Movie reviews: 'The Damned United' and 'The Horse Boy'

THE DAMNED UNITED

★★★ OUT OF FOUR STARS • Rating: R for language. • Where: Uptown.

"The Damned United" is a sports drama based on reality and it shows. The central figure -- we can't call him a hero -- is the late English soccer team manager Brian Clough, who ranks with Jake LaMotta and Ty Cobb as one of the least lovable pro sports stars. Snide of speech, vile of temper, altogether self-centered, he's also magnetically confident and endlessly quotable, as Peter Morgan's screenplay demonstrates. Anybody who declares, "I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business, but I was in the Top One," makes a writer's job much easier.

Michael Sheen -- Tony Blair in "The Queen" and David Frost in "Frost/Nixon," both scripted by Morgan -- is chilling as Clough. We meet him in 1974 as he inherits leadership of league champion Leeds United. He immediately tells the Leeds players, "As far as I'm concerned, you can throw all those medals you've won in the bin, because you won them all by cheating." No surprise that the team turned against him. A consummate egotist, Clough drove away every colleague except his longtime scout Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall), a man loyal to the point of co-dependency. The story of their strained friendship is the background to the soccer dramatics on the field.

Director Tom Hooper's approach is no-frills simplicity. He shows the shabby, small-scale world of pro sports before it became a multibillion-dollar business. Jim Broadbent is solid as the team's blustery chairman, whose verbal duels with the edgy, ambitious Clough are as exciting as the runup to a penalty kick.

COLIN COVERT

THE HORSE BOY

★★★ 1/2 OUT OF FOUR STARS • Where: Lagoon. • Unrated but suitable for all.

Michael Orion Scott's lovely documentary follows author and human rights activist Rupert Isaacson and his psychology professor wife, Kristin Neff, as they grapple with raising their autistic 5-year-old son, Rowan, a beautiful but near-unmanageable child prone to tantrums, incontinence and inward retreat. When Rowan shows an affinity for a neighbor's old mare -- riding her with his dad almost magically calms the boy -- Isaacson connects the dots in a wildly forward-thinking way: What if they took Rowan to Mongolia, the one land where both horses and shamanic healing are still essential parts of life?

The family's eventual trek across Mongolia, strikingly shot by Scott and lovingly narrated by Isaacson, is remarkable not only because they actually survived the grueling adventure (with the invaluable help of a native guide), but for the curiously transformative effects it had on Rowan. Was the boy's progress a result of the ancient mystical healing he received? That answer remains as mysterious as autism itself. Nonetheless, the film, which also contains brief interviews with autism experts, proves an extraordinary journey of the heart and spirit, and a stirring testament to parenthood.

GARY GOLDSTEIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES