downs that we Sox fans go through during every season. The only thing bad about it was how the 2003 season ended, but luckily none of that matters now!! GO SOX!! |
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 "If you're a diehard Sox fan, you've seen this already" | 2004-12-16 |
| - Reviewed By patrickmackenzie |
| I was excited to get my hands on everything Red Sox-related after they finally won the World Series. I couldn't get enough, especially all the DVD's available. I was very pleased with all my purchases except this one. I didn't like it because most of the film is based on a handful of fans' perspectives of the team, and covers very little of the team itself. I don't care about John Q. Fan. I care about Trot, Tek, D-Lowe, Petey, Wake, Man-Ram, JD and Big Papi. If you're a diehard fan, you know people like these fans and you don't need to pony up the cash to see them celebrate Sox wins and moan after Sox defeats. I think the concept of this film was to show outsiders, non-Red Sox fans, the passion and intensity that we have for our team. It definitely gets that point across and serves its purpose. But, in reality, only a Red Sox fan would buy this film. Why buy something to get these other people's reactions to the bigger events of the 2003 season? Why not just remember your reactions and those of fellow Red Sox fans that you know? I was disappointed with this purchase and this DVD will gather dust on my shelf. Will I ever use it as a vehicle to show a non-Red Sox fan the level of passion and intensity? No. It won't work. I tried. It results in boredom. They don't get it. There's only one way to do that -- take them to Cask'N Flagon and Fenway Park. A DVD about a handful of Sox fans does our passion and intensity no justice. I prefer remembering 2003 and 2004 for the players on the field. If I want to REALLY connect with a film, I want to see a throng of faceless fans erupt when Trot hits the bomb in Game 3 of the ALDS and recall that memory. I don't want to watch Angry Bill sit in his chair and comment on it. Snore. Do yourself a favor and go buy 1). Faith Rewarded, 2)The 2004 World Series and 3) Cowboy Up. |
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 "Unconventional Documentary about more than Baseball" | 2004-12-06 |
| - Reviewed By thecrank |
This review refers to the DVD edition.
"Still We Believe" will have obvious appeal for Boston Red Sox fans, and following the Championship of 2004, the somewhat downbeat ending to the film will no longer be a source of pain to the faithful. The filmmakers were given full access to the Red Sox during the 2003 season to make a documentary, from eavesdropping in the locker room to a full-season time-lapse camera angle of the field mounted on the roof behind home plate. (Paul Doyle is given credit as the director, but as he says on the DVD audio commentary, it was largely a group effort). With the original intent of providing a team documentary, they started to follow the season through the eyes of a selected group of fans as a sort of video sidebar.
It's a sign of excellent documentary filmmaking that they then decided, once the season was over and the project had developed, that the focus of this film became the journey of those hardcore fans over the course of the season. The team is obviously the centerpiece, but it's almost a MacGuffin (Hitchcock's term for something in a film that seems to be the center of attention but which is just there to get the action moving along -- like the Maltese falcon in "The Maltese Falcon" or Private Ryan in "Saving Private Ryan", etc.)
As such, this is most assuredly not a document of the 2003 season, and not a conventional sports documentary. As a Red Sox fan, I surely enjoyed the perspective of seeing the oh-too-familiar vicissitudes of the season through seven fans eyes. The fans they ended up selecting are a sort of spectrum of types, from the radio talk show call-in regulars Angry Bill and Jermaine to a pair of working class sisters to a high school coach and a fire fighter, with the California transplant owner of Sonny McLean's as a stand-in for the diaspora of Red Sox fans across the country.
There are, to be sure, a few candid sequences from the team and its management to spice things up, but in the context of the whole film, it's a way of showing how the team matters so much more in some ways to its fans than to the players or owners. The players and owners do care, but they have their bottom lines and a sense of other professional opportunities. For the fans, their loyalty is supreme and it is they who seem, in the end, to actually make up the entity known as the Boston Red Sox more than the guys who actually put it on at the ballpark.
What I found particularly interesting in watching this film on DVD (especially after this past election and its discussion of values and loyalty) is how well the center of this movie does seem to be the sense of faith beyond reason, of shared community, of resilience in the face of disappointment that characterizes Red Sox fans and New England.
It should not be a surprise that many of the people involved in this movie are students of the Ken Burns school of documentary film; Burns himself focusses on 'The American Experience' as a recurring theme in his own work, from 'The Civil War' and 'Baseball' to 'Brooklyn Bridge' and 'Jazz'. There are traces of the Burns style here, but there are no sonorous voiceovers or talking heads. The technique is to follow the fans as they watch the games and mull the aftermath, interspersing this with occasional tidbits from the players and management. One gets the best of both worlds: the narrative of the structure of the season is clear as a backdrop, but the temptation of the conventional sports film does not intrude upon the main text of really showing how the fans are turned inside out by their odd relationship with their team.
The subtle, and almost quiet musical tracks used are an indicator this is not your traditional sports documentary. The editing and selectivity of the filmmakers in making the final film is even more apparent in looking at the DVD edition, which contains many out-takes and extra scenes. These out-takes nearly all have interest -- the very, very long featurette on "Angry Bill" in isolation is nearly a documentary in itself -- but if you view them in sequence after watching the movie, you'll understand exactly how disciplined the filmmakers were in making the decisions they did about what to leave out.
One of the nice DVD extras is interviews with the participants in the film at the movie's premiere. It's a sort of "they're OK" coda that may take some of the sting out of the sad ending to the 2003 season (where the main film stops).
Note: there's one easter egg available from the main screen -- featuring Kevin Millar on proper foot care. It's not the infamous "dancing Kevin" video, alas, but is amusing.
I wrote earlier that "Still We Believe" has obvious interest to Red Sox fans, but I believe the success of this will make this interesting viewing above and beyond that core audience. The theatrical release was largely limited to New England, and I think that's a pity, as it would've been interesting to see how it would run to audiences that didn't have a strong rooting interest in the team or perhaps even in baseball. The great theme of how following a sports team is one of the essential emotional -- almost spiritual -- aspects of American life is subtly and expertly stitched together and I think beyond being one of the best sports documentaries of all-time, this movie has a qualification as one of the best documenatries, period, of 2004.
I would definitely recommend this for Red Sox fans and for all baseball fans, and would cautiously recommend this to those who just dig good documentaries that end up being about something a little bit more than the apparent subject matter. If you saw the film in the theater when it came out and enjoyed it, I would definitely recommend the DVD for its extensive bonus material. |
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