A Couple of Rounds

I AM ALI (A-minus) - About five years ago I was in Phoenix watching a spring training game. Random. I want to say Dodgers vs. Royals. Late in the game, between innings, a bullpen car ambled along the third base/left field line, another seeming innocuous distraction that ballparks assault fans with. A buzz started. A muffled announcement came over the loudspeakers. Word of mouth confirmed it: Muhammad Ali was in that bullpen car, waving to us. Random. He quickly disappeared, but the excitement of being in the same stadium with the Champ, albeit a distant drive-by, gave me a genuine thrill like no other celebrity could provide.

I seem to never get enough of documentaries about Muhammad Ali. He has towered over my life for as long as I can remember. This quiet little film -- an unabashed love letter to the man -- gave me one more thrill.

TV documentarian Clare Lewins here unspools an incredibly intimate portrait of the boxing legend. This story has been told many times before, treading the same territory, but never as personal as this. As a framing device, Lewins utilizes home movies (film and videotape), as well as cassette tapes of phone calls Ali made, mostly to his children. In particular, we hear him bantering with little Maryum (one of his nine children from multiple marriages and affairs), getting her to recite her ABC's or asking the girl what she thinks God's plan for her is.

Some will find this ridiculous and sentimental. They will be appalled when one talking head describes looking into Ali's eyes and seeing God; another calls him the greatest human to ever walk the earth. This is, indeed, unrepentant hagiography. It's one side of the story. But it's hard to take your eyes off of it. It's easy to get wrapped up in Ali's fascinating world. The tale of his interaction with a boy dying of leukemia is magical.

Ex-wives, a brother and children testify here. So do contemporaries and rivals like George Foreman, Jim Brown, Joe Frazier's son Marvis, and successor Mike Tyson. Oddballs like the singer Tom Jones -- describing a publicity sparring session -- offer entertaining tidbits. Manager and pal Gene Kilroy and legendary trainer Angelo Dundee provide insightful commentary. Lewins drops in extended clips of lesser-known interviews, such as Ali describing to David Frost how he was going to defeat the slow-footed Foreman (whom Ali dubbed "The Mummy").

The culled images seem fleeting, (from his rural training camp to Zaire), but they slowly gel into a bigger picture. They create one version of Muhammad Ali, the man. He was and is a cultural phenomenon, a central figure in the history of the second half of the 20th century. He's known in every corner of the world. With this portrait of a family man, a friend, a spiritual being, we now know him just a little bit better.

TAPIA (C) - This is a 52-minute version of the documentary, available on HBO. It is the story of Johnny Tapia, the five-time boxing champ and troubled soul from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This is a serviceable overview of Tapia's career, but it wallows in the boxer's origin story -- the murder of his mom when he was a kid, his longtime drug addiction as an adult -- in a way that goes beyond maudlin. A fellow New Mexico native, Eddie Alcazar, helmed the project, and he falls into the trap of glorifying the hard-scrabble New Mexican-ness of one of the state's favorite (yet troubled) sons.

Tapia himself, in the days before his death in 2012, sits for the camera, bloated, in full ring gear. His ramblings have the musk of rationalization throughout. Alcazar uses kid gloves throughout, finding few other voices that would help provide a more rounded portrait. This is a simple primer that hints at a more in-depth documentary to be made someday.