On Tuesday we kicked off the voting with Field of Dreams and For the Love of the Game, with Field of Dreams doing exactly what we all expected it to and mopping up the floor. Today we get one last Costner baseball movie (possibly his best), along with a Redford classic. Read here to find out what we're doing.
Bull Durham (1988, 1 Oscar nomination) - A year before FoD, Costner did another baseball movie. In this one, he was actually a baseball player: the proverbial Crash Davis, career minor leaguer. His job is to groom the big league team's Next-Big-Thing, Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). Davis is the gritty veteran who plays the game right and with respect, LaLoosh wants to announce his presence with authority ("RUN, MEAT!"). The drama comes in when the team groupie, who has an affair with one player each season, gets involved with both. I'd say that hilarity ensues, but it's not really funny. It's just really, really good.
The Natural (1984, 4 Oscar nominations) - Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford, who, if you've seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, looks like Brad Pitt) was going to be the world's best baseball player. At 19 he struck out a Babe Ruth-esque player in an exhibition, was thusly crowned the next young prodigy, was seduced by a skank who shot him and then died by jumping out a window. Also, did I mention that Roy's father died when he was young, next to a tree that was struck by lighting, and Roy carved a bat from its branches? It's true. All of this happens. Anyway, 16 years later he comes from nowhere and becomes (as he was always destined to be) the best as "a middle-aged rookie". He, literally, tears the cover off the ball. In the movies' climax he hits the ball into the lights. Lights explode, cue heroic music.