24 Hours of Movies: Sports!

Suit up for movies!

Thank you to Adam Riske for suggesting the theme for this marathon!

10 am - Nobody's Perfect (1990, dir. Robert Kaylor)

Rather than start with an all-timer like Tin Cup or Hoosiers (which I have still never seen, #movieshame), I thought it would be fun to kick off our 24-hour sports movie marathon with an early '90s cable staple that almost no one remembers. Chad Lowe has one of only a handful of starring roles as Stephen, a college tennis player who gets kicked off his team and decides to wear drag and join the women's team as Stephanie; hilarious misunderstandings ensue. Taking its title from the great last line of Some Like It Hot is about as close as this movie ever gets to the Billy Wilder classic. I have no doubt that nothing in this movie has aged well, but as long as we go into it understanding that fact we should have a breezy, stupid 90 minutes during which to settle comfortably into the next 24 hours.

11:30 am - For Love of the Game (1999, dir. Sam Raimi)

Listen. I know there are "better" baseball movies I could program in the second slot. I know there are even better baseball movies that star Kevin Costner. But I want to shine a little light on this one because I'm one of the only people I can think of that like it despite knowing that it's pretty soggy and a weird but super sincere attempt by Sam Raimi to make a conventional studio movie without any of his usual eccentricities. Kevin Costner is a ballplayer in the twilight of his career trying to pitch a perfect game while reflecting back on the moments that got him to this point, mainly a romance with single mom Kelly Preston. The only thing that could have made this movie better is if the studio had shown courage. Google it or ask Adam Riske what I'm talking about.

1:30 pm - Stick It (2006, dir. Jessica Bendinger)

I am not the target audience for this movie, but I really like it for a couple of reasons: 1) it's about gymnastics, something I know little about but which turns out to be pretty cinematic; 2) Jeff Bridges appears to be enjoying himself as the coach and 3) it stars Canadian actress Missy Peregrym in the lead role as a rebellious teenager who enters the world of competitive gymnastics (imagine if the entirety of Bring It On focused on the Eliza Dushku character). I'm a big Missy Peregrym fan -- my fellow Rookie Blue heads know what's up -- and this feels like her one shot at mainstream stardom before she started working primarily on television and in some pretty good indie survival horror movies. I like the idea that we try to represent as many different sports as possible, as 24 hours of baseball movies would grow tiresome.

3:30 pm - The Best of Times (1986, dir. Roger Spottiswoode)

Our first (only?) football movie of the marathon is this '80s comedy drama starring Robin Williams as an adult who can't get over dropping the game-winning pass during the Big Game in high school, so he proposes a rematch between the team and their old rivals. First, he has to get the star quarterback (Kurt Russell) on board. The movie is written by Ron Shelton because it is about sports, but like a lot of Shelton screenplays also manages to be about things like identity, masculinity, and regret. His movies are always better when he directs them, but Roger Spottiswoode does a fine job bringing what is a passable three-star movie to the screen. Weirdly enough, I think this is the only Shelton representation of the entire marathon. I might have fucked up.

5:30 pm - Body Slam (1986, dir. Hal Needham)

A wrestling picture! Clearly made to capitalize on the burgeoning Rock 'n Wrestling connection of the 1980s, Body Slam stars Dirk Benedict as a music promoter who winds up managing a pro wrestling tag team (The Tonga Kid and Rowdy Roddy Piper, my all-time favorite, in his first big acting role). He starts up a romance with Tanya Roberts and runs afoul of Captain Lou Albano, playing the villainous manager of tag team The Cannibals. As someone who got into wrestling around this time, I have a lot of nostalgia for the scene presented by Body Slam (other wrestling personalities of the period make cameo appearances) even though the movie is kind of stupid and went direct to video except for a theatrical release in Arizona. For me, the early performance by Roddy Piper is the whole reason to see the movie. This was the last feature directed by the great Hal Needham.

7 pm - The Color of Money (1986, dir. Martin Scorsese)

Primetime Pizza slot goes to Martin Scorsese's sequel to The Hustler in which Paul Newman finally won his Oscar for returning to the role of "Fast" Eddie Felson, who has walked away from playing pool until he finds a new hustler (Tom Cruise) he wants to take under his wing. I know that Scorsese mostly made this movie because he needed a surefire commercial hit, but he still directs the shit out of it and the cast is incredible, especially Newman and Cruise in an electric performance as a pretty big douche. I'm not a big pool guy (though my son Charlie has become one, so much so that we bought him his own "Vince" t-shirt) but like with everything he touches, Scorsese makes it all incredibly cinematic. As studio for-hire movies go, this one is pretty great.

