Yoda Reviews Baseball Movies

Oh and while I'm thinking of it, Field of Dreams might be the most famous story about a voice from beyond and ghost dad (forget the Cosby thing) since Hamlet... although in Shakespeare's play he wanted more from his son than just to build a baseball field and play catch.

Hrmm... there's an idea... an Iowa version of Hamlet... your Uncle, my brother, had a thing for your mom, so he killed me, married her and stole the farm! I really, really want the Iowa corn field, combine/tractor/Ford F-150 driving, level B-road muddin', levi's jeans and Bass Pro Shop trucker cap wearin', can of chaw in the back pocket, and an old rusty pair of pliers on the belt Iowa version of Hamlet. Please God make this happen!

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Good stuff, appreciate you sharing.

Yeah, I read a review that basically pilloried the film, and the central tack was that it was piggybacking on people's nostalgia/unresolved father issues/stuff like that, and that in many cases the sheer potency of those feelings was making the film feel more meaningful than it really was. That's a pretty dense thicket to untangle, since you might say doing some version of that is a totally legitimate thing for a story to try to do. But I think most people would agree that it can be clumsy or it can be deft, and I think it would be hard to argue, in good faith, that Field of Dreams is deft about it. I say this as someone who still got caught up in it, pun absolutely not intended.

But I try to meet a film where it is, and for these reviews I'm doing the extra-layer-thing of evaluating movies based on how well they express something about baseball, and I have to admit it at least sorta-kinda does that. To the degree to which it is cloying or manipulative, it can partially thank the way baseball is culturally tied up in those potent topics to begin with (more on that soon).

is "Eight Men Out" a good movie?

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Stay tuned, that's one of the very next reviews coming. Possibly (probably?) the next, actually.

Yeah, they do something like this. I forget exactly where, I just remember it's not at the actual field from the film. And while they work hard to make it seem folksy, the overhead shots show a fair bit of construction so they can get thousands (rather than dozens) of fans in to see it.

And naturally they have players walk out of the cornfields, and they have Kevin Costner there, and the players wear throwback uniforms, and so on. It's kind of cynical...but it still got me a bit. It probably got a lot of people. Even though there were all sorts of things to remind you of how contrived it was, like a bunch of TV cameras, or seeing players in those uniforms who weren't even allowed to play in the Majors when they were first worn, or seeing the modern day Shoeless Joe equivalent with a neck tattoo.

Nevermind all that! Look, they're coming out of the corn! Feel like a kid, damn it!

I was too young when I saw Field of Dreams, and that was the only time seeing it. Didnt appreciate it. Im gonna give it another try now though. Good writeup Chris.

Man, @Yoda, I gotta tell ya, I couldn't agree less on Annie's Dream.
Maybe that's not quite right, if you think the movie is all about Faith, then maybe I can see your point? But mostly, no, Annie's involvement in the experience was great for me it made her a better character and that/it made the movie stronger for me. I love that Annie is on board, fully, for all of it from fairly early on.

Interesting debate, I side with Yoda on this because, as you point out, I do see the movie about Annie's faith in her husband and also not only that he husband actually heard something, but also that the thing he heard is not his insanity, but a real voice or sign from beyond. It's that whole leap of faith thing and the side characters and townsfolk saying he's crazy corroborate that message that it's about faith. Also the bit with James Earl Jones' character and the doctor played by Burt Lancaster too.

If Annie also has the same dream, it's more than coincidence AND no longer is she "blind trusting" her husband.

There's a wonderful episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" titled "Mr. McBeevee in which Opie tells Andy about this strange person he sees in the woods. The description is far-fetched, like something out of a fairy tale and no one believes Opie. When Andy presses him to tell the truth Opie swears he is telling the truth. He is then punished for lying, but eventually much to the dismay of Aunt Bee and Barney Fife, Andy relents and un-grounds Opie. When asked why... Barnie is bewildered at Andy and says something to the effect of, "You don't mean to say you believe all that nonsense from Opie!!!??" Andy says, "No, no I don't not all, but I do believe in Opie." As it turns out Opie was trying to describe a repair lineman in the woods, which all makes sense, but six or seven year old Opie was unable to know or understand what he saw so he did his best to piece it together which ended up sounding fantastical.

The point is Andy decided to stick with his son because he knows his son wouldn't press a lie that far. By having Annie going along with Kevin Costner's character only so far... until she has the same dream, kind of undermines that a bit. Now if she would have gone along, but with reservations, but go along still the same until the White Sox started coming out of the baseball field... it would have been better for the themes and world the film was trying to create. But then again "The Andy Griffith Show" had much better writers than Field of Dreams.

