There’s this debate that reliably pops up each December about whether Die Hard is a Christmas Movie or not. To answer that in any kind of definitive way you’ve gotta be able to define exactly what a Christmas Movie, right? Presumably it has to be deeper than just being set at Christmas time. Romantic comedies aren’t just any film in which there are kisses and laughs, they have certain rhythms and structures to them. Same as how a horror is more than just a movie that has scary bits. Films can be scary without being horrors. Films can be horrors without being scary. Genre’s tend not to fit like gloves at the best of times and the only reason to learn their rules is so you’re able to break them. But you do still need those rules as a baseline.

Not to step on any toes here but Die Hard is most definitely a Christmas Movie. I’m not even going to hear arguments about that, instead I’ll merely point you in the direction of this video floating around the internet in which British film reviewer Mark Kermode (of the excellent Kermode & Mayo Film Review Podcast) explains exactly why Die Hard is, definitively, a Christmas Movie. His argument is flawless. It goes as thus:

1) There’s the typical Xmas movie “narrative closure” of Bruce Willis, amidst battling to defeat an evil enemy and save the proverbial day, acknowledging his failings as a husband as he seeks to rescue rescue his wife, the same kind of internal reckoning as A Christmas Carol or It’s A Wonderful Life, leading to a happy ending.

2) The “Christmasness” of it is essential to the plot and the film would fall apart if set in any other time of the year.

3) His wife is literally named Holly.

4) “Now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho”.

Case closed. But the reason I was thinking of all that was because I was trying to figure out whether Uncut Gems can be classified as a sports movie. My working theory is: yes, absolutely. For one thing Kevin Garnett is in it, and really bloody good in it too, so jot that down. Mike Francesa is in it too. Adam Sandler’s main character (Howie!) might only be living this awkwardly adjacent life to the sporting aspects of the plot but his incessant gambling has his fate linked desperately to the outcome of various basketball games, not to mention how the eponymous uncut gem slips into the narrative.

In the same as Kermode’s rules on Xmas films, Uncut Gems both revels in the sportsiness of its story but it also couldn’t exist without the backdrop of NBA basketball – if this dude is losing all his money at the pokies or the blackjack table then the stakes simply aren’t the same. And, in true sports movie fashion, literally everything comes to hinge on the result of one desperate last championship match... championship match for Howie at least, for Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics it’s the deciding game seven of the 2012 Eastern Conference semi-finals (and they went on to lose in the Eastern Conference finals to the eventual champion Miami Heat in seven games - LeBron’s first title).

That’s about as complicated as it needs to be. We could dive deep into plot trends and cliches and all that but the more specific it gets, the more the definition loses its value. A sports movie is a sports movie if sports are an essential part of the setting of the film and if sports play a crucial role in the motivation and resolution of the film. Take Happy Gilmore, for example. Another Adam Sandler joint. Happy finds he has a natural talent for golf and eventually gets caught up needing to win a pro tournament so he can use the prize money to save his grandma’s house. Much of the comedy, even, is derived from the golf (and Happy’s non-conventional approach to it). It’s an open and shut case of a sports movie.

Or how about Raging Bull? One of the all time classic prestige sports films. Robert DeNiro’s Jake LaMotta is on the rise as a middleweight boxer, finally winning the title after going through various controversies (a dodgy judges decision, a ban for throwing a fight, a jealous marriage). But those controversies get the best of him, particularly his jealousy, and he isolates himself from those around him as the decline sets in. The man is a boxer so that’s blatantly integral to the plot, while much of the film’s majesty is in how elegantly it portrays LaMotta’s brutal bouts in the ring and how that’s balanced with the ugliness of his anger and violence out of it. It’s a great movie about a great boxer who was anything but a great man. Despicable would be more like it.

Speaking of boxing, maybe the archetypal sports film is Rocky, which came out four years before Raging Bull and won the Oscar for Best Picture (which Raging Bull did not). It’s your classic underdog story of refusing to be counted out. Sylvester Stallone is legitimately good in it too, lending Rocky a kind of working-class pathos that raises the film above most of the trashy imitators it’s had since. I wouldn’t exactly call Rocky a masterpiece or anything but it’s undeniably influential... and although he loses the big fight at the end, he wins so much more with the love of a good woman (or something corny like that – hey nobody said that sports films, like Xmas films, were without their fair share of cheese). By the way, Apollo Creed from Rocky and Chubs Peterson from Happy Gilmore... same actor. Carl Weathers.

