Jim White moves his family after losing his last job as a football coach. He sees that some of the students are worth starting a cross-country team and turns seven students with no hope into one of the best cross-country teams.
At the NFL Draft, general manager Sonny Weaver has the opportunity to rebuild his team when he trades for the number one pick. He must decide what he's willing to sacrifice on a life-changing day for a few hundred young men with NFL dreams.
Director:
Ivan Reitman
Stars:
Kevin Costner,
Chadwick Boseman,
Jennifer Garner
The story of Jackie Robinson from his signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization in 1945 to his historic 1947 rookie season when he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.
Director:
Brian Helgeland
Stars:
Chadwick Boseman,
T.R. Knight,
Harrison Ford
Four Hispanic high school students form a robotics club. With no experience, 800 bucks, used car parts and a dream, this rag tag team goes up against the country's reigning robotics champion, MIT.
Director:
Sean McNamara
Stars:
George Lopez,
Jamie Lee Curtis,
Carlos PenaVega
A dying CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is offered an experimental drug that could save his life in exchange for one last assignment.
Director:
McG
Stars:
Kevin Costner,
Hailee Steinfeld,
Connie Nielsen
After a near-fatal plane crash in WWII, Olympian Louis Zamperini spends a harrowing 47 days in a raft with two fellow crewmen before he's caught by the Japanese navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
Based on H.G. Bissinger's book, which profiled the economically depressed town of Odessa, Texas and their heroic high school football team, The Permian High Panthers.
Director:
Peter Berg
Stars:
Billy Bob Thornton,
Jay Hernandez,
Derek Luke
In Pittsburgh, accomplished pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu uncovers the truth about brain damage in football players who suffer repeated concussions in the course of normal play.
A struggling coach and teacher who has had to move around for different incidents in his career finally comes to one of the poorest cities in America: McFarland, California. There he discovers buried potential in several high school boys and slowly turns them into championship runners and brings them closer than even he could ever imagine.
All promotional materials in Canada, including posters and TV spots, removed "USA" from the title of the film, referring to it simply as "McFarland." See more »
Goofs
The school buses in the background at the final meet are wrong. At the original meet there are Crowns in the parking lot. See more »
Quotes
Maria Marisol:
[reading Jose Cardenas's paper]
We fly like blackbirds through the orange groves, floating on a warm wind. When we run, we own the earth. The land is ours. We speak the birds' language. Not immigrant no more. No stupid Mexicans. When we run, our spirits fly. We speak to the gods. When we run, we are the gods.
See more »
You would not think it at first glance but McFarland, USA turns out to be the site of an inspiring motion picture as well as the title for same. It's the story of a down and out high school coach played by Kevin Costner who in a last chance job takes one at a high school in the small town of McFarland, California having one of the poorest per capita incomes in the USA and made up of a mostly Chicano population who work mostly as fruit pickers. One of the first sites he sees at his new job as a Physical Education Teacher is mom picking up her three sons for their jobs as pickers after school.
But those three brothers turn out to be an integral part of the cross country running team that he creates for the school. These kids see no future other than the fields of citrus fruit to pick and really have no confidence in themselves. Once he learns the culture Costner is able to motivate those kids to achieve not only in track, but in life.
Costner and wife Maria Bello mix so well with them that they even have a Quincinera for their 15 year old daughter Morgan Saylor, a custom in Hispanic families kind of a coming out for a 15 year old daughter. The Quincinera also leads to a crisis of sorts, but it reaffirms the faith and trust that the kids and parents have developed in Costner.
McFarland,USA is a fine family film from the Disney Studios and recommended most definitely for juvenile audiences.
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You would not think it at first glance but McFarland, USA turns out to be the site of an inspiring motion picture as well as the title for same. It's the story of a down and out high school coach played by Kevin Costner who in a last chance job takes one at a high school in the small town of McFarland, California having one of the poorest per capita incomes in the USA and made up of a mostly Chicano population who work mostly as fruit pickers. One of the first sites he sees at his new job as a Physical Education Teacher is mom picking up her three sons for their jobs as pickers after school.
But those three brothers turn out to be an integral part of the cross country running team that he creates for the school. These kids see no future other than the fields of citrus fruit to pick and really have no confidence in themselves. Once he learns the culture Costner is able to motivate those kids to achieve not only in track, but in life.
Costner and wife Maria Bello mix so well with them that they even have a Quincinera for their 15 year old daughter Morgan Saylor, a custom in Hispanic families kind of a coming out for a 15 year old daughter. The Quincinera also leads to a crisis of sorts, but it reaffirms the faith and trust that the kids and parents have developed in Costner.
McFarland,USA is a fine family film from the Disney Studios and recommended most definitely for juvenile audiences.