Board 8 > The Gauntlet Crew Ranks Sports Movies: Results Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Okay, so this is my first time running one of these topics, and it was kinda thrust upon me unexpectedly due to some...drama. But I vow to do my best in executing the posting of write-ups and such for the list of sports movies we were given. Over the past few months, a bunch of members of the gauntlet crew having been watching a selection of forty sports movies (or if not TECHNICALLY sports movies, they at least revolve around some sort of sporting competition.) This list is as follows:

A League of Their Own (1992)
Any Given Sunday (1999)
Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Blades of Glory (2007)
Bull Durham (1988)
Caddyshack (1980)
Chalet Girl (2011)
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Cool Runnings (1993)
Creed (2015)
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)
Field of Dreams (1989)
Friday Night Lights (2004)
Girlfight (2000)
Hoosiers (1986)
Invictus (2009)
Major League (1989)
Moneyball (2011)
North Shore (1987)
Remember The Titans (2000)
Rocky (1976)
Rollerball (1975)
Rush (2013)
Seabiscuit (2003)
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Slap Shot (1977)
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
The Blind Side (2009)
The Endless Summer (1966)
The Fencer (2015)
The Fighter (2010)
The Sandlot (1993)
The Wrestler (2008)
Tin Cup (1996)
Victory (1981)
Warrior (2011)
Whip It (2009)
White Men Can't Jump (1992)
Wimbledon (2004)

After receiving seven lists (myself, Karo, Snake, Scarlet, Wickle, JONA, and Red), we have a ranking ready of these forty films from worst to best. This ranking was determined by taking each films placement from each ranker's respective list and adding them up to get a total score. The higher the score, the lower the placement on the list. In the event of two or more movies tying their scores, I then removed the highest and lowest individual scores each movie received, and broke the tie based on the difference between the new scores.

Obviously the gauntlet crew can discuss this ranking, but if anyone else is interested in the list and wants to comment, you're more than welcome to do so. The more participation in these projects, the more fun we have completing them. If there are movies you think should have been on the list, but aren't, let us know. Keep in mind that despite running the topic, I did not make the ultimate movie selections. The original person who came up with the list wanted to diversify things rather than having a fuckton of like, football or baseball movies, so there are some unconventional choices as well as some things that got overlooked. I personally would've included things like Million Dollar Baby, Happy Gilmore, and Miracle, just to name a few. But that's just me.

Anyway, the next post will contain the overall scores each film received (not naming the movies themselves...just pointing out what scores you can look forward to seeing.) I might put up the first ranking today or that might have to wait until tomorrow though. We'll see.
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TOP OF THE LIST

26
60
64
71
72
92
93
95
100
117
122
126
128
129
132
134
137
142
147
149
154
155
158
158
158
160
160
165
167
167
169
170
173
173
174
190
220
239
242
252

BOTTOM OF THE LIST

Got quite a range there, as well as perhaps the biggest front runner we've ever had in one of these projects (I don't remember if Assault on Arkham was the previous record holder, or just how close Shaun of the Dead/Zombieland were.)
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tag
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PrinceKaro posted...

tag

Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead were 7 apart.
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Tag for Moneyball in spots #1-40
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Tag

Of these I've only seen 11 though
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I'll try to keep current.
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Prediction for #40: Endless Summer
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Hint for #40:

40. Three last place rankings.
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Chalet Girl has to be crap enough to get three last places.
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40. The Endless Summer (252)

Snake - 16
Red - 38
Karo - 39
Wickle - 39
Inviso - 40
JONA - 40
Scarlet - 40

Snake - I’m not into surfing culture as much skateboarding culture but this still an interesting documentary. Good narration and breataking surfing footage with some humor and story to boot. Perfect for fans of the sport.

Red - Boring surf documentary. The only good thing to say about this movie is that seeing some of the locations is kind of fascinating. But beyond that it has little value other than seeming like someones vacation video not very disecretly editted to be more sensational than it really was. The movie is also incredibly racist. When watching I was thinking many drugs had to have been consumed by these guys on this trip, a quick bit of google research confirmed this to be correct. A movie for people that really like surfing, but little value beyond that. More interesting was looking into what happened to many of the locations in the movie as the years went by, some turning into literal dumps. Kind of sad, but way more interesting than the dull movie itself.

Karo - So this is sort of like a documentary, but its really more just a boring and unprofessional narrator who thinks he is way more witty than he actually is talking about surfing for an hour and a half to amateur vacation footage.