9 pm - Whip It (2009, dir. Drew Barrymore)

One of the tricks of programming long marathons like this is variety (obviously). That's one of the reasons horror works so well for 24 hour stretches -- there are so many different kinds of horror movies. Sports movies exist across a wide range of genres (mostly comedy and drama I guess), but there are also so many different sports to which movies have been devoted that we can also mix things up that way. This is all a long way of saying that we should include a movie about roller derby! As much as I enjoy stuff like Kansas City Bomber and Unholy Rollers, I'm in the mood to watch Whip It! here. Elliot Page plays a young woman who falls in love with roller derby and joins a team that consists of Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig, Eve, Drew Barrymore, and Zoë Bell of all people. I love a lot of them is what I'm saying. Whip It! is a fun, sincere celebration of a sport that doesn't get a ton of recognition. This movie makes me think Drew Barrymore should have directed more, but to this date it's her only effort behind the camera. 

11 pm - Gimme an 'F' (1984,  dir. Paul Justman)

Because there aren't a lot of sports horror movies and we're not watching Him as part of this marathon, I've opted instead to devote the overnight section of this marathon to trash cable staples of the 1980s. First up is Gimme an 'F,' a movie I mostly know about because a kid in elementary school had seen it and was obsessed with telling me as much he could about it. It's set at a cheerleading camp where the head counselor (Stephen Shellen of Casual Sex?) is roped into coaching a losing team in order to gain his freedom from the job. Despite being an '80s sex comedy, the gaze is is largely either female or homoerotic, with the movie's standout set piece an extended solo dance (a la Footloose) performed by Shellen and his dance double.

12:30 am - Kickboxer (1989, dir. David Worth)

Late night JCVD! I'm on record as not being a big "competitive fight movie" guy, but in the context of a sports movie marathon I think I would really enjoy this one, especially at 12:30 in the morning when we need something that demands very little. I haven't seen this one as much as Bloodsport so it could be more or less new to me, which is an exciting prospect. I know that it's beloved so if I can stay awake I'm excited to find out why, though I suspect it has something to do with the age at which all of its fans saw the movie.

2:30 am - Coach (1978, dir. Bud Townsend)

Speaking of age! You can't program a sports movie marathon without at least one movie told from the perspective of a coach, so how about one in which the coach starts sleeping with a player? And how about that coach being played by '70s icon and former pro tennis player Cathy Lee Crosby?  And the student she fucks is a young Michael Biehn in his first movie role? And the movie is produced by Crown International Pictures? She plays an Olympic athlete who, through a case of mistaken identity, gets hired to coach a boys basketball team. I know, I know: a woman coach? Don't worry, she and a high school student enter a relationship and the team starts winning! It all sounds so sleazy but the movie feels kind of chaste despite the subject matter. It's also not all that good, which helps at this time of night.

4:15 am - Major League (1989, dir. David S. Ward)

Yes, this is our second baseball movie of the marathon when most sports are only getting one slot, but I couldn't let these 24 hours pass without some Sheen in one of my favorite sports comedies of all time. Besides, the tone and approach of Major League couldn't be more different from the soapy drama of For Love of the Game, so I think we're in the clear. Like so many sports comedies, this one focuses on a ragtag team of lovable losers who learn to get their shit together and start winning, with standout comic performances from Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, and Wesley Snipes, among others. This was a VHS classic for me and my younger sister, the only 10-year old girl to ever have a huge crush on Tom Berenger.

6 am - Slap Shot (1977, dir. George Roy Hill)

We need a hockey movie and I've actually never seen Slap Shot (I know, I know, more #movieshame) so let's slot it into our marathon so I can finally check it off. Major League will have hopefully helped us wake up so we're ready for this one. I know it's supposed to be one of the best hockey movies ever made, which is good because I think I've only seen, like, Mystery Alaska and the first two Mighty Ducks movies. This one focuses on the fighting more than those, right?

8 am - Happy Gilmore (1996, dir. Dennis Dugan)

Ok, this one is a little hockey adjacent, making Slap Shot a great lead-in, but really it's a golf movie and one of the best of all the Adam Sandler comedies. He plays a frustrated hockey player who discovers he's good at golf and starts entering tournaments to save his grandmother's house. The supporting cast, which includes Carl Weathers, Julie Bowen, and (especially) Christopher Macdonald, are all aces and the movie occasionally indulges in those moments of absurdity that made Billy Madison so great. For some reason, I think this one is better remembered. I'm so glad they never made a sequel to this and never will.

9:30 am - Days of Thunder (1990, dir. Tony Scott)

It's a good idea to end a marathon with a movie that doesn't demand too much from us. The great Tony Scott made a movie about Tom Cruise driving very fast in a circle and remembering that he's awesome! Doesn't sound too demanding to me. This is just Top Gun in stock cars, but it's slick and functional enough to be good. Plus we get Robert Duvall (RIP), Cary Elwes, Michael Rooker, Caroline Williams, and early Kidman. I would drive in circles very fast for early Kidman. Or Kidman now. Really any Kidman is circle worthy.