Rookie of the Year (1993)::rating::3.5::rating::3.5::rating::3.5

O f all baseball movies, none will have a higher nostalgia factor for 90s kids than Rookie of the Year. It brilliantly takes a gangly middle schooler and chucks him right into the big leagues. For 103 glorious minutes, we get to live vicariously through Henry Rowengartner (Thomas Ian Nicholas) as he becomes an ace pitcher…

ByTodd WoffordMay 9, 20220Comments

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)::rating::3.5

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will draw inevitable comparisons to Everything Everywhere All at Once, Michelle Yeoh's bravura indie feature from last month. Like that film, this story imagines an infinite collective of universes, where anything that can happen, does happen. But where Everything used its reality-hopping premise to ponder the very nature of existence, Strange 2 assembles its…

ByTodd WoffordMay 7, 20220Comments

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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)::rating::4

N o film in recent memory gets a more appropriate title than Everything Everywhere All at Once. Over the course of its dizzying, dazzling 140 minutes, multiple movie genres smash into each other, like protons in a particle accelerator. The result is an explosion of pure cinematic energy, with shockwaves of dense plot bursting from the screen. Sadness…

ByTodd WoffordMay 4, 20220Comments

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Major League (1989)::rating::3

M ajor League is a bawdy, disposable little sports movie. Long ago, I filed it away as Porky's at the Dugout. And thirty-plus years out, it's still all of those things. At the same time, I enjoyed revisiting Major League way more than I thought. For all its raunch and silliness, this movie also has a surprising…

ByTodd WoffordMay 2, 20220Comments

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Moonfall (2022)::rating::2.5

M oonfall dwells in a weird limbo of mediocrity. I wish the script could've been a notch smarter, or else ten times dumber. The special effects might've been sharpened up a bit, or rendered hilariously incompetent. This talented cast could've been given some, you know, decent dialogue. Otherwise, they should've just farmed these roles out…

ByTodd WoffordApril 29, 20220Comments

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Moneyball (2011)::rating::4.5

M oneyball spends just over two hours stripping the mythic grandeur from the game of baseball. Along the way, it also deconstructs the sweeping narrative hubris of the baseball movie itself. Instead of supernatural legends who smash out the stadium lights or the voice of God whispering over the corn crop, this film reduces the…

ByTodd WoffordApril 26, 20220Comments

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Marry Me (2022)::rating::3

M ovies like Marry Me ignite a battle within my soul. The cynical side of my personality wants to bash this thing with a tire iron, as I scream how dopey, dippy, and utterly ri-goddam-diculous it is. But go beyond my snarky outer shell, and you'll find that I'm basically one of those oversized teddy bears…

ByTodd WoffordApril 22, 20220Comments

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The Sandlot::rating::3.5

I t’s a fascinating irony that The Sandlot began as an exercise in deep nostalgia. From its twinkly narration to the hoppin’ oldies on the soundtrack, the entire film is meant to evoke what was–for some–a simpler time, along with the guileless joys of being a child. Now, almost three decades after its release, children of the…

ByTodd WoffordApril 18, 20220Comments

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A League of Their Own (1992)::rating::4

A s with all the best baseball movies, A League of Their Own captures all the joys, monotonies, and superstitions of a long season. But unlike other classics of the genre, League also captures a significant-but-neglected piece of WWII history: With the MLB shut down for the war, a landmark professional league sprang up for women. In addition to…

ByTodd WoffordApril 13, 20220Comments

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Bull Durham (1988)::rating::4

"This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You catch the ball. You hit the ball!" -- Skip Riggins, Manager of the Durham Bulls. T he irony of the above statement is that Bull Durham centers on two characters who embody the exact opposite of its sentiment. For Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon),…

ByTodd WoffordApril 6, 20220Comments