It is mainly about these two surf dudes on their worldwide surfing trip, but there apparently wasn’t enough from that for the whole movie and so we constantly get commercials for various beaches in California and Hawaii awkwardly interrupting what little story the film has. From a documentary standpoint, it is incredibly useless and uninformative, we learn basically nothing about the sport of surfing other than 'whoa dude, here are some really gnarly places to catch a wave!'

This summer can't end quickly enough.

Wickle - We literally had a sequence of staring at a seal ride a full wave. Honestly, I don't care if this finishes before or after the skateboarding one, but my writeup for it very easily talks about how little I give a shit about this movie. Non-team sports suck ass. At least it had some BGM that I... kinda liked.
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Inviso - This movie wasn’t even about sports. It’s a documentary about privileged white people traveling around the world and surfing, generally under similar conditions each and every time. I don’t give a shit about watching some boring narrator talk about his summer vacation and I hope all of these people got eaten by sharks.

JONA - Summer is now endless
My consciousness can not last this
Wake me up when this movie ends
Scenic spots I'll never go
Hour half has gone so slow
Wake me up when this movie ends

Here comes surfing again
I'm falling to sleep
Drenched surfers surf again
I'm busy counting sheep
I'm almost put to rest
But remember the time I lost
Wake me up when this movie ends

Summer is now endless
My consciousness can not last this
Wake me up when this movie ends
Bring me coffee again
Drank it when the film began
Wake me up when this movie ends

Here comes surfing again
I'm falling to sleep
Drenched surfers surf again
I'm busy counting sheep
I'm almost put to rest
But remember the time I lost
Wake me up when this movie ends

Summer is now endless
My consciousness can not last this
Wake me up when this movie ends
Scenic spots I'll never go
Movie's over time to go
Wake me up when this movie ends
Wake me up when this movie ends
Wake me up when this movie ends

Scarlet - Here is a list of sports documentaries that I think are better than The Endless Summer:

Hoop Dreams, Senna, When We Were Kings, Murderball, Undefeated, Beyond the Mat, The U, The Two Escobars, Bigger Stronger Faster, The Fab Five, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Once in a Lifetime, Through the Fire, Closer to the Edge, The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, One Day in September, Survive and Advance, Kings Ransom, Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?, Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks, Run Ricky Run, Straight Outta L.A., June 17th 1994, Jordan Rides the Bus, Marion Jones: Press Pause, Pony Excess, The Marinovich Project, Broke, 9.79*, You Don’t Know Bo, Elway to Marino, Big Shot, This Is What They Want, The Price of Gold, Bad Boys, The U Part 2, I Hate Christian Laettner, Trojan War, Chasing Tyson, Four Falls of Buffalo…

Film MVP: Dying Third World Countries
Rating: 10/100
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Outlier Rankings:

Inviso - 0
JONA - 0
Scarlet - 0
Karo - 1
Wickle - 1
Red - 2
Snake - 24

Snake jumps out to a massive lead as the only person to not only rank Endless Summer outside of his bottom three, but also to rank it in the top half of the overall list. Meanwhile, Red moves to the bottom of the list as the only other person not to rank Endless Summer in his bottom TWO. JONA, Scarlet and myself however maintain perfect scores through one round of rankings. Go team!
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JONA's write-up is the real MVP

Expected this though.
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Tag
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where is Angels in the Outfield?

WHERE IS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR!?

though i suppose there was some kind of cut off system
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Hint for #39:

39. Much like The Endless Summer, this film only had one person rank it above the halfway mark.
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Whiskey_Nick posted...

where is Angels in the Outfield?

WHERE IS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR!?

though i suppose there was some kind of cut off system

There was enough on the short list for a second sports list.

Guess for #39 - North Shore, haole.
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Whiskey_Nick posted...

where is Angels in the Outfield?

WHERE IS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR!?

though i suppose there was some kind of cut off system

We could have done an entire list of baseball movies, good and bad.

I blame prof for every bad movie here tbh. Easy to do.

Wickle and Snake both mentioned a skateboarding documentary; I'm guessing whatever that is will be #39
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39. North Shore (242)

Wickle - 19
Karo - 34
Inviso - 35
Snake - 37
JONA - 39
Red - 39
Scarlet - 39

Wickle - Not too great of a movie, but not all that bad either. Never really cared for surfing or its movies because how unique can you really get with everything, granted, I just don't watch any of those sorts of sports. The solo score, just do your own thing manner of sport. Girl was cute, characters got good somewhat towards the late end, hell, I even liked how Vince seemed to be okay with the romance. If he was utilized more he'd probably be part of that favorite archtype of mine, but they kind of put too much of a focus on minor things.

