MY MOVIE SHELF: A League of Their Own

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 209  Days to go: 210

Movie #168:  A League of Their Own

Hey, does anybody know if there’s any crying in baseball? No one’s ever said.

A League of Their Own, in case you were born yesterday or have lived in a cave the past twenty-two years, is the tale of Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) remembering the year she played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She has a competitive relationship with her kid sister Kit (Lori Petty), takes on a leadership role within her team, the Rockford Peaches, builds a grudging respect and collaboration with their drunken manager, Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), and is seen as the best, most important and most dynamic player in the league.

I love stories about women and about their relationships, and this is a really well-told story. It’s the story of a women’s professional baseball league that is officially titled with “Girls” in the name and how it’s simultaneously freeing and objectifying. It’s about women lifting each other up and succeeding together. Some of these women have been put down all their lives, some of them have never learned to read, some are venturing out of their tiny little small-town existences for the first time, some are their families’ breadwinners, and all are finding camaraderie, companionship and a world of opportunity they never knew was there before. It’s such a refreshing change from lots of stories about women, that almost always involve a steep rivalry. Here the only real relationship rivalry is between Dottie and Kit (almost entirely on Kit’s side, since Dottie doesn’t know what Kit’s problem is half the time), and they’re sisters, so there’s more love than animosity, and always will be. If you focus on just the conflicts, you miss the part where Kit makes a plea to Dottie for her very well-being at the beginning of the film, begging for the chance to leave their hometown and to be someone, and Dottie gives it to her. You’d miss how supportive she is, how much she praises her. You’d miss how they come together at the end, mingling happy and sad over the result of the World Series, but with a love for each other that binds them together stronger than time or distance or even baseball can break. You’d also miss how they stick together in Fort Collins, Colorado, as Marla (Megan Cavanagh) is trying out for the scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz), and if you miss anything to do with the scout, you’ve done yourself a grievous wrong.

Ernie Capadino is the most perfect perfect perfect character in this film. He’s brash and cold and cuts to the chase, and literally almost every single line of his is hilarious. Whether he’s sarcastically cutting down the “milk maids,” as he calls them, and their naiveté, or offering to drum up a pistol for a man whose job is so boring Ernie would kill himself if he had it, or simply going home to “give the wife a little pickle tickle,” he’s fantastic. But the absolute best moment is when Marla lifts her head to show her face to him at, let’s say, not the most advantageous angle. He makes a face that is priceless in its shock and disgust, and it is my favorite face of all time.

There are parts of the film that feel clunky to me — the framing in the present, the silly earworm song about the league (even though it was the real song of the league, it’s still so oddly wedged into the film), and the casting of Madonna as a woman who liked to show off her bosoms named “All the Way” Mae Mordabito, to name a few. But so much of it is strong and moving (and funny), that the ill-fitting aspects are easily overlooked. Tom Hanks’s performance grows on me every time I watch it, always giving me a slightly greater glimpse at all the nuance he put into this role that initially struck me as just bluster. Yes, hitting Stillwell Angel (Justin Scheller) in the head with a glove is a perfect moment, but so is the time he wrestles away the telegram and solemnly delivers it to the player whose husband has just died in the war. (If you do not bawl your eyes out in that moment, even when you know it is coming, you’ve got a stronger constitution than I.)

One of the things that has always struck me about A League of Their Own, though, is the opening scene. A grandmother is preparing to go on a trip across the country to the induction of women (and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) into the Baseball Hall of Fame. She’s reluctant, but her daughter is insistent and as they are leaving, the woman’s two grandsons are playing basketball. To the older, she offers a reminder that his younger brother is still smaller, no matter what he does, so give him a chance to shoot. To the younger, she says, “Kill him.” I’ve thought about this so many times, how this woman’s relationship with her little sister growing up (because we will soon find that this is an older Dottie Hinson, played by Lynn Cartwright in these opening and closing scenes) frames how she treats and encourages her grandchildren. It’s something we all do to a certain extent, of course. Our experiences inform our perceptions. But I find it infinitely interesting all the same.

It’s as if Dottie feels regret toward her relationship with Kit, as if it’s somehow Dottie’s responsibility that Kit feels inferior to her. And yet, being that older, protective sibling, she’s going to feel responsible for her younger sister. It’s fascinating how cyclical these patterns are, and I honestly can’t tell you if I think Dottie is justified or not in her regret (not that anyone has to justify regret, but you know what I mean — does she have a reason, something she did, etc.). I might be the only person to focus in on that, but I come across it a lot — in how my experiences have shaped by behaviors, how my kids are shaped by their experiences, and how much of an excuse that gives us, if any, for the way we act going forward. It’s a puzzle.

