Feel All The Feels With These Sports Movies and Documentaries
The Blues are Stanley Cup champs! Here's several stirring sports movies to keep the party going.
Here at Do You Like Apples, we are riding high on the St. Louis Blues’ first ever Stanley Cup victory. The past few months have felt like we were watching our very own inspirational sports movie, so it seemed like the perfect time to make this edition about just that.
(If you can’t get enough pucks, note that Miracle is streaming on Netflix and all three Mighty Ducks movies are on HBO. Quote along, get emotional, and just revel in the Blues’ magical season while you watch.)
Below we have several great sports movies and documentaries for you. Billy reviews a baseball movie classic and an underrated hockey flick, and I recommend two separate double features, one on football and the other on mountain climbing. Now excuse us as we go back to blasting “Gloria” on repeat.
Drew recommends...
Double Feature #1:
Friday Night Lights (streaming on Amazon Prime)
Undefeated (streaming on Netflix)
There’s not many sports movies that can tug on the heartstrings quite like the high school football movie. My first double feature matches up two films from this genre that left me emotionally wrecked, Friday Night Lights (the 2004 film, not the show) and Undefeated, a 2011 documentary set in inner-city Memphis.
Before Friday Night Lights was turned into a successful NBC TV show, first it was a phenomenal movie. Set in football-crazed Texas, it follows the Permian High Panthers as they make a run to the state championship. Based on a true story, Friday Night Lights dramatizes the actual events in a riveting and realistic way. It’s shot with a shaky-cam style to give it a documentary feel, but utilizes Explosions in the Sky on the soundtrack, music that is as inspirational and rousing as it gets.
Billy Bob Thornton plays Coach Gaines, in what is easily one of his finest performances. Lucas Black (Mike Winchell), Derek Luke (Boobie Miles), and Garrett Hedlund (Don Billingsley) are three of the Permian players the film spotlights. Tim McGraw surprises as Billingsley’s overbearing, glory-days-obsessed father. Each of these performances anchors Friday Night Lights to real, earned emotion.
You may have heard that football is a religion in Texas, and this movie shows us the positive and negative effects of that reality. The pressure on these kids is unimaginable, which leads to exceptional drama. You don’t mind the story’s corny parts, because it really does feel like life or death when a Texas state title is on the line. You root intensely for the talented Boobie Miles to come back from injury. You want so badly for Billingsley to impress his dad. And you wish only the best for unproven quarterback Mike Winchell. Just try and make it through the climactic scene without getting misty-eyed.
Similarly, Undefeated saves its powerhouse emotional moment for its climactic scene, but this time you’re watching real kids go through character-revealing moments. This Oscar-winning documentary is about a decidedly un-Friday Night Lights kind of school. Manasses is a Memphis high school bereft of the legendary football history of a Permian. It’s only with the grit and determination of coach Bill Courtney that the team starts to turn it around.
As they fight through academic and athletic struggles, the charismatic Courtney and his Manasses Tigers transform into a lovable group. They are all pulling for each other on and off the field, which means we do too. For that, Undefeated is an inspirational and moving football doc that makes for a real-life Friday Night Lights.
Double Feature #2:
Meru (streaming on Amazon Prime)
Free Solo (streaming on Hulu)
As a generally cautious person, sports documentaries featuring thrill-seekers are fascinating to me. What is it that drives a person to risk their life almost everyday just to scale a big rock? Meru and Free Solo are two of the best extreme sports docs that try to answer this question.
Both films are directed by married couple Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, and they both follow climbers at the height of their profession attempting to complete an impossible summit. Meru shows three climbers, one of whom is Chin himself, as they ascend the Meru Peak in the Indian Himalayans. Battling through brutal snowstorms, avalanches, and their own personal histories, the three men survey the cost of their dream while they sleep in a suspended tent on the side of a mountain. It’s harrowing and majestic at the same time.
