cinephile at large, again!

"Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way."
--RICHARD II, I, iii


And so the ace film programmer Joel Shepard (and his trusty assistant, yours truly) are exiled from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, who have chosen to place their film program "on pause" before they convene to reimagine it along lines similar to their other programming.


Even before I started working there with Joel, I had, to the point of tedium, opined that his film program was one of the best in the country. He's been a visible figure on the scene for the 22 years he's helmed the program, and I've been pleased by the number of tributes being paid to him and the volumes of words in support on line (flattered, also, by the number of people acknowledging my own contribution to the program).

On pause it may be, but life continues for your proprietor, who has given himself a little time off to get re-centered. It is necessitating some adjustment, I tell you what. But if nothing else, it'll give me more time to update here more regularly.

And I suspect there'll be some recollections of memories of the YBCA film program over the years. As these are not archived anywhere it may be useful to put even my own selective memories down here. Meanwhile, I'm going to give Joel the last word, and reprint from his final statement to YBCA's stalwart staff (and note that you can replace the SF-specific venues with your own local film programs, who just as surely need your support.:

"Movies matter. Please support the theatrical exhibition of independent and foreign film. Please patronize the Castro, Roxie, PFA, SF Cinematheque, Landmark theaters, YBCA’s future screenings, and the work of all the beautiful weirdos out there keeping this impossible dream alive."

January.

Observed through the windows of the House, this mid-winter month:

--Your proprietor can't believe it took a second viewing to grasp how wonderful (and
how squarely aligned with his interests) Powell/Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS is. It's an exotic Technicolor travelogue, for sure, and a marvelous tale of culture clash, but in the end it's a Gothic horror through and through. The thing finally became a favorite, and kicked off a year of rep viewing on a perfect note.

--Similarly pleasing was THE COMMUTER, the first 2018 movie enjoyed this year. After so greatly enjoying THE SHALLOWS year before last I excitedly boarded the Jaume Collet-Serra train, joining a small but growing cult around the man's work and technique (among other things, JCS fans seem nicer and refreshingly less strident than the Nolan cult). THE COMMUTER sees Liam Neeson (in his fourth film with JCS) as a worn-out, increasingly desperate Everyman forced to seek out a passenger who doesn't belong on his train, for reasons that he (and we) slowly determine to be more and more sinister. Whatever fundamentals we lose through JCS' approach are more than made up for with some gorgeously stylish flourishes (here including a marvelous and efficient portrait of a marriage during a gracefully packed opening credits sequence, and a marvelous done-in-one fistfight). Perhaps because I wanted to be taken in I was engaged, even enraptured, throughout. If this movie establishes a baseline of quality through the year, then we're pretty much set.

--It feels strange, however, to prefer THE COMMUTER to PHANTOM THREAD, the latest work by Paul Thomas Anderson. It's a keenly, hermetically designed tale of a mid-50s fashion giant (Daniel Day-Lewis) whose routine is unraveled by the arrival of a quiet, but equally formidable woman (Vicky Krieps). As meticulously artful a work as it is, there's something stifling about its perfection. It helps that the movie is dryly but deliberately funny; among other things, Day-Lewis seems to have the lead in THE RON MAEL STORY all sewn up with his fastidious performance here. And its portrait of a powerful romance threatened by an unwillingness to shuck off interiority was a painful reminder of this viewer's own mistakes in that arena. But there's a sense of experimentation and risk-taking that's missing here, which is keenly evident in my favorite Anderson films such as MAGNOLIA and PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (it certainly abounds in THE COMMUTER), which I realize is one of the main things I go to movies to experience. I'm pleased to have seen PHANTOM THREAD in its artisianally-preferred 70mm film format, and can't imagine it being anywhere near as satisfying otherwise. I may yet revisit it, and find my eyes opened to its greatness (as I did with BLACK NARCISSUS), but at the moment THE COMMUTER is the new movie that resonates most powerfully.

CAT'S EYE

So grateful for the chance to get reacquainted with this, a hidden gem among Stephen King adaptations. King himself adapts two of his NIGHT SHIFT stories ("Quitters, Inc." & "The Ledge"), and pens a new closing segment ("The General"). So distinct is each segment from the other two that director Lewis Teague is directing three different movies. And he's directing a cat in all of them.



