Best/Worst depictions of sport in films

[lackedpunch]

This is the funniest football related comedy sketch I have seen!

[Alex Anderson]

My best mate has always said The Miracle of Bern is his favourite ever depiction of football in a film, too. I was sure I'd seen it but now can't remember. I shall have to see whether we get a spare couple of hours to watch it with him in a few weeks.

Would highly recommend it, Sam. But, then, my judgement here is hardly reliable. And I don't mean just because I still have that instinctive belief that anything with subtitles is arthouse: I had a real "it's all about me" thing with contemporaneous German national teams. They meant more to me than they should have when I was a kid-teen in the late 70s and all through the 80's. But reading Tor! (which, I think, actually mentions the film being in production), I not only got the full background on the 1954 side but a full understanding of why [adopts professor Brian Cox gushing voiceover intonations] "the Nationalmannschaft meant just so much to a young boy from a small town in the west coast of Scotland". So, by the time I went to see the film, about a year after reading and re-reading Tor!, in an empty top floor of the multiplex in Renfrew Street, Glasgow - I was weeping like a baby as soon as the opening titles came up. It couldn't really fail with me.

[Levin]

I love the Miracle of Bern but my memory told me that there isn't that much of an attempt to recreate events on the pitch. For sure there are shots of the players on the pitch but there isn't much choreographed play. Am I misremembering?

[Various Artist]

It was pretty decent, as I recall. Don't quote me on that, though.

Sam, thanks in turn for the reminder of the Python sketch! The Mitchell & Webb one always creases me up (er, no cricketing pun intended) – and reminds me, they also skewered Sky-style football coverage so efficiently I can't catch a second of the real thing without thinking of this:

[pebblethefish]

Does anyone remember the 80s TV series Bodyline? I absolutely loved it, but I was about 10, so I had no critical faculties and have no idea if the cricket was represented accurately or not.

[Various Artist]

Snake does, pebble:

There is a 1980s BBC series on Bodyline which I remember loving as a kid. Hugo Weaving as Douglas Jardine. Would love to see it again.

[Thierry Ennui]

While acknowledging VA's reservations about boxing/fighting films, I would suggest Rocky as the best boxing film. The sharply declining quality and increasing silliness of the sequels has meant that the original has become something of an overlooked classic. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, up against Taxi Driver, Network, All The President's Men and Bound for Glory, all of which are fairly decent movies to say the least. It's a brilliant movie, especially as it was written by Stallone in three days (after he watched the unfancied Chuck Wepner take Ali to 15 rounds), and then shot in 28 days for $1m. And Rocky loses the fight.

Raging Bull is one of the best films ever, but boxing is a lesser theme, behind masculinity, anger, jealousy, insecurity etc.

In terms of how realistically they depict boxing, Raging Bull's much closer to the truth. It's highly stylised, but the fights aren't the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot bouts that often appeared in the Rocky films.

The most truthful account of boxing I've seen is the hopelessly bleak Fat City from 1972. There's no glamour or embellishment when the fight scenes come on - they're grimy, violent and occasionally dull. It's actually a very good film if you're into the whole freewheeling New Hollywood thing.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I dunno, you try and help people out...

[Bored Of Education]

The Goal! Trilogy is hackneyed, mawkish tripe.

I have to say that, in an appalling field, I found the football scenes in the first two bearable and certainly a lot better than many many others. Of course, the film itself is banal but it is, essentially, a kids film.

They are, however, Raging Bull compared to the third which doesn't even have any of their redeeming factors.

[Alex Anderson]

I love the Miracle of Bern but my memory told me that there isn't that much of an attempt to recreate events on the pitch. For sure there are shots of the players on the pitch but there isn't much choreographed play. Am I misremembering?

More likely to be me, Levin. I think the only decent thing for me to do is watch it again.

[Lang Spoon]

From Whatever happened to the Likely Lads? to Goal!

What might've been, the scriptwriter's saddest words.

[Aitch]

Just got back in after seeing Raging Bull, it's not a boxing film per se, but it certainly left me punchdrunk.

