Yoda Reviews Baseball Movies

It's not cheating if I can absorb the movie while doing other things. My face is still facing the screen at all times. My autism allows me to focus on multiple things at once if I do it right, and if I do miss something I can just rewind. On top of this, I had a lot of practice with it. So no, I don't count it if I don't focus, but if I have two eyes I can use one each for two purposes.

I saw Bull Durham in the theater, then about 25 times on cable and then god knows how many times on VHS. In my cohort, if we weren't watching Bull Durham, and we didn't feel like specifically doing something else, we could always just watch Bull Durham. I mean, it is a perfect film that makes us laugh and think and laugh a little more and of course, feel some melancholy that we don't quite yet understand but we do understand is in our future and we largely understand that because we watched Bull Durham. To me, and my people, it is a wise film. It is a film that has a lot to teach. Especially to a young man. You can be tough and still dance. You can be great but still have a lot to learn. You can have it all figured out and still be wrong. So much good stuff. But it is also fun. I mean, my love of early Rhythm and Blues music comes from hearing "Sixty-minute Man" in Bull Durham and I decided to go from being a Nuke to being a Crash as a young man because of this movie.
I say all this because another movie that we could always put on was Major League, which I know every word of. For fun alone, I can hardly imagine a movie we wore out more. But we never had any illusions about which of those two films was a "better movie". That was always obvious.

Hm. I think of ALotO as a 3-3.5 if I ever saw one. Never understood the love for this movie though not that many people loved it when it came out, at least among the people I knew. I liked Gina Davis and Lori Petty a lot and was really pulling for this and felt very disappointed. Not bad at all, some good stuff, but just kinda dull overall with nowhere to go.
And, obviously, nowhere near as good as Bull Durham.

I want all my 5’s to reflect that. I’m sure sometimes they don’t. I think that’s also kind of the point.

I mean, good for you on the ratings, but I doubt most people have it down that cold.

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Letterboxd

#JusticeForHamilton

That’s disappointing that he doesn’t really watch them. I don’t see how he can can get anything out them if he’s not properly paying attention to them.
To each their own, I suppose

Well, yeah.

First, I just wanna say I love the phrase "and my people" here, as if the lovers of this film are so dedicated to it that they constitute something akin to a race.

Second, all the rest of that makes sense. I think it's related to what @seanc and I were just talking about, about how certain films (particularly certain baseball films, for our people i.e. baseball fans) just become emblematic of some formative stage of life, and a lot of it's down to when you see them. When I get to The Sandlot I'm sure a few people will be horrendously confused about why I seem to love it so much, and it's for exactly that sort of reason: it's what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it.

I'd probably concede that Bull Durham is better made, and it certainly has loftier ambitions. I'm kind of a softie for "modest ambitions done extremely well." And I did see Major League first, so it was my introduction to the idea of baseball as something for grown-ups, baseball as a business, all that.

Surely we don't need to try to reconcile a half-star difference?

Best explanation I can offer is that the writing's really good, genuinely funny, and it doesn't really waste any time. Barring the few parts that need to be dramatic or serious, every single scene is fun. That's why I love it, at least.

Heh. I meant "my people" as in my IRL friends, not The Bull Durham Fan Club.
To be clear, while I do love the movie and feel strongly that it should be highly regarded, my tone is light. (Sometimes it's hard to tell in print.) It's a fun discussion to have and this is a good thread I'm glad you made.
But I won't lie to you, I f*cking hate The Sandlot.

Yes, I was really using this to razz Yoda for not liking a beloved movie of mine more. I largely agree on stars and it's the main reason I have done so few "Reviews" here even though I've "written-up" so many films. A movie that is a perfect example of a low-budget slasher is, in its way, a 5-star film. But how do I do that when I only give Goodfellas 4?

Maybe I should watch The Sandlot before it shows up. It’s one of those movies that is so in the zeitgeist that it feels like I have seen it but I actually never have. I was the exact wrong age to care when it came out. I would have been 17. I was way too cool for The Sandlot.

Which is good, because as much as I might roll my eyes at many attempts at baseball poetry (or baseball movies for that matter), you have a tendency to perfectly express my thoughts, whether they've occurred to me or not. One great line among many:




(Until your team gives up ten runs in the first inning; then you're really ticked off.)

I figured, I just love the phrase there. "This film is sacred to my people."

This was my guess, but it's nice to know for sure. I appreciate all these responses, too. I like talking about this stuff a lot, so I'm happy for any dialogue about baseball or baseball movies, even if it is jokingly antagonistic or is about how wrong I am.