A blogger of my acquaintance makes a credible case that rather than an anthology, it's all one story with a plucky and determined (not to mention insanely well-trained and directed) cat as its protagonist. I would add that the film even follows its feline hero through Hell (Quitters Inc. - a terrifying no-escape situation) into Purgatory (The Ledge - trial by heights) before ending in Heaven (The General - home at last).

Kudoes to Teague, King, and the four credited animal trainers in this film; I'm hard pressed to recall another animal character (a cat, no less) that makes such a strong impression. But each of the segments has its strengths: James Woods provides a grounded and believable performance in the Twilight Zone-like Quitters, Inc.; Kenneth McMillan's mania dances beautifully with Robert Hays' fear-then-determination in The Ledge; and there's genuine suspense in The General's cat-on-troll fight.

Stephen King movies came and went throughout the 80s, but something about CAT'S EYE held it a little higher than the others. It became something of a staple on cable, which is where I initially saw it - indeed, I caught it tonight on Encore's Movieplex station, which seems to be bearing the standard of pan-&-scan, weirdly random cable programming that made Cinemax such a favorite destination during my teenage years. If pressed, I'd name "The Ledge" as my favorite segment, for the intensity of the McMillan/Hays conflict, the way the cat plays his shifting loyalties, and the sound effect that caps it. Rare for anthologies like this, a browse of reviews on line finds each of the three segments with its champions. This lack of consensus speaks to something special in it, an offbeat charm that the decades haven't diminished, whether you enjoy it as a trio of Stephen King stories, an undersung gem in the offbeat but entertaining filmography of Lewis Teague, or the tale of a resourceful, well-traveled, and ultimately lovable cat.

THE HUNGER GAMES

Winter break means getting caught up on some movies I'd missed during the year. I'd been curious about this, from the YA novel by Suzanne Collins. What I'd read about it made me suspicious of the nerdmob's knee-jerk allegations that the book (and, by extension, the film) was a ripoff of Battle Royale, but I kept sleeping on chances to watch it and gauge the similarities for myself.

Ultimately the story (of a young woman's fight in a gladiatorial battle televised throughout a futuristic dystopia) is a distinctly American take on its familiar subject matter. It is as awash in direct references to Greek & Roman cultures as it is in similarities to Battle Royale or other hunting-humans stories, but its take on the specifically American aspects of a media-saturated culture (and the attending desensitization to both violence and the more systemic suffering of others) makes it A Young Person's Guide to Class Warfare, Volume One (of Three). The story's focus on protagonist Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, as assured as ever) further muddies any comparison to other, similar stories. Is it the most effective treatment of this kind of story? Perhaps not (and, yes, I do believe that BATTLE ROYALE is a stronger film), but for better or for worse it is its own story, with its own agenda, its own strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately its own power.

S.O.B.

NIGHT WIND, the latest film from producer Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) has flopped. Badly. As an array of Hollywood players rally to recover their losses, Felix descends into suicidal gloom. But when Felix falls (literally) into an orgy that is happening in his home, he is revitalized by an epiphany: NIGHT WIND can be saved with the inclusion of graphic sex scenes. Now if he can convince his wife/leading lady/squeaky clean icon Sally Miles (Julie Andrews) to bare her breasts for it...

This film was a staple in the early days of HBO, and 11-year-old me watched it many, many times. It had achieved some notoriety as "that movie where we see Julie Andrews' breasts" which certainly wasn't lost on me, but as a nascent cinephile there was much to enjoy here. I was starting to understand what moviemakers did, and so I was always going to be interested in a movie ABOUT moviemaking. Especially when the moviemaker hero at its center was as crazy and fun to watch as Mulligan was.

Revisiting it now, for the first time in decades (thanks, Warner Archive), I wonder if I took the film's anger to heart. It's very much a vent (and a pointed stick) from writer/director Blake Edwards, and is both charged with wish fulfillment and fuelled by the kind of spite and specificity that only an insider could bring to bear. Though I did eventually get a degree in theatre and have since pursued storytelling in one way or another, I never, ever had any desire to make it big in Hollywood, and this film illustrates many of the reasons why. (The final scene, in which many of the film's players continue to network during a funeral, is insanely true to my recent experiences of Hollywood.)

