March 17, 2025 • 56 mins
Opening day is right around the corner and Mike can’t wait! He shares his Top 10 Baseball movies of all time that include the classics and some unexpected picks in true Movie Mike fashion. He also talks about where his love of baseball started and the MLB player who ghosted him as a kid. In the Movie Review, Mike gives his thoughts on Novocaine starring Jack Quaid. He plays a man who turns his inability to feel pain into an unexpected advantage as he fights a bunch of thugs to get the girl of his dreams back after she gets kidnapped. Mike talks about how good that R-rated action was, Jack Quaid and Ray Nicolson as nepo babies and the role loneliness plays into the story. In the Trailer Park, Mike blinds reacts to the new Lilo & Stitch trailer from Disney. He talks about what surprised him the most, the part about Stitch that seems different and why he is hopeful they will do justice to his favorite Disney movie despite what they have done with other classic remakes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today I want to share
with you what I think are the top ten baseball
movies in history. In the movie review, we'll be talking
about Jack Quaid in a new action thriller comedy called
Nova Kane, where he plays a man who can't feel pain.
And in the trailer park, I am going to blind
(00:20):
react to the new Lilo and Stitch trailer. It dropped
last week. I hit record before I watched it because
I wanted my true, raw, honest emotions because Lelo and
Stitch is my favorite Disney movie of all time. Have
all that for you coming up. If you want to
subscribe to the YouTube channel, go to YouTube dot com
slash Mike Distro. You can watch individual movie reviews there.
(00:41):
For all my socials and links, you can always find
them in the episode notes. Thank you for listening, Thank
you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday Morning
Movie crew. And now let's talk movies from the Distro
podcast network. And this is Movie Mike's Movie Podcasts. Baseball
is you have games kicking off this week in Japan.
(01:03):
Next week is the official opening day on Thursday, March
twenty seventh. I love baseball, and when it comes to
sports movies, baseball is my favorite genre of sports movie.
I wanted to share with you what I think are
the top ten baseball movies in history because I saw
someone else put out a list that I'll get to
(01:23):
towards the end of the episode. But I thought that
list was an abomination. And I'll remind you if you're
new here, I was a kid grew up in the nineties,
so obviously it's gonna be heavily rooted then, So let's
get right into the list. At number ten, I have
Bad News Bears, and it is not the Bad News
Bears from nineteen seventy six, the original. I went with
(01:43):
the remake in two thousand and five, starring Billy Bob
Thornton as butter Maker. He plays a burnt out minor
league baseball player who loves to drink, he loves to curse,
and he gets forced to manage a local little league team.
I think why I enjoy this one over the original, Well,
two thousand and five was a great year in movies,
more importantly, a great year for Billy Bob Thornton and
(02:07):
one of my favorite movies of his came out just
two years before this. Bad Sanna, Bad Sanna, Bad News Bears.
It all goes together. I just really enjoy Billy Bob
Thornton being a degenerate. I think it's funny to see
him drinking heavily, making bad decision cursing around kids. That
is my favorite era of Billy Bob Thornton. And what
(02:29):
I got in Bad Sanna, I got even more in
Bad News Bears. I also just love baseball movies. We'll
see a theme throughout this list about kids who are
told they suck and aren't very good, have no athletic ability,
but they go on to accomplish greatness, and that is
what great sports movies are about. I think sometimes I
struggle with enjoying sports movies because they are very formulaic,
(02:52):
and it's always about taking a group of kids or
a group of players that aren't very good. Can you
have somebody come in clean him up and take him
to greatness? And I think why I love this movie
so much. It's very nostalgic for me. I just love
that it's way more vulgar than the nineteen seventy six version.
