Faded Dreams

We just moved to Argentina and my wife and I saw this film in a local video store and decided to try it. We are very glad that we did. Pretty genuine acting across the board and a very talented and athletic basketball player. We realized that the writer of this film had something to say and we felt that he did get the point across. We liked the way the games were spiced together with shots of the crowd coming in and out. That was creative.

As a former athlete myself, I can come to terms with what this movie tries to get across. I have had experiences with politics and favoritism with some of the basketball teams I have played on. This film really hit home in certain aspects.

The basketball players were very athletic, especially when we get into college in the last half of the film.

Good movie for a limited budget. We liked it.

Excellent independent film. I especially appreciated the filmmakers dedication to athletes at the very end of the film credits, It says; "This is for all the athletes who were not given a chance, even though they earned it." I had heard about this movie from other people and through the internet and I just now decided to check it out for myself, and I found this film to be very real and honest. I have read good and bad reviews about this movie and in my opinion, I tend to lean towards the good reviews. Most of the negative reviews are one to two sentences in length and they really offer no insight on the movie and the message it is trying to send. One example, "it is a low budget film", Since when does a film have to have a big budget to be good? I have seen some real stinkers with extremely high budgets, and I find it that independent films have more heart and soul than big productions. The acting? Well, I thought that this was better acted than a lot of movies I have seen, the character that the story was based upon was as good as any other actor I have seen in any role. This movie does tend to expose corrupt coaches, and therefore, I can see why some people would not want to rave about this film. For a film that was shot for 15,000 dollars, checked on IMDb, it was done quite well, the games were done as well as they could have been with a limited budget. It seems to me like in this day and age, if movies don't have a budget of 50 million dollars and don't have explosions and what not, they are not considered good. I would take this film over those films that have no heart and soul, like I previously said, any day.

This is an interesting little film. It's clearly low budget and aside from some of the actors, most of the acting is unprofessional. But it tells an interesting story within its technical and economic confines. The main character is a good kid who is a talented basketball player with ambitions of playing professionally. He shops around for the perfect high school and college team to launch his career. But every coach he ever plays for is either a jerk or an idiot. They're either bullies who like to throw their weight around abusing their players at the team's expense, or they're just idiots who couldn't make a good tactical decision for the team if their lives depended on it. Sadly, the main character never seems to learn the real lesson, choose a school with the intention of learning something, not to play sports. Otherwise, all you'll learn is how shallow human nature can be.

I don't want to be unduly heavy handed, but even for an indie effort, this movie is as bad as I've seen awhile. The acting performances, script, music, editing, but especially the writing were just horrible.

The only thing about the film that was even close to believable was the skill of the players, though the game segments were hokey, hokey, hokey. There weren't any NBA quality players, but some of the players were skilled enough for college play, more than we might say for the script.

Sadly, the screenplay was disjointed as a broken press. It was full of clichés, lacked direction, coherence, and focus. The casting choices were laughable, with apparent thirty year-olds attempting to pass as teenagers. Danilo Mancinelli has some potential as an actor, but the rest of the characters were amateurish as a YMCA team.

Even with all of these negative components, I might have been inspired to offer a positive comment about the movie's heart or intent, but the film was delivered so disjointedly, that I couldn't discern any of that. The main character often seemed likable, but intermittently uttered inane, shallow, dismissive comments that indicated a lack of critical thinking, nuance, and consistency of character.

One of the major problems with the script is that characters were written as arbitrary and/or capricious (the coaches). There are certainly bad people in the world, but even apparently bad people usually do things for their own reasons. As written, we were forced to simply assume the characters were unfair simply because the protagonist didn't get his way. My experience in sports and in life is that if the same thing consistently happens to the same person, the problem tends to be within, not without. To be believable, a film must offer more of an explanation than, "because the script said so."

I admire the effort of anybody that jumps into the pool rather than sunning themselves on the sidelines. Still, a future effort cannot elevate without listening to sincere, candid criticism. I wish all those associated with the film future success.

I really enjoyed Foul Shot. With it having been based on true life experiences, you can feel the emotion involved with the main character, Dan Milano. Danilo Mancinelli has talent as an actor. He is very committed to doing his best on screen, and that shows from beginning to end in Foul Shot. As well, Danilo has talent as a producer. This movie has a great storyline that comes around full circle. A lot of time, and effort went into the making of this movie, and it shows. It is no wonder that Foul Shot won at the Indy film festival. I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes movies about sports, or the politics in sports, or to anybody who likes to watch a well put together movie by a talented independent filmmaker.