30 Best Sports Movies of All Time
This list was compiled by Rolling Stone in August,
2010.
1. Hoop Dreams (1994)
"...a three-hour odyssey about high school kids William Gates
and Arthur Agee as they try to make their way to the NBA. A landmark
American documentary, this compassionate labor of love..."
2. Rocky (1976)
"...a surprisingly lived-in, sensitive
drama about a broken-down boxer who gets one last, very unlikely
chance to prove himself against the World Heavyweight Champion..."
3. The Bad News Bears (1976)
"...so timeless — even if the sight
of Walter Matthau playing a beer-guzzling single guy overseeing latchkey
children screams 'Yes, this most definitely is the 1970s.' Writer Bill
Lancaster and director Michael Ritchie capture the pressure grown-ups
put on pre-teens who have more on their minds than sports."
4. Raging
Bull (1980)
"...a brutal, unromantic portrait of the sport and the film's real-life
protagonist — the charmless but utterly compelling Jake LaMotta
(Robert De Niro)...Less a biopic than a psychological study of what it
takes to get in the ring (and what happens when you take that killer
instinct home with you)."
5. Caddyshack (1980)
"...eminently quotable and supremely rewatchable, Caddyshack has
earned a sizable cult following since arriving in theaters in the summer
of 1980, and it's easy to see why..."
6. Bull Durham
(1988)
"A tribute to those whose love for the
game needs no limelight, Bull Durham is at once a breezy romance,
a knowing look at the less-glamorous aspects of America's pastime, and
a story about how the compromises of aging aren't just unavoidable — they're
far preferable to clinging to the past."
7. Slap Shot (1977)
"...this spirited, profane tribute to
sports' lost causes and those who see them through to the end. Paul Newman
stars as a player/coach who resorts to questionable, often violent, tactics
to boost the profits of the Charlestown Chiefs, the local heroes of a
failing steel-mill town."
8. When We Were Kings (1996)
"...Oscar-winning documentary is pretty
much the definitive last word on the legendary bout, complete with talking-head
testimonies from Norman Mailer and George Plimpton, training clips and
footage of the moment the Greatest takes back the belt (from George Forman
in the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight)."
9. Senna (2010)
"Brazil's Ayrton Senna became a national
hero and the photogenic face of the Formula One circuit in the Eighties
and Nineties before an accident at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994
ended his life..."
10. Friday Night Lights (2004)
"... balancing documentary-inspired handheld
camerawork against the soaring emotions of the players' lives both off
and on the field, then grounding the entire affair via a rock-solid performance
from Billy Bob Thornton as a deeply invested coach."
11. White Men Can't Jump (1992)
"...Real-life pals Woody Harrelson and Wesley
Snipes make for a sharp comedic dynamic duo as dead-end Venice Beach
streetballers reluctantly teaming up to win local competitions...
12. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
"Like most sports biopics of the time,
this retelling about Gehrig's life, career and ultimate demise from ALS
(a disease that's synonymous with his name) is shamelessly sentimental,
incredibly inspiring and focuses just as much on mythologizing the man
as it does the game."
13. Hoosiers (1986)
"... this dizzyingly feel-good sports movie in which a troubled
coach (Gene Hackman) motivates a group of underdog 1950s Indiana high
schoolers to play the best basketball of their lives by — wait
for it — sticking to the fundamentals."
14. Murderball (2005)
"...what makes Murderball – so named for the brutal sport
of wheelchair rugby it focuses on – such a great film is that
it skips all the gooey, inspirational bulls--t, instead chronicling the
burgeoning, bloody rivalry between the U.S. and Canadian teams."
15. Fat City (1972)
"...John Huston's fatalistic film about the relationship between
the down-and-out alcoholic boxer Billy (Stacy Keach) and Ernie, the young-up-and-comer
(Jeff Bridges) who inspires the older fighter to try for a comeback.
It’s a boxing movie more concerned with between-bouts trials and
traps than what goes on in the ring."
16. The Endless Summer (1966)
"The greatest surfing picture of all time, this unassuming piece
of counterculture anthropology is so likable that it had kids around
the world buying boards and heading to the California coast in search
of the perfect barrel."
