There are several distinct genres of film, each with its specific storytelling style and tropes that include romance, comedy, drama, and science-fiction. The sports genre — though they may be romantic, humorous, lovelorn, and creative, also overlap with other genres of film and are distinct because they function at their own pace.
The reason why sports films are so appealing to viewers is the exact reason the sport itself is so beloved. They’re an innate story arc that features triumphant winners and defeated losers and features the audience in a band of individuals coming together to accomplish and celebrate a certain objective. There’s plenty to be cheered for in sports and great sports films as well.
HBO Max happens to be the streaming platform for several iconic sports movies from the last several decades. Here are the best films about champions and heroes from the gridiron, diamond track, track, and much more, available now via HBO Max.
Updated on January 3, 2022. HBO Max frequently changes its catalog of movies that are available for streaming, so we’ll keep this listing regularly up-to-date to reflect the latest changes. Keep an eye out to see more of the top ever sports films on HBO Max.
Football Movies On Hbo Max
1. Warner Bros.
As one of his initial major characters before making his mark on the screen with the role of Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Chadwick Boseman was a key historical person who left a huge legacy for American sports and contributed to giving rise to the Civil Rights Movement. The year 1947 was when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s long-standing, though the not official requirement to recruit only white players.
Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey picked Robinson as a standout from in the Negro Leagues to become the first Black player to play in Major League Baseball, and “42” depicts the monumental significance of this, along with the daily personal struggles that faced Robinson, the player who wore the infamous jersey number. “42” explores the personal element of a moment that changed the world.
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Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie
Director: Brian Helgeland
Year: 2013
Running time: 128 min.
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%
2. Bend it Like Beckham
“Bend it Like Beckham” is a spirited and inspiring illustration of what’s great about sports: How they unite people and assist people in establishing their own distinctive identities. Jess is a superstar in soccer; however, her strict British Indian parents forbid her from playing soccer. However, Jess sneaks out and plays in the pickup games.
She is noticed by Jules, an 18-year-old woman who plays for the amateur side of the team. Jules and Jess quickly become friends, and Jess begins to play competitive soccer. But how long will she keep the secret, as well as her growing relationship with her coach a secret?
Starring: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Year: 2002
Running time 112 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%
3. Blue Crush
With stunning water scenes with cameras mounted to surfboards as they drift over and beneath the stunning sea, “Blue Crush” is an intensely enthralling, visceral you’re-there film about surfing that simply by being there, showcases the beauty and joys in the game. The non-surf scenes reflect the delights of living life.
It tells the tale of Anne Marie and her three roommates who reside in a beachside shack and desire nothing more of life other than getting up each day and going surfing. There are complications as an important surf contest looms closer, and Anne Marie alternately butts heads and gets smitten by the cocky professional football player who turns surfer.
Starring: Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, Matthew Davis
Director: John Stockwell
Year: 2002
Time of Run: 104 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 62%
4. Boogie
Focus Features
“Boogie,” a new book by “Boogie,” celebrity chef (and “Fresh Off the Boat” source of inspiration) Eddie Huang, explores the vibrant and competitive basketball world. Alfred Chin, better known to his pals as Boogie, is a remarkably gifted athlete amid his youth in Queens. He’s well on his way to achieving his goal of playing in the NBA If he can overcome the most difficult obstacle on his path: his highly traditional expectations from his parents that he attend a prestigious college.
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Starring: Taylor Takahashi, Taylour Paige, Pamelyn Chee
Director: Eddie Huang
Year: 2021
Time: 89 minutes
Rating: R
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%
5. Chasing Mavericks
A sleepy, minimal surf drama, “Chasing Mavericks” will so completely immerse viewers that they’ll be on a beach at dawn, soaking wet and sand. Based on the real young years of teenage surf star Jay Moriarty, Jonny Weston portrays the young California beach-side dweller and wave-watcher who realizes it’s one of the largest surfing waves in the world that is the Mavericks, is located just from where he is.
He sets out to prepare himself to be a strong enough surfer to take on the Mavericks, and then he recruits a surfer from the area Frosty Hesson to assist with the process. Both of them had plans to take their passion for surfing to the highest level (and the scenes from surfing in “Chasing Mavericks” are magnificent). However, they never imagined that they would create the father-son bond so desperately missing in their lives.
