February 2, 2017 Page 5 Cardinals Beat Cougars, Climb Standings The Lawndale Cardinals and the Hawthorne Cougars boys’ soccer teams are on two very different trajectories. Hawthorne, a team with plenty of junior and senior talent, got off to an amazing start this season and looked to be one of the clubs to beat in a stacked Ocean League. Lawndale, on the other hand, sports a roster full of freshman and sophomores. Those youngsters got off to a shaky start at the beginning of the year, but have recently come on strong when it has meant the most. The directions that these two teams have been headed held true when they met each other for a rivalry matchup last Wednesday afternoon. Lawndale’s young guns took control of the game early and the defense clamped down late. A 3-0 victory boosted the Cardinals up the Ocean League standings while Hawthorne has been left looking for answers in a season that is quickly coming to a close. The story of the game and much of the season for the Cardinals has been an extremely strong defense led by senior captain Ruben Salas. Salas is one of the more tenured players on a team that has been getting major contributions from its sophomore players. “Defensively, we’re a lot better now than we were earlier in the season,” Salas explained. “We’re more organized, positioned better and communicate better.” That great communication hasn’t only led to wins, but also to shutouts. In the last five games the Cardinals have played, they have only given up a total of four goals. While the defense has held strong, the offense has been on fire as well. Led mainly by sophomore Mario Perez, Lawndale took a quick 2-0 lead on Hawthorne before the seventh minute was even fully over. Perez scored in the second minute to give his team the quick lead before sophomore Anthony Canseco notched the second goal of the game in the seventh. The Cardinals were able to score their third goal of the game in the 70th minute to officially put things away. Their defense had already done a great job of putting things away by allowing only one shot on goal while completely shutting out the Cougars, who have been without the services of their star offensive player Oskar Gomez who is out for the rest of the season due to injury. With the victory, Lawndale keeps its momentum heading into the final stretch of the regular season with a young but exuberant team. Salas likes the direction in which his players are headed. “We struggled early, we have a young team, but we’re getting used to each other and communicating well and it shows on the field,” he said. Lawndale will look to keep gelling as it competes for the Ocean League title with games against the first place Culver City Centaurs and fourth place El Segundo Eagles this week. Despite their current third place standing, the Cardinals (7-12-3, 3-2) have the firepower and the opportunity with the schedule to keep their head of steam going and take a shot at the Ocean League championship before all is said and done. Hawthorne, on the other hand, has been spiraling out of control--almost to the point of no return. Without Gomez, it has been next to impossible for the Cougars to formulate any offense whatsoever. “You have a starting lineup, one key kid goes down…you start moving things around. It’s been tough,” said Hawthorne head coach Yury Najarro. “We’re not defeated yet. We’re trying to hang in there and figure it out.” The loss to Lawndale marked the fourth loss in a row for a Hawthorne team that had only scored two goals in that same time span and was shut out in three straight games. The Cougars (9-7-6, 1-4-1) will look to get anything at all going on offense as they take on Santa Monica (second place) and Culver City (first place) this week, looking to improve on their fifth place Ocean League standing. Inglewood High While Hawthorne and Lawndale have made things extremely interesting over in the Ocean League, the Inglewood Sentinels boys’ soccer club has been completely outmatched in the Bay League. Inglewood has been extremely competitive thus far, attempting to make a run at the Bay League championship in the latter stages of the regular season, but the school has suffered an inability to field a competitive soccer club. Inglewood’s (0-9- 2, 0-5) last victory on the soccer field came in the last game of the regular season last year when they beat Morningside by a final score of 3-1. The Sentinels have been marred by losses this season, including a 6-0 shutout at Palos Verdes last Friday night and a 3-0 shutout at home against the Peninsula Panthers last Thursday. Inglewood has to deal with Mira Costa and Peninsula once again down the stretch, but does have an opportunity for a victory with a potential matchup against Morningside (0-5, 0-1) on the schedule in what would be the final game of the regular season. • – Asixlion@earthlink.net Entertainment Film Review Grindhouse Comedy I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore Wins Sundance Grand Jury Prize By Ryan Rojas for Cinemacy.com Cinemacy just came back from covering this year’s Sundance film festival (the first time for me and Morgan!) and we were lucky enough to see the film that took home the top prize. That film was Macon Blair’s comedy-thriller I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which won the coveted Grand Jury Prize after leaving audiences in stitches with its raucous tonal mixings of genuinely side-splitting comedy and shockviolence action that plays like an indie grindhouse comedy. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore is built on the premise that the world is full of self-centered jerks. It’s certainly the world that Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) lives in, where minor violations like witnessing lifted trucks pumping out black exhaust, people carelessly discarding items on the floor at the grocery store, and finding constantly not-picked-up dog droppings on her lawn are a part of everyday life. The easygoing nice-person levee breaks when, after the discovery of a home invasion with personal affections stolen, Ruth decides to take matters into her own hands and track down the culprit--if for nothing more than to confront the perpetrator for the moral wrongness. Ruth enlists the help of her quirky karate-obsessed neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) to help find the burglar, but little do they know that they’re tracking down a band of junkie nutsos led by slithery and vampiric Marshall (Tony Zow), who are planning an even bigger smash and grab job- -which sucks them into an underbelly world full of bloodbath mayhem that puts them in way over their heads. As Ruth, Melanie Lynskey is great as an elder’s nurse turned homespun moral crime-fighter, playing the full comedic range of meekly expected disappointments at the beginning of the film up through passing her tipping point and boiling over into DIY revenge when she steals back her grandmother’s silver from a seedy pawn shop in one of the film’s most jarringly and unexpectedly hilarious moments as the store owner tries to stop them. Even the notion of being one of the last few moral defenders in a world run amuck by schmucks is a feeling that taps into the collective conscious that we all have (haven’t we all fantasized about confronting that jerk who uncaringly spoils a major twist in that fantasy novel?), making the cathartic and comedic effects here even greater. Wood as Ruth’s nerdy, karate-loving loner neighbor Tony may have never been funnier onscreen. With his rattail hair, old man specs, and nunchucks and ninja stars, Wood plays the punchline sidekick that keeps the filming motoring confidently ahead on its screwy head. Wood gets rich deadpan dialogue at every turn from Blair’s original script (after struggling to get a ninja star out of a wall, Tony surmises, “That’s how hard I threw it…”). But Wood’s sensitivity also conveys the introverted antisocial neighbor that makes his Tony a perfect companion. He’s more looking for a friend than a reprobation, and the chemistry between him and Ruth makes one wish those two would get into more adventures. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (its mouthy title comes from a gospel LP that Blair received from director pal Jeremy Saulnier, whose name ended up fitting the tone of the film perfectly) is a true bellylaugh of a film and a great watch for when you’re in the mood for a weirdly hilariously and insane hybrid of a movie. Director Blair, who Morgan and I had the fortune of actually running into while walking down Park City’s Main Street earlier in the day before his film would win at the Awards Ceremony later that night, could not have been a more pleasant and nice person. Which just goes to show--as the film will be streaming on Netflix later this year--that nice people don’t always finish last. • Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey in I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. Photo Courtesy of Sundance. 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