Movie of the Day: "Field of Dreams" (1989)

Kevin Costner kicked off and he returns to finish out baseball movie week with this fantasy love letter to the game and the literal magic it can inspire. Costner owns a farm he's not sure what to do with until he starts hearing voices telling him that if he builds it, they will come. What he builds turns out to be a baseball field and who they are turn out to be the ghosts of legendary and long dead ball players who come out to play the game for all eternity. Now if that's not a story that absolutely reveres the sport itself I don't know what does. The movie works though, as an old-fashioned fable and an emotional tribute to American's pastime as the stuff dreams are made of. A perfect cap to our week of baseball films.

Original 1989 Trailer:

Reese and Sofia On the Run in New Trailer for 'Hot Pursuit'

I really hope this isn't as dumb as it looks, because you can kinda tell that these two might have some decent comedic chemistry together- but Reese's track record for comedies since Legally Blonde is pretty awful. Lots of sitcom-y schtick here. Comes out May 8th.

'Live From New York' Documentary to Open Tribeca Film Festival

In case you're still not tired of all the celebratory SNL activities this year, this new documentary is based on the oral history of Saturday Night Live, which was compiled by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, and documents the show's 40 year history through various interviews. It's set top open the Tribeca Film Festival on April 15th, and for SNL junkies, it's probably going to be as essential as the 40th anniversary show itself.

Movie of the Day: "The Bad News Bears" (1976)

Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal make quite a pair in this 70's classic, one of the best movies about kids you could ever see. He's the prickly alcoholic loser who takes the job of coaching a god awful Little League team because he needs the money, and she's the daughter of one his ex-girlfriends, whom he taught to pitch better than any of the boys. The best thing about this movie is how utterly frank and unsentimental it is. This is the '70's, so there's a complete lack of political correctness- Matthau is never without a beer can in his hand and manages to triumph without once softening any edges to his personality, and the kids are a bunch of rude, shit talking little twerps who actually resemble real kids and not precocious "movie kids" that you see so often in other films. O'Neal is at the peak of her child star glory and steals all her scenes as the tough girl pitcher who can take any challenge thrown at her, and the barbed rapport between her and Matthau is terrific. The fact that you could never make this movie today was seen in the awful 2005 remake, that was forced to dumb down so much of what people loved about the original. It makes this a time capsule for the ages.

Original 1976 Trailer:

Disney to Remake 'Pinocchio'

Is this set to become a weekly announcement? Now Disney has hired Peter Hedges (who wrote and directed Pieces of April and Dan in Real Life) to write a new live-action version of Pinocchio, which will of course be loosely based on the 1940 movie, and has been done before in many other versions as well (remember the horrifying Roberto Benigni 90's one starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas?). Guillermo del Toro is also in the midst of adapting a stop-motion animated Pinocchio movie that's currently seeking foreign financing. The 1940 Pinocchio is really one of the darkest Disney movies ever, maybe the one that comes closest of all their fairy tale adaptations to capturing the true, kind of twisted nature of those stories to begin with. It's also of course one of the most dazzling pieces of pure animation ever made, and every bit of it can still take your breath away when you watch a restored version. As one of the best from Disney's Golden Age, it can't be topped in any way, really.

Just to freak you out all over again, here's the scene where Pinocchio and Lampwick are turned into donkeys because of their bad behavior. This is seriously freaky stuff you'd never see in a kids movie today:

New Poster for Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Maggie'

I have to admit, I'm kind of curious about this movie, even though it's scheduled to come out on Video on Demand (not necessarily a good sign) alongside its theatrical release in May. The trailer made it look like a slightly different kind of movie for both Schwarzenegger and the zombie genre, so we'll see if it's any good soon enough.

Movie of the Day: "A League of Their Own" (1992)

On deck today is one of my very favorites. It's the story of the 1940's All American Girl's Professional Baseball League, which was formed during WWII when the men were off at war, and it stars Geena Davis and Lori Petty as sisters with a deep and abiding sibling rivalry, who join the Rockford Peaches under the management of boozing ex-ball player Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks in one of his all time best performances (I'm not kidding, he should have won an Oscar for this). It's funny, the ensemble is great (including Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell), and it holds up today as unbelievably, still one of the very few sports movies of any kind to center around women (I think Bend it Like Beckham is probably the one other I can think of). Hollywood needs to do some work on that, don't you think? Once a decade is not a great track record.

Original 1992 Trailer:

Behind the Scenes with 'The Avengers'

A couple of new featurettes are out there for the new Avengers movie, the first one introducing the new additions of super-siblings Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, played by Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and the second goes behind the scenes with the cast as they hang around goofing off on set. I've never been totally convinced that these guys like each other that much, frankly. They're more like a bunch of actors who get paid a lot of money to pretend to have some rapport, but unlike, say the old Ocean's Eleven or Star Trek casts, nobody believes these guys hang out with each other in real life, do they?

Trailer for "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"

So this is another Sundance movie that apparently got positive notices and was picked up for a summer release, but is it me or does this look exactly like The Fault in Our Stars 2.0? Is this a new fad, the weepy teen melodrama involving terminal illness (and voiceover narration acknowledging movie cliches)? I tend to give Sundance movies the benefit of the doubt on principle, but this just looks way too cheesy.

Movie of the Day: "42" (2013)

Baseball season's opening week continues, and today we have this Jackie Robinson biopic from a couple of years ago, starring Chadwick Boseman in a nice, understated performance as the man who changed the game. In many ways this is a straightforward telling of the story, which also stars Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers who recruits Robinson to integrate America's pastime, but the nice thing about this movie is that it shows you how moving and powerful the story itself really is. It may not be surprising, but the true nature of the events still holds tremendous power so many years later, especially when it's so well acted and sensitively told.

Trailer:

New Poster for "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Here's a cool poster for the new Mad Max, which apparently has star Tom Hardy signed on for three more sequels. That may be jumping the gun a little bit (it has been thirty years since the last Mad Max movie, after all), but maybe the studio just has that much confidence in this. Can't wait to hear how it is.

Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "Cries and Whispers" (1972)

Now on blu-ray is Ingmar Bergman's 1972 masterpiece Cries and Whispers, which is one of the most powerful, gut-punching films I've ever seen- it's an experience unlike any other, although I do have to warn you that it may not be for everyone. It's about three wealthy sisters in the early 20th century, two of whom have to watch over the third as she's on her deathbed, suffering from a crippling illness that will kill her in just a matter of time...but how much time? Obviously, this is intense, existential material- even though it's incredible filmmaking, the word "fun" is probably the last one you'd use to describe watching this, but it gets under your skin and provides you with an emotional roller coaster ride you'll never forget.

Criterion Collection's 3 Reasons to See: