Mike Ribaudo Movies

A true story of tragedy, hope, and resilience comes to the screen in this sports drama. Huntington, WV, is home to Marshall University, a school where college football is a way of life. Huntington is also a town that learned to deal with tragedy in the fall of 1970 when Marshall's "Thundering Herd" boarded an airliner to return home after a football game in North Carolina. The jet crashed into a hill due to bad weather, and 75 members of Marshall's football squad and athletic staff died that night. The accident dealt a crippling blow to the city of Huntington, as well as Marshall's faculty and student body, and university president Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) considered abandoning the school's football program. But instead Coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) was recruited from Ohio's College of Wooster to rebuild Marshall's football program. Lengyel was not naïve about the task ahead of him, and working beside Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), an assistant coach who narrowly missed the doomed flight and was one of the program's only survivors, he came to understand his job was not just to put a team on the field, but help a college and a community heal their wounds from the tragic accident. Together Lengyel and Dawson turned a handful of rookies and second-string players into a competitive team who in 1971 showed the world what they could do in a legendary game against Marshall's rivals, Xavier University. Produced with the cooperation of Marshall University and filmed in part on their campus, We Are Marshall also stars Ian McShane, Anthony Mackie, and January Jones. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This blend of sports and youthful romantic comedy is from director Michael Tollin, who previously produced the sports drama Varsity Blues (1999). Freddie Prinze Jr. stars as Ryan Dunne, a ballplayer who's spending the summer as a pitcher for the famed, highly prestigious Cape Cod League, a non-professional farm team that has turned out numerous baseball legends. Ryan's under special pressure on a number of fronts. He's the first local boy to earn a slot in the league in years, and his blue-collar status earns him the enmity of a hot-shot college teammate, Eric Van Leemer (Corey Pearson). Although he's backed up by his best friend and team catcher Billy Brubaker (Matthew Lillard), Ryan adds more stress to his life by embarking on an affair with a beautiful, wealthy young Vassar graduate, Tenley Parrish (Jessica Biel), who's spending the summer on the Cape with her parents. Tenley is facing her own crisis as her father (Bruce Davison) pressures her to move to San Francisco and work with her uncle, though she'd rather remain in the East and become an architect. Summer Catch is the third onscreen teaming of Prinze and Lillard, and also stars Brian Dennehy, Wilmer Valderrama, Jason Gedrick, Fred Ward, and Brittany Murphy. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide