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Thursday, August 28, 2014

Classic Sports Movies to Add to Your Collection



Baseball Edition


We love “best of” lists when it comes to building our movie collection. It's hard to find the right movies to place on our shelves when we consider the vast amount of films created all over the world. So, every now and then we will give you a list of our favorite films as a suggestion. Think of it as your cheat sheet to movie research. You might not agree with our picks, but you might be inspired to watch one you haven't seen yet and then add it to your home theater library. 

Field of Dreams (1989) – “If you build it, he will come.” So many famous quotes seem to come from sports movies and Field of Dreams spawned one of the most misquoted lines in history! In 1989, Kevin Costner starred in this film that combines magic, nostalgia, and baseball. Costner's character (Ray Kinsella) hears voices that inspire him to build a baseball diamond in his backyard. This diamond brings the ghosts of famous baseball players to play in front of the small town—one of those players being the ghost of Kinsella's father. This movie is said to be the movie to make even the most macho man cry, so keep that in mind, but it's also a great escapist film that makes you wish you could build a baseball diamond of your own.


Major League (1989) – Before Charlie Sheen was dating questionable women, tearing up Las Vegas and talking about tiger blood, he portrayed Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn in the Major League movie series. This flick is about the Cleveland Indians road to the playoffs. The team ends up with a new owner that wants the Indians to lose in order to move them out of Ohio. Once the players learn about their new owner's plot, they decide to start playing well on purpose, both to spite their owner and keep the team in Cleveland. If you enjoy the first Major League movie, make sure to check out the sequel that was released in 1994. Sheen returns in the sequel and the film keeps the same tone and humor of the first movie in the franchise.

A League Of Their Own (1992) – “There's no crying in baseball!” How many times have you heard that one? Directed by Penny Marshall (of Laverne & Shirley fame) this movie sheds light on the lives of female baseball players in the US during World War II. With the men off to war, women took over a lot of jobs once only done by men—including baseball. With an all-star cast including Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, and Madonna, it's hard not to enjoy this classic. Baseball intertwined with politics and societies a lot back in the day, and this movie shows one of those instances in a comedic, yet memorable way.

The Sandlot (1993) – “You're killing me, Smalls!” Maybe you've heard your friends say it before, and I'm sure you've seen a clip of a freckle-faced redhead boy in a catcher's mask yelling “Play ball!” at a game. Well, that clip and that quote are from The Sandlot. This classic is about the summer adventures of a group of boys and their neighborhood baseball games. Other classic lines, like “You play ball like a girl!” (also used at sports games) come from this comedic and nostalgic film. For those of you that keep thinking about the good ol' days and your childhood, The Sandlot is a must.

42  (2013) – Although this was a recent entry into the world of baseball movies, it should still have a spot in your movie collection. 42 is the story of Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player, and the struggles he had to go through to earn the respect of racist fans, players, and managers. It is a touching story, sometimes hard to watch (only because of how awful he was treated) that ends up teaching the audience a very important lesson—that baseball fans can be of any color, and from any walk of life, as can its players.

Friday, August 15, 2014

5 Movie Endings We STILL can't figure out



SPOILER ALERT! The movies in this article ARE a  few years old, so we'll hold back on saying I told you so if you continue to read on. If you haven't seen these movies you should probably schedule some time and put them in your Netflix queue-- they’re well worth watching, even if we don’t fully grasp the ending.

Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan's ensemble cast film left many moviegoers very angry, mostly because the ending left the movie’s biggest question unanswered. In our current culture of immediate satisfaction, the obscure ending just wasn't what the audience wanted to see. In Inception, a movie about the layers of our dreams and how our reality influences them, we are introduced to the concept of a token. This item lets characters know whether they are in a dream or not. If they can knock the item down, they are in the real world, but if the item does not fall over, they are still dreaming. Well, the movie ends with Leo DiCaprio’s token (a top) spinning and spinning. Just as you think it wobbles and is about to fall the movie ends, leaving you wondering if the final happy moment between DiCaprio’s character and his family is indeed a dream or reality.



The Shining (1980)

This Stanley Kubrick film, based on a novel by horror master Stephen King, gave us some key pop culture quotes and scenes. Who could forget Jack Nicholson’s crazed visage peering through the broken door and yelling, “Here’s Johnny!” ? But believe it or not, many people have not seen the movie in its entirety--they just know the quotes.  If you have seen the movie, the ending doesn't leave you hanging as much as Inception’s ending, but we are still left with a big question. We discover that Jack Nicholson's character has actually been in that hotel for a very, very long time, appearing in photos from the 1920’s. Does that mean his wife and child are also ghosts? Is Nicholson’s character reincarnated? Is any of it real at all? People still debate the movie’s ending and its creepy scenes today.



K-Pax (2001)

This movie isn't as well known as the others on our list, but the ending is just as mysterious. In K-Pax, Kevin Spacey plays a man that claims to be from another planet. His psychiatrist, Jeff Bridges, tries to convince him otherwise, but starts to doubt his own knowledge of medicine. Throughout the entire movie we are wondering if Spacey is indeed an alien from the planet K-Pax or just a mentally ill man.  The movie explores the concept of science, psychology, and insanity, but it also makes you wonder if people that are institutionalized are actually as crazy as we think. Was Spacey’s character indeed from another planet? We don’t know.

  

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)


This movie brought very little closure to fans of the Wachowski brothers famous trilogy. People had a difficult time fully understanding the concept of The Matrix the first time around, and Revolutions didn’t seem to add anything concrete to the situation. The characters Oracle and The Architect didn’t clarify much of anything--instead, they seemed to have confused fans even more. Finally, at the end, the audience is left wondering: Did Neo become part of the I Matrix? Was he actually killed in his final battle against Agent Smith? We have yet to find out.



2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

If you could even sit through this lengthy, somewhat strange Kubrick movie, the ending will have you wondering what in the world you actually watched. The movie has very little dialogue, and we go from apes and a monolith to astronauts in a space ship without much of a bridge. People are mostly familiar with Hal 9000-but if you've seen the image of the giant baby floating in space and wondered what in the world it had to do with the movie--join the club. We still don't know if that is the reincarnation of the main character or something else entirely.