Miyagi left behind before he moved to California.) The film hits all of the expected beats with skill and enthusiasm before the winning formula got ground down by uninspired sequels and remakes. (Not for nothing, but at a time when racial sensitivity wasn’t exactly in vogue in Hollywood films, The Karate Kid actually paid lip service to the life Mr. Macchio embodied teenage insecurity for the Atari generation, and Morita (who received a Best Supporting Actor nomination) brought compassion and wisdom to a performance that could have easily just been a stock wise-mentor role. The Karate Kid is a fantasy for every sensitive young person who dreams of being cool, and it’s made with tons of heart, sweetness, and sympathy. Avildsen delivered another underdog sports movie, telling the story of a New Jersey kid named Daniel ( Ralph Macchio) who moves to Southern California, falls in love with Elisabeth Shue’s cheerleader character Ali, and trains with an immigrant handyman (Pat Morita) after some bullies beat him up. If you can separate it from That Oscar Night - and it’s not easy- it remains stirring it’s truly an incredible story.Įight years after Rocky, director John G. You wish Venus and Serena were bigger parts of what is, after all, their own story, but then again, they were producers on the movie: This is a love letter to a father who made them who they are … for better and for worse.
Smith inhabits the incorrigibly determined Richard in a way that plays off Smith’s star power, and how it (and he) has aged, making Richard so convinced of his own correctness about everything that it’s all the more astounding that he turns out to be right.
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As for the glimpses of Formula One racing, they’re electric even after all these years - which is undercut by the sense of sadness and terror hovering over each pulse-pounding moment.ĭestined, alas, to be known as “the movie Will Smith won the Oscar for just a few minutes after the Slap,” it’s easy to forget how perfectly cast Smith is as Richard Williams, the uncompromising, unconventional, often-maddening-and-also-maybe-just-brilliant father of Venus and Serena Willams. What this documentary communicates most vividly is the unknowable depths of some people’s need to compete - how it’s nearly a religion, or a sickness - and that lack of understanding leaves Senna as a fascinating, inscrutable figure. Senna utilizes archival footage to tell the story of the man, who died in 1994 at the age of 34, and even if you know how he met his fate, it doesn’t make this story any less compelling or tragic.
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The best sports surprise us: These great sports movies do the same.īefore director Asif Kapadia won an Oscar for Amy, he focused on Ayrton Senna, a race-car driver compelled to be the best. Those are not the sort of sports movies you will find on our list of the 50 best sports movies of all time. But for some reason, many sports movies insist on being predictable, adhering to the formula.
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.
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 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. It’s like saying that “desert movies” are a genre, or “ocean movies” are. It is strange that sports movies are considered a genre since, all told, they really are just a setting. This story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated to include recent releases.
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