Sundance Review: ‘The Winning Season’

Sam Rockwell is Sundance Film Festival 2009, and I am very happy about that. One of my favorite actors, Rockwell stung everyone with 2 movies at this year’s festival. The first being ‘Moon‘ which Rockwell turned in a couple of great performances, and now ‘The Winning Season’. Which is a basketball dramedy about an out of work, alcoholic ex basketball coach who is sought out to Coach the girls varsity team at his former high school.

At this point there isn’t anything that I don’t think Rockwell can pull off and this movie definitely proves that. He plays Bill, a basketball coach who did great things for a boys varsity team, is having to deal with life outside of basketball while he works as a bus boy at a local restaurant. A friend of his comes to offer him the job of coaching girls varsity basketball as the school Bill took to state finals when he was in high school. After much reluctance he takes the job on only to realize that the team isn’t that good and he has more work to do than he anticipated.

James C. Strouse (‘Grace is Gone’) wrote and directed this one in fine fashion. I was really surprised at how emotional I got towards the end of the movie when Rockwell was overcoming his demons. The movie treads along the lines of a full blown comedy, intertwined with a full blown drama. If you are a fan of Sam Rockwell, or heart warming stories of conquering your past and making things right then this is definitely a movie you need to see.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5