A collection of recommendations this week inspired by the main reason I’m still busy outside of work. I’m actually a little surprised how many sports movies I’ve covered, as it’s generally outside my interests. But I’ve had a long time to collect them now.
Field of Dreams – if someone doesn’t name this as the quintessential baseball movie, it’s probably because they said A League of Their Own
Mr. 3000 – Bernie Mac is playing baseball, how silly!
Major League – Awful players are playing baseball, how silly!
Ed – Matt Leblanc is playing baseball, how silly! Also there’s a chimp.
BASEketball – You got your baseball in my basketball! You got your basketball in my baseball!
One more that I never heard of until I saw it floating around my sources. Damon Wayans terrorizes some JROTC kids as their drill instructor, so it sounds like fun. As the instructor is the protagonist, it sounds like a bit of the inverse of movies like Sgt. Bilko and Stripes.
I’m sure there will be one or two kids with an interesting quirk, but I don’t have high expectations for a memorable bunch, just a generic group of misfit boys trying to get the ex-Marine off their backs.
Despite election cycles, the world is all politics, all the time, and it is only the privileged few who can avoid that, perhaps especially during an administration mainly built on not constantly drumming up controversy. So there’s always time to consider American government through the movies.
1776: Begin at the beginning, and sit down, John. Gridlock is eternal.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: The little guy with a heart who’s chronically too rare in the machinery of government.
The Manchurian Candidate: Back when it was easier to imagine a foreign government brainwashing and grooming future American leaders than just tuning the minds of the electorate through online advertisements and fake accounts.
All the President’s Men: Somehow Watergate is when cynicism about government corruption became standard, though it’s always been with us.
Wag the Dog: When there seems little else to do about the state of affairs, why not laugh about it?
As much as I lean into popular criticism of Adam Sandler, I have to admit I’ve been a little interested in this movie since it came out. It has to be pretty sweet if it’s a romantic comedy about a guy so dedicated to his relationship with a woman that he keeps getting her to fall in love with him every day. There’s usually at least a kernel of a good story in an Adam Sandler Comedy, at least the ones that don’t get immediately forgotten.
I have no idea what to expect. Apparently it’s a comedy, but the very little I read up front didn’t really give that impression outside from the “comedy” tag. So… I assume there is martial arts, and something about gang violence?
This year more than any other year, I’ve been finding myself with less time or energy than I need to do a full review. I’m getting busier and older, but even so, I’ve still made at least some kind of post once a week, more Yesterdays and back catalog collections than ever before. Some of them were work I felt I did some good or at least fun writing with, but mostly, I consider them filler.
In that spirit, I’m dropping the ball one more time this year by counting down my ten favorite actual reviews of the past year.
1: Julie and Julia: hmm, I wonder what I connected with here
I hope in the new year to have less filler but also more branching out with opportunities to make social commentary though movies. Maybe only ten people read this blog regularly, but I made a commitment to myself if nobody else, and I have no intention of just fizzling on this project.
Yesterday's Movies 
