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Field of Dreams (1989)

post #1 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:56am
Thread Starter 
The most bullshit of all bullshit movies.
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post #2 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:00am
Patrick, you sound like you need to have a catch.

This movie works on me. I can see the strings from miles away, yet I can't help it.
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post #3 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:04am
I have very fond memories of this. Why would I want to ruin that by revisiting it?
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post #4 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:04am
Having civil-rights activist Terrence Mann deliver a speech about the constant, unchanging nature of baseball's is bullshit, though.
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post #5 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:45am
I come from a country that doesn't play baseball and I find this film mawkish, over-bearing, overtly and blatantly manipulative left-wing-baby-boomer wish fullfillment retardation.

...but god damn it if that final scene of Costner playing catch with his dad at the end doesn't get me every fucking time.

...and I hate the thing even more for that.
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post #6 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:47am
Thread Starter 
That whole last part of the movie is bullshit heaped upon bullshit. I rented it for Carly because she was doing a paper on J.D. Salinger's influence on film (Terrence Mann is based on Salinger), and I'm embarrassed to have it on my library record.

I have no patience for the bullshit "Baseball is the greatest thing Americans can do" rhetoric that all baseball films seem to have, and by the end of this I was foaming at the mouth.
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post #7 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:51am
You should really stay away from THE NATURAL then.
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post #8 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith F View Post
You should really stay away from THE NATURAL then.
Hell, at least 80% of sports movies in general.

You sound like you'd be more of a Slap Shot man Patrick (fuck knows I am).

I suggest watching that if you haven't seen it as an antidote for the trite mawkishness you just had to sit through.
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post #9 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:58am
On an even more lowbrow note, MAJOR LEAGUE is fun, if still attached to sports movie cliches.
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post #10 of 103
5/29/09 at 3:05am
Major League has come to annoy me over the years as it wants its cake and to eat it to, it starts off trying to be a Slap Shot-style inversion of sport film cliches then cops out to being just another in a long line of sporting underdog movies.

Slap Shot is still the only sport film I can think of to this day that is wholly devoted to its pitch-black inversion of the genre - and thats why it'll always be the best sports film ever.
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post #11 of 103
5/29/09 at 3:07am
You should really stay away from Slap Shot II then.

I totally agree. Whenever anybody asks me what my favorite sports movie is- and surprisingly I get this question alot- I always ask if Caddyshack counts, but then the real answer is Slapshot.

I will defend Major League in saying that I disagree that's it is trying to subvert anything, it's more about just adding zany characters to the mix. Not really a defense, I just don't think there's anything as lofty as subversion going on there. It's a standard underdog movie, just happens to have quotable lines and good performances for the most part.
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post #12 of 103
5/29/09 at 3:12am
Thread Starter 
I'm just saying, The King of Kong didn't need to sell me on the importance that video games have on me, as an American. It just gave me two interesting characters and told a story well. I could take it from there.
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post #13 of 103
5/29/09 at 3:16am
King of Kong also had a villain and real conflict. Best Field of Dreams could muster is a few people deservedly so calling Costner crazy, and some lady who wanted to ban books. Rain Dog was right, this is boomer rubbish.

Yet, like I said, it works on me.
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post #14 of 103
5/29/09 at 6:27am
Sports moives in general don't work for me but I liked this when I saw it a few yeares back. Although I really have no desire to revisit it anytime soon.
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post #15 of 103
5/29/09 at 7:47am
Regardless of its merits, I find it significant that it's the only baseball movie I know of that's about playing, not winning. Name me one other film about the game that doesn't build towards a championship race.

P.S. If you dig Slap Shot, check out Semi-Tough.
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post #16 of 103
5/29/09 at 10:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhead View Post
Regardless of its merits, I find it significant that it's the only baseball movie I know of that's about playing, not winning. Name me one other film about the game that doesn't build towards a championship race.
EIGHT MEN OUT?
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post #17 of 103
5/29/09 at 10:45am
I think if you look at it simply at its surface, it is, indeed, bullshit.

But looking at baseball simply at a surface level, you could say the same thing.

There's a reason people keep going to baseball games and love baseball. There's a reason people keep going to movies and love movies.

That's what Field of Dreams is about. Strangely enough, it works for me.
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post #18 of 103
5/29/09 at 11:06am
The film uses baseball as a metaphor for lost childhood, for lost innocence. Even when this film came out, baseball had started to lose that luster it used to have, and this film is rife with the longing for the days when kids would sneak radios into school to listen to afternoon World Series games and when a guy on your favorite team was there for your entire childhood. When players hung out in neighborhood bars and were simultaneously larger than life and down to earth. The feeling conjured up by those When It Was a Game HBO specials. But then everyone grew up -- the kids, baseball, America -- and that feeling is gone. So the pull of the field Kinsella builds is the chance to go back, the chance to recapture that feeling you felt when your dad seemed immortal and all-knowing and one hell of a guy, when baseball felt like it was about more than just money, when an angry rebel actually felt like their voice could make a difference. One last chance to appreciate something we should have maybe appreciated a little more while it was still around.

