Top Five Football Movies of All Time

The NFL kicks off its football season this week, and we at The Movie Brothers are pumped! We’re huge football fans, and in honor all things great about football – from chili and beer, to chips and friends screaming and cheering on their favorite teams – we’ve brought you our Top Five Football Movies of All Time. And in case you were wondering what out favorite team is… LET’S GO BUFFALO BILLS!!!

5. Any Given Sunday
Oliver Stone can politicize anything, including football. But he did a very nice job with this film, shooting a fast-paced, sexy movie, combining it with a great cast headed by Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx. It looks at the money and madness that goes into football. Is it a tad overly dramatic? For sure. But it certainly is a great football movie. Oh, and Al Pacino’s awesome speech… fantastic.

4. Knute Rockne All American
This one has that iconic moment, where Ronald Regean, playing George Gipp, gives those famous words: “Win one for the Gipper.” This has classic football moments all over — Notre Dame, All-American Knute Rockne, and yes… old Ronny. And it definitely deserves a place on this list.

3. Jerry McGwire
Show me the money was a pretty awesome part of this flick, but the movie is so much more than the famous catch-phrase. It’s a movie that crossed over two genres with unbelievable success — romantic comedy and sports. But it works, big time. Even if your significant other isn’t a football lover, it’s a movie you’ll both enjoy. Great acting, humor, sharp writing and direction, and, of course, plenty of football.

2. Brian’s Song
Based on the real-life relationship between teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, this is a fantastic movie that shows the bond established by two men competing for the same job. They broke boundaries as roommates, teammates, and inspired people by their strength of friendship when Piccolo discovers that he is dying. It’s a great movie, and definitely deserving to be called one of the greatest football movies every.

1. Rudy
You have to have a heart made of iron not to love this story. It’s the ultimate tale of the little guy who works harder than anyone and finally gets a shot at his dream. It’s a bitter-sweet moment when he does, but it’s a great movie, and a believable, earnest performance by Sean Astin, with strong support by Ned Beatty and Jon Favreau. This was the first movie that jumped out at us as the best football movie. If you’ve never seen, it’s definitely worth a watch.

Brian’s Review – “Legend” (1985)

A young man must stop the Lord of Darkness from both destroying daylight and marrying the woman he loves.

“Legend”  –

Rating – 2 out of 10

Legend, or as I like to call it, “boring shit with cotton blowing around”, is easily the most lame, ugly, and stupid movie in the Ridley Scott filmography.

I have never seen a fantasy film that felt smaller than this one in my entire life. There are so few characters and the sets feel so shrunken that it was almost claustrophobic. In all great films of this genre, the one thing that makes all of them stand out is the ability to create wonder. The viewer needs to not only feel like the world could possibly exist but they need to feel the awe of strange and unique surprises that couldn’t happen in everyday life. Legend not only fails to amaze but it doesn’t even draw interest. There are no big towns, long quests, interesting locales, or characters that we even give half a shit about. So, what point is there to watching it?

I have one positive thing to say: the makeup. Technical wizard Rob Bottin (John Carpenter’s The Thing) creates some of his best work ever here. All non-humans are completely unrecognizable and reflect fictional characters in a believable way. A few standouts are both the Troll King(who looks like Satan) and a green witch who comes across as more than creepy.

It’s all completely wasted though. The lame premise that somehow a unicorn holds the entire key to preserving environmental stability isn’t just lame, it’s downright stupid. After that we’re subjected to the stale and obvious “I kidnapped your woman. Come and get her” plot that has been done to death, Tom Cruise just walks around with ugly midgets who have no clue what to do and no way to convince an audience that they have any ability to pull it off.

I could have even gone along for the ride if there was something other than the fake looking snow, cotton blowing around, or horses running in slow motion to keep my visual interest. Another problem I had was how this turd really feels like you’re on a sound stage. Everywhere I looked I felt like I was going to catch a glimpse of dolly track or a mic hanging down. It just doesn’t create a convincing fantasy world. Also, Tom Cruise’s character really sucks and his performance is terrible. When he isn’t staring all lovey dovey into his girlfriend’s eyes, he looks spaced out and bored.

This film is the utter definition of a waste of time. There’s far better things you can do with 2 hours of your life…

The Movie Brothers Podcast Episode 3

The Movie Brothers discuss a slew of movie news and views. We talk Predators, our Top 5 road trip movies, Cowboys and Aliens, the campy flick Burning Bright, Funny People and tear Ashton Kutcher a new one in our new feature “Talentless Fuck.”  Enjoy!

