Best sports movies of all time to watch now the footy’s back
It’s been a while but the footy season is back and to get you in the mood, here are some of the best sports movies to watch in between games to inspire, energise and entertain you.
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Sport movies can inspire even the most unfit of us. From boxing and baseball to football, here are some of the best sports movies over the decades.
ROCKY: ALL OF THEM
You will struggle to find a best sports movies list anywhere that doesn’t have the original Rocky close to the top. They’re not all great and if you have to prioritise then make it Rocky and Rocky II, then jump ahead to Creed and Creed II where the quality is right up there again (that’s probably not the advice the hardcore fans will give and if you have the time start at the beginning and work your way through).
It might be almost 45 years since we first met Rocky Balboa, but this movie will never grow old. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s interesting to note that Stallone wrote all of the Rocky movies (and directed II, III, IV and Balboa).
Watch: Foxtel
THE SANDLOT (1993)
This early ’90s coming-of-age movie didn’t overly impress critics at the time but it has since become a cult classic. If you’re a fan of Stand By Me (about four 12-year-old mates who decide to search for the body of a dead teenager), this will also touch a chord.
There’s no tantalising mystery in The Sandlot, but there is a group of young boys finding their way in the world and both movies are about the importance of friendship and how they help you grow — even if they don’t last forever.
The Sandlot centres on Scott, a bit of a loner who has arrived in town and joins a group of kids who play baseball in a sandlot nearby. The only problem is Scott isn’t great at baseball, but he’s taken under the wing of the best player. Like Stand By Me, there’s a ferocious (in this case baseball-eating) dog that plays a big part of the story here. Good family fun.
Watch: Disney+
LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (1992)
Before this movie hit screens almost 30 years ago, there were whispers it would be too hard an ask to find an audience willing to hand over cash to watch a story about women’s baseball — especially women’s baseball in 1943. But those predicting a flop were dead wrong.
A League Of Their Own went on to come second at the box office in its first week (up against Batman Returns) and first in its second week on the way to a significant global box office.
With an impressive cast including Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell, the movie is based on the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — the organisation set up by a group of concerned Major League Baseball owners who thought the sport might collapse as the men were sent to war. Lots of laughs, plenty of tears and well worth 128 minutes of your time.
Watch: Foxtel and Binge
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS FRANCHISE
They are the movies that catapulted Vin Diesel and Paul Walker to action stardom and continue to this day to rake in the dollars at the box office. This high-energy car/heist/action series has earned its creators almost $6 billion since the original movie in 2001.
Dropping Dwayne Johnson into the mix from Fast Five was a genius move that reignited the interest in the franchise. Tragedy struck while filming Furious 7 when Walker was killed in a high-speed crash, with his brothers Cody and Caleb standing in to finish the films. These movies live up to their name — they are fast and they are fun.
Watch: Foxtel and Binge
THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)
A Coen Brothers classic, The Big Lebowski was inspired by Raymond Chandler’s character Philip Marlowe and his first novel The Big Sleep. It centres on Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) who is mistaken for a millionaire of the same name and is attacked by thugs who also pee on his rug that “ties the room together”.
At the urging of his bowling mates — John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak (in what many call his greatest performance ever) and Steve Buscemi’s Donny Kerabatsos — he goes about seeking restitution from his wealthier namesake and finds himself caught up in a kidnapping scheme that is as hilarious as it is absurd.
Watch: Foxtel and Binge
THE NATURAL (1984)
Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close and Kim Basinger — this could have had a fizzer of a plot and still been worth watching. Fortunately, The Natural is a great baseball story set in the late 1930s about the mysterious Roy Hobbs (Redford), who joins the Knights as a middle-aged rookie, much to the displeasure of coach Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley).
Hobbs is spectacular, as is the story as to why he hasn’t made it in the big leagues.
Watch: GooglePlay
THE LONGEST YARD
(The original, not the Adam Sandler remake)
Burt Reynolds is Paul Crewe, a former NFL superstar who is sent to prison after his life seemingly falls apart. Once inside, the dodgy prison warden ‘convinces’ him to coach a team of prisoners to play against a team of guards.
There is some underlying social messaging about the time, but this is a funny, brutal movie with a looooong brutal game worth watching. Sandler’s remake? That one’s not so good.
Watch: Foxtel and Binge
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (2002)
It is hard to believe this movie is fast approaching its 20th anniversary. Made for under 10 million bucks, this coming-of-age story, about a young British-Indian girl struggling to manage her love of football with her sometimes restricting traditional family (with a side of falling in love with your coach thrown in for good measure), was a global hit.
It turned both Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra into household names and really broke the mould in terms of female-led sports movies.
Watch: Foxtel and Binge
RUSH (2013)
Chris Hemsworth’s run as Thor tends to overshadow his other movies but this 2013 Formula One movie deserves more. Based on the fierce rivalry between James Hunt (Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl), the movie centres on the storied 1976 season where the two racers battled it out to the very end where one was awarded the championship by just a single point. Exhilarating racing scenes and well received performances from both Hemsworth and Bruhl.
Watch: Foxtel
THE BLIND SIDE (2009)
This true story about a homeless black teenager taken in by a rich white family in Tennessee who goes on to be recruited in the first round of the NFL draft might sound a little formulaic, but it won Sandra Bullock an Oscar and Golden Globe and went on to become the highest grossing sports movie (for a few years anyway).
Michael Oher was a 17-year-old who had been cycled through foster homes for years because of his mother’s drug addiction. He ends up at a Christian school where he is noticed by Leigh Anne Tuohy who takes him in after seeing him struggle — much to the shock of her conservative ‘Christian’ friends.
Watch: Foxtel and Binge