Yesterday, my good friend Jason Kurylo demonstrated just how wrong he can be at times: he published a list of the ten sports movies that you really ought to re-watch. The post’s purpose was the same as all posts of that nature: to make people argue with the author. So argue with him I shall. Cool Runnings, Jason? COOL RUNNINGS??
10. Men with Brooms
Buy it here.
If you’re going to recommend a comedy about a fringe sport, you could do worse than this Canadian romantic comedy starring Paul Gross, Molly Parker and Leslie Nielsen. The last will and testament of a recently dead curling coach tasks his former rink with reuniting to win a bonspiel by placing the rock containing his ashes on the button to win the tournament. It is possibly the finest Canadian sports movie that doesn’t feature gratuitous hockey violence. It is also, possibly owing to its amusingly terrible Canadianness, unlikely to appear on many top-25 sports movie lists.
9. Ali
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You even dream of not watching’ this movie you better wake up an’ apologize! Michael Mann had planned this biopic of Muhammad Ali for a couple of years before production got underway. Will Smith, who Mann had in mind for the title role, didn’t think he was up to the challenge of portraying the legendary boxer, and turned him down several times. Smith was wrong. He spent a year learning everything about Ali, learning how to box, and gaining enough weight to look the part. He now thinks his portrayal of Ali was his greatest role, and his dedication to the part shows.
8. Caddyshack
Buy it here.
It’s a terrible tragedy that Happy Gilmore is now remembered as the funniest golf comedy ever. The unforgettable 1980s flick Caddyshack stars a small, burrowing rodent that’s funnier than Adam Sandler, and it has Rodney Dangerfield, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray at their comedic peaks to boot.
7. Rudy
Buy it here.
The king of the cheeseball uplifting sports movie, Rudy stars Sean Astin as a student who overcomes a learning disability and his hobbit-esque physical stature to make it onto Notre Dame University’s football team. It’s nigh impossible to not get goosebumps from the final scene, when chants of “Rudy! Rudy!” echo throughout the stadium.
6. A League of Their Own
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Geena Davis, Madonna and Tom Hanks star in possibly the first Hollywood movie ever made about an all-women sports league. The league featured in this dramedy is real. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was formed in the 1940’s when World War II threatened the cancellation of Major League Baseball. As I’m sure you expect, the players were derided and condescended to, and A League of Their Own does a good job of portraying that while keeping the tone upbeat and letting Davis, Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell and the rest of the female ensemble carry the show. The film took in an impressive $132M at the box office back in 1992, and has been selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry.
5. The Battered Bastards of Baseball
Watch it here.
Many may not have heard of this Netflix documentary, but it’s well worth your time. It chronicles the rise and fall of the Portland Mavericks, America’s last independent baseball team. Actor Kurt Russell is one of the main storytellers as his father, Bing, was the owner of the club. This is a great little story about a small single-A club that moves into the stadium vacated by the relocated ‘AAA’ Portland Beavers. (A stadium, by the way, that still exists as the soccer-specific Providence Park, occupied by the Portland Timbers.) Lacking an affiliation with a Major League Baseball club, the Mavericks hold open tryouts, dominate their league, thumb their nose at the establishment and generally succeed where a larger club failed. It’s a must-watch for anyone who bemoans the commercialization of modern sports.
4. Any Given Sunday
Buy it here.
Al Pacino carries this gridiron movie, starring as the embattled coach of a middling pro football team. Jamie Foxx turns in a solid performance as the team’s third-string quarterback, pressed into service due to a string of injuries and now a phenom garnering endorsement deals and more money than he knows what to do with. The fire ’em up speech to the troops before the big game is one of the most overused cliches in sports movies, but Pacino’s is the best ever written.
3. Moneyball
Buy it here.
Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager who puts together a playoff team out of discarded spare parts and underrated players by recognizing that they have attributes that are overlooked by most people in the baseball business. The film is based off of the book by the same name that popularized sports analytics, but far from being dry, the film is alternately funny and moving, and has strong performances from Pitt, Jonah Hill, and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman.
2. The Wrestler
Buy it here.
Mickey Rourke’s return after a two-year hiatus has him portraying a washed-up professional wrestler living out of a trailer park and working for minimum wage at a local grocery store. His daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) wants nothing to do with him. The stripper that he tries to strike up a relationship with (Marisa Tomei) might be interested, if only he’d stop killing himself for another shot at glory. For folks like me who were once huge wrestling fans, The Wrestler is a sobering reminder of the physical price these athletes pay to earn their living and the struggles they can sometimes face once their star has faded. Bruce Springsteen’s theme song by the same name is icing on a very good cake.
1. Field of Dreams
Buy it here.
Creating a top-ten sports movies list that doesn’t feature Field of Dreams should be grounds for being catapulted into the middle of an Iowa corn field. An Iowan farmer begins hearing voices, and is persuaded by those voices that if he cuts down his corn crop to build a baseball field in the middle of nowhere, the ghosts of the Chicago Black Sox will return as spirits to play baseball for tourists who will suddenly decide to show up. If you think that sounds absolutely ridiculous, then you, good sir or madam, are correct. Nevertheless, the performances of Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, (an astoundingly young-looking) Ray Liotta and Burt Lancaster (in his final role) are top-notch, and the film nails every emotional moment it tries for.