Download the podcast here.

Top 5 Road Trip Movies

Matt

In our second podcast, we got the idea for Top 5 road trip movies. This is a fitting list for Thanksgiving, since many of us will be doing a great deal of travel. Enjoy!

5. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure: This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It has all the makings of a great road trip flick, with the added bonus of a seemingly unlimited amount of gags and bits with Pee-wee’s silly and smart innocence that strikes at the core of children and adults. Pee-wee heads to El Paso in hopes of finding his beloved stolen bicycle — making friends with bikers, hopping a trains and joining the rodeo.

4. Planes Trains and Automobiles: Is a charming movie that showcases Steve Martin and John Candy at their finest in this movie that plays off of their acting skills brilliantly. Martin plays a man trying to get home to his family for the holidays while Candy plays a  man with no home, a salesman with nothing in the world. Plenty of hilarious moments, including the one in the following clip (warning: strong language).

3. Easy Rider: Is a film that defined actors Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda and set a tone for filmmakers of their generation. With cash from a cocaine sale, free-wheelers Billy and Wyatt — played by Hopper and Fonda — hop on their motorcycles and ride across America toward New Orleans. Along the way, they add boozy lawyer George to their trouble-finding, society-questioning entourage. Hopper directed and co-wrote the film with Fonda. It was a landmark 1960s counterculture film. Jack Nicholson earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role as George.

2. Rain Man: This film had fantastic performances by Dustin Hoffman (who won an Oscar) and Tom Cruise in what is a very simple film layered in complex family relationships, escaping reality, and finding out what’s important. The movie is spent on the road, with interesting twists and turns along the way as two brothers who don’t know each other — one with autism — who hit the road after Cruise’s character springs Hoffman’s from his home for the disabled.

1. The Wizard of Oz: This is a phenomenal piece of film — from its vast sets, costumes and musicals, to its performances and ability to endure time. This is the ultimate road trip — going over the rainbow and back again, with charming characters, universal, lasting messages and sense of humor that takes the dark edge off the film. This is a movie that will endure forever, making it the most successful movie on this list, hands down.

Top Gun 2

Matt

As if they hadn’t made enough crappy sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots, “Top Gun” director Tony Scott wants to bring back his 1980s Airforce action flick in a sequel called — you guessed it — “Top Gun 2.” 

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer at Paramount Pictures is on board, naturally, and Tom Cruise is seriously interested. I don’t think this would be his best opportunity at redeeming his career. Perhaps he should give up worshipping aliens, or whatever the hell scientology nuts believe. 

Scott told hitflix.com in an exclusive interview — and I could not make this up people — that he got the idea for “Top Gun 2” from a drunken, half asleep 20-something who told him about his job flying unmanned drones.

“It was funny, because I was on a plane actually coming back from Vegas, rock climbing in Red Rock, and the guy sitting next to me was all hung over,” Scott said in the interview. “He must have been in his late 20’s and he was one of these kids. He said, ‘I partied all night.’  And I said, ‘What do you do?’  ‘I work [with unmanned aircraft in] the Air Force.’  But they operate these drones like it’s war games, but it’s for real.”

So let me get this straight… you want to do a sequel to a movie about fighter pilots that’s about planes that don’t use fighter pilots. Well, that’s just brilliant! Sign me up for advanced tickets!

Scott’s next film, called “Unstoppable,” is about two men played by Denzel Washington and Chris Pine who are trying to stop a runaway train. That sounds about as compelling as seeing Ice Man and Maverick taking their shirts off and playing volleyball again — although I don’t think Val Kilmer is quite up to task these days. This is just another example of Hollywood lacking any creativity and grasping at very thin straws to turn a buck. Even the Nintendo game “Top Gun” sucked.

Here’s Quentin Tarantino’s take on Top Gun. Enjoy!

Valkyrie

Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer. Bill Nighy and Eddie Izzard co-star in this drama based on actual events. Directed by Bryan Singer (Apt Pupil, Superman Returns).

Matt
Rating: 6 out of 10

The core of the story is a great one: German soldiers who rebel against Hitler’s tyrannical leadership that lead to the holocaust and WWII by attempting to kill him and form a new government.

It’s all based on a true story, and it’s one that is celebrated every year in Germany with a memorial as a testament to those who rebelled against Hitler. There are some great elements to the movie, too, which embraces the spririt of the original story and pays respect to their cause and character.