Conversely, Free Solo chronicles the mad pursuits of one man, Alex Honnold, as he tries to climb El Capitan, a totally vertical 3,000 foot rock formation in Yosemite, without any ropes. The doc does an excellent job letting us peek inside Alex’s head, even as we remain flummoxed how anyone would want to be a free solo climber when the death rate is so high.
Free Solo won Best Documentary at this year’s Oscars, and it’s not hard to see why. I saw it in theaters last year and it was as exhilarating as any doc I’ve ever seen. It’s full of white-knuckle thrills (one little slip will take Alex’s life) and gorgeous views of Yosemite. Even if you’ve never thought about rock climbing yourself, your jaw will be on the floor watching Alex do what he does.
It’s also amazing to consider how Chin and his team filmed these two docs. It has to be incredibly difficult to make an impossible climb while shooting such gripping footage at the same time. Between shots of these climbers hanging off a mountain, the filmmakers find time to give your average person perspective into why they do this. It may be the furthest thing from rational, but there is something elemental and endlessly inspiring about conquering a mountain as you stand on its peak.
Billy recommends…
Bull Durham (streaming on Netflix)
Kevin Costner is the king of baseball movies, with Bull Durham as his best performance. It is Oscar-worthy. Through his performance we get a perfect snapshot into the life of a minor leaguer. Obviously sensationalized for entertainment purposes, but any athlete remembers the feeling of trying to prove yourself and having pointless conversations in the middle of competition.
What makes Bull Durham a classic is not because of Kevin Costner alone, but the contrast between characters Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and Ebby “Duke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). We have the young gun with all the potential and the aging veteran who is on his way out. Crash is brought to the Durham Bulls to mentor young Duke LaLoosh. Through their relationship we get amazing commentary on relationships, growing up, and losing something you hold dear.
We see the ups and downs of all of these situations and connect to the characters. The highlight of these situations coming when there is a meeting on the mound. What you think is going to be a normal mound visit turns into a casual conversation about doubts, dads, and what would be a good wedding present. Such a human moment that brings a smile to my face every time. Bull Durham is the perfect movie to get you into the mood for the baseball season and get you thinking about the good things you have in life. A crowd pleaser all the way through.
Goon (streaming on Netflix)
So... the Blues are Stanley Cup Champions. The natural selection as a result would be to recommend Miracle (it really is great), but I want to recommend a criminally unseen indie called Goon. Movies like this are what Netflix is here for, a random movie about hockey that takes an original spin on a sports movie.
Bill Simmons, of the Bill Simmons podcast and president of the The Ringer website, has a rule that any good sports movie needs a great “chill” moment. We have the “wanna have a catch” moment from Field of Dreams. The home run from The Natural. Goon has a ton of these moments, but not in the traditional sense. In Goon we follow a hockey lover who has an amazing ability to fight well. Through this he begins a hockey career and we begin to profile a type of hockey player that is dying in the current NHL landscape.
This rarity of a player in modern hockey gives us a stylized indie that is a wonderful breath of fresh air needed in a cliche-ridden genre. In this one we have stylized violence, unique characters, and an amazingly entertaining story. All of which builds up to an amazing “chill” sequence in the final act. Upon rewatching Goon this week I realized how much I like this one. Goon is unique in the best possible way and more sports movies need to take the risks that it is willing to take.
Streaming TV Corner
The Office Episode of the Week
Billy: “Branch Wars” (Season 4, Episode 6)
This episode has my favorite Dwight, Michael, and Jim hijinx. It brings the awkwardness into Jim’s past relationships and furthers the reluctant bromance between the three. Stanley is being headhunted from the Utica branch to come on as a salesman. In response, they play a prank on Karen, the new branch manager at Utica. The highlight being when Michael threatens to burn Utica to the ground if they hurt Stanley. Not many episodes of The Office further the friendships forward outside of Jim and Pam, but this does that brilliantly. Funny enough, this was directed by the amazing Joss Whedon in 2007. Three years before the first Avengers movie, and honestly, this is a team-up episode kind of like The Avengers.
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