Time to have a little fun. Everybody here loves sports. Sports movies, maybe not so much. Lets face it most of them aren't that great. A lot of them are down right ofensive to the fans of the sport in the movie. Still, upon research, there are more good ones than I remembered. So I've made my list of sports movies, broken down into each sport. I will select my favorites, and if you disagree, or if I've ommitted something, please bring it on.
Baseball, football, and basketball will each get their own posts later, as there are so many movies on each one of them. Right now we're going with a couple of sports with not a lot of movies repping them.
BOXING
Boxing had the only two sports movies to win an Ocar for best picture, 'Rocky', and 'Million Dollar Baby'. Here's my list.....
1.T.....'Raging Bull'
1.T.....'Rocky'
3.........'Cinderella Man'
4.........'Ali'
5.........'Diggstown'
Raging Bull should have won best picture in 1980. I guess the Academy didn't want to give it to another boxing movie so soon after Rocky won the award. Cinderella Man was beautiful, way underrated. PaulGiammatti was brilliant. RussellCrowe was pretty good too. Ali was just all right. WillSmith mugging is not entertaining for me after about ten minutes. I've seen it enough on 'The Fresh Prince'. Diggstown is a guilty pleasure to watch. JamesWoods is a piece of work. Honorable mention...TheHurricane. Worst boxing movie ever...MillionDollarBaby.
AUTORACING
There were not many good auto racing movies to choose from. Here's my list.....
1.......'Last American Hero'
2.......'Stroker Ace'
3........'Le Mans'
4........'Speedway'
5.........'Greased Lightning''
Not one great auto racing movie. Sad. Last American Hero is a very good movie about the life of Jr. Johnson. Great racing scenes from the early 1970s between RichardPetty and BobbyAllison. I went with Stroker Ace at my number two because it's fun to watch, has some old NASCAR scenes from the 1980's, and a great CharlieDaniels song as the title track. Le Mans was the first state of the art, in car camera, racing movie. That state of the art was in 1971 though. Elvis in Speedway. Another guilty pleasure. Watch it for some old drivers and race scenes from the 1960s. RichardPryor portrayed NASCAR's first black driver, WendellScott, in Greased Lightning. Honorable mention...HeartlikeaWheel, TalladegaNights, DaysofThunder, and Six Pack. Worst auto racing movies ever....ThePettyStory and Driven.
Jags,
Good list on the boxing flicks. Raging bull is one of my favs as well. I also liked Cinderella man and thought it was a great movie.
As for the racing movies I haven't seen any of those except a few you named in the honorable mention part. I'm kind of young (34) so I'm sure you can guess as to which those ones are.
Hmmm, I am lacking in my sports movies education. Of the boxing movies I've only seen Rocky (all of them) and like the first couple the best.
For Auto Racing movies of your top 5 I've only seen three, Stroker Ace (didn't like, too silly) LeMans - Loved this one, and Speedway (Saw it a LONG time ago). As for the honorable mentions, I thought Days of Thunder was very good. However I Didnt like Talledega Nights at all -- Too silly/dumb for me.
Countryjag, great pics, particularly the boxing pics. Raging Bull was a GREAT movie--I remember seeing it in high school. DeNiro's portrayal of Jake LaMotta is the stuff legends are made of. You could feel the rage coming through the screen. Rocky was very well written and produced. Great portrayal of the underdog in life working and fighting to achieve his goals.
The best boxing movie I ever saw was "Requiem for a Heavyweight". Anthony Quinn was brilliant as the punch drunk, old heavyweight. Jackie Gleason was brilliant as his manager. The problem was this movie was so dark, it made "Raging Bull" look like it was made at Disney.
gambit....I'm not that old. I wasn't around to watch these old movies at the drive-in. Most of my racing movie DVDs are from ex-girlfriends, who knew I like racing.
I would guess the racing movies you saw were Days of Thunder, and Talladega Nights. Please don't think they rep the real NASCAR. Thanks for chiming in, and checking out my blog.
