ALL-TIME CLASSIC MOVIE FAVOURITES – FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)

 

“Field of Dreams” is a sports drama, screenplay by Phil Alden Robinson based on the novel by W.P.Kinsella and Directed by Phil Alden Robinson

In the extraordinary story, Iowa corn farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears a voice in his corn field telling him, “If you build it, he will come” and he interpreted this message as an instruction to build a baseball diamond on his farm, with the support of his wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann).

Upon completion of the diamond players appear from the corn, the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and the other seven Chicago White Sox players who were banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series.

When the voices continue, Ray goes on the road to seek out a reclusive author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) to help him understand the meaning of the messages and the purpose for his field.

Before they can head back to the farm they are directed to seek out Dr. Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham (Burt Lancaster) and find his ghost, and then on the way home they pick up a hitch hiker who turns out to be to young wannabee ball player, Archie Graham (Frank Whaley) and Kinsella has his ball team, but there is one more surprise for Ray when his father John (Dwier Brown) appears on the diamond.

Field Of Dreams is a Timeless Classic and a perfect example of a movie that finds meaning, not in aspects of the story, but rather in the underlying emotional core and heart that defines the story.

ALL-TIME CLASSIC MOVIE FAVOURITES – THE NATURAL (1984)

 

 “The Natural” is a sports drama, based on the novel by Bernard Malamud and Directed by Barry Levinson.

The story is about an unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) with a mysterious past, who appears out of nowhere to join a struggling team as a rookie in the 1930’s, much to the disgust of coach Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) who thinks the teams owner The Judge (Robert Prosky) is deliberately trying to scupper the team, so he refuses to play Hobbs on principle.

But he does have an ally in assistant coach Red Blow (Richard Farnsworth) and eventually Pop relents and Hobbs takes a losing baseball team to the top of the league with the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree.

But it soon becomes apparent that it’s more important to the Judge that the team fail and when bribes don’t work, femme fatal Memo Paris (Kim Basinger) tries to distract him, and it appears to be working until his childhood sweetheart Iris Gaines (Glenn Close) appears one day in the stands and gets him back on track.

It takes reporter Max Mercy (Robert Duvall) to uncover the story of Roy Hobbs mysterious past as he begins to bask in the fame he should have had earlier in his life when, as a rising pitcher, he was inexplicably shot by a young woman, Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey) in a hotel room.