Colt Keith the movie critic? Tigers infielder has a passion for cinema

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Colt Keith grew up around rankings. He was MLB Pipeline’s No. 87 prospect going into the 2020 Draft out of high school before the Tigers selected him in the fifth round. He rose from the No. 20 prospect in the Tigers system going into the 2021 season to the second-ranked prospect in the organization, and the No. 24 prospect across baseball, when he was Detroit’s Opening Day second baseman last year.

Nearly two full seasons into his big league career, he’s still getting questions about rankings. But they’re a little different these days.

“A lot of people here are ticked that I have ‘Good Will Hunting’ in like the 85s,” he shrugged. “I just like more action, I guess. ‘Good Will Hunting’ was good; it was just more of an emotional film. But yeah, some guys definitely have some opinions.”

Turns out Keith is a movie buff. In fact, he might be becoming a budding movie critic.

He’s not giving out stars or reviews just yet, but he has rankings on Letterboxd and imdb. It’s the natural extension of a passion that began last year as a way for Keith to decompress from the pressures of baseball.

“Honestly, that's probably why I got into the rankings,” he said. “The last year and a half has been so stressful, getting into the big leagues, struggling and stuff, so I was looking for anything to get my mind away from the field. I'd find myself going 0-fer for the 10th time in a row and make an error, and I'd just go home or to the hotel and think about it for eight hours straight until I'd go to the field the next day, so I'd find anything to get my mind off it, whether that's video games, movies, things like that.

“You can talk to people about movies. I'll talk to my dad about movies [he watched] when he was growing up. But it would just get my mind off it, decompress, because when you're watching it, you're not thinking about baseball at all, so it's pretty nice.”

Keith remembers growing up watching movies with his dad. One of his favorites was the 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction.” When he started looking for more movies to watch, he found another Quentin Tarantino gem from 2019: “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

“When I really started to like those movies, I looked up movies like that and started getting into it that way,” he said. “And then I realized there's a ton of movies that aren't mainstream that I liked a lot.”

Before he knew it, he had watched hundreds of films and was looking for more. It was easy to find recommendations based on his personal preferences, but he found himself checking other people’s lists. The more he watched, the more he had his own opinions.

“I like people asking me my favorite movies and things like that, so I just started putting them into this app,” he said. “And then I just got to a point where I had like 300 movies, so I just made a top 100 list. It was a thing I'd see on TikTok a lot of people's top 100, so I just decided to make my own.”

He developed his own criteria for his rankings.

“I have a somewhat rough system. I don't go exactly by it, but it's based off of plot, characters, acting, pace of movie, things like that,” he said. “I kinda go off of that, and sometimes movies rank above others and I just kinda put them in order based off what I think. I use a top 100 list.”

A quick look at the list shows a definite genre and time frame for his favorites. But he has found himself branching out.

“There's a lot of stuff from 2005 on there,” he said. “That is probably my favorite stuff just because the graphics and everything are the best. But there's some movies like ‘Rambo -- First Blood’ and some of the Rocky movies and ‘Apocalypse Now,’ things that are a little older that I watched when I was a kid, like my dad made me watch or whatever. And then I'd watch [them again] in the last year and I really, really liked them. Even ‘Pulp Fiction’ is on the older end.

“Honestly if I see a movie's made in, like, 1975, I'm probably not going to watch it, but there's still some good ones from back then. ‘Apocalypse Now’ is kinda right up my alley with that kind of genre and things like that. It was definitely ahead of its time, I'd say.”

The only list that overshadows the movies Keith has seen is the list of movies he wants to see.

“I have like 500 on a list,” he said. “‘Unthinkable’ with Samuel L. Jackson, ‘Primal Fear’ in 1996. And then I need to watch ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ I mean, there's so many on here. I'm really looking forward to ‘The Odyssey’ next year.”