Oscars 2013: What’s The Best Sports Film of All-Time?
By Josh Hill
Best Picture
Nominees
– Raging Bull (1980)
– Bull Durham (1988)
– Rocky (1976)
– Hoosiers (1986)
– Caddyshack (1980)
– Slap Shot (1977)
– Field of Dreams (1989)
– The Wrestler (2008)
– Jerry Maguire (1997)
When it comes down to the best sports movies of all time, thank god the Oscars now nominate eight million films in the category of Best Picture. From top to bottom these are the finest sports films ever produced and could be watched on a loop for eternity. Caddyshack remains one of the most quoted films of all-time (admit it, at least once while golfing you either “Newman” or “Nu-nu-nu-nu-na”). Slap Shot is perhaps the finest and most honest hockey film every made, Kevin Costner got really into baseball for a few years and gave the world Bulls Durham and it’s polar opposite Field of Dreams. Hoosiers is always regarded as one of the best sports films ever made and for some reason films about fighting are really popular and usually done really well. From The Wrestler to Rocky and Raging Bull, the formula seems to be take a depressing character and put him in a violent sport (you know, to emphasize his struggle in the world) and boom, you’ve got Oscar gold. And then there’s Jerry Maguire which, like it or not, is a solid film through and through.
It should have won Best Picture at the 1981 Oscars but somehow lost to Ordinary People. It remains one of the most egregious Oscar snubs of all-time and that’s sentiment that is well deserved. From Robert De Niro’s career defining performance to Martin Scorsese’s honest and harrowing direction, Raging Bull will forever be not only one of the finest sports movies of all-time but one of the best movies ever filmed. The point of Raging Bull wasn’t that Jake LaMotta was a a boxer who lost it all, it was that Jake LaMotta was a bastard that happened to be a boxer and no matter what he did, he’d never be happy. Everything about the film is iconic, from it’s steamy cinematography to the story itself and while it didn’t win the Oscar, it remains a sin of omission we weren’t about to commit.