At the Movies with Jerry Blevins

[Guest sharpie]

I've seen Sugar and it easily makes the top ten:

BULL DURHAM
SBANG THE DRUM SLOWLY
SUGAR
MONEYBALL
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME
THE NATURAL
BINGO LONG
EIGHT MEN OUT
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
THE ROOKIE

[A Boy Named Seo]

Mr. Baseball's always been my fav crappy baseball movie. Selleck as that mustachioed, over-the-hill primadonna ballplayer is just one of the terrible stereotypes in that movie I dig.

I looked up Everybody Wants Some and remembered it's something like Linklater's Dazed and Confused, but in the 80s. I didn't know it was a baseball movie at all (maybe it's not, who knows). Anyway, it's on Amazon Prime if anyone else has that.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Everybody Wants Some was a failure as a comedy, a baseball movie and an 80s movie. It wears the Triple Crown of Suck.

[Edgy MD]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Mr. Baseball's always been my fav crappy baseball movie. Selleck as that mustachioed, over-the-hill primadonna ballplayer is just one of the terrible stereotypes in that movie I dig.

It stands with The Bad News Bears Go to Japan as films that have an opportunity to make thoughtful observations about baseball, Japan, and baseball in Japan, but instead thought, "What a great opportunity to try and fail to get lots o' laffs out of lame-ass stereotypes!"

I'm not a list guy, but I guess my favorite crappy baseball movie is The Winning Team.

I basically think 90% of all baseball movies stink. They're either by folks who don't know about baseball, but know there's a market for people who do, or by people who think they know more than anybody about baseball, but actually have a pretty narrow view.

I passed on to a friend the Roger Ebert philosophy that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." My friend said it was also true about John Goodman.

"King Ralph wasn't altogether bad?" I wrote. "The Babe wasn't altogether bad?"

"The Babe was irredeemably awful and fuck you," he wrote back.

[bmfc1]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: I looked up Everybody Wants Some and remembered it's something like Linklater's Dazed and Confused, but in the 80s. I didn't know it was a baseball movie at all (maybe it's not, who knows). Anyway, it's on Amazon Prime if anyone else has that.

It's definitely not a baseball movie. There are only two scenes that show them playing baseball. Lots of talk but they could have been talking about anything.

[Frayed Knot]

I looked up Everybody Wants Some and remembered it's something like Linklater's Dazed and Confused, but in the 80s. I didn't know it was a baseball movie at all (maybe it's not, who knows). Anyway, it's on Amazon Prime if anyone else has that.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=25330&p=684683&hilit=linklater#p684683

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

has anyone seen SUGAR?

Also seem it, and yeah, it's pretty damn great. Dominican kid with an arm toils at a DR baseball academy, hoping for his big break... which, when it comes, doesn't go easily. Understated realism... reminded me a lot of Maria Full of Grace (similar story, only a little more harrowing... owing to the main character being a Colombian drug mule, not a pitcher). From the people who did Half-Nelson, IIRC, with a young Ryan
Gosling.

documentary about DR baseball? Or was that Sugar Kings?

The one with Miguel Sano? That's Baseball: Peloteros and it's ALSO phenomenal.

Maybe it's being raised mostly dadless, but I agree with whoever called FoD manipulative. Minus that pull, it's full of a lot of shrill, charmless stuff.

My top 10:

1) Bull Durham
2) Bad News Bears
3) Moneyball
4) Sugar
5) Eight Men Out
5) The Sandlot
6) 42
7) Bang the Drum Slowly
8) Major League
9) A League of Their Own
10-a) Bingo Long
10- The Natural (if you don't consider what a massive inversion/desecration of the book THIS was)

[MFS62]

Edgy MD wrote: I passed on to a friend the Roger Ebert philosophy that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad."

Interesting.
Harry Dean Stanton was in Steven Seagal's Fire Down Below and Emmet Walsh was in Chuck Norris' Missing in Action.
Although the bar is low, those were probably two of their better movies.

I think Norris had a baseball theme in some of his Walker, Texas Ranger episodes, but I don't think Seagal ever did anything with a baseball theme.

Later

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, I think the key to the notion is the word "altogether." They've certainly been in some bad films—perhaps a lot of them—but not necessarily altogether bad ones. It's not just that their performances alone modestly redeem lousy films, but their presence indicates somebody on the production gave a crap, and perhaps that small amount of crap-giving bled over into other areas, if only a little.

I think Bill Nighy is probably a latter day example. Maybe J.K. Simmons.

If a movie starred Nicholas Cage, but had Harry Dean Stanton in a supporting role, that might one of those irresistible-force-meets-immovable-object conundrums.

[MFS62]

Edgy MD wrote: Y If a movie starred Nicholas Cage, but had Harry Dean Stanton in a supporting role, that might one of those irresistible-force-meets-immovable-object conundrums.

Edgy, that is one of your best lines - EVER.
I'm still laughing.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

SUGAR was one of those dramas that played out almost as if a documentary. Well done.



The one baseball movie which gets low marks from me in opposition to general crowd wisdom in LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN.
I never did get through it; mainly I was too turned off by Jon Lovitz playing Jon Lovitz and mostly by Madonna playing Madonna (or at least playing herself in her 'Look at me, I'm a slut' phase).
It was as if the movie was written by the actors' agents trying to promote a brand.
And, yeah, I know that the flick is about more than that but those were enough to make me skip the rest, and if that means I missed a halfway decent movie then that's something I'll live with.

[nymr83]

Wait, SUGAR wasn't real?

[Frayed Knot]

The one I'm thinking of wasn't: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0990413/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

It might have been based on someone real, although I got the idea that 'Sugar' was more some composite character not meant to represent anyone specific.

[A Boy Named Seo]

Paste Magazine comes through with their top 18(?) baseball movies.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/the-best-baseball-movies-of-all-time.html?utm_source=PMNL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=180327

They cheat a little with the Ken Burns documentary, but looks like most of us are missing out on The Battered Bastards of Baseball and No-No: A Dockumentary

Trailers:

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iATpe6GLT5g

[Vic Sage]

documentaries don't count. If you take out the 2 they put in the top 10, then LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN and 8 MEN OUT sneak into the top 10. Interesting that MONEYBALL is not in the top 10, and SUGAR is. I've to check that movie out.

[Edgy MD]

Battered Bastards of Baseball Crane Pool action here.