Watchdog

"Racing Dreams," 95 minutes

The final Tribeca/ESPN movie I screened was this documentary about three stars of the go-kart circuit - ages 11 to 13 - who aspire to NASCAR while testing their families' budgets and dedication.

What makes it work is the personalities of the racers - two boys and a girl - as they navigate the sharp turns of racing and of growing up.

The film won the festival's award for Best Feature Documentary.

Director Marshall Curry was nominated for an Oscar for his 2005 "Street Fight," and some insiders believe this work has a chance, too.

First step: Securing a distribution deal so you actually can see it.

Redbelt, 99 minutes.

The world premiere of David Mamet's new film kicked off the Tribeca/ESPN Film Festival and opens widely Friday.

The backdrop is mixed martial arts and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and it was described to me as an "American Samurai" movie.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is effective as the honor-bound coach who is dragged reluctantly into the competitive arena, and Alice Braga is luminescent as his Brazilian wife with a less-than-nice family.

Tim Allen plays a movie star. Randy Couture plays a TV commentator.

Some plot points are confusing, which apparently is not uncommon in Mamet films, and there are elements of sports movie cliche.

But I found it entertaining, and it's another step for MMA into the mainstream sports and entertainment culture.

Kicking It, 98 minutes.

The "Homeless World Cup?" At first, it sounds like some sort of parody, or an idea for a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

But it's a real event, held in South Africa the year this film chronicles the action.

The idea is to save lost or almost lost souls with problems that include alcoholism and drug abuse through the magic of soccer, in this case the "street soccer" version with four players per side.

Mel Young, the competition's founder, acknowledges some will think it's a "crazy idea," but he knows it works.

The American team struggles badly with anger issues, and the Spanish team struggles gamely despite a lack of talent and one player who is 62 years old.

In one poignant scene, the Kenyan team is happy to be housed in a large, open room in which players sleep on the floor. They consider it a palace for one reason above all others:

No mosquitoes.

Run For Your Life, 99 minutes.

This affectionate look back at Fred Lebow and his pride and joy, the New York City Marathon, comes complete with 1970s style lettering, titles, soundtrack and views of New York.

It's good stuff for nostalgic oldsters, but younger people who didn't live through the era will learn something if they can be persuaded to sit still and pay attention to a series of interesting talking heads.

Lebow revolutionized the culture of the New York long-distance running community, which quickly went from quirky and exclusive to quirky and inclusive.

The film does a fine job conveying the pied piper who formed the marathon in his image, but leaves unanswered the dark ages of Lebow's life from age 14-32 that he intentionally left mysterious.

The account of his 1992 marathon run while battling brain cancer is the emotional highlight.

Kassim the Dream, 86 minutes.

This is the remarkable story of Kassim (The Dream) Ouma, who overcame a shattering childhood as a Ugandan soldier - first killing a person at age 8 - to become a successful boxer in the United States.

Strange as it sounds, the early telling of the story is not the most compelling part of the film. That comes later, when the cameras follow Ouma as he returns to his native country by special permission of the president and visits his beloved grandmother and his father's grave.

One great scene: Kassim walks past a flag-waving Don King en route to a bout. "Only in America," Ouma says.

Responds King: "Don't you forget it - greatest country in the world."

Another: Ouma explains the importance of abstaining from sex before a bout, saying sperm "is the motor oil of the body."

Another: Ouma, steeped in American culture after a decade living here, blurts this out in the presence of the Ugandan president: "I love you, nigga!"

Gunnin' for That #1 Spot, 90 minutes.

This is a look at the September, 2006, "Elite 24" game at Rucker Park that brought together many of the nation's top high school basketball players, including Kevin Love, Michael Beasley and Kyle Singler.

The director is Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, who knows how to mix cool highlights with cool music.

The film addresses concerns over high school kids in the Internet era, but some of the concerns are decades old.

I had some personal flashbacks to my time covering the world of city high school hoops in the 1980s, before these guys were born.

Among the characters in the movie is Ron Naclerio, the coach at Cardozo since the dawn of time, and Tiny Morton, now the multiple city champion coach at Lincoln High and in my day a kid so shy he sat next to me for an entire All-City dinner without saying a word.

Best lines: Someone calls Singler a blond Billy Paultz. And Naclerio says this: "In Africa, they've got AIDS. In basketball, they have the disease of me."

(By the way, that Paultz picture I used in an earlier post is from this great site on the ABA. Enjoy.)

Ball Don't Lie, 102 minutes.

This is another of the non-documentary films in the festival, and it has some pretty big names in it, including Ludacris, Rosanna Arquette and Grayson (The Professor) Boucher.

So I'm not really clear on why it doesn't have a distribution deal yet. But that's not my department.

The film, based on the novel "Ball Don't Lie" concerns a white, street basketball player whose life is far more messed up than those of his poor black and Latino friends, as one of those friends memorably explains to him late in the movie.

