With all the great sports going on right now, including the uneventful return of the NHL last night, and my recent watching of "The Longest Yard" on DVD, I felt I'd put up my take on:
The Top 10 Best Sports Movies
10. Rudy - There's something about a good underdog story that makes a great sports movie...and this is one of the best. The last scene always gives me goosebumps.
9. A League of Their Own - Call it a shitty pick since it's about women baseball players if you want, but this is a really solid movie. Tom Hanks is freakin' amazing in this and I would definitely consider it one of the best.
8. Major League - This is a staple of mine...I think I've seen it over 50 times, including the terrible made-for-TV versions. Wild Thing out of the pen is always a money moment.
7. Bull Durham - Most people would put this higher up, but I'm really not that big of a fan. It does have some classic baseball lines, especially the Costner speech about what he believes in.
6. The Natural - Again, this is one other people may put up higher, but I really think it's only the second half of the movie that makes this one great...plus the soundtrack.
5. Remember the Titans - I think as far as "movies" go, this is a great one...then add to that the football parts, and you're sitting in the top 5.
4. Any Given Sunday - It's a bit corny at times, but the football scenes and Pacino's speech about "A Game of Inches" makes this one a classic. Man, that speech is great.
3. Field of Dreams - Everytime I watch it, I just marvel at how great a story it is. It could just as easily be my #1 with these other two.
2. Miracle - This one doesn't get much respect, but I think it is one of the best team sport movies out there. The scene where the coach works them until the guy says he plays for the USA is awesome, and the Miracle on Ice is one of the best moments in sports to see on the big screen.
1. Rocky - This is THE underdog movie, and a sports classic. I don't care what anyone else says, this is my #1.
Getting this list to 10 was tough.
6 comments:
wow. it's amazing that two friends can have such terribly different top 10 sports movies. I'll post mine in a bit when I finish reeling from your crapfest.
In the wings: North Dallas Forty (only seen 10 minutes of it and that could shoot it up the list).
20. Rocky III / Major League / Tin Cup
19. Karate Kid
18. Miracle
14. Any Given Sunday / Varsity Blues / All the Right Moves / The Program (with the original "laying in the road" scene)
11. Caddyshack / Happy Gilmore / SlapShot
9. Field of Dreams / Bull Durham
8. The Longest Yard
6. The Hustler / Rounders
5. The Pistol
4. Hoosiers
3. Prefontaine (one was better than the other, but I forget which was better)
2. Rudy
1. Breaking Away
Poker is not a sport...so I'm gonna disregard "Rounders". On a related note, I just saw the movie "The Big Town" which is about craps. It's pretty decent, if you haven't seen it yet.
Also, am I to believe that you liked Rocky III the best of all the Rocky's, given that you have it at 20 and no others on the list? That just destroyed any credibility your list had.
I would put Rocky later in the 20s.
Rocky III trumps Rocky because of its eternal nature. You will always want to see certain scenes in Rocky III. The same came not be said for Rocky. There is no better "getting in shape" montage than in Rocky III. Also there's no better ending in a Rocky movie than in III when Rocky tells Apollo to ring the bell and he goes "ding ding" with that stupid hand gesture and then they both go to fight and it ends with both of them about to knock the shit out of each other. There are no such "chill" scenes in Rocky.
In addition your very reason for putting Rocky at the top is that it is an "underdog" movie. Rocky is not a true "underdog" movie. It's a story that eerily parallels what happened to Mike Tyson when Buster Douglas caught him sleeping. Rocky wasn't better than Apollo, Rocky caught Apollo sleeping (and adds to the awful black lazy athlete stereotype -- though this stereotype character was wisely made more whole and filled out by also portraying Apollo as the savvy business man trying to take care of his family monetarily by leveraging his boxing fame before his career cooled off.
That's why Rounders and The Hustler are where they are. They're both not "sports" movies, but they still fit the list for some reason. Otherwise we might have to take all golf movies off the list.
Does BASEketball count as a sport?
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