Documentaries To Watch While You Wait For Sports To Return

Plus: See what we thought of new movies Palm Springs and The Old Guard

Jul 17, 2020

Sports fans haven’t had much to interest them over these last few months. We are only now seeing a few sports come back, like golf and soccer, and the NBA, NHL, and MLB are all planning on starting or restarting their seasons over the next several weeks. Until there are live sports back on TV, you might be on the search for good sports content to consume, so let’s help you out with that today.

Fortunately, there is an abundance of fascinating sports documentaries on various streaming services right now. We’ve highlighted a few of them below. Plus, keep scrolling for our take on two new movie releases: Netflix’s action thriller The Old Guard and Hulu’s surreal comedy Palm Springs.

Billy recommends…

The Battered Bastards of Baseball (streaming on Netflix)

This documentary lacks flash in its style, but grasps the audience because of the characters the movie is profiling bring all the pizazz you need. The Battered Bastards of Baseball follows the unlikely independent baseball team who brought a life to baseball that could attract even the most lukewarm fan.

The famous acting Russell family had a love that would have been their career if the talent had followed suit, but their #1 dream did not work out. After Bing Russell, father of Kurt, made his long career as a side character in Hollywood he began to lose his drive on life. The only cure for him was baseball and he saw a rare opportunity to go to Portland.

Portland for baseball? Well that can’t be right. A land of almost no pro sports would seem like a place where baseball would die. At least if it was played like it is normally played. Instead Bing, the owner and general manager, decided to take a simple approach and put an ad in the paper. What they thought would attract 30-40 people turned out to bring out around 300 people.

This is where this documentary grabs any casual baseball fan. It pokes at the dream a lot of young people had and makes it feel accessible. Most importantly it made it look fun. With baseball coming back soon and bringing a season that will be hard-pressed for fun, this documentary reminds me that even the most stripped-down version of baseball is a blast. Give this a look for a fast watch with great energy.

Andre the Giant (streaming on HBO)

Andre Roussimof supposedly drank 104 beers in one day… that should be enough to get you to watch this documentary. And there is a whole section about the man’s farting. He is clearly the best athlete to have ever lived.

Andre the Giant shows why a lot of us like sport documentaries. The best stories about sports are hardly ever about the sport itself. During the moment all we care about is the athlete and how the sport they play can serve us. That expectation had always been there for someone as recognizable as Andre. At a young age he began to grow unlike anyone we have ever seen. The height we have seen. The size we have seen. The combo together is Goliath-like. That brings so much attention, but somehow an equal amount of loneliness.

This whole story could have been about his pure size and entertainment value, but the filmmakers behind this smartly used that aspect to show the wonder and heartache of this legendary character. What looked like a confident, strong, and unique figure is humanized as someone we all know. The emotional aspects are completely surprising when you turn on this movie and that is all the reason to watch this immediately.

Drew recommends…

Icarus (streaming on Netflix)

The opening ceremony for the 2020 Summer Olympics was supposed to take place in one week. Instead, it has been moved to next summer, just another casualty of this deeply strange and terrible year. Sigh. In lieu of the Olympic Games, you could watch the Oscar-winning Icarus, an eye-opening documentary about the international doping scandal. Sure, it doesn’t have the same uplifting spirit of the Olympics, but Icarus uncovers some important and uncomfortable truths about the integrity of our sports.

Icarus begins with a crazy idea and takes off in an unexpected direction from there. Documentarian Bryan Fogel decides he wants to investigate illegal doping in sports by taking banned performance-enhancing drugs to see if he can win an amateur cycling event. He gets help from Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory, who shows him how to do this and avoid testing positive. Somewhere along the way, Fogel stumbles upon a monumental discovery: Rodchenkov has been overseeing Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping program.

As news of this program gets out, Rodchenkov’s life is suddenly in danger, so Fogel brings him to the United States. In many ways, Icarus plays like a real-life conspiracy thriller. Rodchenkov’s allegations about the extent of Russia’s cheating is unbelievable -- and that’s before the suspicious deaths of two of his associates.

