May marks National Fitness and Sports Month, not to mention the complete transition into springtime, with longer days and warmer weather. And as the world continues to emerge from the after-effects of a global pandemic, what better time to reconnect with our bodies and our animalistic need for movement and physical challenge?
We've compiled a list of 10 iconic sports films for National Fitness and Sports Month to purchase for your library collection. Take a look at our guide to public performance rights and learn how to screen movies in public to bring these titles to your library, classroom, and local community organization.
Cool Runnings (2003) directed by Jon Turteltaub
Cool Runnings is the goofy, gold-hearted, and only partially true story of how Jamaica entered the 1988 Winter Olympics with their first national bobsledding team. Leon Robinson plays Derice Banock who fails to qualify as a sprinter for the 1988 Summer Olympics. Still bent on bringing Olympic glory to both himself and to Jamaica, he concocts a plan to enter that year’s Winter Olympics with a sport utterly alien to himself and his tropical zone teammates: bobsledding.
Flashdance (1983) directed by Adrian Lyne
Jennifer Beals plays a young working-class woman living in Pittsburgh: a welder by day, an exotic dancer by night, and a professional conservatory dancer only in her wildest aspirations. She has no formal training and sticks out like a sore thumb in a crowd of clean pink leotards, but with the right push, she just might make it anyway. A massive box office success at its release and a decent critical failure ever since (largely in part to its lacking, somewhat nonsensical script), Flashdance is nonetheless a fun, undeniably iconic, visual feast for anyone interested in the art of dance film.
Read our review of Flashdance
Lords of Dogtown (2005) directed by Catherine Hardwicke
It’s the 1970s, in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica, California, also known by locals as “Dogtown.” A sudden drought in the city makes for a plethora of empty swimming pools. In come our protagonists: a trio of young surfer/skaters with shiny new wheels on their boards, mischievous spirits, and a passion for the sport. They form the Z-Boys, a competitive skating team, and the rest is messy history. Heath Ledger in particular gives an excellent performance as skateboarding entrepreneur Skip Engblom: chaotic and charismatic all at once. Although it was both a box office and critical failure, Lords of Dogtown has achieved a cult following in the skate community since its release.
Read our review of Lords of Dogtown
Bend it Like Beckham (2002) directed by Gurinder Chadha
What list of iconic sports films would be complete without Bend it Like Beckham? Jess is a young London woman in love with soccer and has an exceptional talent for it. However, her conservative British Indian Sikh family does not approve of her playing sports. Nonetheless, she accepts an offer to join a semi-professional soccer team and hides it from her family. Along the way, she finds friendship, love, and reconciliation between her family and her cultural rebelliousness. What makes this film great even 20 years later is its empathetic and humorous treatment of the challenges of self-actualization that damn near all first and second-generation young people face.
Read our review of Bend it Like Beckham
I, Tonya (2017) directed by Craig Gillespie
The infamous 1994 attack on ice skater Nancy Kerrigan once captivated a nation, as did the subsequent discovery of her rival Tonya Harding’s involvement. I, Tonya tells the unreliably narrated story of Tonya Harding as she rises from a “white trash” misfit on the rink to a record-breaking legend-in-the-making, until a scandal ends her career. This film succeeds as a humorous and visually pleasing portrait of an imperfect and complex protagonist. There are no black and white morals in this story, and that's kind of the point.
Read our review of I, Tonya
Raging Bull (1980) directed by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese, Robert de Niro, and a nearly insufferable antihero: what’s not to love? De Niro is Jake LaMotta, an Italian-American boxer living in New York. Raging Bull chronicles the rise and fall of LaMotta, fueled by the man’s ego, rage, obsession, jealousy, and drive to destroy anything that challenges him. If he’s a raging bull, his personal life is the proverbial china shop. Shot in black-and-white, with relatively simple and pared-down sets and noir-esque high contrast lighting, this film allows the excellent performances of its cast to enrapture the audience in this tale of sin and self-destruction.
Read our review of Raging Bull
Personal Best (1982) directed by Robert Towne
Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly play two track-and-field teammates that develop a homoerotic relationship that threatens their ability to compete alongside each other, as Chris (played by Hemingway) also becomes involved with their male coach. Many sports films, with a few examples (such as Raging Bull), can fall into a pattern of sanitizing the reality of what it means to be a professional athlete, and that’s especially true when it comes to female protagonists. Personal Best, however, makes no attempt to shy away from the blood, sweat, tears, grit, pain, anxiety, and injury that comes with the territory, making for a film that is all at once full of a sense of tension and freedom.
Space Jam (1996) directed by Bruce W. Smith and Tony Cervone
Although an unforgettable staple of countless childhoods, the premise, and execution of Space Jam is kind of insane. First, real-life basketball legend Michael Jordon plays a fictionalized version of himself that retires from basketball to start a baseball career. Second, an alien civilization abducts the Looney Toons (who exist in this universe) to be exploited for mass entertainment. Third, these desperate Toons make a bid for their freedom: win a basketball match against the aliens. The key to their success? Michael Jordon. Space Jam is pure goofy, fun camp, paired with a killer soundtrack.
Read our review of Space Jam
National Velvet (1944) directed by Clarence Brown
The original horse girl movie that birthed all horse girl movies. One of the first sports films ever shot in Technicolor, National Velvet stars Elizabeth Taylor as a headstrong young girl that wins a troublesome horse in a raffle, and Mickey Rooney as the mysterious, broody ex-jockey that helps her in her goal to train the beast to race for gold in The Grand National. Unlike a great deal of sports-related media, this film doesn’t focus on the ideas of fame, glory, stardom, or inherited greatness. At its core is a humble young girl from a small town who just wants to ride, and turns down fame and notoriety out of her own sense of principle and love for her horse.
Ali (2001) directed by Michael Mann
This biopic follows the rise and peak of Cassius Clay Junior, aka Muhammad Ali's boxing career as he juggles his personal, political, legal, and religious struggles. Will Smith transforms himself in a career-best performance as Ali, easily capturing the legend’s distinct sense of fire and charisma. This film boasts an excellent soundtrack, performances, remarkable realism in its boxing sequences, and a sensitive, emotional core that serves as the connective tissue.
Read our review of Ali