And this is an example from the movie of a
scene that is incredibly vulgar so much I had to
(03:14):
censor it a little bit, but I would quote this
scene all the time. It's when he's doing some batting
practice and Billy Bob Thoorton notices that the kid is
eating a bunch of bacon. The hell is that a
baggy full of bacon? Om On Atkins, what I have
to eat all the time, keep my metabolism up, so
my body comes a fat burning machine. So like, you
(03:36):
don't give me all time the easy sport. And the
other great thing about this movie is there's always that
moment in a Billy Bob Thornton role like this where
he just comes around where for the entire time he's
not caring, he's not putting in any effort, he is
doing everything in his ability to drive something straight into
the ground. But there's always that moment where he flips
(04:00):
and he starts caring about the kids. And it's always
like that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where
suddenly his heart grows and grows and grows and he
starts to realize, Oh, I've actually started to care about
these kids, and I want to coach them I want
them to do a good job that and also when
he gets to Bailbond's company to sponsor the team. So
(04:20):
at number ten, I have Bad News Bears. At number eight,
I have Basketball from nineteen ninety eight starring Trey Parker
and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. And I
know some people were going to say, you're cheating on
this one, but I feel like this movie is a
baseball movie to me, even though the sport they create
is a hybrid sport combining baseball and basketball, and it
(04:40):
was a big parody and poking fun at the state
of professional sports at the time in the nineties, which
it's even crazier now, where teams would move to different cities,
where players would just move all the time and there
was no consistency or loyalty because they would just go
wherever the money was. They wanted to create their own
wa league, and they primarily take the rules of baseball,
(05:04):
but instead of hitting the ball, they are shooting it
like a basket. But I think the actual game and
the politics that go into basketball is more rooted in
the game of baseball. So that is why I feel
to me it is more of a baseball movie. The
ball itself also looks like a giant baseball. My favorite
part of this entire movie is the rule they add
(05:26):
that you can psych out your opponent, and how hilarious
would this be if a real professional sport added this
as a way to have a colorful defense. Where what
they do in the game is whenever somebody goes up
to shoot, one player is allowed to psych out that player.
You can basically say anything you want to the shooter
to try to disrupt their concentration. So you're trying to
(05:48):
say the gnarliest thing to get them to break, to
get them to react to you, for whenever they take
their shot, they end up missing it. Here's one of
my favorite psychouts from the movie, which of course I
have to censor it, but it's whenever Trey Parker goes
up to psych somebody out and he goes into the
Cartman voice, because not only is he one of the
(06:09):
creators of South Park, he is also the voice of
CARTMANK you losing weight? And that is a psych out
that works. And I think the other reason I love
this movie is it's because it's about two guys who
aren't that athletic. They wanted to play a sport where
(06:32):
they could drink beer and hang out and beat people
who were more athletic and could probably beat them in
any other sport, but this game levels the playing field.
I think it's whatever. Whenever pickleball first got popular and
everybody was saying that you could get good at it,
really quickly you had senior citizens playing pickleball, and it
(06:52):
really levels the playing field compared to tennis. That is
what basketball does. So it was a sport for the
working class American who just wanted to have fun, So
it takes it back to the everyday person. It also
brings back what the true heart and soul of baseball is.
Just loving your team and showing your support for that team.
(07:13):
That is what basketball is all about. And this movie
is also hilarious. I really wish that they would have
done more live action movies, but I think through this
film in particular, they realize that they hate working with
Hollywood actors. They hate that entire world. So that's why
they decided to just do animated movies and puppet movies.
And I can't wait to see the movie that supposedly
(07:34):
is coming out later this year from them that they
are working with Kendrick Lamar to make so at number
nine Greatest Baseball movie of all time Basketball at number
eight from nineteen eighty nine, I have Field of Dreams.
Kevin Costner has done five big baseball movies in his career,
and I decided on my list I would only pick
(07:56):
one of them, and I think this one is the
best one. It has the most memorable line in my opinion.
The year before this, he did Bull Durham that came
out in nineteen eighty eight, and I had to do
some research that Kevin Costner was a baseball player and
he had real life baseball aspirations. That is what influenced
(08:18):
him to take many baseball movies and other sports movies
in his career. To go from Bull Durham to Field
of Dreams back to back and have them both be
classics is a crazy accomplishment. Field of Dreams is all
about him hearing the voice telling him to build a
baseball It has great camaraderie, it has a great message.
It has a lot of emotion that I feel comes
(08:40):
across more than Bull Durham. He was also in for
the Love of the Game in nineteen ninety nine. Chasing
Dreams also in nineteen ninety nine, where he played a
baseball player who had spent some time in jail, and
then The Upside of Anger in two thousand and five,
where he played a former pro baseball player. I think
he's doing another baseball movie. And I know we just
did Horizon that didn't really do what he wanted it
(09:04):
to do in theaters. He's still shopping around Horizon too.
