Video review: "The Miracle Season"

“The Miracle Season” is a pretty typical sports flick, with a few worthwhile exceptions.

It focuses on volleyball, not historically a cinematic gold mine, and features a high school girls’ team. I’m trying to even think of another recent women’s sports movie -- “Bend It Like Beckham” is all I can come up without resorting to Google, and that was 16 years ago.

More importantly, this drama features not one but two Oscar winners in leading roles: Helen Hunt as Kathy “Brez” Bresnahan, the longtime coach of West High School Iowa City, and William Hurt as Ernie Found, a doctor and father of the team’s best player, Caroline aka “Line” (Danika Yarosh).

Line is an exuberant personality who would be the center of attention even if she wasn’t captain of the team, which has a long string of state championships under its belt. When she tragically dies early on, it shakes up the entire team, and community.

Erin Moriarty plays Kelly, Line’s best friend and a marginal player on the team. She suddenly finds the mantle of leadership thrust into her hands, and struggles with the role. There’s also conflict with Brez, who is aces at the X’s and O’s of the game but not really a touchy-feely type. She learns to come out of her shell a bit and coach them not just in the game, but how to handle their emotions after a devastating loss.

The movie -- directed by Sean McNamara from a screenplay by Elissa Natsueda and David Arron -- follows the traditional path of sports movies. The team goes from presumed favorites to underdogs stringing up a bunch of losses or forfeitures. But they eventually get their act together to take another run at the state title.

Nobody is going to confuse “The Miracle Season” with groundbreaking cinema. But it takes a tried-and-true formula, executes it well and tosses in some superlative acting and spotlighting of an overlooked sport to give it distinction.

Video extras are disappointingly slim. There’s a single documentary short, “Star Player,” and a gallery of production stills.

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Review: "The Miracle Season"

Movies like “The Miracle Season” flow like the tide -- you know exactly what it is and where it’s going. Most sports flicks possess this same sort of inexorable pull: confidence, challenge, struggle and then triumph.

There are not many surprises in “The Miracle Season,” but it’s a well-executed film that hits all the right notes and doesn’t let the on-field action overwhelm the human story. Having performances by two world-class actors -- Helen Hunt and William Hurt, both Oscar winners -- doesn’t hurt, either.

Directed by Sean McNamara (“Soul Surfer”) from a script by Elissa Natsueda and David Aaron Cohen, it’s based on the true story of the girls’ volleyball team at West High School in Iowa City. (Tax-credit-friendly Vancouver subs in for Iowa.) After winning the state championship in 2010, the team was crushed by the sudden death of its captain, best player and irrepressible leader, Caroline “Line” Found.

After forfeiting or losing the entire early season, the team comes together to make another run at the title. I won’t spoil things by saying how it turns out, but if you have to guess then you haven’t seen a lot of sports flicks.

(“Rocky” remains near the pinnacle in part because it’s one of the very few where the victory is less important than how the big match plays out.)

Erin Moriarty is the main character as Kelly, Line’s best friend. She’s a bit shy and retiring -- everyone is, compared to Line -- and isn’t nearly the dominant player. Indeed, as their senior year opens, Kelly doubts she’ll even make the starting squad. But Line is indefatigable, offering boundless encouragement and friendship to literally everyone she meets.

Played by Danika Yarosh in an attention-grabbing performance, Line is the sort of person who will drive by a family moving into their new home, spot a cute boy, slam on the brakes and hop out to introduce herself and invite him to their party the next day.

Hurt plays Line’s dad, Ernie, a surgeon/farmer who’s also dealing with a severely ill wife. The movie grants him his own journey, including struggling with his faith in the face of tragedy in a sensitive way we don’t usually see in mainstream Hollywood films. A quaint, somewhat bumbling figure who likes to perform corny magic tricks for the team, Ernie gradually takes on a sort of accepting grace.

Hunt has a difficult part as the coach, Kathy “Brez” Bresnahan. She’s a very interior person who has always given her girls tremendous expertise on the court but not a lot of emotional support off it. But the death of her best player forces Brez out of her comfort zone, making her relate to the team members as people rather than pieces to a winning season.

The other team members form the usual sort of Greek chorus of supporting players. Natalie Sharp is Mack, the tough, aggressive one; Lillian Doucet-Roche plays Taylor, the freshman lacking in confidence; Nesta Cooper is Lizzie, who plays with her emotions on her sleeve.

The volleyball scenes are energetic without overstaying their welcome. There haven’t been too many volleyball movies that I can think of, but “The Miracle Season” shows the kinetics and power of the sport. The sound crew also underlines each thump of the ball with a fat bass undertone.