Well, buckle up. That one's coming before long.

That's very nice of you, thank you. I think one of the reasons I like baseball is related to the reasons I like weddings and funerals: they're topics on which it is appropriate to be dramatic, to be a little purple, to be unabashedly sentimental. I like just saying what I want to say and not worrying if it'll come off as cloying or over the top.

At some point I'll definitely try to pick a film to represent baseball's many frustrations, too.

I was actually going to tell a little story related to this, but honestly, it's so good I should save it for the appropriate time in one of these reviews.

Absolutely, I just think people try to force it sometimes because they feel like they're supposed to look at the game that way. "Roll my eyes" is probably an exaggeration of my reaction to those times, and it might be completely made up on my end.

I don't go to many games, but I always enjoy them when I do. The O's play in a terrific stadium in Baltimore and it's a nice place to have a nearby dinner along with a game. I can ride the train from my house to the stadium. I'm not a big fan, but I do enjoy games on warm summer nights.

Baseball movies often seem best when they appeal to the idea/myth that baseball is a metaphor for aspiring to all that's good and holy in America. It has to seem like centerfield aspirations are all that counts in life and that a home run is a nearly mystical event. They only work without a hint of cynicism.

This scene hits so hard, every time. One of my main memories of this film is that no matter how many times I'd watch it or re-watch it with other people, we would always hold our breath at this scene like we didn't know who was going to receive that telegram.

I cannot think of a single other movie about a woman or women playing sports from the 80s or 90s where there was a character who just loved the game. Kit's character arc is all about, as you say, harnessing her stubbornness to push herself to greatness. As a multi-sport athlete in middle and high school, this movie was incredibly popular among my teammates. There's nothing wrong with movies that have romantic subplots, but a movie grounded in a complicated sibling relationship AND sports AND woman-centered was a new species. Also, at the time that this movie came out, the women athletes getting the most attention were petite gymnasts and figure skaters, so Marla Hooch was low-key an icon. Like maybe you could just be really strong and capable and excel at a sport that didn't require wearing eyeshadow.

Sidenote: have we all seen the Capital One commercial where Jennifer Garner inexplicably botches the line "There's no crying in baseball"?, pronouncing the final word baseBALL, as if she's not only not seen A League of Their Own, but maybe never heard nor spoken the word "baseball" before?

Eh, it is cheating. You can 'absorb' it, but you can't experience it the same way you would if you gave it your full, unadulterated attention. The film's atmosphere is taking a huge blow because of this. It's impossible to get engaged and mesmerized at the same level when you half-watch a film. This is tricky because people think that if they can get the gist of it and follow along, there's no difference between watching and half-watching a film, but there's a huge difference.

You could technically say that half-watching is similar to watching films when tired, but I believe these are two different things. I think that intention matters a lot, and somebody who's tired and misses details in a film usually doesn't intend to miss them. They miss them due to their state they're not necessarily responsible for. Of course, if you're tired, it's better to go to sleep, but sometimes you become tired in the middle of the film and you'd rather finish it in this state than finish it the next day. Starting to watch a film with the intent of half-watching it while working or doing chores means you're more responsible and more at fault.

It's like falling asleep behind the wheel because you started feeling lightheaded during a ride versus because you sat behind the wheel drunk.

Yep, you can rewind, but rewinding means you're taking yourself out of the film, breaking something that is supposed to be experienced in an unbreakable manner without any pauses. If you intentionally and directly sully your experience, you're responsible for it, and it's cheating your way into watching a film by experiencing it in a half-assed manner.

Yeah, I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt since I only saw other people say he said he does that, but I never saw him claim that. That being said, he has a wife and two kids, and yet spends over 10 hours a day watching films. He's unemployed, though, so this is doable, but doing this every day with no breaks for years sounds exhausting. I watch less than him and need to take a day off from time to time!

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

No it is not cheating. Not every movie is going to be mesmerizing because not going to be that good. If it really does deserve that attention then I'll give it. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And you will not tell me I've been cheating for 14 years. I am PROUD that I can focus on two things at once with my autism, and you're not taking that away. For that, I'll be watching two movies at once all week, and I'll be writing reviews on them. Deal with it.

I'd only seen ALOTO once when it first came out. After Chris's review though I looked it upon Prime, and it's on sale for $7.99 - SOLD! Downloading it now. Amazon should send Yoda a residual.