That movie had no plot. I think he needs to
go back to the classics. I think a post Yellowstone
Kevin Kostner. He did the Passion Project thing, which I
know he hates anybody who refers to Horizon as a
passion project because to him, that lessens the product of it.
But that's kind of what that was. Because he created
(09:26):
a movie with no real plot, it was really hard
to sell. I think he needs to go back and
do another baseball movie. Bring on the Hits, Come on, Costner,
you got it in You? That is at number eight,
Field the Dreams at number seven from nineteen ninety three.
I have Rookie of the Year. This is a fantastic,
great nineties comedy that we just don't get anymore. It's
(09:48):
about Henry. Henry, how do you say his last name.
Let's let's go to the club. I'm looking for Henry
Rulin Furter, Ravin Booze, Brozenbager, Cotton Hozer. I never doubted
him for a minute. Hey wait a go run a
mocker going in what you call me? He suffers a
(10:09):
freak accident, he's twelve years old, and then whenever that
ball gets thrown into his section at that baseball game
for the Cubs, he throws it back and they're like,
bring me that arm, and he goes on to be
a picture for the Cubs. I think why I love
this movie so much as a kid, It just embodies
the nineties of fun sports movies that we really don't
(10:31):
get anymore. Obviously, I'm not a kid anymore, so I
can't experience a movie like this anymore. These just great
fun movies that remind me of when life was so
joyful and fun and you could create a wild concept
like this and have it be a hit. Sports movies
right now becomes so few and far between that really
(10:51):
we only get biopicks. It's hard to create a great
sports movie that I haven't seen a movie with this
much originality in ten to fifteen years. I think The
other reason I love this movie is because growing up,
I had no athletic ability, and it was that thought
of man, if I just had a freak accident that
could get me superpowers and make me play incredible, that
(11:13):
is something we all dreamed about as kids, for those
of us who were not gifted with athletic ability. Another
show from the nineties that I loved that embody this
as well was The Jersey, which was a Disney Channel
show about this magical jersey that whenever you put it on,
you were transported into the body of a professional athlete.
I thought that was amazing. So there was just this
(11:34):
theme in the nineties of man if you could convince
the kid that there was something out there that could
give them that ability. But this movie just feels like
summer to me, and that is what I love about baseball,
that spring and summertime where we all just come out
of that seasonal depression and want to be outside. If
you were to tell me to describe my perfect day,
(11:54):
if I could create a just a dream day, that
day would involve me and Kelsey go into a base
ball game getting three or four beers, even though I
don't really drink anymore. I would drink at a baseball game,
eat some peanuts. I would say an afternoon game. A
night game is great too, But there's something about being
in a baseball park where the air feels crisp, you
hear that sound of a bat hitting a ball like
(12:19):
that is my favorite sound. If I could describe just
one sound that's my favorite sound, it would be this
sound right here. Give me perfect weather at a baseball game.
That is my favorite day. And that is what I feel,
and it instantly takes me back to when I watch
Rookie of the Year. So at number seven, that is
(12:40):
what I have. At number six. Speaking of rookies, I
have the Rookie from two thousand and two, the real
life story of Jim Morris, the high school science teacher
who ended up making the big leagues at the age
of thirty five. We all love a classic underdog story,
and I think that's what the theme of a lot
of baseball movies are, a lot of sports movies. It's
(13:01):
all about the underdog. But of all the underdog stories,
not just in baseball, but in all of film, this
is one of the best because you think about what
this says about life and you get to a point
in life where you start comparing yourself to others as
far as where you are in your life, at what age.
(13:21):
I'm doing this right now at thirty three years old
looking at Jim Morris thirty five years old when this
movie takes place. He is played by the one and
only Dennis Quaid. And you think about that when you
start comparing yourself to other people, like, oh, at this age,
like this other person has this type of job where
they're making this amount of money and they have two kids.
We have no kids. And you're always comparing yourself to
(13:43):
other people and where they are in their life, and
it makes you feel bad about your life. And I
think something that I've learned is you got to stop
comparing yourself because everybody's timeline is different. I would probably
be described as a late bloomer in life, like I
didn't have a first real relationship until I met Kelsey
I was twenty seven years old. So it's having to
(14:05):
tell yourself that it's never too late to start something new,
never too late to go back to school, and in
the rookies case, it is never too late to live
out your dream of playing in the big leagues. You
also have Jimmy Sun in the movie, played by Angus T. Jones,
who went on to be in Two and a Half Men.
