And now, for something completely different: football. The first trailer for Warners' We Are Marshall made both my roommate and I cry, which isn't saying much for me, because I get weepy at promos for The Office, but for her, that's an achievement. Check out Premiere's November issue if you're not familiar with the Marshall University story.

We open with a comely young lady (Brokeback Mountain's Kate Mara, for those keeping score at home) kissing her football player boyfriend goodbye as he boards a plane. Head coach Robert Patrick, who will always be the T-1000 as far as I'm concerned, briefly speechifies to the plane full of players, boosters, and administrators, leading the cheer "We Are — Marshall!" A second later the screen twitches, jerks in a circle, and goes to black — the plane has smashed into the side of a mountain, killing all 75 people on board. We see Matthew Fox, playing the only coach who wasn't on the plane, in a locker room, sobbing.

Director McG really goes there, showing the burning forest and a stunned-looking David Strathairn, playing the university's president, as we see football players who weren't on the plane lined up on the field for a tribute and Mara handing her engagement ring back to her boyfriend's father (the magnificent Ian McShane). Fox voiceovers, "I promised mothers that I'd look after their sons — there's not one of them left," and if you aren't weeping at this point, you are a meaner Irishman than I, because Matthew Fox can really sell some tragedy. How else do you explain six seasons of Party of Five?

Matthew McConaughey in We Are Marshall.

And now, the meat of the film: what comes after the crash. Strathairn plans to cancel Marshall's embattled and now leaderless football program, until the arrival of Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey, wearing some truly gnarly sideburns and a ratty mustache), who sets about recruiting a new team of baseball, basketball, and soccer players. Ah, the rousing soundtrack of a drumline — beacon of hope! Perhaps if Home of the Brave had included a cadence ... nah. Probably still would have been pabulum. A collage of rough hits show that this new Marshall team is at the mercy of the foley guys, who really like smashing things together.

Third act meltdown: Fox loses it at cocaptain Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie) and I think we're going to need a Rudy moment as McShane intones, "This is not about the game. This is about what happened to this town." We see Mara alone in a diner, the handmade memorial in the woods, and then a mob of students on the president's lawn, chanting "We Are — Marshall!" And I'm sobbing.

McConaughey makes a stirring oration in front of the formal memorial to the victims (the real one in Huntington, West Virginia), saying, "Funerals end today!" The Marshall squad takes the field in a herd of green and white and we close up on the memorial, the chant still ringing in the background, as McConaughey holds his kid, asking, "What day is it, son?" "Game day!" "What day?" "Game day!" "Time to play till the whistle blows."

Seriously? I'm a mess here. Now, I adore a rousing football movie. Rudy? Yep. Varsity Blues? You bet. Jerry Maguire? Of course. I even get psyched when I hear the ESPN theme music. But this, I'm going to love this. It's sad, it's stirring, it's epic. The score under this trailer, a sensitive and softly tuned orchestral swelling, fits the emotion, and rises with the cliché. Yes, it's still a cliché, but it isn't as offensively airbrushed as the Home of the Brave pop-pastiche. I love the movies. Just not the kind that invoke Dave Freaking Matthews to tell me how to feel about a war.