James Smilie Movies

Long before his legendary association with the Alabama Crimson Tide, football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant was athletic director at Texas A&M University. In this made for TV movie, the hard-as-nails Bryant (played by Tom Berenger) shepherds 100 potential college football players into the desolate village known as Junction, Texas, in the summer of 1954. Determined to find out which of his boys has the guts and fortitude to play winning football, Bryant forces the applicants to train eight hours a day in 120 degree heat, without food or water. Ultimately, only 35 players make the cut, among them such gridiron luminaries as Gene Stallings and Jack Pardee (though, outside of Bryant, none of the players' actual names is mentioned in the script). "Bear"'s grueling regimen is tough, relentless and perhaps unfair, but the football players emerge as a unified whole, dedicated both to victory and to their tireless coach. The second feature film produced especially for the ESPN cable network, The Junction Boys was based on the book by Jim Dent, and originally aired on December 14, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Thirty-four years after the release of National Velvet, MGM came up with this attractively filmed sequel. Tatum O'Neal stars as the niece of Velvet Brown, Elizabeth Taylor's character from the first film (the Taylor role is played herein by Nanette Newman, the wife of director Bryan Forbes). Like her aunt, O'Neal is horse-happy, and hopes to become an Olympic equestrienne. There are a few tense moments when O'Neal fails to measure up to her aunt's overexacting standards, and when the girl evinces jealousy concerning auntie's live-in love Christopher Plummer. But with the help of crusty old trainer Anthony Hopkins, O'Neal proves herself every inch the horsewoman that Velvet had been so long ago. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi