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A League Of Their Own (1992)
Playing rounders for a living is a tough job - but someone's gotta do it. And, in 1943 America, with Joe DiMaggio and co off fighting Gerry, it was down to the womenfolk to keep the sport of baseball ticking over. As it happens, the All-American Girls' Professional Baseball League became popular enough that it survived for a further eight years after the War came to an end. But 'A League of Their Own' tells the story of those first pioneers to replace their..... |
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Bad News Bears (1976)
One of director Michael Ritchie's most universally recognized comedies, THE BAD NEWS BEARS is a film that continues to entertain audiences of all ages. The story concerns a hopeless Little League team that eventually scores big when it acquires a new coach, Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), a grouchy, beer-guzzling pool cleaner who takes the position for some extra cash. When he realizes that his players are a bunch of talentless misfits..... |
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Bang The Drum Slowly (1973)
Only those with ice water in their veins won't get misty-eyed watching this moving film about the friendship of two professional baseball players, one of whom--in every sense--is playing his last season. A pre-stardom Robert De Niro portrays a rather simple-minded rookie catcher who comes under the wing of a veteran pitcher (Michael Moriarty). When De Niro's character is diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, Moriarty tries to help him get through one.... |
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Breaking Away (1979)
Dennis Christopher stars as a recent high school graduate in Bloomington, Indiana, who is caught with his friends -- Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley -- coasting between high school and deciding what to do with the rest of their lives. The four friends are snobbishly looked down upon by the college students of the town as "cutters," since they were born in Bloomington and their parents worked in the local limestone quarries.... |
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Brian's Song (1971)
While women shed more than a few tears over Love Story back in 1970, men had their equivalent with Brian's Song on TV. This biopic about the Chicago Bears' Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers is no mere sports film. It's one of those transcendent stories that struck a rare cultural nerve, a sensitive film about love, friendship, cancer, racial harmony, and football that came along at just the right time. James Caan is at his free-spirited best as Piccolo, and.... |
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Bull Durham (1988)
Bull Durham is about minor league baseball. It's also about romance, sex, poetry, metaphysics, and talent--though not necessarily in that order. Susan Sarandon plays a loopy lady who just loves America's national pastime--and the men who play it. At the opening of every season, she attaches herself to a promising rookie and guides him through the season. Unfortunately, the player she bestows her favors upon does not really deserve it..... |
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Caddyshack (1980)
his hysterical farce, set against the backdrop of the typically hoity-toity Bushwood Country club, pits the caddies vs. the establishment with riotous results. Danny, a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, is struggling to make it as a caddy at Bushwood. Terrified of being a caddy for life, he is dying to win the Bushwood annual caddy scholarship and is willing to do whomever and whatever it takes. The caddies carouse, smoke, and.... |
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Chariots of Fire (1981)
Sporting events today have become rancorous, angry affairs where the motto, more frequently than not, is "win at all costs." Exhibitions of good sportsmanship are about as rare as selflessness. Everyone is out for themselves, and the displays of athletes like Albert Belle, John McEnroe, and Dennis Rodman can sit in the stomach like a chunk of indigestible matter. So it's refreshing to look back at an era when victory didn't demand isolation, bitterness, and.... |
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Eight Men Out (1988)
Eliot Asinof's detailed book Eight Men Out illustrates how the system of American sports collapsed in 1919, the year the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series. Filmmaker John Sayles worked on his script years before the 1988Â film (or before he had the rights to make the film) as a labor of love. Sayles's adaptation proves one can make a historically accurate film in the day and age of artistic license. And what a story. Although many know about.... |
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Field of Dreams (1989)
Kevin Costner plays a former Sixties idealist who runs a farm in Iowa with his wife and young daughter. After hearing a mysterious, heavenly voice one day, Costner turns one of his cornfields into a baseball diamond. Of course, everyone thinks he's crazy, but in time "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and other ghostly outcasts, who had previously languished in a sort of baseball purgatory, show up to play the game they still love. Soon men from all.... |
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Heaven Can Wait (1978)
A gung-ho and merciful angel (Buck Henry) pulls Joe Pendleton (Beatty), a football star, out of his body before his time, forcing the higher powers to come up with a substitute host. Joe settles on a vicious multimillionaire whose wife and partner are trying to kill him. Light, breezy, with not a mean bone in its body, Heaven is based on the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Beatty is wonderfully daft and innocent as Joe, Jack Warden is on top of his form as.... |
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Hoop Dreams (1994)
The wonderful thing about dreams, like hope, is that everyone can nurture their own, and there's no cost. It's taking the next step -- transforming those wispy ideals and half-realized wishes into reality -- that demands a price, and sometimes a high one at that. Hoop Dreams, the tale of two high school basketball players, is less a story about the sport than it is a chronicle of life in the inner city and of following Aldous Huxley's advice that.... |
