The 50 best sports movies of all time, ranked by griersonleitch
Photo: Vulture This story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated to include recent releases.
50. Seabiscuit If people can have hokey, against-the-odds, win-the-big-game inspirational sports movies, why can’t horses? Director Gary Ross pulls out all the stops in this adaptation of the Laura Hillenbrand best seller, and while it’s manipulative and desperately plays to the audience’s tear ducts, it still mostly works because, hey, turns out it is viscerally exciting to watch a horse come back from last place and win the big race.
46. Personal Best Also on our list of great Olympic movies, this Robert Towne drama revolves around a group of American women training for the 1980 Olympics before realizing that the United States would be boycotting them. Mariel Hemingway does a terrific star turn as the top runner, and the movie has aged well, particularly when it comes to the bisexual love triangle at its center. The early ’80s were a big time for movies featuring people running long distances in slow motion.
42. I, Tonya Have we been unfair to Tonya Harding all this time? That’s the provocative question asked by I, Tonya, a nervy biopic about the disgraced figure skater, brought to complicated life by Margot Robbie. The Tonya we meet in this comedy-drama is an ambitious athlete from a working-class background who’s been nettled by her disapproving mother all her life.
38. Major League Every actual Major League Baseball player’s favorite baseball movie, though we’re not sure that’s a mark in its favor or a strike against it. Basically a big bawdy baseball sitcom, this David S. Ward film leans into every possible baseball cliché and wrings them for all they’re worth. Charlie Sheen’s Wild Thing remains the least interesting character, but, again, not surprisingly, that’s probably why active players relate to him so much.
34. Bend It Like Beckham An inspirational soccer movie for a generation, its the story of two women who just want to play soccer but keep being thwarted by their families and a culture that tries to stand in their way. This was probably the first time you saw Keira Knightley, and it’s possible that she was never more purely likable; in a fair world, co-star Parminder Nagra would be just as big a star .
30. Happy Gilmore “Are you too good for your home?!? Answer me!” Among Adam Sandler’s most quotable early hits, Happy Gilmore is relatively more sophisticated than Billy Madison while retaining that film’s affection for moronic comedy. Sandler is Happy, a failed hockey player who discovers that he’s perfect for golf since he can drive the ball a long way — he just can’t do any of the other stuff on the green.
26. Sugar A film that speaks to so much that’s fraught about baseball — how some of its most talented players come from conditions overseas that are intolerable, only to arrive on our shores and suffer culture shock — Sugar is a minor-key heartbreaker. This drama stars Algenis Perez Soto as Miguel, an aspiring pitcher in the Dominican Republic who gets his shot at the big leagues, only to discover how unlike a sports movie that journey will be.
22. Hoosiers The movie’s small-town-white-kids ethos has frayed a bit over the years, and watching it in 2019, you find yourself wondering if you should have been rooting for South Bend in the final game all along. Still, this is a classic Big Game sports movie, with some terrifically filmed basketball scenes and a momentum in its final scenes that you almost can’t help but give yourself over to.
18. Miracle Released in 2004, during a time when America’s spirits were low in the wake of 9/11, Miracle speaks to another era when the national mood was abysmal — the late 1970s, as the economy was stagnating and Jimmy Carter was scuffling. The movie depicts the journey of the U.S. Men’s Olympic Team as they fight their way to the 1980 gold medal, and because it’s one of the country’s most famous sports triumphs, you probably know the outcome from the start.
14. When We Were Kings .youtube[data-uri="www.vulture.com/_components/youtube/instances/cjrigc9kc002n3g65obam146c@published"].border-top:before { content: 'Watch'; } Plenty of sports films are about underdogs, but When We Were Kings introduces us to arguably the most compelling ever: some past-his-prime bum named Muhammad Ali.
10. Slap Shot Paul Newman’s grizzled, appreciably dingy little hockey movie might be more beloved by fans of its sport than any other film on this list: This is how hockey fans imagine their sport to be, in its purest form.
6. Pride of the Yankees .youtube[data-uri="www.vulture.com/_components/youtube/instances/cjrcz5o1r001a3g65fj1gew9s@published"].border-top:before { content: 'Watch'; } When TV Guide did a reader poll of the most famous television moments in the history of the medium a few years ago, its readers voted Lou Gehrig’s “I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech into the top ten even though, uh, it was never actually broadcast live on television.
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