Yeah, maybe it's cool to be all hard-assed and dump on a movie that wears its emotions on its sleeve and doesn't try to be cynical about it. But I don't need that kind of cool.
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post #19 of 103
5/29/09 at 11:07am
Thread Starter 
Yeah, that must be it. In hating Field of Dreams, I'm declaring myself a badass motherfucker. Because to say that it's cloying and false and manipulative is really a controversial statement.
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post #20 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arjen Rudd View Post
I have very fond memories of this. Why would I want to ruin that by revisiting it?
I made that mistake last year. This movie is a piece of shit. Stay far away, remember "have a catch", and leave it at that.
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post #21 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:04pm
I wish people would stop using the word "manipulative" as a problem for a film. ALL film is manipulative. From Spielberg to Kubrick to Fellini to Kurosawa.
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post #22 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll View Post
Yeah, that must be it. In hating Field of Dreams, I'm declaring myself a badass motherfucker. Because to say that it's cloying and false and manipulative is really a controversial statement.
It's also not a very original one.
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post #23 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
The film uses baseball as a metaphor for lost childhood, for lost innocence. Even when this film came out, baseball had started to lose that luster it used to have, and this film is rife with the longing for the days when kids would sneak radios into school to listen to afternoon World Series games and when a guy on your favorite team was there for your entire childhood. When players hung out in neighborhood bars and were simultaneously larger than life and down to earth. The feeling conjured up by those When It Was a Game HBO specials. But then everyone grew up -- the kids, baseball, America -- and that feeling is gone. So the pull of the field Kinsella builds is the chance to go back, the chance to recapture that feeling you felt when your dad seemed immortal and all-knowing and one hell of a guy, when baseball felt like it was about more than just money, when an angry rebel actually felt like their voice could make a difference. One last chance to appreciate something we should have maybe appreciated a little more while it was still around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Rain Dog View Post
mawkish, over-bearing, overtly and blatantly manipulative left-wing-baby-boomer wish fullfillment retardation.
Yeah, Rain Dog nailed it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson
It's also not a very original one.
That's my point. If I was trying to be all hardnosed and "cool", I wouldn't choose Field of Dreams to do it.
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post #24 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll View Post
I rented it for Carly because she was doing a paper on J.D. Salinger's influence on film (Terrence Mann is based on Salinger), and I'm embarrassed to have it on my library record.
Carly should read the book.

Also, stay far away from Ken Burns' Baseball series. It has the whole "baseball is the greatest thing ever" angle, but it also shows why you're a big pile of wrong, and why it has such a paramount importance in American culture/history. I get that the movie is mawkish and sentimental and that doesn't appeal to you (and I agree that the film is, which is why I like the also mawkish and sentimental League of their Own better*, but also more honest and true about the sport and its characters) but this is something well worth your time looking into. There are a number of good-great baseball movies out there. Look harder.

*Also, I'm a girl.
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post #25 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:33pm
Well, thanks for starting a thread on it, I guess.
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post #26 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:34pm
Thread Starter 
I like a League Of Their Own quite a lot, actually. It's a lot of fun, and I'm madly in love with Geena Davis. The Sandlot is also a childhood favorite, though I'm very much afraid to go back and revisit it (if I recall, it has "all children yelling all the time" syndrome) to find out how dumb I was.
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post #27 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:40pm
I think that 'The Untouchables' gets to the core of what baseball is all about: individual and team achievements. I certainly don't need or want any kind of mythology developed over a sport.
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post #28 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:40pm
The two things that stick with me about Ken Burns baseball series:

1) How annoying it is to watch these people wax poetic about every single element of the game. Like the guy who seemed to think it was by some divine inspiration that the bases were placed 90 feet apart.

2) Buck O'Neil is awesome.
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post #29 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:45pm
I love the film and have no qualms in saying it.

My ex-girlfriend and I watched the movie together one time and she didn't get it why I absolutely bawled my eyes out at the end. It's one of those guy movies.
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post #30 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:47pm
You have my steel, Patrick.

Anyway, DeNiro summed up the nature of baseball much more accurately and succinctly in UNTOUCHABLES.
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post #31 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:48pm
Goddammit, Judas.
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post #32 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:49pm
Haven't watched the whole thing in a while but I'd say I'm still fond of DREAMS. I admit I'm at a disadvantage because I don't have much in the way of daddy issues. I mean he'd slam a few doors every now and again and from time to time I'd be on the receiving end of one of his classic cuss-outs but he never really did anything that would cause me to dislike FIELD OF DREAMS.
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post #33 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll View Post
I like a League Of Their Own quite a lot, actually. It's a lot of fun, and I'm madly in love with Geena Davis. The Sandlot is also a childhood favorite, though I'm very much afraid to go back and revisit it (if I recall, it has "all children yelling all the time" syndrome) to find out how dumb I was.
I can still watch Sandlot when it's on TV and flash back to when I was 10 I hope I never lose that.
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post #34 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Moltisanti View Post
I mean he'd slam a few doors every now and again and from time to time I'd be on the receiving end of one of his classic cuss-outs but he never really did anything that would cause me to dislike FIELD OF DREAMS.
See? Molt gets it!

LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN is just as bad, by the way. Good god, but that movie doesn't even know how to end. It just keeps dottering on forever.
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post #35 of 103
5/29/09 at 12:57pm
A baseball movie that I DID like: 'The Rookie', with Dennis Quaid. The sport isn't mythologized; it's portrayed as a business that you're able to get into by virtue of your own individual skillset. Seeing Quaid go through the process of trying out and getting accepted into the major league proved to be very entertaining AND very human.

'A League of their Own' is great while John Lovitz is in it. Once he leaves, it loses all of its steam for me.
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post #36 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:15pm
I love that it kind of plays as a sequel to Eight Men Out.

Costner is at his most Gary Cooper-ish. So great.

And the beginning scene--where Amy Madigan tells off the PTA-reminds us how the Boomers were the real 'greatest generation'. (They stopped a war, man!)

Uncomfortable racial overtones aside, James Earl Jones is terrific; his delivery of the speech, awesome. Nice coda for Lancaster.

Movie works for anyone who had a dad, played sports, or is American.

"All his life, Ray Kinsella was searching for his dreams. Then, one day, his dreams came looking for him."

"If you believe the impossible, the incredible can come true."

(Yay!)
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post #37 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:17pm
You guys are entitled to your opinions but you bastards keep your mouth's shut on Major League. You wanna bash the sequels? Go right ahead, but leave the original off your list of stuff to bitch about, or I'll tell JoeBoo.
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post #38 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:18pm
Fuck you, Jobu.
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post #39 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:20pm
'Major League' was great. I remember that they interviewed many actual baseball players when the movie came out; apparently, the movie is very accurate in its portrayal of the players and the shit that they do to each other.
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post #40 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll View Post
The most bullshit of all bullshit movies.
Shoeless Joe tells you to stick it.
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post #41 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
'Major League' was great. I remember that they interviewed many actual baseball players when the movie came out; apparently, the movie is very accurate in its portrayal of the players and the shit that they do to each other.
Accidentally sleeping with your teammate's wife? Probably.

Bringing in KFC to complete a voodoo ritual? Hmm ...
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post #42 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:32pm
For me, the best non-ironic sports movie is Miracle. No bullshit, no frills, just an awesome story of one of the best jingoistic American victories of the Cold War.

And Kurt Russell was awesome.

ETA: And, yeah, Field of Dreams gave me diabetes. But Burt Lancaster is the MAN. He took one of the biggest cliches in sports movies - the almost-was - and made that character fucking affecting as hell.
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post #43 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:51pm
I won't argue the merits of FOD because it's a movie that either works for you or not, and it has nothing to do with the cerebral.

That said, I always love an opportunity to point out that the actor who gives the Big Speech about the importance of baseball to American culture is, in fact, black.
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post #44 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matches_Malone View Post
And Kurt Russell was awesome.
Man, you ain't shittin'. I was just this past weekend telling a buddy of mine who's never seen MIRACLE that it just might be Kurt's best performance. He was looking at me like I had lost my mind.

FIELD OF DREAMS is great. MAJOR LEAGUE is great. THE NATURAL is great. MIRACLE is great. TIN CUP is one of my favorite movies of all time. I think I'm just a sports-movie whore.
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post #45 of 103
5/29/09 at 1:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Ripoll View Post
I like a League Of Their Own quite a lot, actually. It's a lot of fun, and I'm madly in love with Geena Davis. The Sandlot is also a childhood favorite, though I'm very much afraid to go back and revisit it (if I recall, it has "all children yelling all the time" syndrome) to find out how dumb I was.
Sandlot holds up. Little Big League, Rookie of the Year, Angels in the Outfield, not so much. Although there's a Danny Glover line in Angels that I use all the time.

To me, Sandlot and League are better, physical examples of what Terrence Mann talks about in his speech, which is pretty much covered by Tom Hanks in a few lines in the latter.
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post #46 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:00pm
"There's no crying in baseball"?
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post #47 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:06pm
Field of Dreams is Terms of Endearment for dudes.
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post #48 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:14pm
"Avoid the clap"?
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post #49 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:15pm
I think maybe this one:

Quote:
Dottie Hinson: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It's only a game, and, and, I don't need this. I have Bob; I don't need this. At all.
Jimmy Dugan: I, I gave away five years at the end my career to drink. Five years. And now there isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it.
Dottie Hinson: Well, we're different.
Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.
Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.
Jimmy Dugan: It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.
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post #50 of 103
5/29/09 at 2:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matches_Malone View Post
"There's no crying in baseball"?
"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."

Like I said, that's just me. I'm a big girl.
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