Gerrel...true on Rocky. Each one got progressively worse. I liked Stroker because it was so dumb. You could tell they didn't take it too seriously when making it. I don't think anyone thinks NASCAR is as portayed in Stroker Ace.
Howevah, There are plenty of folks who think Days of Thunder is a documentary. I know you are too knowledgeable to take Days seriously. Right?
jon.....much agreement on DeNiro's performance in Raging Bull. I believe it was by far his best work. With his role in 'Heat' being a distant second.
I watched Rocky again not long ago, and I was surprised at how well it has held up. I was expecting it to be real bad, but it was still pretty good. It was hard to believe it won an Oscar for best pic, and Raging didn't.
Jags,
Sorry didn't mean to imply that you was old. you would be correct in your guess as to which movies I saw. I however do watch NASCAR from time to time and do not believe those movies rep. the sport in the least bit.
rocky 1 and 2 were great movies., then we got a little carryed away!!!! when the last one came out i waited to see it on DVD, bad movie!!!! i think it might have been airplane?? but didnt i see a poster on the wall saying rocky 12???? a spoof of course
my mom went to see naked gun. and told me id hate it because she felt it made fun of baseball, i went to see it and said to her later no it didnt thats baseball spitting. scratching, also when neilson makes fun of the umpire??? its baseball!!!!
Well CJ, as you know, I am old (OK ancient) so one of my all time favorite racing movies is one most have probably never seen, Grand Prix (James Garner). As for the worst racing movie ever - it had to be Driven (Stallone). That was one horrible flick.
As for boxing, I loved Requiem For A Heavyweight.
Unlike you, I really like Days of Thunder and another old racing flick was good too, Redline 7000.
By the way, I think Hoosiers is the greatest sports movie ever. Of course, having coached high school and college basketball in Indiana, I'm extremely biased. That story is based on an upset in Hoosier hysteria history when Milan knocked off the mighty Muncie Central Bearcats (the only eight time state champions in Indiana high school history). Indiana was one of the very last states to end single class basketball (2003 I believe).
Last edited by HoosierRacer13 on March 2nd at 10:16 AM.
HR13....So what was your favorite silent movie on sports? HAH.
Grand Prix was a good one. I saw it not long ago on one of the classic movie networks. I guess I'm going to have to find 'Requiem' on DVD. 'Driven' was horrible. They had some good in car camera shots though. A bad rip off of 'Le Mans'.
Marty Smith, the #### reporter on espn, said he learned everything he knows about racing from 'Days'. Sad.
Nice post friend,
I did this blog about a year ago or so. It always draws interesting comments. There are so many good sports movies. We all have our favorites for different reasons. Pick your best and nice post friend. Best wishes. fenfan
fen....thanks for reading and the comment. I've only been here for two months. I figured someone had done this before. I was just hoping it wasn't 3 or 4 months ago. Stop by anytime bro.
I would also go along with Grand Prix as one of the best, if not the best racing movie ever made. I would also like to add the 1930's movie "The Big Wheel" starring Mickey Rooney.
Boxing? Got to have Bogart in "The Harder They Fall".
CJ, Pretty good picks. I liked Cinderella Man. Only thing bad about it was the way they vilified Max Baer. Can't argue with putting Raging Bull at the top.
LeMans was great on the big screen when I first saw it. Not much storyline, but that's racin! Istill like to watch it in the springtime when my racing antennae start sprouting!
Noticed you didn't include Grand Prix. It was a little long and over done I suppose.
Very good list. I agree w/ bosox61 that Requiem for a Heavyweight is right up on the list. Bogart is great (as usual) and Quinn-Gleason play very well off each other.
CR....Much agreement with all your comments. I guess it made for a beter movie by having Baer played as such an unlikeable character. Thanks for the chime.
Last edited by countryjag on March 4th at 9:52 AM.
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