I also like the funny parts, I’m not a monster. I like the decorum classes. I agree that “avoid the clap” is good advice. I like the idea of calling someone Betty Spaghetti, and if I knew anyone whose name rhymed with spaghetti, I’d be on it. I like Rosie O’Donnell as Doris, but I love her dad and her admirers just a little bit more. I love “singing to Nelson.” I love thanking God for “that waitress in South Bend.” I’m a fan of an uncomfortably long pee joke. I like Ann Cusack learning to read “grabbed her milky white breasts,” because, after all, it only matters that she’s reading. I like Garry Marshall as fictionalized candy pioneer and league owner Walter Harvey, who keeps his socializing short and sweet. I like David Strathairn as Ira Lowenstein, who, until Jimmy scratched his balls for an hour in the 5th inning, didn’t know if he was drunk or dead. I like dirt in the skirt and “accidentally” hitting jerks in the stands with baseballs. I even like seeing Tea Leoni playing for Racine. And heaven knows I love all those really well-done baseball montages.

However, with only four teams in the entire league? There are way too many games in a baseball season. I will die on this hill.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Jurassic Park III

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 215  Days to go: 218

Movie #162:  Jurassic Park III

So I said in the last post that Jurassic Park III wouldn’t make quite as much of a blunder as The Lost World does in world-building and taking its sweet time to get to the island. This is true, but just barely. There are still several opening scenes in which the audience is apprised of the status of Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) in the intervening years and the pitch by the Kirbys (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) to entice Grant and his assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola) into joining them on an aerial tour of Isla Sorna. It’s really only the opening scene — so much stronger than The Lost World‘s — wherein the film’s inciting incident occurs in the skies around Isla Sorna, that builds enough tension to carry the viewer through the next few establishing scenes without them dragging.

This time, the filmmakers decide to hell with the experts, let’s populate this team of island visitors with a bunch of imbeciles. True, Dr. Grant (despite his cocksure stance to the contrary — arrogance is always punished, sir) accompanies the Kirbys and team onto the island, along with tag-along Billy, but nobody really wants to listen to him — even less so than they did in the first movie. These fools just want to come onto the island and stomp around screaming for young Eric Kirby (Trevor Morgan, offspring of the aforementioned Kirbys) and his stepfather Ben, who were the two parasailers in the opening scene.

Proving absolutely everything is commercialized, a tourist company in Costa Rica called Dino-Soar (classic), takes parasailers around the island for a unique view of whatever might be lurking there (still nobody has bombed these islands??). Their view of their boat obscured by fog, they feel some violent tugs and then notice as the fog clears that the boat crew is missing and the boat itself has sustained damage. Frantic, they disconnect their cable from the boat and float off into the air above a dinosaur-populated island and the big blue ocean, so these two aren’t that smart either. I mean, really, wouldn’t it be better to let the boat beach itself, fall into the sea still attached to said boat, and then, I don’t know, radio for help? Instead of just letting the wind whisk you off into wherever? Anyway, they don’t follow my advice and of course have gone missing, which is where the desperately seeking Kirbys come into the picture.

The Kirbys trick Dr. Grant into being their guide with an enormously kited check and big talk of being an international captain of the import/export industry. Then they land on the stupid island (the island, by the way, that Dr. Grant has never been to, but instead was the subject of Dr. Malcolm’s nightmare in The Lost World: Jurassic Park), and start screaming for their son and immediately get one of their crew killed. (The other two members don’t last much longer.)

Eventually they find the parasail, still attached to dear old stepdad, now eight weeks deceased. The boy is nowhere in sight, but luckily Dr. Grant stumbles upon him while trying to evade some nasty raptors. In fact, it’s Eric who saves the Dr. from said raptors, by using an old Injen gas bomb. Then it becomes a task to get back with the Kirbys and Billy and get off the island in one piece.

The raptors really take center stage here, as part of the exposition of the early scenes is to explain how they can vocalize and communicate with one another, for assistance or to send a warning or whatever. They are on the hunt for these human interlopers because genius Billy swiped a few of their eggs — he figures they’ll be worth a fortune, because who could foresee any problem with hatching live dinosaurs back in the States? (Billy unfortunately skipped The Lost World.) The raptors come across smarter and scarier than ever, even going so far as to set a trap using one of the aforementioned ill-fated team members as bait.

As always, though, the raptors aren’t the only threat. There’s a simply fabulous sequence in a birdcage with some nasty Pterodactyls (another reason I maybe wouldn’t have tried parasailing around a dinosaur island, DUH) in which young Eric is snatched away to be bird food in a dino-nest and valiant Billy risks himself to parasail in there and save him.

There’s also the newer, bigger, scarier dinosaur (with a back fin )known as the Spinosaurus, which apparently wasn’t on Injen’s initial species list. Uh-oh, looks like Injen wasn’t upfront about their business, if you can believe that. The Spinosaurus is a brutal killer, unfooled by standing still, and apparently super attracted to T-Rex urine. It’s also assumed to be the water-bound attacker of the boat, both at the beginning and end of the film (by virtue of the fin, I guess) but in my opinion the film doesn’t do enough to establish its land and sea dominance. I mean, on land it doesn’t look like much of a swimmer. Thank God, Paul Kirby (Macy) is, then, I guess. (Never introduce swimming lessons in the first act without deploying them in the third.) What the film does establish is that the Kirbys’ satellite phone is some kind of heavy duty miracle of engineering, tough enough to withstand the digestive system of a Spinosaurus — my cell quits working if I type too fast — and that a Spinosaurus, while seriously into T-Rex pee, has no interest in anything that smells like its own droppings.