But it's interesting as a transition from one decade to the next, evident mainly, but not solely, in its two takes on NIGHT WIND's dream sequence. The film is populated with veteran actors, many of them old hands (and Edwards mainstays) whom one suspects know exactly what real-life counterparts they're playing (Mulligan is clearly an id-unleashed stand-in for Edwards, and the parallels between Andrews and Miles are clear; Robert Vaughn recently admitted that his ruthless exec was modeled on Robert Evans). Among these veterans are young faces who would go on to fame later in the decade (I recognized Joe Penny, didn't recognize Roseanna Arquette, didn't even see Corbin Bernsen). As (charmingly gently) 80s-raunchy as the action often gets, there's a refreshing and intriguing old-school vibe to the thing, from Henry Mancini's score to the joyous third-act counterattack perpetrated by these three Musketeers:

But the transitions spoken of in this film carried to real life. William Holden (above left) died shortly after the film was completed. Roberts Preston (center) and Webber (right) continued to work (quite visibly in Preston's case, in VICTOR/VICTORIA and THE LAST STARFIGHTER), but neither of them would survive the decade. Until I watched the film recently my abiding memory of the film was always just these three guys sitting around, getting lit with Sinatra on the jukebox, rallying for one final hurrah. Even now they stand together as the film's conscience, and collectively make its most joyfully indelible impression. Here's to the old school.

PARK ROW

1884-ish. Fed up with the lack of ethics and deleterious effects on the public of New York's Star newspaper, pissed-off reporter Phinneas Mitchell (Gene Evans) takes a tiny sum of money, some generous donations, and some of the scrappiest newsmen on NYC's fabled Park Row and builds himself a goddamn NEWSPAPER. Mitchell's Globe dedicates itself to printing quality news, preferably at the expense of the Star, and no matter what Park Row throws at him (and it throws an awful lot), Mitchell just KEEPS. ON. COMING.



Written, produced, and directed by Samuel Fuller, who bankrolled the thing himself and later named it his favorite of his films. It is cliche to call a movie a love letter to anything, but PARK ROW declares its love for the fourth estate so explicitly that it'd make Aaron Sorkin blush. Fuller's reverence toward his subject rivals that of Sorkin (the scene in which the linotype machine is invented is endowed with the holiness that usually attends the birth of Christ on screen), but Fuller backs up his loving words with ACTION, much of which is so over-the-top and brutal that it may surprise contemporary action fans (indeed, a glorious unbroken shot that follows Mitchell along Park Row while he basically BEATS UP THE ENTIRE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY anticipates the corridor fight in OLD BOY, and rivals it for righteous thrills). It's one of the most tactile movies about words I've ever seen; we grow to share these people's love for the painstakingly organized pieces of type they set, for the beer they drink, for the editions they print page by page. The press becomes the holiest congregation imaginable, and Fuller's saved a pew for each of us. Fuller's passion for his subject alone would be enough to win us over to his cause, even if his hero hadn't been so thrilling, his story so engaging, his world so exciting.



Damn right.

THE PITCH

From last night's post-MAD MEN sneak preview: Two ad agencies (each filled with dull people who would probably describe themselves as "creatives") vie for a Subway breakfast campaign targeting the 18-24 demographic. Lots of blah-blah, people talking about how fear is a great motivator for them, quiet (nearly subliminal) music, advertising is a very competitive field, people talking about how they're in it to win it, someone uses the word "concept" as a verb, and I turn it off about 20 minutes in.

Your proprietor's interest in reality television has thus been exhausted for the year.

the DARK SHADOWS trailer

I'm less than pleased with the clip above, which is shattering since I've been looking forward to this film for a couple of years. I'm quite surprised that this gaudy comic mishmash is the movie that Burton and Depp chose to make from the series, considering the decades each has spent nursing their affection for it. A friend quite reasonably reminds me that a trailer can't be counted on as a concrete indicator of what a film will be like, and one does wonder if the studio marketing department (who surely cut this trailer) were put off by stranger moments in the film and settled on the cutesier, more saleable stuff.

And yet the fact that so much of the latter seems so evident in the trailer is cause for concern. I'm not blind to the camp value that many ascribe to DARK SHADOWS (indeed, I've reveled in some of the show's more enthusiastic outbursts myself). And yet the craziness of the show was an outgrowth of its ambitious creative process, not a deliberately winking wackiness, and to play the story of Barnabas Collins and family mainly for yuks is an easy out that I'm disappointed to see Burton and Depp taking.

