Are we especially nostalgic about sports movies and only embrace ones that show the sport the way we would hope it to be rather than how it is? My favorites take a more jaundiced look at sports. HOOP DREAMS, for instance.
Baseball movies seem the most nostalgic. What are your favorites? Which ones offer a full picture?
You're right, lots of good baseball movies. Here are 10 favorites:
ReplyDeleteField of Dreams
Bang the Drum Slowly
Bull Durham
Pride of the Yankees
Eight Men Out (certainly unpleasant)
The Stratton Story
It Happens Every Spring
The Bad News Bears
The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars & Motor Kings
A League of Their Own
The worst sports movies ever:
The Babe Ruth Story (William Bendix)
Safe at Home!
As a big Yankee fan I had to see this when it came out in 1962. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris played themselves, very very badly.
Jeff M.
Hadn't really thought about it before. Two of my favorites are North Dallas Forty and Any Given Sunday, both of which are pretty cynical, I think.
ReplyDeletethe most cynicism seems to come with football and boxing movies.
ReplyDeleteSports feed fantasies so I suspect you're right about the positive endings being preferred over downers. But an exception might be the original Brian's Song.
ReplyDeleteFootball and boxing are the primary US sports about hurting each other, though hockey always tries to high-stick its way into that club. MMA gaining currency as Real Life wrasslin'.
ReplyDeleteBendix was fine, as I remember him, in KILL THE UMPIRE...not in scary thug nor hagiography mode so much as a less goofy variation on Riley.
Among the most clear-eyed sports films I recall:
PERSONAL BEST
DOWNHILL RACER
FAT CITY
SLAPSHOT
the somewhat hagiographic telefilm BABE (haven't seen it since it was new)
HEART LIKE A WHEEL
among the worst:
THE BETSY (despite the swimming pool scene)
WHEN WE WERE KINGS (if the fetishistic worship of every backstage sweating frame of James Brown they could find wasn't enough, they so tellingly coupled that with repeated insult to Miriam Makeba)
I thought the ROCKY series was overdone. Do they actually fight like he does in the ring? I have never been to a real boxing match. On the other hand, THE CHAMP, I think, is the most sympathetic film about boxing I've seen.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, who could ever forget the swimming pool scene in THE BETSY?
ReplyDeleteNot I.
Jeff M.
I was oddly happified to learn a year or so back that Ms. Beller and Thomas Dolby wed, some years after their most intensely public lives, and apparently have had a good or at least a lasting marriage.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite movies features a bicycle race: BREAKING AWAY.
ReplyDeletesaw that again not long ago and it holds up.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/05/likable_and_unlikable_characters_in_fiction_claire_messud_and_meg_wolitzer.html
ReplyDeleteMy favorite sports movie is Bull Durham which is wise about baseball AND life. It also features one of my all-time favorite quotes: "The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." How often I have had recourse to quote that line. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteDeb
THat seems to be a very common discussion right now, Todd.
ReplyDeleteI wondered where that line came from Deb. Thanks.
Fantasies of meaningful "genre" will do that to one.
ReplyDeleteCaddyshack!
ReplyDeleteHow about Casey's Shadow?
Wow1 They both are distance hums for me. Horse racing movies? Are they more about gambling than sports?
ReplyDeleteThe only part of CADDYSHACK I really liked was Rodney. Other non baseball sports movies I like:
ReplyDeleteBrian's Song (original only)
Slap Shot
Breaking Away
Jeff M.
More horse-racing films should be about cruelty to horses, but NATIONAL VELVET through SECRETARIAT are largely about the horses and their keepers, as opposed to GUYS AND DOLLS...
ReplyDeleteBEND IT LIKE BECKHAM was certainly pleasant/reasonably true to life.
ReplyDeleteHow come no one mentioned Idol of the Crowds where John Wayne plays a chicken farmer who tries to save his farm by playing hockey? Try to top that one. I have to admit I haven't seen it, but I do have a borrowed VHS copy that I will watch at the cottage where we still have a player.
ReplyDeleteWOW!! Let us know if it's any good.
ReplyDeleteThe best boxing movies tend to be the cynical ones:
ReplyDeleteRequiem for a Heavyweight
The Set-Up
The Harder They Fall
There is a surprising lack of good soccer (ouch, I hate that word - you yanks are just WRONG) movies. BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, sure. SHE'S THE MAN is also quite good - except for the actual football (ha!) scenes. I haven't seen THE DAMNED UNITED but I have heard good things about it.
ReplyDeleteThere are of course many documentaries out there. I guess I'm partial but I just love the footage from the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, some of which can be found on youtube. Things were so much simpler back then.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvN6DD8fMJ4
And speaking of 1912, there's this about the remarkable Jim Thorpe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlur2JYDYhg
For soccer movies, The Damned United was great.
ReplyDeleteSeabiscuit was a good enough horse racing movie too.