Dennis Quaid is another person who has been in multiple
(14:26):
baseball movies. Not only was he in this movie in
two thousand and two, he was also recently in The
Hill in twenty and twenty three. He looks great in
a baseball uniform. I have the rookie at number six
getting into the top five. Now I have from twenty
eleven Moneyball. It is a movie about math and data
(14:46):
and the love of the sport. You have Brad Pitt
and Jonah Hill. This movie changed my outlook on life
because much like we were talking about last movie of
how you have to not compare yourself to other people,
this movie made me realize that just because I'm not
the highest draft pick, I am not the most desirable.
(15:08):
I am not the person that you're gonna pay a
lot of money to do anything. It is about using
your resources, playing the numbers in your favor, and learning
how to manipulate the system to your advantage despite the
cards you've been dealt, and that is what this movie
is about. It is based on the true story of
the Oakland A's two thousand and two season, where they
(15:29):
were struggling with competing with larger teams. They lost a
lot of their players. So they developed this method that
they talk about in Moneyball, of how can we make
the best team with the money we have by playing
the numbers. We don't have our big star player, but
instead we can bring in all these players that can
do selective things really well, and if we place them
(15:51):
just right and get all of our chips together in
perfect order, we can have a shot by looking at
this problem like a math problem. And I've used this
in my life because you're not always going to have
all the money at your disposal, whether you're like me,
you're a podcaster working in your home studio, or you're
trying to start a business, You're not always going to
(16:12):
have the best machines or the best processors to get
your product out there. But you have to learn to
work with what you have, and that is what this
movie is all about. The movie is pretty accurate to
what happened in real life. They do leave out some
key players who were on the two thousand and two
A's team. Again, Hollywood is always going to Hollywood stories
(16:33):
up to make them more emotional. I also believe the
character of Jonah Hill was a fictionalized person. He was
based on somebody real, but some of the details about
his character were again hollywooded up, and some of the
conflicts between Billy Bean, who was played by Brad Pitt,
and the arguments he had with the coaching staff were
(16:54):
a little bit exaggerated. But again, it's a movie. You
have to include those things. But Moneyball is not just
a great baseball movie. It also had a lot of
critical acclaim was up for awards, So I think that's
another important thing I factored in to my top five
is not only how much does it resonate with me
as a baseball movie, but how much of an impact
(17:15):
it head on cinema. So at number five, I have Moneyball.
At number four from nineteen eighty nine, I have Major
League and every way this movie embodies what I love
about baseball. You have the camaraderie of the team, you
have the vulgarity, you have the drama, you have the butt,
(17:36):
sweat and tears that is all in Major League. You
have a ragtag group of individuals, and what the movie
is about. You have somebody new take over the team
and you think, oh, they're gonna turn this team around,
take them all the way to the top. No, this
person comes in and they want to tank the team
in hopes of they can move the Cleveland Indians from
(17:58):
there to Miami, which is another wild thing to think about.
This team doesn't exist anymore, and the A's in this
movie also are about to not exist anymore. So parts
of this rewatching it just feels like a bit of
a relic. There's a scene whenever one of the players
gets out of a taxi going to the call where
(18:18):
all the players are meeting for the first time and
pays with cash. That would never happen anymore. Nobody's taking
a taxi and paying with cash. But the person who
takes over wants to tank the team. Finds the most
ridiculous players. Charlie Sheen comes straight out of jail. You
have people who don't look like baseball players whatsoever. You
(18:40):
have a really old pitcher, just a very unique group
of individuals who don't get along. Some people way past
their prime, some people who never had a prime. And
these people think that, oh, we finally have our chance
to be back in the big leagues, not knowing that
they were set up to fail and looking back on
this movie and thinking forward to Ted Lasso, how much
(19:00):
inspiration did they pull for Major League. My favorite character,
of course, would be Charlie Sheen's character. His glasses are
iconic when he realizes that he can't see and that's
the reason that he's throwing all these wild pitches, and
he puts those on like that final scene in the
last game where he comes to close out the game
in the ninth inning. That scene still gives me chills.
