Rain
01-15-2008, 08:25 AM
Getting ready for the weekend's NFL playoff games? Huddle up with the Hollywood football squads we'd vote all-Pro, from ''The Longest Yard'' to ''Wildcats'' to ''Friday Night Lights''
14.WILDCATS (1986)
Finally, a gridiron movie where the woman isn't the coach's wife. Instead, Goldie Hawn is the drill sergeant at a high school where Nipsey Russell is the principal. Unbelievably, critics called this plot predictable — earn the players' respect, beat your old school where you were the girls' track coach, I get it — but I still find Hawn's participation in the credit-rolling rap surprising. And charming. —Mandi Bierly
13.THE LONGEST YARD (1974)
Slim chance The Bad News Bears or Slap Shot would've been made if Burt Reynolds' prison football pic had fumbled at the box office. (That said, its success did thrust the 2005 Adam Sandler debacle upon us.) Surrounded by NFL all-stars, Reynolds shines as disgraced QB Paul Crewe, who reluctantly cobbles together fellow convicts to take on the guards' semipro team. Director Robert Aldrich was among the first to capture the sport's speed and violence up close, and Yard's triumph trumpeted the bankability of football, which had always played backup to baseball and boxing in Hollywood. —Jeff Labrecque
12.REMEMBER THE TITANS (2000)
Not many people can say they learned about the history of their high school at a multiplex. Yet, that's exactly what happened with me when I watched this story about the mandatory integration of two high schools in Alexandria, Va., in 1971 — and how Coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) led his team to an undefeated season. I was moved by the movie, partly for its atmospheric evocation of those tense times, but mostly for the thrill and satisfaction in knowing that the Herman Boone portrayed on screen was the same Herman Boone I knew: He was my P.E. teacher. —Marc Vera
11.ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999)
Football, at its very core, is savage and brutal — but that animalistic side is rarely presented on the big screen. In Any Given Sunday, director Oliver Stone captures all that furious energy — and packs in the drama with a pre-Ray Jamie Foxx as a quarterback long on skills (but short on maturity) and the usually sweet Cameron Diaz showing us she has a pair playing an ambitious team owner. —Mark Luckie
10.HORSE FEATHERS (1932)
Huxley College has been ''neglecting football for education,'' complains new dean Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx), who soon puts a stop to that. He heads to the local speakeasy to recruit two ringers, but rival Darwin College has beaten him to it, and Wagstaff enrolls the wrong guys (Chico and Harpo). The result is a gridiron finale that may be the most anarchic and hilarious football game ever captured on film — and probably the only one involving banana peels, a hot dog bun, a deck of cards, and a chariot. —Gary Susman
9.NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979)
''No pain, no gain'' is no maxim for this football flick's pill-popping hulks, who shoot up their aching joints just to make it onto the field. It took until the counterculture's waning years for America to accept that some of its star athletes might be nearly crippled dope fiends and unrepentant womanizers — and those are the heroes, doing what they must for the Man, in this adaptation of Dallas Cowboy Peter Gent's roman à clef. Nick Nolte (pictured) is a master of prematurely arthritic manhood, and Mac Davis (as the Don Meredith figure) is great as a Boy just slightly less Good Old than he first seems. —Chris Willman
8.THE WATERBOY (1998)
''Fool's ball,'' as Mama Boucher (Kathy Bates) calls it, is a lot more entertaining when Adam Sandler is knocking down opponents like bowling pins. Sandler, like fellow SNL alum Will Ferrell, can step into any onscreen job and turn it into a nonstop joke-fest of a movie. Well, except for his remake of The Longest Yard. And I'll forgive him for that one. —ML
14.WILDCATS (1986)
Finally, a gridiron movie where the woman isn't the coach's wife. Instead, Goldie Hawn is the drill sergeant at a high school where Nipsey Russell is the principal. Unbelievably, critics called this plot predictable — earn the players' respect, beat your old school where you were the girls' track coach, I get it — but I still find Hawn's participation in the credit-rolling rap surprising. And charming. —Mandi Bierly
13.THE LONGEST YARD (1974)
Slim chance The Bad News Bears or Slap Shot would've been made if Burt Reynolds' prison football pic had fumbled at the box office. (That said, its success did thrust the 2005 Adam Sandler debacle upon us.) Surrounded by NFL all-stars, Reynolds shines as disgraced QB Paul Crewe, who reluctantly cobbles together fellow convicts to take on the guards' semipro team. Director Robert Aldrich was among the first to capture the sport's speed and violence up close, and Yard's triumph trumpeted the bankability of football, which had always played backup to baseball and boxing in Hollywood. —Jeff Labrecque
12.REMEMBER THE TITANS (2000)
Not many people can say they learned about the history of their high school at a multiplex. Yet, that's exactly what happened with me when I watched this story about the mandatory integration of two high schools in Alexandria, Va., in 1971 — and how Coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) led his team to an undefeated season. I was moved by the movie, partly for its atmospheric evocation of those tense times, but mostly for the thrill and satisfaction in knowing that the Herman Boone portrayed on screen was the same Herman Boone I knew: He was my P.E. teacher. —Marc Vera
11.ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999)
Football, at its very core, is savage and brutal — but that animalistic side is rarely presented on the big screen. In Any Given Sunday, director Oliver Stone captures all that furious energy — and packs in the drama with a pre-Ray Jamie Foxx as a quarterback long on skills (but short on maturity) and the usually sweet Cameron Diaz showing us she has a pair playing an ambitious team owner. —Mark Luckie
10.HORSE FEATHERS (1932)
Huxley College has been ''neglecting football for education,'' complains new dean Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx), who soon puts a stop to that. He heads to the local speakeasy to recruit two ringers, but rival Darwin College has beaten him to it, and Wagstaff enrolls the wrong guys (Chico and Harpo). The result is a gridiron finale that may be the most anarchic and hilarious football game ever captured on film — and probably the only one involving banana peels, a hot dog bun, a deck of cards, and a chariot. —Gary Susman
9.NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979)
''No pain, no gain'' is no maxim for this football flick's pill-popping hulks, who shoot up their aching joints just to make it onto the field. It took until the counterculture's waning years for America to accept that some of its star athletes might be nearly crippled dope fiends and unrepentant womanizers — and those are the heroes, doing what they must for the Man, in this adaptation of Dallas Cowboy Peter Gent's roman à clef. Nick Nolte (pictured) is a master of prematurely arthritic manhood, and Mac Davis (as the Don Meredith figure) is great as a Boy just slightly less Good Old than he first seems. —Chris Willman
8.THE WATERBOY (1998)
''Fool's ball,'' as Mama Boucher (Kathy Bates) calls it, is a lot more entertaining when Adam Sandler is knocking down opponents like bowling pins. Sandler, like fellow SNL alum Will Ferrell, can step into any onscreen job and turn it into a nonstop joke-fest of a movie. Well, except for his remake of The Longest Yard. And I'll forgive him for that one. —ML