The reviews of modern sports movies on Rotten Tomatoes help to sort out the winners from the rest of the pack. Here are a few of the best sports movies based on the site’s rankings of the top 100.
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"Murderball" (2005)
"Murderball" tells the true story of quadriplegic athletes who play quad rugby, originally called murderball, in which armored wheelchair-bound teams compete to move the ball down the court to score. Most quad rugby players have previously broken their necks and require extensive rehabilitation to be able to play the full-contact, competitive, and rigorous sport.
The compelling stories of these athletes provide what Stephen Holden of
The New York Times called "an unusually deep exploration of sports, machismo and the competitive spirit." He said that without their sport, these quad rugby athletes might instead "be at war with themselves, locked in a cycle of resentment, despair and self-loathing."
"Hoop Dreams" (1994)
Set in inner city Chicago, "Hoop Dreams" depicts the real-life drama of two African-American high school boys who look to basketball as their ticket to a better life. Filmed over a span of six years, this modern sports movie draws viewers in with
"its drama and melodrama, packaged with outrage and moments that make you want to cry," according to Roger Ebert's review.
Owen Gleiberman of
Entertainment Weekly noted that, as we watch young William and Arthur, hoping for their success while they face setbacks and obstacles, "we realize that the events in 'Hoop Dreams' aren't going to unfold according to tidy melodramatic rules - that we're seeing life in all its precarious complexity."
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"When We Were Kings" (1996)
When heavyweights Mohammad Ali and George Foreman faced off in Zaire in 1974 for the so-called "Rumble in the Jungle," director Leon Gast was there to record the event along with the accompanying music festival. More than two decades later his documentary of the world championship fight provides unique insight into these boxing greats in their time, while commemorating
"one of the defining moments in human athletic contests," according to Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly.
In her review, Schwarzbaum wrote that this modern sports movie "brings the 'Rumble in the Jungle' alive with a vibrancy guaranteed to move the souls of even the most boxing illiterate. In one moment of poetry, Don King describes all the participants as being enveloped in 'an aura of scintillating splendor.' For once, he was simply stating the facts."
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