(19:22):
Second would have to be Wesley Snipe's character as Willie
Mays Hayes, who is just funny, great comedic relief. My
favorite scene in the movie, though, is whenever they are
first starting out in spring training and one of the
players complains about having to do set ups, that those
sit ups you want me to do? I got a
write to hear my contract says, I don't have to
(19:43):
do any calistenics. I don't feel unnecessary.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So what do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Manitor just peas on the contract. That is why I
love this movie, a baseball movie where they act like
probably real baseball players do in real life. They're cussing,
their fighting. That is what makes this movie so impactful.
It reminds me of me. Going to My first ever
baseball game had to have been the year two thousand,
(20:15):
maybe two thousand and one. I went with my church.
It was the first professional sports game I had ever
been to because grew up I just never thought me
going to a professional game was in the cards for
me because we didn't spend much money on extra things
because we didn't have a whole lot. But by going
with the church, I think we either got free tickets
(20:37):
or really cheap tickets, or somebody paid my way to
go to this game. But we went to a Texas
Rangers game at the ballpark in Arlington, which they've since
moved to Globely Field, and that is what made me
fall in love with baseball. And I'll never forget how
that game ended. Alex Rodriguez was playing on the team
at the time, and he hit the game winning home
(20:58):
run and I was probably ten eleven years old, and
I lost my crap. He was at the time my
favorite player pretty much only because he had my same
last name. That was kind of a key role in
me being such a fan of the Texas Rangers is
Before that, my favorite player was Pudge Rodriguez also had
my last name. There was a lot of Mexican influence
(21:20):
in the nineties Rangers, so I think that's why I
gravitated towards them so much. Obviously being from Dallas, them
being right up the road, natural I was going to
become a Texas Rangers fan. But seeing Alex Rodriguez hit
that game winning home run, crowd went crazy, and then
we tried to get our ball signed by Alex Rodriguez
and they told us that he was going to come
(21:41):
out and sign autographs after the game, which maybe somebody
was lying to us. Again, I was ten eleven years
old at the time. I'm not even sure who we asked,
but I thought since we were part of the church
youth group there, maybe they would come and sign autographs.
But now looking back on it, they really only do
that before the game. It's very rare that they come
out after the game. But me sitting there with my
(22:02):
church youth group wanting to get my ball signed, and
he never came out. He ghosted us. Again. At the time,
I held it against him because I thought, man, he
never came out after winning the game, and they said
he wasn't gonna come out because he was so hyped
from that, I think somebody was just lying to us
from every angle of that story. But nonetheless, it didn't
(22:23):
stop me from continuing to be a fan. A couple
of years ago twenty twenty three, that won the World
Series was a fantastic experience for me and made up
for everything I experienced that day at my first game,
because now we can say we finally won a World Series,
and I have high hopes this season that we're going back,
well at least making the playoffs this year hopefully, but
going back to Major League. I think it is a
(22:46):
favorite among movie lovers, but also I feel if you
asked every single MOLB player to name their favorite movie,
I think since this is at least in what we
think is an accurate depiction of what the lie of
an MLB player is like, I feel like most athletes
would pick this as their number one. And even though
this movie came out in nineteen eighty nine, it feels
(23:08):
very nineties to me. It is right there on the
cusp of it. I would have loved for this movie
to come out in the nineties just so I could
add it to my list of favorite nineties movies. But nonetheless,
It ranks pretty high on my list of favorite eighties
movies at number four. I have Major League. Top three
is strong at number three from nineteen ninety two, I
Have a League of their Own. Not only is this
(23:29):
one of the best baseball movies of all time, it
is also the highest grossing baseball movie, with a lifetime
gross of one hundred and seven million dollars. This has
a fantastic cast. Everywhere you look in this cast, it's
star star, star, star star, quote after quote. This movie
also feels like a piece of history because it's rooted
(23:50):
around World War Two, when all the men had to
go and fight in the war, leaving behind avoid in
the country. And you have the first ever all female
professional baseball league in the Midwest. You have the relationship
between Dottie and Kit fighting with each other. You have
the grumpy coach and has been Tom Hanks, and you
have one of the greatest quotes in sports movie history.
(24:13):
He's no criting baseball classic right there. And outside of
it being a good sports movie, it is also just
a great drama, and that is hard to do on
this list. I feel like there are only two movies
that I would feel that same way about that if
you rip apart all the elements of the sport at
(24:34):
the core, they are just still great movies without it.
I would say A League of their Own is that one,
because not only is it a story about that first
all female league, but it's also a story about two sisters.
