16 Best Sports Movies On Hulu
The best sports stories, be they based on truth or made up by a writer, are by their very nature narrative. In fact, they can be downright cinematic. That means sports can make great building blocks for movies. Sports are all about heroes and villains, overcoming adversity, and emerging triumphant to the delight of cheering fans — not unlike a well-made film. It's a logical end then that some of the most beloved and memorable movies ever made are about athletes competing for glory, be they comedies, dramas, documentaries, action flicks, or pulled-from-the-headlines, based-on-a-true-story affairs.
Major streaming service Hulu offers an especially varied abundance of sports movies, available at a click to its millions of subscribers. Here then are the 16 best sports films currently available on Hulu.
Updated on December 29, 2021: As Hulu adds and drops different titles, we'll keep this list updated to reflect those changes in the digital catalog. Check back each month for the best movies about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat to grace the site.
Red Penguins
If real life can be stranger and funnier than fiction, then "Red Penguins" is proof in the form of a documentary film. It's a look at life in Russia in the early 1990s, just after the breakup of the Soviet Union — a crucial moment in American-Russian relations. It was at this time that American master marketer Steve Warshaw, with the assistance of storied NHL franchise the Pittsburgh Penguins, headed to Moscow to turn the men's national hockey team into a spectacle on ice.
"Red Penguins" tells the tale of how Warshaw injected a whole lot of American-style showbiz into a formerly sedate and state-oriented operation. Along the way, you'll watch as organized crime and live bears working as beer servers get involved in this strange and unbelievable film about the intersection of politics, business, and hockey.
- Director: Gabe Polsky
- Year: 2019
- Runtime: 80 minutes
- Rating: PG-13
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%
Moneyball
Sports, or at least modern-day professional sports, are about more than on-the-field accomplishments and coming together as a team to beat a hated rival. Franchises are billion-dollar businesses, and they put a lot of effort, time, and finances into trying to create the best possible squads. And that's what this understated and underrated sports flick is all about.
Based on the nonfiction work by Michael Lewis, "Moneyball" tells the surprisingly exciting and fascinating story of the early 2000s (and underfunded) Oakland Athletics, led by general manager Billy Beane. A traditional sports movie in that it's about an underdog facing big odds and even bigger skepticism, "Moneyball" tracks Beane's introduction and use of sabermetrics to find the best, most cost-effective players — or using advanced statistical analysis to pinpoint and sign ideal ballplayers.
- Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
- Director: Bennett Miller
- Year: 2011
- Runtime: 133 minutes
- Rating: PG-13
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
Knuckleball!
It's tough for even the best Major League pitcher to throw the perfect knuckleball, a pitch so slow, wily, and unpredictable that it's almost impossible to hit (and which a lot big-league hurlers write off as a cheap gimmick). Filmmakers Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg made this documentary of the same name to explain, demystify, and explore the lore surrounding the knuckleball. They focus mainly on two pitchers near the end of their careers, R.A. Dickey and Tim Wakefield, who adopted the knuckleball as a last resort to extend their baseball days.
- Director: Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg
- Year: 2012
- Runtime: 94 minutes
- Rating: NR
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
The Last Race
Outside the NASCAR hotbed of the South, one of the earliest and longest-lasting stock car racing communities is situated on Long Island, just outside of Manhattan. In the mid-20th century, 40 busy racetracks populated the island, but by the 2010s, only the Riverhead Raceway remained. "The Last Race" looks at the small but tight-knit community of Long Island stock car enthusiasts, as well as Barbara and Jim Cromarty, the 80-something owners who bought the Riverhead Raceway in the 1970s and steadfastly refused to sell the land beneath it to aggressive, fortune-offering real estate developers. But due to many extenuating circumstances, they can't hold out much longer.
- Director: Michael Dweck
- Year: 2018
- Runtime: 75 minutes
- Rating: NR
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
I, Tonya
In one of the most shocking and bizarre sports stories of all time, in 1994, figures associated with Winter Olympics-level figure skater Tonya Harding conspired to take gold medal frontrunner Nancy Kerrigan out of the competition by whacking her on the knee. None of it went according to plan, Harding was implicated in the scandal, and the whole incident is recalled and documented as a tragicomedy of errors in "I, Tonya."
Margot Robbie brings layers to Harding, a skater who comes from a lot more upheaval and a lot less money that most of her competitors, including being raised by a conniving, cruel, belittling mother (Allison Janney, in an Oscar-winning performance). And in this brilliantly bizarre sports flick, Tonya Harding aims to win at any price, so she thinks it's a good idea when her ne'er-do-well husband, Jeff, and an associate, Shawn (who think he's much tougher and smarter than he really is), plan a violent and poorly prepared takedown of her chief rival.
