The All-Time Best...Sports Movies?

Where do you go when all of your teams bite the dust? What do you watch when your basketball team is missing the playoffs and when you can barely recognize half the players on your baseball team’s roster? I’ll tell you what, boys and girls: the cinema. Since my days in Morningside Heights are numbered—and therefore, editors Jake and Anand can’t fire me (ed. note: Kevin, we can still fire you. Consider this strike two.)—I decided to give you a little underground sports film exposé. In these sad days in American sport—with baseball legends lying and whining and basketball heroes losing to obscure European ballers—the film medium may be the last hope of salvation for athletic greatness. So here are my five favorite sports movies of all time—five movies that you may or may not have even considered sports movies at all. Who needs baseball opening day anyway?

Point Break

Sometimes, in a rare while, a film will rise above its genre and verge on the transcendental. This is the accomplishment of Point Break, a film combining the talents of a hot-headed Keanu Reeves and a violent yet enlightened Patrick Swayze. Johnny Utah versus Bodhisattva. Football versus surfing. The Establishment versus guerilla bank robbers. It doesn’t get much better than this. Utah, a former Ohio State QB and Rose Bowl runner-up, joins the FBI and takes his first big bank robbery case in this non-stop thriller. Gury Busey is at his side every step of the way, until he gets shot at the end and mysteriously disappears. It turns out the gang Utah infiltrates has been holding up banks in the Tri-County area. This realization is slowly played out in the intimate relationship of Utah and Bodhi, who almost have sex, like, four times.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Think about it. This movie is all about sports. Dolphins, Dan Marino, Ray Finkle? Watch it again. This story is rooted in the pain of a kicker who missed a clutch field goal, losing the Superbowl for Dan and the ’Phins. A lot of people like to write this movie off as a comedy. I consider it an extremely touching/disturbing psychological portrait of a man (who becomes a woman) who just can’t claim responsibility for his errors. It is a tale of revenge, held together by Snowflake, the Dolphins’ field goal-kicking mascot.

Gleaming the Cube

I wouldn’t be surprised if I am the only person on campus who has seen this fine film starring Christian Slater and a bunch of no-names. It tells the story of a young skater kid in Southern California whose adopted brother is kidnapped and killed by a Vietnamese gang that is selling weapons in the neighborhood. Intent on solving the mystery of his brother’s death, Slater ignores the pleadings of cops and parents and takes to the street on his skates. This film is simultaneously one of the worst movies ever made and one of the best.

Aspen Extreme

Skiing, neon parkas, hot cocoa at 10,000 feet, fresh powder—Aspen Extreme. I don’t even remember what happens in this movie. All I can recall is a series of “Figure-Eight” slalom contests, avalanches, and crazy Aspen lovemaking. Why do ski instructors always have the best lives ever?

The Big Lebowski

Walter (played by John Goodman), the Dude’s lifelong companion, sums up the pretense of sport: “This is not ’Nam... there are rules.” This film is held together by the most mundane sport of all: bowling. Indeed, bowling balls and pins are used, at different points in the film, as phallic symbols, weapons, costumes, and wrecking balls. It also features perhaps the best sports-related dance sequence in history, in which the Dude, dressed as a bowling ball-wielding plumber, attempts to woo an Athena-like Julianne Moore.

So there they are, the five best sports movies that you never thought were about sports. I’d advise watching one of these rather than tuning into the Yankees-Red Sox opener. They’re all on the juice anyway.