During the coronavirus shutdown, each day we will bring you a recommendation from The Post’s Peter Botte for a sports movie, TV show or book that perhaps was before your time or somehow slipped between the cracks of your viewing/reading history. Getcha popcorn ready!
Raging Bull (1980), Rated R
Streaming: Netflix, Amazon Prime
No better place to start than with the No. 1 sports flick of all-time, as ranked by the American Film Institute. Three sports movies, including two about boxing (“Rocky” and “Million Dollar Baby”), have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This graphic, 40-year-old, black-and-white bio about N.Y.-bred, Italian-American boxer Jake LaMotta should have earned director Martin Scorsese his first Oscar more than a quarter-century before he finally copped a gold statue in 2006 for “The Departed.” (Robert Redford won Best Director in 1980 for the suicide drama “Ordinary People,” which also won Best Picture.)
Seven-time Oscar nominee Robert De Niro did earn his only career Best Actor statue (he also won a supporting award for 1974’s “The Godfather Part II”) for his gritty portrayal of LaMotta, the volatile and vulgar former world middleweight champion in the early 1950s.
The film largely concentrates on his abusive relationship with his first wife, Vicky (Oscar-nominated Cathy Moriarty), while Joe Pesci, in his first major role, also earned a supporting nom as LaMotta’s crazed but well-meaning brother, Joey.
Many of the film’s most memorable scenes take place out of the ring, especially when the washed-up and overweight LaMotta tells glory stories at nightclubs he owns in Miami and New York years after his retirement from boxing.
Quote of note: “You didn’t get me down, Ray. You didn’t get me down.” LaMotta, after absorbing a brutal beating but avoiding a knockout in one of his six career fights against Sugar Ray Robinson.
Botte blows: 4.8 out of 5.