Karo - Basically this dumb kid goes to hawaii to surf and does stupid things because he thinks he's actually good at surfing. Because he has a death wish, he keeps trying to fuck the cousin of a local gang leader.

He eventually meets some surf guru who teaches him about the soul of the ocean and how to use the Force while surfing.

What follows is a very predictable outcome where he learns that winning isn’t important, its the spirit of the waves, brah! The gangster also now suddenly likes him so he is conveniently free to get the girl.

This is honestly like some made-for-TV piece of shit they would show on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel.

Inviso - This movie was SO fucking cheesy. It legitimately felt like the sort of thing they’d poke fun at on MST3K. Acting was terrible and stunted (either that, or horribly dubbed). Honestly, Surf’s Up did this exact story so much better. Also, everyone was douchebags. EVERYONE. And the main character had too many different plots going on with every other character…it made me not care about any of them.

Snake - Terrible dialogue, cheesy ‘80s comedy, the only redeeming factor is its pretty good surfing scenes.

JONA - I cannot think of a positive thing to say about the movie except that one character's acting made me laugh.

Red - Surfing is a hard sport to make a movie out of. That makes it extra hard to make a good movie out of it. This is not a good movie. This takes stereotypical hawaiian surf culture, throws in a jerk of a main character that is gifted at surfing despite lacking any sort of a brain, and throws in a forbidden love story into the mix just to further insult our intelligence. The main problem with this movie is you are rooting for the main character to slam into the reef and kill himself to spare us of having to listen to him for the rest of the film. Hes simply far too annoying to ever enjoy this film.

Scarlet - When sanding a surfboard, a cloud of dust permeates every corner of the surfer’s workshop. The dust filled the nostrils of the writer, director and actors in this film, turning the entire affair into a braindead mess of slop and drivel. Don’t get high on your own product, Haole.

Film MVP: The word “Haole”
Rating: 29/100
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Outlier Rankings:

JONA - 0
Scarlet - 0
Red - 2
Inviso - 4
Karo - 6
Wickle - 21
Snake - 26

JONA and Scarlet continue to maintain perfecty outlier scores. What, JONA is leading the outlier race? Color me shocked. Look at my shocked face o_o. LOOK AT IT. Meanwhile, his sole high ranking moves Wickle solidly into the bottom tier alongside Snake "I Thought Endless Summer Was Worth Watching" 5555555555.
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Hint for #38:

38. NOT extreme sports-related.
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Prediction for #38 - Talladega Nights
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I never watched any of these films.
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38. Blades of Glory (239)

Inviso - 27
Karo - 32
Wickle - 33
JONA - 35
Red - 35
Scarlet - 38
Snake - 39

Inviso - Okay, so…this was kind of a disappointment. I typically love Will Ferrell, but…no…not great. For starters, I don’t think Jon Heder was that funny, and he didn’t play to Ferrell’s strengths that well. Two, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are funny actors, but in this, it felt like they just showed up and were suddenly villains doing evil things with little explanation. I don’t know…I just didn’t laugh a whole lot during the movie, with the sole exception of the hilarious “ice skating on dry land” scene. That was great.

Karo - Two male figure skating rivals who get banned from the sport try to get around it by forming the first same-sex pairs skating team (how is that even fucking okay in the rulebook).

They of course have opposite personalities on top of hating each other and so the two of them being forced together leads to all sorts of incredibly stupid hijinks that are like 'gee, I don't like this situation!' 'well I don't like your face! boo-yah!'.

They eventually come together so they can face off against a rival pair who are even more dumb than they are.

When a comedy gets most of its laughs from how poorly made and stupid it is, something is very wrong. Far too many of the jokes revolve around 'oh hey, dudes skating is even more gay then it was before and its making us uncomfortable with our sexuality, hahaha'.

Wickle - Dear god this is why I dislike Will Ferrell, if it's not rated R for his crap language, it's still him being a perverted cuck. Like the whole sex addicts class scenario, it's pretty r*******. I also don't like Amy Poehler. She just has some shit eating grin, and I don't mean like some mischeivous comedian or some crap like that... I mean she looks like she just dropped a deuce and ate it after. Makes her look like a hag, and don't forget that her version of humor is some of the worst. Just goes to show that these people might as well be Jim Carrey because I cannot sanction their buffoonery.