[Alex Anderson]

I love the Miracle of Bern but my memory told me that there isn't that much of an attempt to recreate events on the pitch. For sure there are shots of the players on the pitch but there isn't much choreographed play. Am I misremembering?

There's a lot of choreographed play, Levin but all of it is confined to the final, versus the Magical Magyars. That's the only game recreated. So I'm misremembering it. There's a couple of training sessions - one a Rot Weiss Essen session - and a dressing room scene en route to the final, but all other actual football action was imagined by me. Also the wee laddie protagonist is fucking brutal. I'd forgotten that I'd realised this the second or third time I watched it. Just watched it again for the first time in years and I should think that'll be me done.

I should have known it wasn't a true classic by the fact I gret my eyes out first time I saw it. Like a lot of people, very few of the films that last down the decades for me - ye know, the ones I pop on the DVD when arriving home from a Friday night out before passing out during the second scene then being woken at 5am on the sofa to cold saliva down my chin, a slice of Cathedral City on my top lip and an angry, crusty-eyed wife shaking my shoulder demanding I turn that fucking thing off as the menu page has been belting out the same ten seconds of the bank robbery music from Heat for the last three and a half hours while she'd been in her bed like someone who can actually handle three Bacardi Breezers in one sitting - completely blew me away first time I saw them; they all did enough to grab my attention, obviously. But, mostly, the initial viewing of all my favourite films caused them merely to nag away at me, starting a slow burn which ensured they then stood the test of time.

Das Wunder von Bern is not a quality film but a very worthwhile exercise - both for 2003 me and the producers.

The scene with the kids playing a game to the Austrian commentary on the semi-final does, however, retain some impact and is absolutely the high point of the movie. However, even here I've managed to misremember. There's only one goal - scored to the commentary on Otto Walter making it 4-1 from a corner by Fritz. The kids do also score a header from a corner but it's at the back stick, totally unmarked - a downward header. Otto Walter converted his brother's cross from the near-post, with an Austrian on top of him - a backward flick up into the far corner. I mean, some of these child actors are as old as 11 - what the fuck were they playing at ...

[Sam]

I've just remembered that for boxing, there's this film called When We Were Kings which features some highly convincing scenes. You'd almost think it was documentary footage.

[Janik]

Lead character is completely impalusible, though.

[Excitable_Boy]

I've just remembered that for boxing, there's this film called When We Were Kings which features some highly convincing scenes. You'd almost think it was documentary footage.

Shame about the budget constraints; they should have just paid more and got Will Smith not someone who looks a bit like him from certain angles.

[Alex Anderson]

Lead character is completely impalusible, though.

And why give the actor playing Hugh McIlvanney the most macho voice in the whole movie.

Make-up department couldn't even sort out the Don King character's preposterous costume ...

[Guy Profumo]

"The Club"

And the best exchange about professional sport ever.

"We'd've played for free"

<sotto voce> "Then you must've been fucking stupid"

[Levin]

Firstly can you help me find "The Club" Guy? because secondly, searching for the club film brought me to The Club (2015 film) which appears to be a Chilean Father Ted played straight.

[Alex Anderson]

Alan Dershowitz's legal team playing basketball in Reversal of Fortune.

[Guy Profumo]

Firstly can you help me find "The Club" Guy? because secondly, searching for the club film brought me to The Club (2015 film) which appears to be a Chilean Father Ted played straight.

Wikipedia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Club_(1980_film)

[delicatemoth]

The action scenes in Shaolin Soccer are spellbinding. Probably the best sports film I've seen.

[MarkF]

There is a 1980s BBC series on Bodyline which I remember loving as a kid. Hugo Weaving as Douglas Jardine. Would love to see it again.

Here <ahem>Hu go

There are links to the other episodes adjacent.

[edit] ...and I see Toby already got there. I'll get me coat.

[Guy Profumo]

And whoever knew Indian-born and Scotland-raised Douglas Jardine spoke with a nasal Strine whine?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Not exactly on topic but not worth it's own thread yet. CBC (really!) has a new soccer based series, 21 Thunder, beginning on Monday. Surprisingly the premise doesn't sound half bad.

Encouraging early review here.