17. North Dallas Forty (1979)
"Set among the players and management of a team
semi-loosely modeled after the Dallas Cowboys, Ted Kotcheff's down-and-dirty
sports drama does double duty as a broad satire as it delves into
the corrupt underbelly of professional football – the drugs,
the sex, the backstabbing, and the bureaucratic incompetence..."
18. The Wrestler (2008)
"...Mickey Rourke’s Randy "The Ram" Robinson:
an ex-superstar who gets beat to hell whenever he entertains. Director
Darren Aronofsky's film lingers over the sport's lurid details (performers
using blades to make their shows more visceral), and contrasts the
Ram's colorful costumes with the bleak existence of his life offstage..."
19. The Natural (1984)
"...in this loose adaptation of Bernard Malamud's
novel. Robert Redford plays the once-promising phenom Roy Hobbs,
who, in his mid 30s, finally gets his shot at the big leagues after
disappearing from the scene for mysterious reasons..."
20. The Big
Lebowski (1998)
"Joel and Ethan Coen's Raymond Chandler-inspired shaggy dog
story is, among its other qualities, a great bowling movie...The Big
Lebowski captures how much of the experience of chucking a heavy
ball down a lane depends on a number of factors: alley ambience, team
camaraderie, between-frames taunts, and fetishistic equipment maintenance."
21. Victory (1981)
"Based on the Hungarian film Two Half Times in Hell,
director John Huston's potboiler stars Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone,
and Brazilian superstar Pele as WWII POWs who're going to use a match
against the Germans as an opportunity to escape..."
22. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor
Kings (1976)
"Co-produced by Motown honcho Berry Gordy and directed by a
pre-Saturday Night Fever John Badham, this period baseball comedy
recalls the age of barnstorming, when pro athletes supplemented their
income by traveling the country to play against rubes..."
23. Bend It Like Beckham (2002, UK)
"...Gurinder Chadha's follow-your-dreams fable wouldn't work
half as well if weren't for future ER star Parminder Nagra's winning
performance and a real knack for nailing how sports can boost the self-esteem
and self-identity of young women."
24. Any Given Sunday (1999)
"... this look at a turbulent season in the life of a struggling
Miami football franchise...That collective sense of anxiety and hopelessness
is just one of the reasons why Pacino's climactic "Life's just a
game of inches" speech to his troops has earned its place as one
of the all-time greatest sports movie speeches."
25. Blue Chips (1994)
"Basketball-fanatic director William Friedkin populated screenwriter
Ron Shelton's story of college hoops corruption with the likes of Larry
Bird, Bob Knight, Dick Vitale, Bob Cousy, and Shaquille O’Neal — some
as themselves, and others as characters from a fictional west coast university..."
26. Rudy (1993)
"...you've got a story about a hard-working, huge-hearted hero
overcomes all obstacles (dyslexia, diminutive size, coach Dan Devine)
to get his shot in the final home game of the 1975 season..."
27. Chariots of Fire (1981, UK)
"It's remembered today primarily for its pulsing Vangelis synthesizer
score and that shot of Olympians running along a beach in slow-motion — but
director Hugh Hudson's Oscar-winning sports drama is anything but an
easy callback punchline..."
28. Miracle (2004)
"...one of the finest attributes of Gavin O'Connor's
tribute to gruff coach Herb Brooks is that it never stops reminding
us that the man who led the underdog U.S. hockey team to an unlikely
gold medal was no touchy-feely, heart-tugging dude."
29. Tin Cup (1996)
"Kevin Costner reunited with his Bull Durham writer-director
Ron Shelton for this golf-themed rom-com, playing Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy,
a burned out ex-pro who tries to win the heart of a woman (Rene Russo)
by out-shooting her boyfriend (Don Johnson) at the U.S. Open..."
30. No No: A Dockumentary (2014)
"Dock Ellis is most famous for claiming that
he once pitched a no-hitter while tripping on LSD, but as Jeff Radice's "dockumentary" makes
clear, the Pirates hurler had a fairly distinguished career, intersecting
with one of baseball's wildest decades..."
Sports
Films 