So, Jurassic Park III is maybe a little too easy to make fun of at this point. I still enjoy it quite a bit. It’s still thrilling, it’s still awe-inspiring, it’s still a warning about the hubris of man, and it still offers Jurassic Park‘s Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) to save the day by deploying her state department husband to the island with a gazillion land and sea tanks when her little boy indicates the Dinosaur Man (illustrious Dr. Grant) is on the phone with a big growling monster in the background. (Okay, she infers most of that. The boy is 3; I’m sure all Ellie does is infer what he’s talking about.) It’s far-fetched, sure, but it’s still a fantastically thrilling popcorn adventure, and I’ll rarely complain about those.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Deep Impact

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 296  Days to go: 283

Movie #81: Deep Impact

Back at the start of 1998 there was a lot of hubbub within insider entertainment news about two different “giant asteroid” movies being made (and set to release ) at the same time. Within two months of each other that summer, Deep Impact and Armageddon were released. Armageddon was by far the bigger movie — bigger stars, bigger budget, bigger hit, plus a theme song that railroaded just about everything in its path — but for me, Deep Impact has always been the better one.

Armageddon was always meant to be a flashy, wise-cracking dude movie with explosions, and that’s fine. Those are good, enjoyable popcorn flicks, and they don’t need a lot of substance to succeed. It’s a save-the-world movie, concerned only with those doing the saving. Deep Impact, on the other hand, is a movie about human frailty and heroism — it’s about the people on the ground faced with the hopes and fears of a global mission to divert an extinction-level event-sized asteroid, and the harsh realities that force them to face their own mortality and decide what’s important.

On the surface, one could probably pin Deep Impact‘s humanity on its director Mimi Leder (as opposed to Armageddon‘s testosterone-obsessed Michael Bay), a woman who throughout her career directing (largely) TV episodes has always shown interest in the personal stories associated with great drama. Even her other action thriller motion picture, The Peacemaker, had a villain with an emotional, personal purpose. What makes Deep Impact so exceptional, though, are the multiple stories it encompasses and the breadth of their emotions contained within.

Elijah Wood plays a young high school student named Leo Biederman who is thrust into the spotlight when the anomaly he spots during astronomy club turns out to be an asteroid larger than Mount Everest on a collision course with Earth. But he’s still just a kid, in love with his high school sweetheart Sarah (Leelee Sobieski), interested in sex and motorbikes, and close to his parents. In a quintessentially teenager way, he finds the notoriety kind of thrilling at first, and as the time to collision draws nearer, he fights to hold things together, and matures quite a bit, as he would have to.

Tea Leoni, meanwhile, is Jenny Lerner, an ambitious researcher at MSNBC who stumbles on the story of the asteroid when looking into the questionable resignation of a top government official. She bluffs her way through a confidential meeting with the President (Morgan Freeman) enough to find out the true story and get first question (a significant boost to her career) at the White House press briefing on the matter. Suddenly, she too is thrust into the spotlight, seen by the nation as the face of any news concerning the asteroid. It’s everything she’s wanted professionally, but personally she is suffering. Her father (Maximilian Schell) has left her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and married a much younger woman — only two years older than Jenny herself. Any other time this state of affairs would be a tough hurdle, but faced with the possible end of all life on Earth, Jenny is at loose ends, unable to find any solid footing — particularly after the suicide of her mother. She shuns her father in anger, but gives up her ride to safety at the zero hour to a colleague she’s always admired (Laura Innes) who has a young daughter, and seeks out her father to reconcile with him. That’s where she needs to be, because her family is what’s most important to her.

The astronauts sent into space to destroy the asteroid are also featured, but as fully realized people with strengths and weaknesses instead of as wacky balls of machismo. These astronauts feature a woman, for one, played by Mary McCormack, who joins Blair Underwood, Ron Eldard, Jon Favreau, Aleksandr Baluev and Robert Duvall on a mission of arrogance, humility, loss, solidarity and ultimately sacrifice. Their mission, above all, is to save mankind if they can, regardless of the cost, and they fulfill it with heartbreaking and heroic resolve.

The movie also has small moments of lovely character work: Leo’s dad (Richard Schiff) giving him items to trade (and hence his blessing) when Leo decides to go back for Sarah. The President facing the nation with calm leadership, pragmatism, hope and eventually heartfelt compassion. The meticulous beauty regimen of Jenny’s mom and the devastating realization that she’s preparing to take her own life. The wrenching goodbyes between Sarah and her parents as they hand over her baby brother to care for and send her off with Leo to survive without them, then their touching embrace as they await their ends.

Deep Impact is great. It’s a movie filled with touching and thoughtful moments, of the wide array of feelings and fears that would be an absolute certainty in the face of such an impending event. It’s a movie that is concerned with the human condition, without sacrificing action and suspense. It explores the realistic, years-long process between discovery and destruction of such an asteroid, and how life continues to go on all that time, despite the looming possibility of the end of the world. It’s an emotional, touching, heartbreaking film. So I guess it’s no surprise that Deep Impact, unlike Armageddon, always leaves me in tears.