While we’re all missing the excitement and spectacle of the Olympics, it’s worth remembering the actual corruption and cheating that can and has come with it. We’re used to thinking about this on an individual level, but what happens if a major nation’s government decides to commit themselves to acting illegally on the world’s biggest athletics stage? Icarus explores that with in-depth and passionate dedication.

Diego Maradona (streaming on HBO)

How do you tell the story of a legend like Diego Maradona? Widely considered one of the greatest to ever set foot to a ball, the Argentine has been no stranger to controversy and wild living throughout his life. How do you sum up the outsized influence of someone many consider a genius (or a god) in one single film? Fortunately, one of the best working documentary directors was up to the task.

Asif Kapadia has proven he knows how to tell the story of troubled genius in past documentaries about singer Amy Winehouse (Amy) and Formula One champion Ayrton Senna (Senna). The director typically uses different methods than the conventional documentary, opting to utilize archival footage to immerse you in the subject as opposed to talking head interviews of people explaining things to you. It’s an incredibly effective style, especially in Diego Maradona, where Kapadia had access to never-before-seen footage of Maradona at his most intimate and uninhibited.

The doc briefly takes you through Maradona’s upbringing and rise before arriving at its main focus: His time in the 1980s with Napoli, the famous Italian football club. If you don’t know much about professional soccer, Diego Maradona does an excellent job introducing you to what you need to know about European and international soccer. Maradona was playing for Napoli when he led Argentina to a World Cup victory in 1986 (with a little help from the Hand of God). This doc insightfully shows us why that was so damaging to Maradona’s relationship with Italians.

While the doc gives time to some of Maradona’s significant personal failings, including a little about his connection to an Italian mafia family (for real) and a lot about his hard-charging nightlife, Diego Maradona also finds a way to translate how brilliant the man was on the field. You can count on one hand the number of players that have ever been able to move and dominate like Maradona. And that’s what makes him such a fascinating figure for a documentary like this. How can such an obviously flawed person be considered a god to so many? Diego Maradona shows you how.

Recent Release Mini-Reviews

Palm Springs (streaming on Hulu)

Drew: If one of the signs of an enjoyable movie is how soon you want to rewatch it, Palm Springs passes that test with ease. I can’t wait to watch this clever and delightfully absurd romantic comedy again and again. Without giving away the movie’s twists and turns, this is a risky high-concept story that works like a charm.

Much of that is owed to the two leads. Andy Samberg could not be more perfectly cast as an endearing goofball with no direction. And while you may not be overly familiar with Cristin Milioti, she’s so appealing here that you will wonder why she’s not given more great parts like this. Their chemistry and vibe fits comfortably in with the movie’s freewheeling tone.

There are long stretches of Palm Springs that are fun, hysterical, and giddy with possibility, but there are also real emotional stakes at play in the second half that pay off splendidly. And for the viewer, frequently stuck at home in the midst of a world-changing pandemic, the storyline becomes relevant in a way the filmmakers couldn’t have intended. - 4 / 5 Apples

The Old Guard (streaming on Netflix)

Drew: In a summer bereft of blockbuster action thrillers due to closed theaters, The Old Guard is manna from heaven. In normal times, would I be so appreciative of this movie? Maybe not, but we’ll take what we can get right now. This story of immortal mercenaries does have unimaginative dialogue and often silly music choices, but the action is suitably intense and the scenes in between provide more intriguing character development than your average superhero flick.

The cast is led by Charlize Theron, who seemingly can’t miss as an action star. Kiki Layne (If Beale Street Could Talk) plays the newcomer to this group and she holds her own on screen with the likes of Theron and the other veteran actors. The Old Guard has a nice sense of levity about its complex superheroes -- it’s not all doom and gloom. When it ended, I found myself excited about the prospect of returning to this world if a sequel gets made. - 3.5 / 5 Apples

Do You Like Apples

Discussion about this post