There is no dramatic new ground broken here, but the basketball scenes ring true, the seedy side of L.A. is depicted effectively and for once the love interest of the high school jock - actress Kim Hidalgo - actually could pass for a high school-aged kid.

The hip hop soundtrack was cool, too. Not that I'm an expert.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster, 106 minutes.

This unusual film by Christopher Bell looks at the steroid era through the prism of both his own family - with two brothers who are users - and larger American culture.

The refreshing twist is that he does not go into the project with the knee-jerk, mainstream assumption that steroids are bad - or at least that they are any worse than innumerable other American vices.

The style is similar to that of Michael Moore, especially his climactic confrontation with the governor of California.

Bell scores off-beat interviews with assorted figures from Ben Johnson to Carl Lewis to Floyd Landis to an uncomfortably frank talk with Don Hooton, who believes his son, Taylor, took his own life as a direct result of his steroid use.

The comic highlight is an interview with Bell's congressman, Henry Waxman. For a guy who oversaw the recent Roger Clemens hearing, he displays an alarming, embarrassing lack of knowledge about the subject and others, including the legal drinking age.

The Zen of Bobby V, 93 minutes.

This one will be on ESPN May 13, and I will have more to say about it then. There is much more good about it than not, mostly because of Bobby Valentine's ability to ham it up on camera in a compelling fashion.

A trio of insanely young NYU film students followed Valentine through a season in Japan and have come away with an intriguing look at a unique American abroad, one who happens to have products from beer to hamburgers named for him.

Valentine fits into a different culture while still being who he is. His cocky, condescending tone with Japanese reporters could just as easily have been a scene in his office at Shea Stadium.

Even though he understands the culture, Valentine never stops marveling at it. "At the beginning of practice you don't have to look around and wonder who's here," he says. "They're here early."

The film's biggest flaw is the overuse of game highlights. Even more of Bobby V would have been more interesting.

The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab, 86 minutes.

There really is only one thing you have to know before seeing this Spanish-language film about chef Jesus Almagro's preparations for the prestigious "Bocuse d'Or" cooking contest:

Absolutely, positively do not watch when hungry. It's bad enough watching the parade of food prepared by the world's best in two dimensions. No need to make it worse.

The funniest scenes are those in which Almagro's fellow Spanish chefs debate the flaws in every dish he prepares, perhaps the most compelling argument ever filmed for the notion of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

"The halibut is insipid!'' one chef declares.

This is in contrast to the scene of the Norwegian fish farm where the halibut in the contest has been raised. "These are happy halibut,'' says a farmer. "When the halibut is happy, we are happy."

Fighter, 100 minutes.

Think "Bend it Like Beckham,'' only in Danish, Turkish and English, featuring a cute, spunky, Turkish-Dane girl next store whose father just doesn't understand her burning desire to cut down much larger male opponents as a Kung Fu black belt.

The cultural and generational clashes are derivative, sure, but Natasha Arthy is a compelling lead as the multi-lingual havoc-wreaker and to the best of my knowledge the fighting scenes are well choreographed.

There is an inevitable climactic fight against the bad guy, plus a lot of American-style hip hop music.

And the poor girl's father. Oy. Kids today. What are you gonna do?

Gotta Dance, 95 minutes.

I hate to patronize people not much older than me by calling them "cute," but there's no getting around the word when it comes to describing this warm film about the inaugural season of the NETSationals, the Swamp Dragons' senior dance team.

(Their teachers from the regular dance team are cute, too. But in, um, a different way.)

Two of the dancers are the grandmothers of regular dance team members, which adds to the warm, family-friendly vibe as the 60-and-over group tries to make sense of hip hop music.

"It's hard to teach someone who doesn't have rhythm rhythm,'' the team's coach, Jacqui, says of the only male dancer.

The team eventually gets good reviews and massive attention, including the triple crown of morning shows at CBS, NBC and ABC.

One of the best lines comes from a senior dancer who has just watched members of the younger team walk by, casually shaking their tiny tushes.

"You think you're never going to get here, but surprise, surprise,'' she says, meaning the realities of senior tushes.

Says another dancer as she prepares for a performance: "I like to look sexy, but it's a lot of work."

My profound apologies to the producers of the documentary "Football Under Cover," which is about German women's soccer players who go to Tehran to help their Iranian counterparts play the game they love.

It sounds good. But it was the only one of the 12 films in the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival I did not see over the past week.

I am now going to offer mini-reviews of the other 11, most of which can be seen at the AMC 19th Street Saturday. (This is another part of our first anniversary gala, because the third WatchDog post ever included reviews of last year's festival films.)

For ticket availability and screening times, go to the festival's official Web site.

It is difficult to predict when or if these films will make it to a theater or TV screen near you. Several of the movies I saw last year are just coming out now.

None of the 11 (eight of them docus) is bad, or it would not be in the festival at all. But my favorite was "Gotta Dance," a delightful movie about the Nets' senior dance team.

My view might have been colored by the fact I inadvertently sat among the dancers themselves, and that they performed afterward, and that the screening received a standing ovation.