But even if they are going for something more interesting and varied, this trailer sets us up for a campy laff riot. Which is so much less than what the series offered, even amid the technical screw-ups and blown lines. I stand by my definition of the show as "the craziest community theatre in your town doing a short Gothic horror play EVERY SINGLE DAY" - the result of this approach is, just as often as camp, an atmospheric shudder delivered creatively on the cheap, and occasionally inspired romance (not to mention time travel and parallel worlds). The Burton/Depp film may yet provide these, and though the trailer gives me no hope, I admit I'll be heading out the second weekend of May to see for myself.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES

Two spaceships touch down on a distant planet, their crews investigating strange signals and freakish meteorites. It becomes rapidly clear that all is not well on this planet as the travelers find themselves in the thrall of strange forces, and as they battle desperately to escape they find their numbers dwindling, and their mysterious enemy slowly forming around them.

Mario Bava's sci-fi chiller is commonly regarded as a forerunner to Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Though the later film does share Bava's Gothic spirit (and some plot details with PLANET, right down to the huge alien corpses in a derelict spaceship), I tend to believe Scott and company when they say they never saw Bava's film. The vastness of space is as foreboding as an abandoned, fog-shrouded house, and it's a natural setting for horror (just ask Lovecraft).

It's not quite as dizzying or thrilling as some of Bava's other films - perhaps the on-set language barriers (which, with actors speaking their lines in four different languages, must have been considerable) kept everyone somewhat off the same page. But the occasionally leaden pace allows our mind and eyes to wander, and there are MANY places for them to go.


Though an international co-production, the film was realized on an insanely flimsy budget, which only brought out Bava's more insane and outlandish creative instincts. Even if one of his main sets resembles a metallic (if impressively minimalist) take on a STAR TREK set...


...the whole affair, considering the lack of available material resources, is designed, lit, and paced splendidly. Which just goes to show that imagination and a horror director's eye for lighting and atmosphere go a long way in realizing an ambitious scenario. Though an attractive international cast in pervy spacesuits doesn't hurt, either.

[REC]2

Picking up apparently seconds after the end of the first film, a Barcelona SWAT team gears up to enter a quarantined building. Recording their incursion with video cameras, the team captures both the escalating horror within the building and the unusual actions of a doctor ordered to accompany them. Also entering the building are a trio of kids whose own video footage captures still more horror, including the startling arrival of a survivor of the plague's previous onslaught.

It's always a bold move to begin a sequel right where its predecessor left off, and the makers of the [REC] series move quickly to keep us engaged. This, happily, is no mere rehash of the previous film; though the SWAT team offer new viewers a perfect anchor to the carnage, there's quite a lot of callbacks to the previous film. This includes a moment that effectively upends [REC]'s brilliant closing image. Happily none of these reveals completely undermines what we've previously experienced.

I couldn't imagine a sequel to the previous film, which ended its story so beautifully. Though I can't imagine where a sequel to this one would go either (two are planned), I gotta say I'm eager to see what they cook up next.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

It's a gorgeous production, really. I think the original story is absolutely foolproof in the horror and the humanity it evokes (and that its message is timeless), and all an adaptation really has to do is commit to the characters and the words, but my goodness. George C. Scott gives a full-blooded, totally human Scrooge - cold-blooded at the start, but every little reaction he gives on the way back to humanity's embrace is well-calibrated, building on the one before it. And the whole damn cast commits - among others, who knew that David Warner had such reservoirs of vulnerability to draw upon?


A mention of the late Edward Woodward (yes he died two years ago, but I miss him still). I remember watching this with my mom, the first night it aired. Budding cinephile that I was, I was digging the period detail, the effectiveness of the performances and photography, and just having a nice pre-holiday with mom and this story. But good lord, when the Ghost of Christmas Present bounded in, Mom and I were both agape. Who the hell is this guy? Bedecked in white fur, holly laurels, and an impossible mane of hair, Woodward is the ultimate, pre-eminent party animal, both Lord of the Dance and one of the pubgoers from Wire's "A Serious Of Snakes". Watching him playfully fucking with Scrooge on their tour of Christmas present, and then seeing that mischief turn vicious as he delivers a WITHERING judgment on him, is an absolute joy. I wasn't at all surprised when Woodward returned to CBS the following year in his own series, and I like to think that some executive saw him booming through A CHRISTMAS CAROL and, for some beautifully obscure reason, said "Holy shit, this guy, THIS is our Robert McCall."

(Thanks to fellow Woodwardian Stacia at She Blogged by Night for the second image above.

And Merry Christmas to you.)

JOHNNY STACCATO: Evil

"Evil attacks you through your television sets."