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jonny Weston, Elisabeth Shue
Director: Curtis Hanson
Year: 2012
Time of running is at 116 minutes
Rating: PG
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 33%
6. Days of Thunder
A few years away from his role as the hotshot daredevil Navy pilot on “Top Gun,” Tom Cruise returned to the seat of a powerful, sophisticated, expensive, and high-end car, playing the arrogant NASCAR rookie Cole Trickle in the soapy quick, fast, and delightfully high-pitched auto-racing drama “Days of Thunder.”
Cole does not stand as only an aggressive racer on the track and ends up in the crosshairs of the famous Rowdy Burns until they become friends while recovering from crashes that almost end their lives. Cole earns the trust of Rowdy that he can race Rowdy’s famous car in the most famous race of all, the Daytona 500, up against competitors vying for his spot as his neurosurgeon-turned-love interest supports him.
Starring: Tom Cruise, Michael Rooker, Nicole Kidman
Director: Tony Scott
Year: 1990
Running time: 107 mins
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 38%
Eight Men Out
Orion Pictures
Baseball was just beginning its growth in 1910, and the annual World Series pitted the best players from the National League and American League against one another. However, the 1919 match against both the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox was to undermine the authenticity of the game and the eight players who took part in it after it was discovered that the team comprised of White Sox players agreed to throw the entire game in the name of the gambling ring.
“Eight Men Out,” in full period detail, and highlighting the tragic aspect of the true story gives depth to this historical footnote. It shows that the players who were banned took the actions they did as a result of being underpaid. One of the players, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, might not have done any wrong.
Starring: John Cusack, D.B. Sweeney, Charlie Sheen
Director: John Sayles
Year: 1988
Time: The duration is 119 minutes
Rating: PG
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%
7. He Got Game
In the film “He Got Game,” American master of cinema Spike Lee turns his attention to the terribly ineffective prison system and basketball. The first subject is dark and depressing. The latter is something Lee is passionate about.
Jake Shuttlesworth has been in jail for six years due to his role in the murder of his spouse, who was the mom of his child Jesus. Jake’s son has become removed from his father and is eking his own existence and being sought out for his basketball abilities. When the prison warden offers Jake one week of parole, they must convince Jesus to go to the old warden’s school. Our protagonist takes the opportunity.
Jake and Jesus meet up and resolve their differences on the courts for basketball. “He Got Game” has a game of its own because its sports scenes are thrillingly and beautifully produced. They are also more than real because Jesus Shuttlesworth is portrayed by an NBA superstar (and an exceptionally gifted actor), Ray Allen.
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Milla Jovovich
Director: Spike Lee
Year: 1998
Time of running: 135 minutes
Rating: R
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%
8. Hoop Dreams
In 1994, when releases of iconic films such as “Pulp Fiction,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” and “Forrest Gump,” top-level film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert stated that their top films of 1994 included “Hoop Dreams,” a documentary that follows two high school basketball superstars who work hard and working hard to escape their hectic lives and succeed in the crowded world of sports.
Filmmakers follow William Gates and Arthur Agee, who are both residents of Chicago’s inner-city housing developments and both exceptionally talented basketballers, in their fight against their peers (and the system’s odds and crushing rules) to make themselves known and get out of the crime and poverty that are a part of their lives. “Hoop Dreams” is all at once harrowing, painful, and inspiring, as well as a beautiful and compassionate great documentary, to put it simply.
Director: Steve James
Year: 1994
Time of run: 172 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%
9. Love and Basketball
What’s better than watching the combination of two of the most enjoyable things to watch unfold onscreen, such as romance and basketball at the highest level?
Monica and Quincy have been friends throughout their lives growing up, becoming close as children and becoming close friends due to basketball. When they were teenagers, both of them pursued the game professionally. Their unwavering, uncompromising determination to reach a WNBA and NBA, as well as the NBA, makes their relationship platonic in character, encouraging and pushing each other to improve their competing levels. These clear goals become somewhat hazy and secondary when Monica and Quincy’s long-standing love and respect develop into a romance, making an extremely sexy driveway basketball one-on-one games.
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Starring: Sanaa Lathan, Omar Epps, Alfre Woodard
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Year: 2000
Time of running: 124 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%
10. Rocky
“Rocky” is definitely the most acclaimed boxing film ever created, if it’s not even the most well-known and satisfying sports film ever made. The plot of the Oscar-winning film is akin to the action on screen that sees the struggling actress Sylvester Stallone writing himself a film to give him some work to do. The film is about Rocky Balboa, a no-name Philadelphia boxer chosen to fill in for an injured boxer to fight Apollo Creed, the world’s heavyweight champion.
