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Posts Tagged ‘baseball’

Bad News Bears (2005)

Monday, July 21st, 2025

July 22, 2005

I have a confession to make: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the original BAD NEWS BEARS movies in full. Parts, maybe. I know people love the first one. I don’t remember it. So this review comes from the rare perspective of a person who saw Richard Linklater’s remake in theaters and is returning to it after 20 years of still not seeing the original to find out why nobody seemed to think this stacked up to it. Ignorance is bliss!

SUMMER 2005For me the main movie to compare it to is BAD SANTA, which came from the same screenwriters, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (CATS & DOGS). Obviously it’s not as good, but it’s the second best movie at presenting Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic asshole in a way that is somehow really funny and ultimately sweet in a way that doesn’t seem too phony because the guy is still an asshole, he just made a small gesture that shows he’s trying. This is a PG-13 family-friendly-ish sports movie, so the change is a little bigger than just wanting to give a stuffed elephant to a child after getting shot by the police, but it still maintains his acerbicness to pretty uncomfortable levels until the last couple innings of the big game. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Family, Sport | 26 Comments »

A League of Their Own

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (which opened against BOOMERANG on July 1, 1992) is a very nice and pleasing mainstream period sports comedy-drama from director Penny Marshall (JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH). It’s a fictionalized version of one of those true life historical events you hear about and think “Yep, that’s a movie” because it reads so much like a high concept movie pitch: during WWII, when so many American men were sent to fight overseas, some enterprising baseball executives started the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to keep the sport in the public eye. Though they endured all manner of sexist indignities (like being forced to wear skirts and pretend to fit various feminine stereotypes) they also were good at what they did and took their shot to show it off.

Geena Davis (FLETCH) and Lori Petty (CADILLAC MAN) star as Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller, small town Oregon sisters who run a dairy and play catcher and pitcher on a softball team. One day a scout named Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz*, THREE AMIGOS) attends a game and wants Dottie to try out for the A.A.G.P.B.L. She’s happy with her life and uninterested, but agrees to go if he’ll give Kit a shot too. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Sport | 28 Comments »

Trouble With the Curve

Tuesday, January 1st, 2013

tn_troublewiththecurveI don’t know if this is true but I heard it’s good luck for movie critics to start a year with a Clint Eastwood review. So I saved TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE for the occasion.

It’s a pretty standard mainstream feel-good-about-everything-at-the-end father-daughter relationship drama, but I couldn’t resist it because Clint plays the stubborn old grump dad and Amy Adams plays the daughter. She’s pissed off and sarcastic through half the movie but I’m still powerless in the face of her charms. I’m sorry.

Here’s the situation: Gus (Clint) is a veteran scout for the Braves baseball team, sent to evaluate some young hot shot out in North Carolina (Scott Eastwood). But Gus is secretly losing his eyesight and openly losing favor in the organization to a young douchebag (Matthew Lillard) who prefers modern methods involving computers and statistics. Gus’s best friend (John Goodman with an impressive mustache) worries they’re gonna drop him if something goes wrong, so he begs Gus’s estranged lawyer daughter Mickey (Adams) to come keep an eye on him. Meanwhile, a young pitching-phenom-turned-scout who Gus likes (Justin Timberlake) helps out and tries to woo Mickey.
(read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 23 Comments »

Moneyball

Friday, February 24th, 2012

tn_moneyballI heard MONEYBALL was good, so I wanted to see it, but I was definitely skeptical. Steven Soderbergh tried to get this movie done for a long time, based on the non-fiction book of the same title. But he got the plug pulled a couple times, the studio thought the script wasn’t entertaining enough and he wouldn’t do what they wanted because he was trying not to dramatize and composite and shit, he wanted to try to make it as close to 100% true as he could. Well, after he finally bowed out they quickly got a new script by Steve Zaillian (SCHINDLER’S LIST, GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) and Aaron Sorkin (SOCIAL NETWORK, West Wing TV show) and director Bennett Miller, and that’s a good group of people, but these kinds of salvage jobs never turn out good. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 49 Comments »

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