This is the suitably ballsy first line of this television episode, and it's delivered by this man:



Brother Max (Alexander Scourby) is addressing the congregation of an inner-city mission on the dangers of Evil, and the threat it poses to us in our daily lives. His spiel is caught in a bracing, uncut 2-minute take:



"You say 'Hallelujah', you say 'Amen'...but what you say and what you do, my friends, they can be very different." And Brother Max should know, as we find someone special waiting for him after the service...



Our hero saunters into the frame, captured, unsurprisingly, in a stolen shot from a handheld camera, in the true Cassavetes manner:



In VO, Johnny tells him that he's been asked to check out a mission to which the girlfriend of a pal has given all her savings. Johnny asks around, eventually winds up in the orbit of the VERY drunk Brother Conrad (Elisha Cook):



Johnny is taken to the congregation of Brother Max, seen holding forth against Evil:



Brother Conrad stands to testify, but finds his repeated drunkenness too many lapses into Evil, and he is cruelly ejected by Brother Max:



Johnny takes the stage to do some testifying of his own, insisting that "nobody was ever that far gone that he couldn't be forgiven." And when he directly charges Brother Max with lying to and exploiting his flock, the faithful descend upon him, knock him unconscious, and leave him in the alley outside:



Brother Max briefly steps outside and cheerfully comes clean to Johnny: he is, indeed, a fraud, who has taken these good people for every penny he could get.



Ironically, this hipster detective's moral compass is more functional than that of the false man of God, and Johnny knows Max is right when he says that to expose him would be to shatter the faith of the parishioners. At the moment, only Johnny and we see Brother Max for who he is.



But their conversation has been observed:



This is Brother Thomas (Lloyd Corrigan), the original founder of this modest church. After 20 years of little success in attracting much of a parish, Thomas found his ministry taken over by Max. And though Max has filled the pews with the devout in a way that Thomas never could, Thomas has always suspected that Max wasn't completely on the level. The shame of these new revelations shatter him.

Johnny knows that if Max is going to be exposed, and if the faith of the parish is to be preserved, Brother Thomas is going to have to be the man to do it. Max is too weak, too ashamed to fight. "You don't have the faith in those people that you expect them to give to you," chides Johnny. "All we can do is try."

Brother Thomas takes the stage to make a last, desperate plea for the souls of his flock...



...and the last we see of Johnny before this final conflict makes us wonder if even he's saying a little prayer:



The seventh episode of Johnny Staccato, starring John Cassavetes in the title role, might as well have been filmed last week. It's a powerful piece of filmmaking, and its portrait of religion abused and faith exploited for the benefit of charlatans is, sadly, as timely as ever. And it's an insanely well-crafted episode, completely jettisoning Johnny's jazz milieu (which had framed the series thus far) to enter some downright Rod Serling territory. Richard Carr's script stays safely off the side of polemic, letting the episode's two main characters remain human even as they embody Good and Evil.

I'd been bothered by the tendency of the show to background its leading man, a tendency that Cassavetes himself seems to acknowledge with the funny framing of this shot:



Johnny emerges here as a conscience, observing the conflict (like us) from the sidelines but still wholly invested. And there's a downright utopian confluence in this episode, as Johnny's moral hipster and Corrigan's meek but resolute man of God find common ground. It's a powerful moment that resonates in these fractious times, and though greed hides behind a number of faces (including a few of those who were debating last night), there's more than one kind of faith, too.

Take a bow, Johnny. And tag it:

Raimifest: FOR LOVE OF THE GAME

(For Raimifest, run by Bryce Wilson over at the witty and wonderful Things That Don't Suck.)

"...you get the feeling that Billy Chapel isn't pitching against left handers, he isn't pitching against pinch hitters, he isn't pitching against the Yankees. He's pitching against time. He's pitching against the future, against age, and even when you think about his career, against ending. And tonight I think he might be able to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky and give us one more day of summer."



Forty-year-old Detroit Tigers pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is at the very end of his career. Pretty much everything has collapsed around him - his tumultuous baseball career is ending with a losing season, and his long-term but difficult relationship with New York career woman Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) seems to have similarly, and permanently, hit the skids. To make matters worse, the poor bastard is throwing his last game in Yankee Stadium, where thousands of fans have gathered to jeer at him. Though focused on the game at hand, Chapel recalls key moments in both his career and his relationship with Jane, and becomes so involved in his memories that he doesn't immediately realize that he's pitching the best game of his life.

