Friday Night Lights

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.).

This is the most human sports movie I've ever seen. Most sports movies follow a very basic formula of being either inspirational or comedic. Some try to be dramatic, but most fail because unless a person is playing a sport they often don't feel the tension, the struggle, the pain, or the elation. Where most others fail, Friday Night Lights soars.

Peter Berg does a wonderful job using the shaky-cam technique to create a documentary type of feel to the movie. We see the characters in their daily lives as if we are walking side by side with them. This is especially effective considering the plight many of those people feel. They all want to escape. Through football they can. Berg captures this.

The acting is extremely balanced. Even Tim McGraw surprises. Derek Luke is exceptional tackling(no pun intended) a tragic superstar. Everyone shines.

For anyone who loves sports and remembers when nothing else mattered when you played, this is a beautiful parallel.

When I first heard of this movie, I immediately let it go under my radar because I am not a big fan of sports movies. However, I am a huge fan of the Texas band Explosions in the Sky and when I heard a few months ago that they scored most of the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights, it was compulsory that I check it out.

It turns out that I freaking love this movie. The cinematography is nicely done, comprising wide, sweeping shots of Texas plains, oil-rigs, and football fields. The colors come through nicely (the white and black of the jerseys is particularly nice). As I already mentioned, I am not a big sports fan, but from what I could tell, the football sequences were well done and quite intense.

The acting is superbly executed by most in the film. However, there are still one or two times when one of the players' lines is delivered with that all-too-well-known teen-acting cheesiness that almost makes me cringe a little. Those times aside, the acting works wonderfully.

As I already mentioned, the reason why I initially watched this movie, was because Explosions in the Sky did the score. In my opinion, every song that they wrote (or adapted from previously written songs) for this movie lends beautifully to the content. Their lush soundscapes play nicely alongside the beautiful fields of Texas (no surprise, since TX is their home). Their crescendo-laden rock happens also to fit perfectly with slow-motion sequences (which there are plenty of in Friday Night Lights).

I am sure that almost all of the other reviews here have touched on the fact that this football movie does not play like other football movies (with all of the regular sport movie clichés). Because of this, I won't go into that. My thoughts are, if you like football (and also enjoy genuinely good cinema) OR if you aren't really a big fan of football (and also enjoy genuinely good cinema), you will probably dig Friday Night Lights.

So go and buy the DVD; and while you are at the store, pick up an Explosions in the Sky CD.

I just don't see how anyone who didn't read the book could follow the story at all. The book was so watered down, and the story is almost unrecognizable. We saw precious little of Booby Miles' complexity or the pressures around him over which he had no control. We saw almost nothing of Chavez, one of the very few players who actually made something of himself, or what effect the high school football experience had on his success in life. And the other players ... their personal lives were so affected by what happened that single season, and it was pretty much ignored. There was so much background about the frenzy that Mojo generated (and still generates) in Odessa that just wasn't shown.

That being said, I can see why the people in Odessa so disapproved of the book and loved the movie. The movie doesn't show the rather affectionate, yet unflattering picture that Buzz Bissinger painted of the town. Instead, it only showed the stereotypical hype of small town football. After seeing the movie, PLEASE do yourself a favor and read the book.

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.