This isn’t even getting into the wonders of the sports documentary genre, which is a whole other beast. Often they borrow some of the same narrative tools in telling their stories but it’d be an injustice to mix them up with this lot, sports docos are their own thing. And even within the most bland and formulaic sports films there’s still heaps of room for genre bending. Kids movies. Hollywood cheese. Gritty drama. Crime capers. There must be some good horror sports movies out there too... can’t think of any of the top of the dome but maybe that’s the next trend in the industry.

But this whole thing started by trying (with success) to prove that Uncut Gems is a sports movie. With that in mind, and having cracked into the general rules of what it takes to be classed as such, here’s some non-disputable clarification on a few more non-sports movie sports movies. Pistols at dawn if you disagree.

The Rules:

1) Sport is integral to the plot and the motivations of the main characters

2) The film, usually, rises in stakes and action towards a climactic ‘championship game’

3) A general revelry/knowledge/passion in/of/for the sports they represent on screen

The Big Lebowski – Look, I realise there’s a lot of bowling involved. But the bowling is inessential. Donny knocks those pins down and Walter and The Dude are still talking about the rug, all the important stuff that happens at the bowling alley happens at the bar, in the carpark, or by the scorer’s table. And even though they do roll their way into the semis... the movie ends before those semis even happen. I don’t say this lightly either, this is my favourite movie of all time... but it’s NOT A SPORTS MOVIE.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective – The definitive Jim Carrey film, still hilarious after more than 25 years, and it’s centred around an extravagant revenge plot involving the Miami Dolphins and the Super Bowl. Dan Marino stars as himself. An errant field goal is the impetus for everything. The big finale happens during the first half of a Super Bowl that Marino is supposed to be playing in... actually that bit’s always struck me as weird that the game would just go ahead when the starting QB for one of the teams has literally been kidnapped, then he turns up at half-time and goes straight in to play like nothing happened. Marino infamously never won a Super Bowl, perhaps the best QB never to do so, so he can probably blame Ray Finkle for that one twice over. Regardless, definitely a SPORTS MOVIE.

Point Break – A bit more of a stretch since there’s no organised sport (unless you count bank robbing) but remember: beach football, sky-diving, surfing. The whole film is littered with sporting moments that work as character and plot development. It’s an extremely athletic, high-adrenalin movie and you know what? I reckon bank robbing does count because to Patrick Swayze and his crew it fulfils the same extreme sport addiction as all their other risky endeavours. Also, Keanu Reeves’ character was a college quarterback before joining the FBI. You have to think about it a little and there’ll be those that disagree but I’m calling it a SPORTS MOVIE.

Casino Royale – I had to think about this one because so much of it really does hinge on a card game. And it has that climactic big game tension that sports movies so often have... but it’s a Bond movie. It’s too indebted to its franchise and the glamorous spy film tendencies to be a sports movie, the Bond conventions drown out any chance the sports movie conventions might have had. After all, it’s not like James Bond was gonna end up like Howie Ratner. Best Bond film of the millennium and it’s not even close but NOT A SPORTS MOVIE.

Snatch – Hmm. This one needs some proper consideration. There are two intertwined plots here in Guy Ritchie’s film. The stuff about the diamond heist, that’s not a sports movie. But then there’s the stuff with Brad Pitt as a gypsy bare-knuckler who is bribed into a legit boxing bout but the catch is that he has to take a fall, has to throw the fight. He doesn’t and then his handlers are forced to double down to make it up to the folks that were depending on that outcome. More stuff happens and that second fight becomes pivotal to the climax of the story. There’s some legit sports movie yarns in all that... but it’s only half of the film and by the end of it the fight becomes a decoy. Mickey gets his triumphant win and if Snatch was purely about him then it would have ticked all the boxes. But while there’s a sports movie within the movie, it AIN’T A SPORTS MOVIE. Instead it’s a high-paced underworld caper and a bloody good one, underrated because it covers so much of the same ground as Lock Stock before it.

You get the idea. Fire along some more debatable ones and maybe if I get enough I’ll do it as a segment in our weekly newsletter (sign up here, friend).

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