The last of Costner's baseball movies grows a little schmaltzier with each viewing. The romantic stuff gets longer and more irritating every time I see it - Costner and Preston do their best with the often leaden dialogue, but the hideous MOR pop tunes on the soundtrack oversell the emotions at too many moments.

That said, it's a thoroughly adult romance - we're not asked to believe in a younger woman's attraction to an insanely older man, and Costner and Preston are totally credible through the ups and downs of their believably difficult relationship. The then-15-year-old Jena Malone offers a nicely realized performance as Jane's daughter Heather, a sweetly human foil for both characters.



And, AND, the baseball scenes remain some of the best ever made. The acting really sells the in-game action, with Costner totally believable as a pitcher facing his final game, as is John C. Reilly as his catcher - their relationship feels like one that has been built over years (and JK Simmons, in his first of many appearances in Raimi films, is a joy as their coach). These scenes gain authenticity and dramatic heft with the longtime voice of the Yankees Bob Sheppard and veteran announcer Vin Scully thrillingly calling the game.



You're basically on the mound with Chapel, and his ongoing monologue offers as vivid a sense of the game's mechanics as you'll get anywhere else. The film captures the odd sensation of being completely alone in front of 50,000 people.



Basil Poledouris' theme is a great piece of film music, the perfect accompaniment to the end of an era, and to a tired man's last desperate fight. The brass that ascends beneath the strings is the perfect musical reflection of the conflict within Billy, mirroring the rise of his spirit against his exhaustion and the considerable odds against him. The script from Michael Shaara's novel is generous with character moments, and Costner savors each one. And there's some gorgeous photography as well (from veteran DP John Bailey), as here where Chapel makes a rare plea for divine intervention, and the lights of Yankee Stadium come alive as if in response:



And Reilly's "Just throw" speech before the 8th inning is an impassioned and beautiful monologue, surely one of the cinema's great declarations of heterosexual male-male love.



It's directed by Sam Raimi, and it's challenging to place it comfortably in his oeuvre. It falls in the middle of what one might call a "realist" period in his work, bookended by the modern noir A Simple Plan and the effective character piece The Gift. But though it lacks the gonzoid energy and freneticism of his best known work (from the Evil Dead films through the Spider-Man trilogy), it's no less effects-driven: much CGI was used to fill the seats of Yankee Stadium during the film's off-season shoot (along with actual Yankee fans who showed up to heckle Costner and Reilly for local colour). Most impressive is the sequence in which Chapel "clears the mechanism", a mental means of shutting out the stadium's noise section by section. And one wonders if a more realistically-inclined filmmaker would have brought as much viscera to the film's most harrowing scene in which Chapel receives a career-threatening injury at the wrong end of a table saw.



The scene brings out the best in Jane as she fights to save Billy's hand, tapping into a heroic desperation we've seen in Raimi's films before:



In the end I keep thinking back on Zhang Yimou, who was called upon to defend his retreat into martial arts territory with Hero and House of Flying Daggers. He explained that every Chinese filmmaker has at least one wuxia film in him. Perhaps every American filmmaker has at least one baseball film in them. Given that Raimi himself is a fan of the national pastime, who're we to begrudge him this film?



I first caught For Love of the Game theatrically in October 1999, at the end of the first baseball season I'd followed with any interest. Pretty much every year I watch it shortly after the baseball season winds down, a perfect film for the twilight of the season. And though its flaws become more evident with each viewing, I still get caught up in it, and the 9th inning still makes me cry. I dislike The Natural for the way it deifies its hero, and I find the climactic home run overdone and bland. The characters in For Love of the Game are more recognizably human to me, frail, vulnerable, prone to bouts of total assholishness, capable of greatness, and truly at their best in the company of kindred spirits.

Evil Dead 2 was a staple of my high school years, but For Love of the Game is the Raimi film I've spent the most time with. In some ways, as I draw perilously near to Chapel's age (and I note that Raimi himself turned 40 the year the film was released), I find more real resonance in his conflicts than the cartoonish battles of Ash against the undead. It thrills me to see someone with whom I find more and more familiarity with each passing year finding (and proving) that he's not yet done. It's a solid story, beautifully told, informed by a maturity and gravitas one doesn't often see in Raimi's work. And yet Chapel possesses a likable charm, an often self-defeating capacity for error, and a movingly human strength, all of which he shares with the most memorable of Raimi's heroes. And his goal is no less heroic: to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky. And give us one more day of summer.

all my love