First Half in Review: Mariners Go Hollywood

Names of Mariner players, movies that best approximate their value over the first few months of the season, and why.

Ichiro
The Shawshank Redemption
Everyone's seen it and everyone loves it, except for some crazy idiots who like to point out minor flaws, like how nobody noticed that Andy Dufresne was wearing the warden's shoes.

Randy Winn
Legally Blonde
Perfectly acceptable, as long as you don't go in expecting Shakespeare.

Raul Ibanez
Almost Famous
Title says it all.

Richie Sexson
Armageddon
Big blockbuster film with lots of names, lots of money, and lots of crowd-pleasing special effects, but at the end, you're left wanting, wondering why it wasn't the best movie you've ever seen.

Adrian Beltre
Deep Impact
Released around the same time as Armageddon, this was intended to be a more serious and dramatic film with a similar plot, but despite considerable star power and one or two memorable scenes, it fell well short of what it could've been.

Pokey Reese
Asteroid
Smaller-budget flick that sparked more than few arguments between movie critics, but the public didn't know what to think, since nobody saw it.

Jeremy Reed
Sugar Cookies
Oliver Stone's first attempt at associate production yields a disappointing product with a bit of promise. His next film: Salvador.

Bret Boone
Rocky V
It didn't have to end that way.

Mike Morse
Napoleon Dynamite
Unknown movie comes out of nowhere to capture the hearts of many a patron. Gets a little worse every time you see it.

Miguel Olivo
'Manos' the Hands of Fate
Arguably the worst anything anyone's ever seen, ever.

Wiki Gonzalez
Mystery Science Theater 3000 - 'Manos' the Hands of Fate
This way, at least it's funny.

Willie Bloomquist
Mulholland Dr.
Nobody's really sure what it's about, or why so many people seem to like it, but it has enough raunch and violence to keep even the most casual of audiences from falling asleep.

Wilson Valdez
Baseketball
If you're talking to Trey Parker or Matt Stone, and the movie comes up during the conversation, they'll tell you how embarrassed they are about what they did.

Pat Borders
Pride & Prejudice
Considered impressive by virtue of duration alone, as it almost certainly couldn't be the subtle character development or action sequences. People who like it are either old women or English majors, neither of whom really being in position to tell me which movies I'd like.

Greg Dobbs
Battlefield Earth
Almost completely devoid of competent acting, quality cinematography, and a cogent plot, but with John Travolta and an assload of special effects, it definitely looks like a decent movie to people who don't know any better.

Justin Leone, Shin-soo Choo, Jorge Campillo, George Sherrill
Hollow Man
Wait, he was right here just now, I swear. Where'd he go?

Jose Lopez
Apocalypse Now
Everyone keeps telling you how good it is, so you cave and rent the DVD. You turn it on and sit down in your chair for three hours, and you even laugh a few times, but you don't really get it until the end, at which point you realize why it's so widely acclaimed.

Scott Spiezio
Crossroads
Quick, name two people who peaked in 2002.

Dave Hansen
Six Days, Seven Nights
It's not a fantastic movie by any means, or even one worth paying to see, but there's enough action and intrigue to keep you interested when you have nothing else to do, and if you don't feel like watching it, it's always on USA in case you change your mind.

Dan Wilson
A Walk to Remember
A harmless film enjoyed almost exclusively by women.

Rene Rivera
Bad Boys
There was a time, approximately 118 minutes long, when Martin Lawrence was both funny and enjoyable, but then the movie ended, you remembered that he was Martin Lawrence, and vowed to never see one of his movies again, so that you would only remember him at his peak.

Chris Snelling
The Waterboy
Seriously, just give him a chance to show what he can do.

Ryan Franklin
Cannibal! The Musical
Absolutely awful when you watch it, one of the rare movies that actually makes you want to get up out of your seat, approach the guy in the box office, and punch him in the face for not warning you. It's only when you go home and talk about it with your friends that you realize that the flick wasn't that bad after all, and that it had a handful of genuinely hilarious scenes.

Eddie Guardado
Miracle
Not only did it brilliantly tell the story of a team that beat the longest of odds, but it was also quite possibly Kurt Russell's greatest performance of his career. Sometimes you get the urge to throw the DVD into the player and fast-forward to the end, just to feel a little inspirational buzz.

Aaron Sele
Sky High
Kurt Russell should've quite while he was ahead.

Jamie Moyer
Slap Shot
Some of the humor has softened with age, and the visual quality of the film can't quite match up with its more contemporary counterparts, but there are just enough memorable lines and characters to keep it near the top of your list, even though few of your friends understand why.

Gil Meche
Pearl Harbor
All the ingredients were there - the storyline, the director, the budget - but the guys in charge of production steered it the wrong way, resulting in an incredibly disappointing effort that could've been a hell of a lot better, given a little ingenuity.

Matt Thornton
The Exorcist
Just hearing the theme music is enough to give you nightmares for a week.

Joel Pineiro
Snow Dogs
Cuba Gooding Jr. has always been a pretty good actor, if a little overrated, so why would he go and potentially ruin his career by starring in a poorly-written movie with zero potential? Does he still have the same agent?

Ron Villone
Saving Silverman
Okay, I guess it has a few funny parts here and there, but it'd be great if Comedy Central would diversify a little bit and show something else every once in a while.

Shigetoshi Hasegawa
Orange County
For whatever reason, you always remember this movie as being better than it really is.

JJ Putz
Lost in Translation
...and you always remember this movie as being worse than it really is.

Jeff Nelson
Swimming Pool
You didn't want to see it in the first place, because the main actress was some old lady you didn't know anything about, and the plot sounded incredibly dull, but a friend dragged you into the theater, and despite a few parts that really dragged along, you came away somewhat impressed.

Julio Mateo
Super Troopers
So it's not exactly a masterpiece, but everyone loves it and has it in their collection, so you can pop it into the player on a lazy afternoon when you have a few hours to kill with the guys, and nobody'll complain too much.

Bobby Madritsch
Office Space
89 minutes? That's it?

Entire Season So Far
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
See first comment below.