- Starring: Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Paul Walter Hauser
- Director: Craig Gillespie
- Year: 2017
- Runtime: 121 minutes
- Rating: R
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%
Bull
A film as no-frills and as matter-of-fact as rodeo itself, "Bull" is a movie about the dangerous, exciting, and competitive sport of bull riding. Abe is an aging bull fighter about to leave the sport he's tenuously existed on the fringes for years. Well, that is until he connects with Kris, a troubled and directionless teen who does chores for him to pay off a debt. Eventually, Abe becomes Kris' friend and mentor, and they bond over the joys and thrills of bull riding, something most everyone else in their orbit just doesn't understand.
"Bull" has a small cast and very personal stakes, but it's an emotionally intimate and raw film, one that allows the audience to almost overwhelmingly empathize with the highs and lows experienced by the characters in their pursuit of sporting greatness and personal goodness.
- Starring: Rob Morgan, Yolonda Ross, Amber Havard
- Director: Annie Silverstein
- Year: 2019
- Runtime: 109 minutes
- Rating: NR
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%
Skate Kitchen
HBO's two-season cult favorite "Betty" is a series-length expansion of "Skate Kitchen," a similarly low-key, hyper-realistic, and evocative look at a collective of young female skateboarders in New York City. Co-written and directed by Crystal Moselle, "Skate Kitchen" features many of the same actors playing their "Betty" characters, including skateboarders turned actors Rachelle Vinberg and Nina Moran.
"Skate Kitchen" centers on Camille (Vinberg), a lonely Long Islander as she finds her de facto family of other skateboarding young women. Like "Betty," the best scenes in " Skate Kitchen" are about the characters doing whatever it takes to enjoy their favorite sport (fighting hostile forces as they do), as well as sumptuous, gorgeously shot sequences that make skateboarding in New York City look like the most enjoyable and beautiful thing on Earth.
- Starring: Rachelle Vinberg, Dede Lovelace, Nina Moran
- Director: Crystal Moselle
- Year: 2018
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Rating: R
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%
The Art of Self-Defense
For decades, suburban strip mall karate dojos have advertised their services as a way for kids to get some exercise and learn physical and mental discipline. In "The Art of Self-Defense," a weak, shy, and awkward adult named Casey joins a karate school to learn how to protect himself after he's attacked by a gang of masked motorcycle-wearing criminals. Taken with the dojo's charismatic but mysterious Sensei, Casey dives into karate and quickly advances through the program, becoming a more aggressive and violent man in the process and eventually coming to question Sensei's, uh, unique leadership style.
- Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots, Alessandro Nivola
- Director: Riley Stearns
- Year: 2019
- Runtime: 104 minutes
- Rating: R
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%
Chuck (aka The Bleeder)
There's already one terrific sports movie about boxer Chuck Wepner, and it's called "Rocky," Sylvester Stallone's filmmaking triumph about a down-on-his-luck pugilist striving for greatness in the ring. Stallone's screenplay was inspired by Wepner's fight against one of the greatest in the sport, and now, Wepner – more than 40 years later — gets his actual life story told via a loving, respectful, and at times straight-up crazy sports biopic.
Liev Schreiber plays Wepner, aka the "Bayonne Bleeder," a hard-living boxer who could take a punch to the face even better than he could deliver them. Set in the mid-1970s when Wepner was pushing 40, "Chuck" (also marketed under the title "The Bleeder") charts the fighter's unlikely and baffling ups and downs in the boxing world and his even more unlikely fights against wrestler Andre the Giant, superstar Muhammad Ali ... and a bear.
- Starring: Liev Schreiber, Elisabeth Moss, Naomi Watts
- Director: Philippe Falardeau
- Year: 2016
- Runtime: 98 minutes
- Rating: R
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%
Ali
Muhammad Ali — the man, the legend, and the legacy — towers over the world of sports, the civil rights movement, and 20th-century American history. Shooting to fame and the boxing record books with a captivating personality and pugilistic skills that bewildered his opponents, Ali was the rhyming, self-aggrandizing, heavyweight champion of the world and one of the most famous people on the planet in the 1960s and 1970s. "Ali," starring Will Smith (who disappears into the role and transforms into the boxer) focuses on the athlete's life from 1964 to 1974, an eventful period in which he beats Sonny Liston to become the title-holder, converts to Islam, changes his name from Cassius Clay, comes out against the war in Vietnam, and fights George Foreman in the iconic "Rumble in the Jungle" bout.