“Rocky” then follows the same formula that thousands of sports films were based on: the underdog train with his unruly coach Mickey and is surrounded by a gradual, affectionate relationship with timid Adrian. “Rocky” is the story of an under-appreciated man becoming a household name. Audiences will lift their arms in the conclusion, similar to what Rocky did in the movie’s famous training montage, which was shot around Philadelphia.
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burgess Meredith
Director: John G. Avildsen
Year: 1976
Running time: 120 minutes
Rating: PG
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
11. Semi-Tough
Beyond a sports film, “Semi-Tough” is a glimpse of the professional side of American football in a particular time — the confident 1970s, when players were treated as film stars. In a stunning piece of casting and directing, Burt Reynolds, the beautiful and macho film’s box office queen of that time, Burt Reynolds, plays Miami football player Billy Clyde Puckett, who enjoys a lavish lifestyle and has rooms with his teammates Shake Tiller and Barbara Bookman who is the daughter of the team’s owner. Alongside the classic ’70s football action and popular culture, “Semi-Tough” also explores and hints at the self-actualization craze prevalent at the time when Shake and Barbara become part of a mysterious cult.
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh
Director: Michael Ritchie
Year: 1977
Running time: 107 mins
Rating: R
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%
12. Varsity Blues
A huge “Friday Night Lights” vibe runs throughout “Varsity Blues,” a film about a high school pigskin located in a small Texas town where the entire life is centered around football and the kids who play the game are pressured to be successful at all costs. “Varsity Blues” doesn’t celebrate football in high school in the same way as it criticizes it, with the main protagonist Mox (James Van Der Beek at the peak of his “Dawson’s Creek” teen idol-hood) making his way to the starting quarterback’s position to take over for an injured player and submitting to the demands of his overbearing coach, his family, and the town.
However, Mox does not love football like his raunchy and broadly-defined teammates; ultimately, he’s looking for nothing to do with the carnival.
Starring: James Van Der Beek, Jon Voight, Paul Walker
Director: Brian Robbins
Year: 1999
Time of Run: Time: 104 minutes
Rating: R
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%
13. We Are Marshall
“We Are Marshall,” through the inspirational sports film treatment, tells the real and little-known tale about the 1971 Marshall University football team. The year was 1970, and 75 West Virginia college’s football players, staffers, and boosters died in an airplane crash, which sent the campus and the thriving community surrounding Marshall into a state of immense sadness.
There had been a lot of losses and even football players but a warm-hearted trainer, Jack Lengyel, rolled into town in the spring of 1971 and utilized football to reconnect the entire community following the tragedy. The games performed in Marshall Thundering Herd took on the immense significance and form the foundation of a film about the universal and healing properties of sports.
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Matthew Fox, Anthony Mackie
Director: McG
Year: 2006
Time: 131 minutes
Rating: PG
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 48%
14. Tokyo Olympiad
as the template for documentaries about sports and how the Olympics are presented, shot and disseminated, “Tokyo Olympiad” is an iconic filmmaking event. 1964’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo was very significant because the Games were Japan’s first introduction to the world after an after-World War II reconstruction. Also, the “Tokyo Olympiad” captures the significance and splendor of the quadrennial event that lasted for two weeks.
Filmmaker Kon Ichikawa is glued to Olympians (and the spectators) for as long as he wants to, taking indelible images of the most talented athletes of the world when they reach their goals and delight millions of people and allowing for easy, subtle tricks like slow motion as well as the soundtrack to make the experience more enjoyable. “Tokyo Olympiad” captures the splendor of sports and the extraordinary ability of athletes in a thrilling and surprising package.
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Director: Kon Ichikawa
Year: 1966
Time: 170 minutes
Rating: NR
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%
15. Without Limits
Oregon track and field superstar Steve Prefontaine broke long-distance records so drastically and is still considered to be one of the most impressive American endurance runners. “Without Limits,” tells the personal story of this dazzling athlete who tragically passed away at age 24. The viewers follow him through his rise to supremacy in his sport, form an affair with a fellow student and develop a strong and lasting bond with his mentor, Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman.
Starring: Billy Crudup, Donald Sutherland, Monica Potter
Director: Robert Towne
Year: 1998
Time: at 117 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%