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Hoosiers (1986)
One of the most rousingly enjoyable sports movies ever made, this small-town drama tells the story of the Hickory Huskers, an underdog basketball team from a tiny Indiana high school that makes it all the way to the state championship tournament. It's a familiar story, but sensitive direction and a splendid screenplay helped make this one of the best films of 1986, highlighted by the superb performances of Gene Hackman as the Huskers' coach, and.... |
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Jerry Maguire (1996)
Every time I think Hollywood has slipped beyond redemption, someone in the system produces a film like Jerry Maguire that renews my faith. Apparently, creativity is not dead in the mainstream movie market -- not entirely, at least. This is the kind of movie that reminds me why I started reviewing in the first place. Jerry Maguire is magic on celluloid -- fresh, funny, romantic, and upbeat. You'll leave the theater with a smile on your face and perhaps a tear in your eye. |
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North Dallas Forty (1978)
A very savvy, 1978 film directed by Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) dealing with the seamier side of professional football. Phillip Elliott and Maxwell (Nick Nolte and Mac Davis, respectively) are players for a Texas football team loosely based on the championship Dallas Cowboys. Though at the peak of his football career, Elliott is a personal and physical mess, needing all manner of drugs prescribed by the team physician to play and even to move around.... |
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The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
When people say, "They don't make them like they used to," Pride of the Yankees is just the kind of film they're wistfully remembering. Nominated for 11 Academy awards (winning one for film editing), this handsome biographical drama of baseball legend Lou Gehrig is one of the most finely crafted films ever to emerge from Hollywood. Gary Cooper, that great oak of an American actor, progresses from the awkward and naively shy rookie to the.... |
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Raging Bull (1980)
Some critics, including Siskel & Ebert, are on the record stating that Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, the story of boxer Jake La Motta, is the best film of the '80s. Since there are still a number of '80s films that I haven't seen, I don't feel qualified to make such a judgment, but I'll say this without hesitation: Raging Bull is a great motion picture, and I would be surprised if more than a handful of films released between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1989.... |
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Rocky (1976)
There are essentially three kinds of boxing movies: those that offer a grim, tell-it-as-it-is perspective of life in the ring, those that focus (often in an exaggerated fashion) on the business aspects of things, and those that seek to uplift through a rags-to-riches story. Rocky, the 1977 Best Picture Oscar winner, belongs unabashedly in the third category. Although the movie contains realistic elements and is set in a believable arena, it is essentially a fairy tale.... |
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Rocky II (1979)
In the aftermath of his celebrated match with World Heavyweight Champion Apollo Creed, Rocky Balboa enjoys his success, and the money he earned from the match, which was declared a draw, and the heavyweight championship didn't change hands. He marries his fiancee Adrian, buys her an expensive fox fur, a sports car for himself, and a large new home. When a projected stint in TV commercials fails because he is unable to remember.... |
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Rocky III (1982)
The 3rd movie in the Rocky franchise is really a gem. It starts out the same way as part 2, which is a recap of the movie before it, in this case Rocky II. After that we have a little montage of the wealth and fame Rocky has experienced since he won the belt. This montage also includes some fight scenes of his title defenses this is all set to the song "Eye of The Tiger" by Survivor, it captures the feeling of this movie really well. It is also a very good song. |
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Rounders (1998)
It's amazing how hot Matt Damon has become in such a short time. Since his breakthrough feature, last autumn's The Rainmaker, Damon has moved into the fast lane, with title roles in both Good Will Hunting and Saving Private Ryan. Plus, he and his best buddy, Ben Affleck, snagged an Oscar for their Hunting screenplay. Not bad for someone who, a year ago, was best known for small roles like Edgar Pudwhacker in Glory Daze.... |
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Slap Shot (1977)
So it’s Monday. In two days I will be in DEE-Troit City to see the opening game of the Stanley Cup playoffs (aren’t you jealous!). So on a tax day Monday night, what movie will get me in the proper mood for hockey? Which film would give me the proper pugilistic motivation? Of course the movie that teaches you to ‘put on the foil’ and that movie is Slap Shot. |
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The Color of Money (1986)
The Color of Money is a film about the redemption of Fast Eddie Felson. Not necessarily a religious redemption but redemption of his true calling. You see, Eddie got his nickname (“Fast”) for being a pool hustler. In fact 25 years earlier, Paul Newman played the role of Eddie then (as a young hotshot) and he has reprised the role here (older and wiser). The first time around he received an Oscar nomination; the second time he received an Oscar.... |
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The Hurricane (1999)
"Hate put me in prison. Love's gonna bust me out." Those words, spoken by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (Denzel Washington), form the thematic foundation of Norman Jewsion's latest film, The Hurricane. Alternatively tragic and triumphant, it is an exhilarating trip through the life and times of the title character, a championship boxer from Paterson, New Jersey, who spent 19 years behind bars for murders he did not commit. The Hurricane not..... |