- Starring: Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight
- Director: Michael Mann
- Year: 2001
- Runtime: 158 minutes
- Rating: R
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%
Swimming with Men
Sports, and sports movies, can be about championship-winning athletes overcoming adversity to hoist a trophy. The pursuit of athletics on film can also be small stories about how a simple physical activity brings people together and helps them cope with the hardships of life. In the gentle and poignant British comedy "Swimming with Men," a timid accountant named Eric is left alone after his wife leaves him. Left flailing in his personal life, he finds an unlikely way to restore his confidence and possibly impress his spouse enough for her return: He joins Men who Swim, a synchronized swimming team made up entirely of older gentlemen. As they get themselves and their sweet underwater dance moves in shape for the upcoming world championships, Eric and the guys forge friendships and find themselves too.
- Starring: Rupert Graves, Jim Carter, Rob Brydon
- Director: Oliver Parker
- Year: 2018
- Runtime: 97 minutes
- Rating: NR
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%
Kingpin
After making the ridiculous gross-out comedy classic "Dumb and Dumber" but before directing the Oscar-winning road drama "Green Book," Peter and Bobby Farrelly teamed up to make a film that takes place on the road but is silly, gross, and riotously funny. It also revolves around the proud sport of bowling.
After hustling some amateurs, Roy Munson loses his hand after the angry marks stuff his arm into a ball return. Now fallen from grace, the former pro bowler — using a cheap prosthetic limb — sells bowling supplies and pays for his rent by, er, "physically servicing" his elderly landlady. Then he discovers Ismael, an Amish bowling phenom, and lies to his upstanding family in order to take him on a heavily debauched cross-country trip for a bowling tournament boasting a $1 million prize.
- Starring: Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Bill Murray
- Director: Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly
- Year: 1996
- Runtime: 114 minutes
- Rating: PG-13
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 50%
Dealin' With Idiots
Jeff Garlin is one of comedy's all-time best sidemen, best known for playing easygoing talent manager (and the only person who can stand Larry David) on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or the quick-to-rage blustery dad Murray on "The Goldbergs." Also a standup comic, Garlin wrote, directed, and starred in the chatty, sports-adjacent, parenting-and-showbiz play-like comedy "Dealin' with Idiots." The film's jumping-off point is a common but seldom examined element of American sports — the parents of young athletes sitting in the stands, cheering on their kids, and forced to socialize with one another. Garlin plays Max, a comedian who decides to make a movie based on his interactions with the parents he encounters at his son's baseball games, most of them aggressive, obnoxious, and living vicariously through their kids.
- Starring: Jeff Garlin, Gina Gershon, Nia Vardalos
- Director: Jeff Garlin
- Year: 2013
- Runtime: 87 minutes
- Rating: NR
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 37%
My All-American
Sports are often about beating the odds to achieve both greatness and a certain kind of immortality, and the stories of that trajectory can inspire the audience in their own endeavors, if not move them deeply. For example, "My All-American" is the touching, true story of 1960s football star Freddie Steinmark. A star in high school, he's deemed too small to recruit at the college level. But thanks to University of Texas coach Darrell Royal believing in Steinmark's gifts, he takes a chance and brings the young athlete onto his team. College proves tough for Steinmark, as his brother ships off to fight in the Vietnam War and Steinmark experiences severe pain that isn't football-related but symptomatic of a serious illness. Despite all that, Steinmark helps put the Texas Longhorns on the track to a national championship.
- Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Finn Wittrock, Robin Tunney
- Director: Angelo Pizzo
- Year: 2015
- Runtime: 118 minutes
- Rating: PG
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 31%
The Sandlot
"The Sandlot" captures the wide-eyed innocence of youth baseball, as well as the thrilling mischief of palling around with one's first and best friends. Set in the summer of 1962, this movie follows a kid named Scott Smalls as he moves to a new town and befriends a group of peers who play baseball in a neighborhood sandlot. There are lots of on-field antics involving these baseball-playing kids, each of whom boasts a strong personality. The sport bonds them together, gets them out of the house, and facilitates their hijinks. It is, in short, the stuff of childhood itself.
- Starring: Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna
- Director: David Mickey Evans
- Year: 1993
- Runtime: 101 minutes
- Rating: PG
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 64%
The Foot Fist Way
Long before he became a star for playing fast-talking ne'er-do-wells in cult comedy classics like "Eastbound and Down" and "Your Highness," Danny McBride co-wrote and starred in the ultra-low-budget indie comedy "The Foot Fist Way." Fred Simmons, the owner and operator of a third-rate strip-mall Taekwondo dojo, takes himself very seriously. Unfortunately, he also blows all his money bringing a rude and decidedly past-his-prime martial arts movie star in to inspire his students. He slowly and hilariously comes apart at the seams as he is forced to deal with the various indignities this brings, which eventually awakens the beast within.
- Starring: Danny McBride, Mary Jane Bostic, Ben Best
- Director: Jody Hill
- Year: 2006
- Runtime: 87 minutes
- Rating: R
- Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%