Mystery, Alaska

I'm constantly on all the sports websites reading about how my backup fantasy quarterback tripped in his driveway while getting the paper and is on injured reserve for the next 3 months. One article that pops up about once every 6 months is the topic of sports movies and how the all-time great one's rank. (espn is especially frequent with these articles, since they're owned by Disney and they put out a new sports movie every 11 seconds) So I though my next review would be about a sports movie I really like, but doesn't get much play in these discussions, Mystery, Alaska.

Mystery is a tiny town in northern Alaska that basically has 1 thing going for it. Every Saturday, the entire town gets together and watches the more athletic citizens participate in a pick-up hockey game entitled "The Saturday Game". Catchy, huh? Well, the guys who play in the game are really good. I mean, they've played basically every day for their entire lives. You know, like Canadians. So the town really takes this game seriously, they aren't playing around. One day, a former member of the town (Hank Azaria, the dude who did a bunch of voices on the Simpsons), who wrote an article about The Saturday Game in Sports Illustrated, comes home and informs them that he's set up a scrimmage with none other than the New York Rangers. Of course, the whole town goes nuts. More so than normal.

Russell Crowe turns in a pretty good performance as the town sheriff/passing defenseman. (I do give the guy a bit of a mulligan here. He's from Australia. Don't think they do much ice skating down under). And the legendary Burt Reynolds plays the judge/coach, pretty damn good job by him as well. One of my favorite performances is the cameo by Mike Myers, who plays a crazy Canadian hockey analyst.

Anyway, I'm not putting this up there with Hoosiers or Field of Dreams or anything, but it's a good, solid sports flick. It's funny, dramatic, the sports scenes are pretty good and it's got that whole David vs. Goliath thing going.

Final score: 3 3/4 out of 5 of Steve Yzerman's missing teeth.

True Romance

So I was sitting around thinking about what movie to review next when my mind wandered back to this classic. It's one of those movie's that came out, nobody went to see it, it stayed pretty underground for awhile, and then it seemed like everyone owned the DVD. Kinda like Dazed and Confused. What really surprises me about this film's path to popularity is how it did so little at the box office. Make no mistake, it still took in 11 mil, but when you look at who's in it (Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Michael Rappaport, Balki Bartacomous, Sam Jackson, James Gandolfini, I mean, that's a murderer's row if I've ever seen one), who directed it (Tony Scott, who directed blockbusters like Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II and Man on Fire), and of course, who wrote it (Tarantino, in between Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), it's surprising to me that this was such an underground movie for so long. I guess everyone was either on their way to fame and fortune (Pitt, Gandalfini & Tarantino) or a bit passed their prime (Slater, if he ever had one).

So you've got Clarence (Slater), and average guy who works at a comic book store, who meets Alabama (Arquette) at the movies. They hit it off pretty good and end up going home together. Then, Clarence finds out that Alabama's a hooker who his boss got him for his birthday. Despite this, they love each other anyway (love at first sight and all that) and get married. Clarence wants to go to Alabama's pimp's place and get her stuff (as well as take some revenge on the pimp. Apparently, his philosophy was "Ho's Down") So Clarence goes to see the pimp, shit goes down and he runs out with Alabama's suitcase. Unfortunately, or not, the suitcase he grabbed actually contains a crap-ton of cocaine. So he an Alabama set off to California in order to unload the coke and live happily ever after. Of course, they run into some problems, but you'll have to watch the movie to know what they are.

This film contains one of the all-time EPIC scenes in any movie ever. If you're a fan of I heart the 90's, then you probably know the scene I'm talking about. This one scene is worth the price of admission, but there's plenty more to this movie to keep you entertained.

Final score:
4 1/2 out of 5 John/Hooker romances