If you’re a nerd like me, you spend a lot of time going through the various Discovery Channels as well as National Geographic and Smithsonian. This particular movie comes on Smithsonian at least nine times a week and I think I’ve probably seen it five times. Surely someone else has seen it and noticed what I’ve noticed.

It is called The Rivals. It is a nice little documentary about a blue collar town’s football team and the arch-rival rich kids who live by the sea in Maine. In this case, the poor kids are really, really poor. They are as poor as the people who live in the little towns you drive through on the way to the beach. Really, really poor.
And the rich kids! They are super-rich. They didn’t even have football till a couple years ago. Till then it was all soccer and sailing and rowing and probably cricket or croquet or whatever else rich people and Europeans in movies do.

Conveniently, both high schools have really good football teams…by Maine standards. They are good enough to play for state championships! They are as good as it gets…in Maine.
Once they get to that part, the whole thing just falls apart because you realize everyone in Maine sucks at football.

Also, literally everyone in Maine is white. There isn’t one non-white person anywhere in the entire movie. Not even in the background just hanging out somewhere apart from the film. Nowhere. Not a Mexican kicker nor a black linebacker nor a Samoan safety. Literally everyone in Maine is 5′5″ and white.

So, if you watch this movie, understand you’re dedicating two whole hours to watching a movie about two of the best football teams in all of Maine and also that the best football teams in Maine would lose 54-6 if they played the worst team in Alabama.

Otherwise I spend my time watching The Walking Dead on AMC. If I’m tired on a Sunday night and go to bed early, I’ll get up early so I can watch it on Monday morning. My long-standing love affair with zombies isn’t well-documented but it will be when someone opens a museum about me.
This show isn’t typical zombie fare, however! It definitely takes place during a global zombie apocalypse and there are definitely zombies everywhere. What separates it is the atmosphere Frank Darabont creates. Most of the great zombie movies have been made by guys who just make zombie movies or they’ve been send-ups of other great zombie movies. Now a different kind of film maker is taking it on and the whole thing is really sort of refreshing. It manages to be captivating and intense and dramatic in a different way than the movies George Romero and Dario Argento have done over a span of nearly a half-century.
What I am saying is I highly recommend it and it is great.