It's a reasonable position. I tried to give credit to the contrary view:

Here's my thought: I think people like Annie's dream because they're supposed to. She's the most natural impediment to the "progress" of all the crazy stuff, so when she's on board, the audience gets excited. It's a natural thing, I think it's just a misstep not so much that they do it, but that the filmmakers put themselves in that either-or situation.

So yeah, I think it comes down to what you think the most important ideas in the film are. Is it about dreams, which is served well by one character after another being won over by someone else's passion? Or is it about faith, in which case it's better served by characters doubting and going along with it anyway?

Sorry Yoda just discovered this thread. Never seen this movie

It is a myth. That’s the whole point of the movie I think

Aye, but I'm confused, since I say exactly this in the review...?

Well, it's not very good. Not sure if you read the review but it ends like this:

Well, there's three things that I thought were important about Annie's Dream:
1. It makes sure that she's not the dead-weight or the person trying to stop the dream and engages her more in the story. She would have been a throwaway "downer-wife" character otherwise.
2. The movie is very much about family and Annie is the wife of John's son and mother of his grandchild that he never got to meet and in the end of the movie, John reuniting with his family is what the entire film is about. So her being included in this early on makes sense to me, more sense than her being excluded.
3. A lot of the third act would have to be different if she didn't know and their relationship would be rather strained, she would have to be looking for ways to protect her family from this, possibly going behind his back, her relationship with her brother would be totally different, and the whole tone of the movie would be darker... and of course, when it was revealed to her she would basically be reduced to, "Oh, my man was right all along, I should have listened to my man!", which would have just been dreadful.
Anyway, that's my take, obviously mileage varies. It just happens that Annie is one of my favorite characters of that period of movies so this aggression will not stand!

I guess I just liked it more than you did. Pretty sure I rated it 3 and a half

That's fine, this thread is full of people questioning my ratings. I'm just confused by the part where you say it being a myth is the "whole point of the movie" because I said the same thing in the review. Which I take to mean you didn't read it. Which is also fine, but is obviously going to lead to some awkwardness and confusion if you happen to respond by saying the same thing the review says. Particularly when framed as some kind of counter/disagreement.

Also, I assume you replied to the wrong post here. The one you replied to was about Hardball, which you said you'd never seen. Unless you watched it between that post and this one.

This was what I was getting at in the previous post, yeah: obviously it excites the audience because now Roy can just go, just follow the crazy dream logic. It's one of those things audiences like even though it'd be bad/enabling in real life, like the (in)famous example of Skyler in Breaking Bad.

That said, I think the film already kinda solved this by having her just trust him. She threw up a few small impediments at first (which I'd argue is necessary, since we need to feel how crazy the whole endeavor is for it to feel valuable and magical to pursue in the first place), but mostly came around. She can enable it by trusting him rather than knowing he's right.

Hm. I feel like this is one of those things that could go either way.

Yeah, I'll take what we got over the opposite extreme, where she's just a roadblock who gets won over in the end. But I like the middle the most, where she has a natural, understandable reticence, but simply trusts him.

Either way, I do like the tension between blood relation and marital there, how she has to side with one idea of family over another. That's always a rich dramatic vein.

She's pretty damn memorable even as-is, yeah. Certainly more memorable than Costner's character and about on par with Jones'. Partially it's the writing but I'm inclined to mostly chalk it up to Amy Madigan.

Yeah, I really liked Amy Madigan back in the day. Even in Streets Of Fire, I felt like she understood the assignment of playing a cartoonish version of her character. Paxton actually did that pretty well too, now that I think about it.
But anyway, I understand what you're saying, I just think I very much would prefer the way that's in the film versus another version, if it existed, where she's just "trusting her man" the whole time. Especially because the movie has a pattern to it. All the major characters have their moment when the truth is revealed to them. Ray, Annie, Terry, and Mark each have a moment, in succession, when it is revealed, and it gives a sort of rhythm to the film. And each person is given that reveal when it is necessary for them to know to bring the final even together. They could have revealed themselves to Mark at any time, it would seem, but they waited until the 11th hour to let him see it. And if Mark doesn't see it, they lose their home... and everything ends. Likewise, if Annie doesn't have the dream, Ray doesn't leave the farm to go find Terry. It's like a passing of the baton from one character to the next to get everyone there at the end.
Now an interesting question is when did Karin find out? And why?

No. Eight Men Out is a great movie.

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