JONA - It has a good cast but the script is just mildly amusing at times, with nothing being really funny.

Red - Lets make a movie about male/male ice dancers so we can make stale sexual position jokes all day. Great idea, yeah. No. This movie does nothing but attempt to insult your intelligence and resort to lowest common denominator jokes time after time. This movie simply runs its premise into the ground but never really succeeds at being truly funny. The villains have their moments of bringing mild enjoyment, if only they'd succeeded in ridding us of this terrible pair of main characters.

Scarlet - At some point on Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell developed a misunderstanding of comedy in that, when you yell, you do not magically become funnier. A talented supporting cast is wasted on this utterly atrocious buddy sports film where the buddies have about as much chemistry on the ice as Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.

Film MVP: Jenna Fischer
Rating: 31/100

Snake - Not really my cup of tea for comedy, Ferrell is a complete miss here and the premise of the film is stupid.
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Outlier Rankings:

***Scarlet - 0
**JONA - 3
*Red - 5
Karo - 12
*Inviso - 15
Wickle - 26
Snake - 27

Scarlet goes three in a row with spot-on guesses to maintain a perfect outlier score thus far. Meanwhile, Karo and I take a sizable hit to widen the gap between the top tier and the bottom tier. Wickle and Snake remain the dead last outliers though.
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Hint for #37:

37. The first film on the list to not have a spot-on ranking.
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Prediction for #37 - Chalet Girl

Not sure what else could lurk down here aside from the Dogtown and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-Boys
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Predicting Dogtown

Another hint for number 37

37. The first member of someone's top ten to fall.
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I think I know this one.
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Just gonna tell people I did all my write-ups after watching each film. So anytime I reference another movie it is because I watched the film before I watched that one. Only times I went back to edit write-ups were after Prof ran away crying because I had to remove my original jokes I was doing on each one... And then one movie I realized my argument was wrong on.

I didn't delete any of that write-up though, just added a little bit to it.
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Of the 10 I've seen:

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. Blades of Glory (2007)
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37. Dogtown and Z-Boys (220)

Snake - 4
JONA - 31
Scarlet - 31
Karo - 35
Inviso - 39
Red - 40
Wickle - 40

Snake - An excellent documentary about the history of skateboarding, specifically the Zephyr skateboard team (and also some surfing). It’s a culture I’ve always found so fascinating, so freeing, and intersting to examine. This documentary is thrilling, with spectauclar skating footage and intriguing testimonials. Of course, the amazing soundtrack helps make this a true rock-n-roll spirtual journey. A must for all skateboarding fans.

JONA - While there are some interesting tidbits here and there, this documentary was made for those who had an interest in skateboarding and I'm not the target audience.

Scarlet - Oh, and this to the list of sports documentaries better than The Endless Summer, too. Just not by much.

Film MVP: Whoever put filters an all of the shots of old, dilapidated piers so that they would look trendy
Rating: 49/100

Karo - Sadly this has nothing to do with dogs, but is rather a documentary about the history of skateboarding. Though it is informative, it will be a snoozefest to anyone other than people with great interest in the background of extreme sports, or to those who get off on watching grainy videos of teens with bad haircuts skating in an unimpressive manner.

Inviso - Yeah, documentaries shouldn’t be put in the same category as acted sports movies…they’re just nowhere near as interesting. Well, at least this particular one wasn’t. Same goes for Endless Summer. Both are just a bunch of talking head confessionals interspersed with unimpressive street skating. I give it points over Endless Summer for having people swear, but that’s it.

Red - Sports movies have a hard time appealing to you when you have no interest in the sport. This movie doesn't care about this fact and is a skateboarding documentary for people that are really into skateboarding. Considering I'm not into skateboarding and this movie did nothing to appeal to my senses, I found myself wishing to go to bed or really just do anything else but watch this movie. There was simply no moment in this movie that made me even give a shred of a damn that I Was watching it.