You won’t be surprised by anything that happens in this movie, but darned if you’ll be able to resist having those ol’ heart strings plucked.

Video review: "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"

Tom Cruise pretty well gets the hell beaten out of him in “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.” His character, an ex-military investigator turned freelance do-gooder, has all the hand-to-hand skills we’ve seen before in the movies. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get hit, or feel pain when he does.

Cruise, arguably the biggest movie star in the world for 30 years, seems to be downshifting into more ordinarily human characters as he gets older. Unlike his Ethan Hunt from the “Mission: Impossible” series, Jack Reacher doesn’t have an international spy infrastructure or tons of space-age gadgets at his disposal. He does most everything he needs to with his fists, or a few well-placed threats.

In this second go-round, Reacher finds that his main contact at military headquarters in D.C. (Cobie Smulders) is being investigated for espionage. Soon enough he’s the target of the same suspicions, and he’s busted her out of jail so the two of them can conduct their own detective work while on the lam from the feds.

Complicating things is Samantha (Danika Yarosh), a teen who’s being threatened as leverage against Reacher, who supposedly is her long-lost father. We’re not quite sure if it’s true, but it doesn’t really matter because Reacher is not the sort to let an innocent kid get squeezed for him.

The action scenes are exciting yet believable, and the simple wind-up plot -- talk, chase, fight; talk, chase, fight -- does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Some films have pretensions of being more than they are, but the cool thing about “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” is that it never forgets that it’s meant to be pure popcorn fun.

Bonus features are middling, though you’ll have to spring for the Blu-ray upgrade to get them, as the DVD has none. The Blu-ray comes with six making-of mini-documentaries: “Reacher Returns,” “An Unexpected Family,” “Relentless: On Location in Louisiana,” “Take Your Revenge First: Lethal Combat,” “No Quarter Given: Rooftop Battle” and “Reacher in Focus: With Tom Cruise and Photographer David James.”

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Review: "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"

One thing I appreciated about “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” is that action scenes existed within the realm of the possible. Sure, Tom Cruise’s ex-Army officer can dish out the chop-socky with the best of the Bournes and Bonds.

But when he gets hit, it staggers him. Blows leave marks; his face swells up and stays puffy.

I’m not sure how many moviegoers have ever been punched in the face. I have, once, in second grade. It was a bigger kid, but even fourth graders don’t pack all that much in a swing. Still, I went down, hard. That’s what actual people do when punched straight-on.

It helps make Reacher seem more relatable. Especially when he does things that border on super-human, like luring four bad guys into a factory so he can take them out, unarmed --  but not before the prerequisite taunting and quipping.

“Jack Reacher” is a straightforward bubblegum action flick. It does not pretend to be more than it is. If it’s important for humans to know thyself, then that goes doubles for movies. Most of the bad ones are trying to be something they’re not, or haven’t figured out what they are.

Director Edward Zwick, who co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Wenk and Marshall Herskovitz (based on the book by Lee Child), takes over for Christopher McQuarrie. His action scenes may not have the same zip – it’s not hard to spot Cruise’s stunt double -- but the narrative has a little more cohesion.

Reacher retired from the military a few years ago to wander the land with nothing more than the clothes on his back and his military pension to pay for some scuzzy motels. He lends a hand wherever he can, especially when do-gooders are being rousted by no-good-doers.

His contact back in D.C. is Maj. Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), who took over his old job heading up the military investigations unit. After years of phone flirting, they resolve to have a date in-person. But when Reacher shows up, he learns she’s been arrested for espionage. Soon enough, he’s implicated too.

The rest of the movie is a series of chases, with our pair trying to stay ahead of some ex-military contractors named ParaSource, while simultaneously trying to pin the crimes on them. A trail of bodies soon grows.

Complicating things is 15-year-old Samantha (fresh-faced Danika Yarosh), who may or may not be Reacher’s daughter. It doesn’t really matter if it’s true, since if she’s being used as leverage against Reacher, he figures he has to protect her anyway. Not exactly the paternal type, he’s kind of baffled by the vagaries of teendom.

Rounding out the cast are Robert Knepper as a sinister general, Aldis Hodge as the straight man following orders to a fault, and Patrick Heusinger as Reacher’s dark twin -- a similarly skilled operative but without the moral code.

The movie’s a showcase for Cruise, as are pretty much all of his movies these days. He’s 54 now and finally starting to show it. His face has gotten some new crevices and hollows, and he wears it well. He looks like a guy who’s gotten beat up a lot, and dished out even more. His body is toned as always, but no matter how many crunches and cardio you do, at a certain point things start to droop and spread out.

It all works. Twenty years ago we wouldn’t have bought Tom Cruise as a burnt-out loner. But now Jack Reacher fits him like a glove.