There are some thrilling action sequences and intense moments as the attempt to assassinate Hitler unfolds and we truly root for the main characters, despite knowing how it all turns out. The only thing that drags this film down is all the main characters are German, yet they have a mixed bag of American, English, German and Scottish accents. It doesn’t feel like you’re watching Germans — and this is a very patriotic film for Germans. Tom Cruise is as American as pork rinds and I never lost site of that. It was sort of silly to have only one German actor in the film and no German spoken, which doesn’t help build the believability in the movie. It’s an enjoyable action/adventure movie, just don’t expect “Inglorious Basterds.”

Top 5 Untalented Actors

There are lots of bad actors working today. In fact, you could argue more are bad than good. But this list isn’t for them. This list is for the Top 5 untalented, meaning, they lack very little talent. Bad actors can at least punch their way out of a wet paper bag. The following five should just put that wet paper bag over their heads and call it a day. Here’s Brian’s Top 5 untalented actors.

Brian

5. Matthew McConaughey: If you’re looking for an actor to simply speak in a southern accent, be in your movie despite the script sucking donkey balls, and finding any excuse to take his shirt off, Matthew “Duh…” Mcconaughey is your man.  Do yourself a favor and look at his resume.  This guy is an insult to the word “actor” and that’s saying something.

4. Keanu Reeves: You have to hand it to this guy.  He keeps getting job after job while more talented actors fall into obscurity.  How does he do it?  Is it his “whoa” catch phrase?  Is it his amazing ability to sound like a surfer dude even when he’s in 19^th century Transylvania?  If you ever want to laugh your fucking ass off at what isn’t supposed to be comedy, rent the Devils Advocate.  Not only does he do the worst southern accent in the history of film but whenever he acts alongside the legendary Al Pacino it’s like watching Michael Jordan compete against a Special Olympian.

3.  Jeff Goldblum: This guy has one acting move.  He stutters and stammers his way through dialogue to make it sound natural when it is anything but.  He also never, ever plays characters.  He plays Jeff Goldblum and he doesn’t even do it very well.  You don’t believe me? OK, I want anyone who’s reading this to explain to me what the difference is between any two Jeff Goldblum characters and how his acting performance is any different film to film.  Yeah, that’s what I thought…….

2.  Orlando Bloom: Ok, this is going to get me death threats from 12-year-old fangirls everywhere but this guy is a horrendous actor.  In “Pirates of the Caribbean,” when he’s sword fighting with Johnny Depp and spewing out that horrible dialogue, I was looking for the nearest barf bag.  He nearly sunk “Kingdom of Heaven” with his awful acting. And in “Troy,” I nearly had a bellyache from laughing so hard every time he spoke.  The only movie he’s even passable in is “Lord of the Rings” where he has almost no dialogue and is given the lone responsibility of standing there looking like an elf.

1.  Will Smith: There has never been a more talentless actor than Will Smith.  It’s not that he’s the worst actor that ever lived.  I’m sure if I gave it any thought, David Caruso or some B-movie actor could be worse.  But, we’re talking about one of the top box office stars in the world and he sucks!!!  We’re not talking sucks a little bit.  We’re talking he sucks every single form of testicle that the biggest whore in the world could fit in her mouth at once.  Yeah, that much!!  He also suffers from “Oprah Syndrome.”  What I mean by that is:

A) He thinks he’s incredibly important to the world and amazing at what he does the way Oprah loves the smell of her own feces.  I mean she actually has a magazine that she puts her own ugly mug on week after week!!  But, I digress.  We were talking about Will Smith..

B) He goes in and out of being black whenever the need suits him just like Oprah.  If Will Smith goes on Larry King, he’s as white as can be and even tries to awkwardly fit in large words that he has no idea how to wield.  But, put him on the BET awards and it’s “Dog” this and “yo” that.  I hate that shit. Be yourself and stop trying to cater to everyone to suit your own ego.  He does this in his films too.  He’s constantly picking the safest possible films ever.  He never ever takes a chance on anything.  Think about it.  What film of his ever put him in a risky situation?  I mean, even Tom Cruise did “Eyes Wide Shut.” But Will Smith?  “Pursuit of Happiness?” “Ali?” “Men in Black?” Who in the fuck are these going to offend?  I could go on forever about how much he sucks but I think you get the idea.

In a word: lame!