Sports are all over the news this week, for reasons good and bad. So here are 10 movies for like-minded people who also don’t enjoy leaving their couches, but are curious to see what it feels like to break a sweat outside of playing online sports games using a site like Efirbet. (Also, this isn’t your traditional sports list – we know Raging Bull is a good movie, google every other list if you have to see it listed)

10. Cinderella Man

Cinderella Man tells the story of depression era boxer Jimmy Braddock, who is passed his prime but literally gets back in the ring to feed his family. This film is grossly unrecognized, almost never coming up in any conversation about anything. The movie is stunning, with Russell Crowe giving one of his best performances. This is absolutely the best film Ron Howard has made to date, and yet it didn’t even break even at the box office. The supporting cast is phenomenal, and no I’m not just talking about Clint Howard. Paul Giamatti and Renee Zellweger bring it just as hard and fast as Crowe does. If you love boxing but have arms made of brittle bone, than I know from experience that you’ll love this film.

9. The Sandlot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVscCNZsYSY

Baseball is used as a euphemism a lot in America. Whether it applies to sex, working as a team or even business strategy, baseball is always there. It’s part of the experience of growing up as a boy in this country and no film recognizes that fact better than The Sandlot. This group of childhood friends is every group of friends whether you were a jock, nerd, punk or just someone who didn’t really fit into any particular clique, you could relate to one of these kids. And the best part was they were all part of something that could only be achieved by coming together: a pickup baseball team. I hated baseball as a kid and even I look back on this movie fondly! Look away, I’m getting misty eyed. LOOK AWAY, I SAID!

8. Rocky

I’m sure Rocky qualifies as a movie for both fans and non-fans of sports, because it’s just fantastic. But as a man who has absolutely no interest in any sort of sport whatsoever, this movie still has the power to move me. Stallone’s screenplay is a low-key and touching character portrait, which is shocking considering how batshit insane all the sequels became. But the first film is one of the best movies ever made, and it has the guts to end with (SPOILERS for a movie from 1976 coming!) the main character NOT winning at the sport he’s performing. Because it doesn’t matter if Rocky wins or loses; it just matters that he tries. ::cue inspirational music:

7. The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke’s turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a once top-billed professional wrestler now working the independent circuit, living in a trailer and trying to eke out just enough of a living to pay for a gym membership and steroids might be one of my top five favorite performances of the 21st century. His story is so heartbreaking simply because he’s so goddamn loveable. You want him to succeed. You want him to get the girl. You want him to finish his opponent with a final “Ram Jam” even though the results will be catastrophic. Sure, pro wrestling is the backdrop but The Wrestler is about struggling to do your best against your toughest opponent: yourself.

6. Seabiscuit

This is a list for people who hate sports, so naturally it’s a list for people who love emotion. Seabiscuit is Hollywood sap turned to 11, but it is done so god damn well that it is almost impossible for someone to not like this movie. The cast is full of actors who leave it all on the field. Toby McQuire is much more Cider House Rules than he is Spider-Man in his role as tiny jockey boy. This movie made me fall in love with horse racing, and whenever I start thinking that the sport is just a cruel exploration of helpless animals, I can always turn on Seabiscuit and cheer my worries away.

5. Death Race 2000

Death Race 2000 features the kind of sport I can get behind: car racing that involves intentionally mowing down innocent pedestrians. The 1975 film is a darkly comedic B-movie featuring David Carradine playing a character named Frankenstein, and a young Sylvester Stallone playing a character named Machine Gun Joe Viterbo. Stallone at one point just randomly fires his namesake machine gun into a cheering crowd while yelling indecipherable things. At one point, smiling nurses line up old people in wheelchairs outside the hospital so that the car racing contestants can mow them down. “It’s euthanasia day at the Geriatric Hospital,” Frankenstein explains. “They do it every year.” It’s great! It also features one of my all-time favorite movie lines: “Now presenting President and Mrs. Frankenstein!”

4. Moneyball

Moneyball works for me because it’s a baseball movie that’s not at all about baseball. Baseball doesn’t really figure into the story at all; instead, the film is all about analyzing statistics—which should, in theory, be boring as hell. But the screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin is tight and exciting, and the performances from Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a small but memorable part elevate the film to highly entertaining levels.

3. White Men Can’t Jump

The title alludes to basketball but that’s not even close to what this movie is about. Sure, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson spend half of the movie hustling and trash talking one another on the basketball court but this movie is really about the clash of cultures. Whether it’s Woody Harrelson’s corn-fed white nerd caricature hustling an all-black street basketball league or his Latino girlfriend (played by an over-the-top Rosie Perez) realizing her dream of becoming a contestant on Jeopardy, White Men Can’t Jump takes racial and cultural assumptions and throws them against a brick wall. It all makes for a very interesting and very funny comedy that merely uses basketball as a means to tether these people together and force them to breathe the same air

2. Hoop Dreams

A friend once told me “This isn’t a movie about basketball, it’s a movie about life.” Then I watched it and all they do is play Basketball, so I don’t know what the hell he was talking about. All kidding aside, Hoop Dreams pioneered a new vision not only for sport documentaries, but for how every good documentary after this would be filmed. The film was so groundbreaking, that the Academy had to change the way they vote on documentaries after is was robbed of an Oscar. Roger Ebert called this “the best film of the decade.” – because he obviously never saw Pulp Fiction.

1. A League of Their Own

I’m almost positive every child of the early 90’s was forced to watch this movie with their mothers. Tom Hanks is so fucking good in this film that his scenes have become almost iconic. “Theres no crying in baseball!” is something every kid yelled on the wiffle-ball field the second someone started bitching about the strike zone. Also, now anytime I take a piss that lasts longer than 20 seconds I start thinking about how cool I am, like Tom Hanks at the beginning of this movie.

This list was compiled by the CutPrintFilm staff.