OK, I'm a wimp

[gridlore]

The Natural has one of the cheesiest, most predictable, Hollywood, endings in the history of film. It uses every cliche, every camera trick, every sound trick.

It is pure Hollywood schmaltz.

And I tear up every time.

Second best baseball movie ever made.

For 25 penguin points, guess my favorite baseball movie of all time.

Comments

[grimmwire.livejournal.com]

A League of Her Own? (Certainly my fave. Or maybe Bad News Bears. There's a lot of good ones.)

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

It's A League Of Their Own, and while that is in the top 5, not my favorite.

[netquiddler.livejournal.com]

"Vaughn into the windup and his first offering... JUUUUUUUUUUUUUST a bit outside, he tried the corner and missed..."

I guess "Major League".

[lysana.livejournal.com]

That's my guess, too.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Another good one, but yer outta here!

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

"It Happens Every Spring"?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Good flick, but no.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Bull Durham. Best-written baseball movie around. Though it wouldn't surprise me very much if you were more a Field of Dreams guy if you like The Natural.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Getting closer with Field of Dreams

[kitsap_charles]

Please tell me it's not Damn Yankees. Please.

Also, the movie's ending is completely antithetical to that of the original novel.

[katster.livejournal.com]

Well, if Field of Dreams is close, I'm going to go with the other Black Sox movie, Eight Men Out.

-kat

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Winner! I love that film! Well acted, the baseball footage is great, and a compelling script deftly handled by both director and cast.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Something I like about Eight Men Out is the grittiness of the whole movie.

The way they showed professional baseball players' lives back in the teens.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I'd take "Slapshot" any day...

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

For hockey films I'll take Miracle every time. Mainly because I remember watching that game between the US and the Soviets.

"...Eleven seconds, you've got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk...five seconds left in the game...Do you believe in miracles? YES!!!"

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Miracle is a bit too sentimental for me.

That's the worst thing with sports movies IMO, they take something entertaining and to a certain degree emotional and frequently without any sort of necessary self-irony pumps it so full of hot air and sackarine goo one wonders what the bloody directors would do with a movie actually about something truly serious, like war, AIDS or an average car crash.

I mean, I had the misfortune of being stupid enough to watch "61*" yesterday. I couldn't watch it all the time, but basically Billy Crystal takes a movie which would have been a good observation of the crazy obsessions and behaviour within sports and instead drench it in Emotional Moments, horrible orchestrals and a hyper-sentimental ending.

[benkenobigal.livejournal.com]

I would have guessed Pride of the Yankees...

No penguin points for me!!!