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The Hustler (1961)
As The Hustler's "Fast" Eddie Felson, Paul Newman created a classic anti-hero, charismatic but fundamentally flawed, and nobody's role model. A pool player from Oakland, California as good as anyone who ever picked up a cue, Eddie has an Achilles' heel: arrogance. It's not enough for him to win: he must force his opponent to acknowledge his superiority. The movie... More follows Eddie from his match against billiards champ Minnesota Fats.... |
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The Longest Yard (1974)
Director Robert Aldrich had a knack for depicting outsiders with originality and authenticity. Much like The Dirty Dozen, The Longest Yard is a popular fable about integrity and group unity. It possesses a requisite toughness along with the loneliness that accompanies the outsider status. Compromise is never easy in an Aldrich film. There's always a bitter price to pay..... |
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The Natural (1984)
From the sun-dappled heartland, a young man (Robert Redford, in soft lighting) emerges as maybe the best baseball player anybody's ever seen. On his way to the majors, he is cut down by an enigmatic black widow (Barbara Hershey) and vanishes for many years. When he reemerges, a silent mystery, he lands a spot with the New York team and begins tearing up the league--he's still the natural. Fans of the Bernard Malamud novel will be dismayed.... |
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Tin Cup (1996)
Saying that Tin Cup may be the best-ever "golf motion picture" isn't exactly high praise, considering the competition (Caddyshack, Happy Gilmore), but it's true nonetheless. In fact, as sports movies go (regardless of the sport), this one turns in a respectable showing, injecting some intelligence and maturity into a story that easily could have succumbed to a flood of "struggling underdog" cliches. That's not to say that elements of the.... |
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When We Were Kings (1996)
Decades ago, documentary filmmaker Leon Gast attempted to complete a feature about the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" championship bout between boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire. Sundry complications, though, held up the project until its release in 1996. It was well worth the delay. From Gast's perspective of modern history, the six.... |
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White Men Can't Jump (1992)
Ron Shelton (Bull Durham) wrote and directed the basketball-oriented seriocomedy White Men Can't Jump. Woody Harrelson plays Billy Hoyle, a white con artist who hustles basketball games with black players, lulling his victims into the misguided notion that white men can't match up with black hoopsters. One of his victims, African-American Sidney Deane (Wesley Snipes), becomes Hoyle's "agent," arranging his various inner city scams..... |
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Dogtown and Z-Boys (2002)
Back in the 70s, in a run-down area of Santa Monica, a gang of surfer kids pioneered a new style of skateboarding, reinvigorating the dying hobby and redefining it as a modern urban sport. They called themselves the Z Boys and luckily for us they made home videos of themselves which, spliced with present day interviews and old photos, form the basis of 'skate-umentary' "Dogtown and Z-Boys"..... |
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The Endless Summer (1966)
Mike Hynson and Robert August were among the world's best surfers in the mid-1960s. Bruce Brown was a surfing enthusiast with a few largely unseen films on the sport. The three became legendary when Brown followed the two Californians around the world, filming their quest for the perfect wave in THE ENDLESS SUMMER. Brown captured his subjects hanging ten in their home waters as well as in Hawaii, Australia, Tahiti, Africa, and New Zealand.... |
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Pumping Iron (1977)
Every year the two main bodybuilding contests are held: the Mr Universe, which is open to amateurs, and the Mr Olympia, in which the professionals compete. Austrian-born American Arnold Schwarzenegger has won both many times, and plans to succeed in the Mr Olympia 1975 one last time before his retirement, but the competition is tough this year, with his main rival being the American Lou Ferrigno, a promising young newcomer with a small number.... |
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Rollerball (1975)
Norman Jewison's film is set in 2018 and foresaw that television would become more participatory and more violent. However, sometimes an idea behind a film is better than its execution. Rollerball was a sport specially invented for the film, a vicious anything goes form of roller derby blended with US-style football. Players are armed with spiked gloves as they attempt to throw a steel ball into the opposition's goal. Motor cycles tear in and out of the action....
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The Rookie (2002)
Once upon a time, Disney could be counted on to make family-friendly G-rated films that were not only good for the kids but pleasant for their parents, too. Not just in their animated division, but in their live-action division as well. This was the studio behind classic realizations of Treasure Island, Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller and Freaky Friday after all. But those days have been long gone for some time. Now the best Disney seems to be able.... |
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Remember The Titans (2000)
With a movie like Remember the Titans, your overall opinion will be largely dependent upon how you look at the finished product. If viewed as a crowd-pleasing, feel-good sports movie, the film is an unqualified success, following the accepted formula to the expected conclusion while delivering some nice moments along the way. However, if seen as a socially conscious retrospective on race relations in the South during the early 1970s, Remember the Titans can best be described as timid and unexceptional..... |
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