Vulture's The 50 Greatest Sports Movies of All Time

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By Tim Grierson and Will Leitch

This story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated to include recent releases.*

It is strange that sports movies are considered a genre since, all told, they really are just a setting. It’s like saying that “desert movies” are a genre, or “ocean movies” are. The best sports movies are independent of the sport they’re depicting, with universal stories that should appeal to anyone whether they love the sport or not. Though loving the sport does help.

This is to say: Our favorite sports movies tend to avoid the traditional “meet hero, see hero overcome adversity, see hero win big game” sports movie structure, or at least deconstruct it enough to justify themselves. The thing audiences love about sports and movies, the thing they have in common, is that they are unpredictable: You never know when you sit down to watch either what’s going to happen. But for some reason, many sports movies insist on being predictable, adhering to the formula.

Those are not the sort of sports movies you will find on our list of the 50 best sports movies of all time. The best sports surprise us: These great sports movies do the same.

*The only recent release they included was The Way Back; I don't know which film it knocked off the list from their original one.