Ok, I have to admit, I love sports movies. There's something about them that more then most other genres that can manipulate your emotions, make you feel joy, make you cry, make you rage. Often times they are based in some semblance of reality translating the experience of the writer into a movie platform.
My earliest memory of a sports movie was the Bad News Bears, not the watered down lame remake, but the hard charging kids throwing around incredible language and a complete drunk as a coach 70's movie, where Ogilvie was able to Les Nessman his team to victory in one of the most uplifting moments that I've ever seen, and normally it would make my list, but lets see what happens.
1) Mikey dies in Rocky III - Now to be honest nothing can compare to the first two Rocky movies, they were raw and emotional and had serious Impact. When Rocky III came around they upped the Foley so every punch sounded over exaggerated, they upped the 80's cheese, glamorized Adrianne and watered down the Franchise. The best thing in Rocky III was that Mr T played a truly terrifying opponent who in a lot of ways should have been an amazingly sympathetic character. But the movie's tone changed for me when during a pre match scuffle between Rocky and Clubber, Mickey has a heart attack. His death scene where Rocky and Mickey say goodbye was amazing and heartbreaking
2) We are Marshall
The story of the tragic airplane crash that nearly wiped off the Marshall football team was more about the effect on the survivors and the effect on the town then it was on the football team. This movie had so many strong acting performances. But you get chills when during the meeting where the University decides on the fate of the team that the student and team supporters gathered outside the window.
I have to put this in because I had trouble with deciding on this because the pregame speech at the memorial nearly tore my heart out of my chest.
3) The Karate Kick final match
The Karate Kid is the ultimate uplifting story of how someone overcomes bullying. This movie was in a lot of ways pure movie cheese and at times a little to 80's for me on rewatch. But the underlying story of the relationship between teacher and student, the merciless bullying and then overcoming everything to win in the end. Yeah we know the Crane Technique is literally crap, and in the second movie he gets it fed to him. But the way this was filmed was amazing and I get goosebumps whenever I see it.
4) Rudy - The sack and carried off the field.
The true story of Rudy Ruettiger is probably a lot more interesting then what was shown in the movie as they glossed over his time between high school and fnally becoming a walk on practice roster player for the Irish, and even in the movie Rudy tended to come across at times as a little more self righteous and irritating then heroic. But man this movie has an awesome message around having a life long goal and doing anything that you can do to get there. The last scene in the movie which featured Rudy going on the field to the chants from the fan and the explosion of the fans as he makes the sack and is carried off of the field on his team mates shoulders makes my heart pound every time.
BTW for those that are interested, here's the actual sack
5) A League of their own - Bettty Spaghetti
I have to admit that I really like this movie because its so heart warming, and Tom Hanks and Geena Davis were absolutely stellar in it, and there were some great story lines. But in the middle of this uplifting movie they still manage to break your heart as Betty Sphaghetti learns that her husband has been killed in Europe.
6) Miracle - The win, the speech
Two incredibly powerful scenes for this movie that made it really uplifting. The first was Kurt Russell's pregame speech. Russell doesn't get enough credit for the job he did as Herb Brooks in this movie and that speech had me ready to go through a wall.
The victory scene with the countdown. The cool thing about this movie is how they recreated the last minutes of this game down to fine detail and overlapped the Al Michael's do you believe in miracles call. Again total goose bumps
7) Field of dreams - Do you want to have a catch, they will come
This movie was designed to destroy men's dating lives or improve them because taking your date to the movie and sniffling away during the catch scene can either raise your stature or kill it and send you back to your life of stormtrooper action figures and tang. As well the They will come speech by JEJ is an awesome listen.
8) Locker Room speech - Hoosiers
An absolutely awesome movie based loosely around the true story of the Milan High School State Basketball champions of 1954. This movie didn't have the rapid pace of other sports movies and plods in some places. But the Hackman was awesome in this movie and a complete emotional magnet. The final locker room speech is not what you expect in these movies, and as an add on scene the last scene with the commentary in the back ground is one of my favorites
9) Vision Quest - The warmup.
I don't know why I liked this movie so much. But again it had some really cool moments in it. They also did an amazing job of building up the final fight and the struggle by out main character to get there and win over all the odds against him. I loved the warmup scene because it was equivalent to a man walking to his destiny and I just love how it was filmed. It also helped that they used Lunatic Fringe as the song and for a while it became my pregame song of choice.
10) Friday Night Lights - Coming out of the tunnel
This thing captures so many things for me. When I played sports and I used to get so keyed up and nervous before any game that I played. Even when I coached I was always internally charged up and at the same time a bundle of nerves. But the coolest part of this scene besides the obvious, was when the players walked up the tunnel and were teenage boys and you could see the apprehension and nerves and then the helmets went on, and the sound track exploded.
Honorable mentions - The homerun in the natural. Wild Thing Major League, The boardwalk scene in the Wrestler, The acceptance speech in Brian's Song.
Side notes
A few years ago when I was coaching, in training camp I was looking for a video to send to the players to pump them up and found this beauty, first 2:20, then added on some clips around mental preperation. But that first 2:30 was awesome
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Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 06-01-2020 at 08:12 PM.
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Sports movies are tough to throw up some of the great scenes, because the entire movie is actually moving towards that point, in a lot of the cases. I would hate to ruin that moment for people. You did a good job of avoiding that with your clips.
Hoosiers would be on my list. I'm a bit of a sucker for baseball movies though.
Costner's body breaking down in Perfect Game.
Pitt staring down the scouts in Moneyball.
A train going across the field in Brewster's Millions.
Costner trash talking in Bull Durham.
Selleck telling his pitcher to stand up in Mr. Baseball.
Quaid walking onto the diamond in the Rookie.
Redford taking batting practice in The Natural.
Anything in Major League.
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Trouble with the Curve
"That's known as trouble with a curve" - Gus Lobel
Gus Loblel (Clint Eastwood) is a scout with the Atlanta Braves who is struggling to stay with the team due to his age. His daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) who works for a law firm, comes out North Carolina to help her dad and finds a hidden gem that threatens to expose the the teams #1 pick/ hitting phenom as a mistake.
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"That's known as trouble with a curve" - Gus Lobel
Gus Loblel (Clint Eastwood) is a scout with the Atlanta Braves who is struggling to stay with the team due to his age. His daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) who works for a law firm, comes out North Carolina to help her dad and finds a hidden gem that threatens to expose the the teams #1 pick/ hitting phenom as a mistake.
That was a fantastic movie. Amy Adam's was so good in it.
But anything with Clint in it is bound to shine.
But yeah, I loved that scene "Jesus Christ he knows what's coming and he still can't hit it" The ultimate F u scene.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
the best story that came from that movie was the Reeves was offered a tryout with the Raven's because he threw the ball like a QB with a lot of range.
There are very few movies where the actors are credible playing athletes. (Yeah, I'm looking at you Rob Lowe). So they bring in actual athletes to double for them.
In football former Stamp Rick Johnson appeared in a bunch of movies as a stunt QB.
But in the replacement that was Reeves throwing the ball.
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Basically every scene from Remember The Titans belongs on this list. And this probably isn't the best or most poignant one. But damn if I don't remember this line and tear up every time watching this scene.
"You blitz all night!"
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Roy 'Tin Cup' McAvoy : I hit it again because that shot was a defining moment, and when a defining moment comes along, you define the moment... or the moment defines you.
New list - great moments in sports movies