Wickle - Documentaries are only good in specific circumstances, one of them is the following: YOU HAVE TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CONTENT. I mean... it's not a movie... it's an episode of 60 minutes that went 30 minutes over its air time, has a couple songs added in and they pay some bigger name actor to narrate. The only thing good about Skateboarding are the video games. Bikes > boards, as the ASU war continues to go on.
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Outlier Rankings:

Scarlet - 6
Red - 8
JONA - 9
Karo - 14
Inviso - 17
Wickle - 29
Snake - 60

Well...JONA/Scarlet have yet another ranking the same, so their scores remain unchanged, allowing Red to retake second place. Meanwhile, Snake has bizarre taste in movies and leaps out to a startling sixty points only four movies into the list.
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Hint for #36:

36. Has a female lead.
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Chalet Girl next at last.
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It's obviously A League of Their Own.
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Did we keep track of outlier scores for the rest of the projects? Snake could set a record here.
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Bend It Like Getting Rektem is out next.
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By the way, for everyone who is so against the documentaries being against actual movies, there are a ton of great ones. Hell, I listed them in my #40 write-up. We just didn't get to watch any of them.
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Documentaries are fine. These two were just boring.

36. Chalet Girl (190)

Karo - 2
Wickle - 16
JONA - 29
Inviso - 30
Scarlet - 36
Red - 37
Snake - 40

Karo - An adorable british girl becomes a chalet (which is like the austrian word for butler) at some ski lodge for a rich family. She falls in love with one of her clients in a cute and sappy romance, with a random snowboarding competition at the end for some reason.

Kim herself is what really carries the movie here, without her wry sarcasm and lovable spunk there would be nothing especially remarkable about the film.

Wickle - Damn that "safety first" was a great line. Definitely enjoyed the movie, at first I dreaded it because I wasn't liking the characters, then it took a turn for even worse when there were the drunk shenanigans, the romance plotline... etc. Would it have been a better movie if it wasn't rich guy falling for the chalet girl and instead she falls for the finnish dude? Possibly. Would it have been better without the terrible mother plotline? Probably. But it worked.

JONA - While the movie was charming enough, it didn't exactly make me laugh and the romance is uninteresting.

Inviso - This was a cheesy, lame movie that managed to take all the good will towards RomComs earned by Wimbledon, and flushed that down the drain. Everything was super-simplified (the main character became a snowboarding prodigy, winning a major tournament, in just about four months…awesome), and the characters had zero depth beyond being standard romcom cut-outs. The overbearing mom, the cool dad, the taken hot guy, the sweet girl that provides “true love”, and the BFF who’s kind of a slut. It’s…not great. Not much of a sports movie either, aside from the random “fear of jumping” that doesn’t really gel with the rest of the movie AT ALL.

Scarlet - In a world of Disney Channel original films, this belongs right smack dab in the middle of that list. Felicity Jones may be charismatic, but no amount of her mugging, British pop music or help from all-star supporting castmates can turn this burger flipping ugly duckling into a comedy swan. There’s just not enough substance to hold one’s attention before it all crashes down in an insipid finale.

Film MVP: Felicity Jones
Rating: 38/100

Red - Want a movie that spits on everything athletes work towards to be good at their sport? This is it. A girl goes off an adventure to work in the snow where she somehow finds she is a snowboarding prodigy despite having no experience in the slightest. A few months, mostly of partying and not much practicing and she is the best snowboarder in a competition with a pretty hefty cash prize, people that have likely put their entire life into the sport be damned. Its just a terrible premise. Oh, and she has PTSD due to a car crash that is conquered by getting her boyfriends approval or something stupid. Its never really explained away properly, like just about everything else in this movie.

Snake - Why was this even on the list? Completely forgettable, bland rom-com with predictable plot and characters. I guess Felicity Jones kind of makes it watchable.
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Outlier Ranking:

****Scarlet - 6
*Red - 9
**JONA - 16
*Inviso - 23
Karo - 48
Wickle - 49
Snake - 64

Karo losing his number 2 (which, combined with Snakes 40 may make this the widest gap because best and worst on this list) puts him into a near-tie with Wickle for second-to-last place. Snake continues to be at the bottom however. Meanwhile, Scarlet racks up his FOURTH spot-on ranking out of five rankings thus far. Impressive.
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Hint for #35:

35. Is about an individual sport (as opposed to a team or duo sport.)
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Maybe Talladega Nights? Tin Cup is the only other one I could see dropping at this point.
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Regular gauntlet topic purged btw
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Probably Talladega despite the ambiguity.
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Inviso won't post another ranking until we hit 50 posts. #Fascist #NotMyHost
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