Friday Night Lights

This movie was phenomenal in every way. It had incredible performances under a great director with a fantastic story to back it up.

It tells the story of a high school football team in Texas through the course of their 1988 season. Billy Bob Thorton played the coach of the team and give the best performance I've ever seen him give. The film was directed by Peter Berg who gave it a unique film style. He managed to tell this story in a very beautiful way.

Tim McGraw gives a great debut performance of an ex-high school football player who has become the drunken abusive father of one of the players currently on the team. He was almost unrecodnizable in this role and he portrayed it well. He, and the rest of the cast for that matter deserve a lot of credit.

This is the only football film I have ever seen that has done justice to what it feels like to play football in high school. I played under Friday night lights myself, that time of my life ended just a year ago and it still holds fresh in my memory. And because of that I can tell you how accurately this film portray's the sense of brotherhood and friendship that is felt by every team, at least every good football team.

Whether you ever played under Friday night lights yourself or not anyone should be able to appreciate this film.

Based on a book, this movie does a really good job following a Texas high school football team through their season while dealing with themes of expectations, racism, and class. I'm not sure if this is better than the series or not. There's pros and cons to both. But the movie captures everything in just 2 hours and keeps you engaged and excited throughout. There's also some great sport action scenes and music and edits. It's definitely a strong sports drama that's always worth watching. Definitely recommend this to anyone. IMDb needs to chilllllllll with this stupid character minimum expectation.

This film centers around a high school football team in West Texas known as the Odessa-Permian Panthers who have set a standard of excellence that remains difficult for anybody else to surpass on the football field. However, with this success has come such a rabid devotion to this team by the local residents that an enormous amount of pressure is put upon everyone associated with the team in the process. So much so that the local residents and alumni not only expect a victory each and every time the team takes the field but they also demand it--or else! And this puts the new coach "Gary Gaines" (Billy Bob Thornton) in an especially difficult postion which only gets worse after he loses his star running back "Boobie Miles" (Derek Luke) to a season ending knee injury in the very first game. And things really get bad when he not only loses this game but another one not too long afterward. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that, although there was some artistic license taken with the historical accuracy here and there, the film follows the basic plot of the book and makes for an enjoyable movie experience overall. I especially liked the manner in which the director (Peter Berg) managed to capture the West Texas environment as vividly as he did. Be that as it may, I enjoyed this movie and recommend it to all those who might be looking for a film of this type.

The reason Varsity Blues is so much like Friday Night Lights is b/c VB is a fictional story which was written 10 years after the true story of FNL took place in Odessa, TX in 1988.

The game faces worn by the players in FNL are genuine. The "Religion" of High School Football gave them no other choice. H.G. Bissinger spent almost an entire year with his family in 1988 in Odessa, TX. He essentially became a part of the community and team in documenting and then writing his book Friday Night Lights. He said that due to depressed economic conditions, lack of higher education, and good paying jobs, the communities in West Texas looked upon the high school football programs as saviors from reality.

Few films are truly elevated by their soundtracks, but the scores/songs composed by Explosions in the Sky capture the solitude of youth in suffocating situations (lost in their father's dreams, the isolation of a small Texas town, the aimlessness of high school etc.).