The London Times posted their list of the 50 greatest sports movies ever yesterday. The logical question here is: What on earth do the British know about one of America's premiere film genres?
Quite a lot, actually: They include the superb Major League and Field of Dreams despite baseball being regarded as a women's game in England, and also reserve high praise for Hoop Dreams and, inexplicably, the Oliver Stone unintentional comedy classic Any Given Sunday. (Jamie Foxx in a Speedo pretty much ended any chance of taking the movie seriously for me.)
There are shameful omissions on the list, of course. A few of the essential sports movies left out follow.
Searching For Bobby Fischer (1993) One of the most affecting movies about young talent and the desperate search for identity by a competitor. Chess may be a non-contact event, but the conflicts in this film are jarring enough. A grand-cru cast, too: Ben Kingsley, Lawrence Fishburne, Joan Allen, and some phenomenal and forgotten child actors turn the film into a neglected masterpiece.
North Dallas Forty (1979) Profane, raunchy, and unflinching in its portrayal of men destroying themselves in the name of football. Nick Nolte's mustache deserved at least a nomination for best supporting actor here.
Cobb (1994) A snarling, uncomfortable, nasty, and ultimately riveting film about the greatest baseball player of his time who, against the conventional storyline, never, ever stops being a nakedly evil person.
The Search for Animal Chin (1987) The ultimate skate film, and the face that launched a thousand ships for all skate films. Starring the members of Powell Peralta's Bones Brigade--including a young Tony Hawk and Lance Mountain--it's ostensibly a cinematic search for a long-lost skating master named Animal Chin. What it really is is classic late-80s skate orgy: pools, half-pipes, and skinny men doing unreal tricks in them. My friends had to keep copying it because they watched it so many times they broke the tape. A forgotten classic that had a hand in spawning Jackass, the phenomenon that is Tony Hawk, and modern skating as we know it.
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