Movies to Get You In the Mood for Football Season

Football season is right around the corner. In fact, the pre-season is already underway. Get in the mood for the excitement of football season with these movies.

Little Giants
Football isn't just about professional players, it's also about the little ones just starting out and playing pee-wee football. A pair of brothers take their sibling rivalry onto the football field in this movie. The town's existing team, the Cowboys, battles it out with the newly formed Little Giants. Both teams learn that football is about more than winning; it is also about friendship and teamwork.

The Blind Side
In the Blind side, Michael Oher touches us with his kindness and his ability to rise above his difficult childhood with the help of a loving new family and his abilities on the football field. The Blind Side is based partially on the true story of offensive lineman, Michael Oher.

We Are Marshall
We are Marshall is based on the tragic true story of the plane crash that took the lives of most of the Marshall University football players and coaching staff in 1970. The movie is full of sadness and grief, but also a beautiful display of courage as a new team is formed with the few remaining players along with some new inexperienced players. Amazingly, after a crushing loss at the first game, this team wins at its first home game of the season. This movie is a wonderful example of the way football can bring people together, even following a terrible tragedy.

The Waterboy
The Waterboy will make you laugh, but you will also cheer for Bobby Boucher as he finally stands up for himself and finds success in college and on the football field. Bobby starts out as a water boy who dropped out of high school, but ends up earning his GED, starting college, and playing football after he is encouraged by the coach. He even finds the strength to stand up to his overprotective but well-intentioned mother.

Any Given Sunday
Anything can happen in football. As the name of the movie suggests, something miraculous can happen "any given Sunday". In this movie a team that is part of the Associated Football Franchises of America is struggling. Willie Beamen, the third string quarterback, is forced to play after injuries are sustained by both the starting and back-up quarterbacks. Beamen ends up surprising the team with his abilities, but his selfish attitude does not impress his coach or his teammates. Beamen is given the chance to prove himself again at the end of the movie, and he changes his selfish ways. This movie reminds us that the unexpected is always possible in football; watch it and get excited for the surprises to come this football season.

Gloria Swanson and Hollywood's Greatest Comeback

When Gloria Swanson starred in 'Sunset Boulevard' in 1950, it was heralded as one of the greatest comebacks in cinema history. 25 years earlier, as a silent movie star, she had been one of the best known women in the world, not only treated like royalty but she had created a sensation by actually marrying the Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye, part of the Hennessy drinks family, and a member of one of the noble families of France. When Gloria and her husband returned to America after their wedding they were given ticker-tape parades through New York and Los Angeles and were treated as genuine royalty. Gloria's career was at its peak. She was the highest paid woman in movies and she was a fashion icon for women everywhere.

But her movies had not fared well with the advent of sound in 1929, and her extravagant lifestyle, once the envy of women the world over, grated on the sensibilities of a world undergoing the indignities and deprivations of the Great Depression. At the start of the 1930's she made four Talkies in quick succession, ' What a Widow!' in 1930, 'Indiscreet' the following year, 'Perfect Understanding' in 1933, and 'Music in the Air' in 1934 but they all flopped. Audiences were no longer flocking to her films and as her career went into decline, Gloria went into voluntary semi-retirement. In 1941, after 7 years off screen, she appeared in another movie, the musical comedy 'Father Takes A Wife' which was heavily promoted as her comeback film but it did not do well at the box office and was critically panned. Gloria returned to her self-imposed movie retirement although she continued to appear on stage and also began to try the new medium of television

So, by the late 1940's, for twenty years little had been heard of Gloria Swanson. A complete generation of cinema-goers had grown up without seeing one of her movies or knowing the impact she had once had. All that was about to be changed by one man - director Billy Wilder and his masterly film 'Sunset Boulevard'.

Gloria plays the silent movie star, Norma Desmond, whose career is over but who lives her life dreaming of a successful comeback. She meets a young screenwriter, Joe Gillis, played by William Holden, and falls in love with him but her delusions overtake her and she loses touch with reality. Swanson's acting is quite brilliant and some of her lines have passed into show business legend, such as "I am big; it's the pictures that got small," "We didn't need dialogue, we had faces," and "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

'Sunset Boulevard' is ranked at number 12 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 films of all time and it is widely considered by many critics to be one of the best movies ever made. Gloria Swanson's powerful performance gained her a third Best Actress Oscar nomination and it is as Norma Desmond that we remember her today, not for her previous achievements and fame. She did what Norma Desmond was not able to do. Gloria Swanson came back.