Hey teacher, leave them kids alone!

One of the perils that comes with this gig is that there are times where I walk into a theater armed with too much knowledge about what went down behind-the-scenes on the movie I'm about to see. Take Moneyball, for instance. This adaptation of Michael Lewis' best-selling baseball book -- which covered a season in the life (specifically the 2002 season) of the Oakland A's and their eccentric, wily GM Billy Beane -- has been on my radar since 2008, when one of my favorite directors, Steven Soderbergh, came onboard to shepherd the project to the big screen. As is often the case with Soderbergh, he had developed a fascinating angle he intended to bring to the proceedings, embellishing the central narrative with documentary segments featuring real-life ballplayers and casting actual members of that 2002 A's squad (including David Justice and Scott Hatteberg) as themselves in the dramatic scenes. This approach excited me, but unnerved the studio, which shut down the film just as shooting was going to start in earnest. Soderbergh quickly departed the project and Capote director Bennett Miller was eventually recruited to replace him.

After checking out the movie version of Moneyball earlier this week, we were so inspired by Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's innovative use of "sabermetrics" in building his record-setting 2002 team, we wanted to apply the same close statistical analysis to how the film that's opening in theaters on Friday came together following a few false starts. Originally set to be directed by The Devil Wears Prada's David Frankel, Steven Soderbergh took over the director's chair in 2008 and cast Demetri Martin opposite Brad Pitt's Beane. The following year, Sony Pictures halted production just before the cameras were set to roll and shuffled the deck another time, replacing Soderbergh with Bennett Miller, Martin with Jonah Hill and bringing in screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to punch up a script credited to Steve Zaillian and Stan Chervin. How will these various moves impact the movie's box-office performance? Let's check the stats.

It's no accident that the best sports movies are also underdog stories. While rooting for dominant winners -- whether it's the Yanks, the Pats or Pacquiao -- is an accepted and even encouraged practice in the real wide, wide world of sports, there's just more drama in cheering on the Rudy's, Rocky's and Bad News Bears' of the big screen. Warrior, the new mixed martial arts film from Gavin O'Connor (who knows a thing or two about rousing underdog tales, having previously directed 2004's Miracle, based on the epic American/Soviet hockey match at the 1980 Olympics) doubles our pleasure of rooting for the little guy by giving us not just one, but two underdogs, both of whom are facing off against each other in the final round of a high-profile MMA tournament hoping to bring home a million-dollar payday. In one corner, you've got Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former UFC fighter-turned-high school physics teacher that has climbed back into the ring in order to make the necessary extra cash (he's got a sick daughter, see) his public school gig isn't bringing in. And in the other corner, there's Tommy (Tom Hardy), a Marine recently back from the front who intends to turn his winnings over to the widow and children of his dead army buddy. But wait, here's the best part: these guys also happen to be brothers. How can you resist a set-up like that?

Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton may appear on the poster, but the real stars of the new fight film Warrior are the brutal, bone-shattering mixed-martial arts bouts that dominate the movie's last hour. After Hardy and Edgerton's brothers go up against a variety of opponents, from trash-talking punks to mountainous Russians, they've got nobody left to fight but each other for the million-dollar tournament purse. That sibling-on-sibling match-up put us in mind of the other great movie title bouts we've enjoyed over the years. Follow the fight card below to see some of our favorites. Two notes: We focused only on movies about fictional fighters -- and not just boxers, by the way -- so don't go looking for Raging Bull, The Fighter or When We Were Kings. Also, even though the statute of spoiler limitations would seem to have lapsed for most of these movies, I'm issuing a general Spoiler Warning for the four people out there that haven't seen Rocky. (C'mon... you knew, that was going to be at the top of the list.)

It's World Cup time, and association football fever is sweeping the globe! Of course, if you aren't currently using the metric system, you may know it better as soccer, or possibly as "that game I played in junior high." But even if you aren't a big fan, or have very little tolerance for televised sports in general, there is a way to participate in the soccer mania without enduring an actual match -- namely, by watching a marathon of soccer movies! Like real soccer matches, they take place around the world and run nearly two hours, but at least with a movie you're guaranteed three things: dramatic storylines, big-name stars and far more goals scored than you'd see in an actual game.