North Dallas Forty
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
1979
The NFL refused all cooperation and players said it was the only accurate football film ever made: Nick Nolte plays a receiver held together by painkillers and stubbornness for one more season.
★ 2.3
The Movies canon
Sourced and screened.
Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Chariots of Fire
Directed by Hugh Hudson
1981 · United Kingdom
The Vangelis theme is so famous that people forget the film underneath is about religion: two runners at the 1924 Olympics, one running for God and one against English antisemitism.
★ 3.3
Eight Men Out
Directed by John Sayles
1988
The 1919 World Series fix filmed as a labor dispute rather than a scandal: John Sayles shows eight underpaid White Sox taking money from gamblers, and an owner who pays them nothing.
★ 3.3
Miracle
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
2004
They cast hockey players and taught them to act rather than the reverse: Kurt Russell plays Herb Brooks skating his young Olympic squad into the ground before Lake Placid in 1980.
★ 3.6
Rudy
Directed by David Anspaugh
1993
Notre Dame had not allowed a film crew on campus in fifty years: a kid with no size and no grades wants to dress for one game, and everybody tells him no.
★ 3.7
He Got Game
Directed by Spike Lee
1998
Spike Lee scored a basketball film with Aaron Copland and cast an NBA guard in the lead: a father is released from prison for a week to talk his son into a school.
★ 4.0
Cinderella Man
Directed by Ron Howard
2005
James Braddock was a broken-handed longshoreman on relief when he got a fight nobody expected him to survive: Ron Howard films the Depression as the real opponent, and Paul Giamatti steals it.
★ 4.1
Remember the Titans
Directed by Boaz Yakin
2000
Denzel Washington coaches the first integrated team at a Virginia high school in 1971: the history is tidied up considerably, and it still gets a room every single time.
★ 4.3
The Natural
Directed by Barry Levinson
1984
Randy Newman's fanfare is the sound of American sport: Robert Redford plays a player who arrives too old and too late, and the film treats baseball as an outright myth.
★ 4.4
Hoosiers
Directed by David Anspaugh
1986
Indiana still argues about how close it is to what actually happened in 1954: Gene Hackman coaches a town of a few hundred people who care about nothing else at all.
★ 4.5
Rush
Directed by Ron Howard
2013
Ron Howard made the best racing film by making it about two men who need each other: James Hunt and Niki Lauda in 1976, and the engines were recorded from the actual cars.
★ 4.8
Jerry Maguire
Directed by Cameron Crowe
1996
Cameron Crowe wrote a sports movie that is really about whether you can do a job decently: three catchphrases entered the language, and Tom Cruise has never been more likable.
★ 5.2
Field of Dreams
Directed by Phil Alden Robinson
1989
They built the field on an Iowa farm and people still drive to see it: a man plows under his corn because a voice tells him to, and the last reel gets everyone.
★ 5.4
The Fighter
Directed by David O. Russell
2010
Christian Bale plays the older brother who threw away his own career and cannot stop coaching: Lowell, Massachusetts shot from inside the family, which is the hardest opponent in it.
★ 5.6
Friday Night Lights
Directed by Peter Berg
2004
High-school football is the surface; the subject is a town with nothing else: Odessa, Texas in 1988, filmed handheld and close, where a losing season is a civic emergency.
★ 5.9
The Wrestler
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
2008
Mickey Rourke had been out of serious work for fifteen years and walked straight back into this: a broken-down wrestler working autograph shows in New Jersey, filmed like a documentary from behind.
★ 6.5
Moneyball
Directed by Bennett Miller
2011
A film about a spreadsheet that plays like a thriller: Sorkin and Zaillian turn Billy Beane's 2002 Oakland roster into an argument between a broke general manager and every scout in his building.
★ 6.7
Rocky
Directed by John G. Avildsen
1976
Stallone wrote it himself and would not sell the script unless he could star: a club fighter from Philadelphia is handed a title shot as a publicity stunt, and takes it completely seriously.
★ 6.8
Million Dollar Baby
Directed by Clint Eastwood
2004
Eastwood spends an hour making you love a boxing underdog story and then does something else entirely: nothing in American film is tougher than where it ends up.
★ 6.9
The Hustler
Directed by Robert Rossen
1961
Nobody has filmed a game better: Newman's pool hustler wants to be great and cannot get out of his own way, and the smoke never leaves the room.
★ 7.0