The older sister who has always been the favorite, always
been the one people see as the pretty one, the
one who feels at least in the eyes of the
(24:56):
younger sister, who gets all the opportunities, has the perfect
real life relationship. It's a story of the struggle of
those two sisters and the younger one always being looked
at as the kid and always being second stream, not
only on the team but in life. And it's their
relationship just coming to a head when she gets traded
away blames it on her sister. You have the epic
game to close it all out. And not only that,
(25:19):
but it's also a big part of history when it
comes to the rights of women to do anything that
men can do getting paid the same amount. There's love
and loss so much in this movie, so I feel
out of every movie on this list, it would rank
as also just the best drama. Next to that, I
would put Moneyball, But I think out of all of
(25:41):
the movies on this list, could quite possibly be the
one I've seen the most, only because it would run
so often on T and T and TBS that I
feel like growing up, it was just on all the time,
so maybe it was even later that I actually watched
it from beginning. And it's a movie that you can
really just pick up anywhere and enjoy it. So at
number three from nineteen ninety two, I have A League
(26:04):
of their Own. At number two from nineteen ninety three,
I have The sand Lot. This movie is great because
it embodies what it's like to be a kid, especially
a kid who loves playing baseball. It has one of
the best scenes of all time in any sports movie,
The baseball scene at nine on the fourth of July
with all the fireworks is a moment where all the
(26:25):
wacky things kind of are pushed away to the side.
You have the classic quotes of course you're killing me
smalls with the whole smortest thing. You have all of
the funny moments of like you play baseball like a girl,
all those great things that make this movie great. For
them taking the tobacco and all puking on the ride,
you have all those things, but in this moment, the
(26:45):
movie just slows down and has this very beautiful time
to take in because throughout this entire movie they almost
seem older than they are because they take playing baseball
so serious. But in that scene in particular, you have
them just being kids, just looking up at the fireworks
because the reason they played on the fourth of July
(27:07):
because all the fireworks light up the same lot enough
for them to be able to get a night game in.
When you have all the other kids watching and paying
attention to those fireworks, you see Benny the Jet Rodriguez
being so focused, still running the bases while they're all
just standing there and looking up at the fireworks, because
that's what you do when you're a kid. But that
is the foreshadowing moment where you know that Benny of
(27:29):
the Jet Rodriguez is going to be the only one
who goes on to play in the big leagues because
of how serious he took it. He didn't even allow
himself to be a kid. He kept running the bases
and eventually it led him to this moment, and there
he goes he's stealing home. Don't believe he's stealing over.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
He's stealing. I don't believe in they don't be.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I would also say rip to James Earl Jones whenever
they finally go get the ball back from him and
just go ask him like they should have done at
the beginning, and then he's like, George signed this in
reference to Babe Ruth oh Man. I also forgot about
that quote. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. This
movie is chucked full of great quotes. At number two,
(28:24):
I have the Sandlot from nineteen ninety three. At number
one from nineteen ninety four, my favorite baseball movie of
all time, Angels in the Outfield. It's all about Roger
goes into foster care because his dad's kind of a deadbeat.
And he asked his dad this question at the start
(28:44):
of the movie, going to be a family again.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
From where I'm sitting, I'd say, when the Angels win
the Pennant, you stay out.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Of trouble sign. So his dad tells him we can
be a family again when the Angels win the Pennant.
And he said that because the Angels were the worst
team in baseball. What does Roger do? He starts believing that,
starts going to every game, and by him being at games,
he realizes that he can see angels in the field.
(29:15):
And then the manager, George Knox realizes that this kid
is seeing something and he's kind of a good luck charm. Hey,
where in last place? What's the worst that could happen?
He sets him up with tickets to every single home
game with him and his friend JP, and anytime he
sees an angel again, he's just humoring the kid. They
come up with the signal because in baseball you have signals,
(29:36):
and he starts waving his arms up and down like
an angel would like angel wings going up and down.
And anytime he does that, something crazy happens. You have
Hammerling coming in, You have Matthew McConaughey out in the
outfield making a crazy play. And then they all start
believing in angels that build hype up around the team.
And while that is great the team is winning, it's
(29:58):
all coming back to Rodger, who just wants his dad back,
just wants to be a family again, and gets to
that point where the Angels are just a game away,
I believe, and he goes to his court hearing and
he sees his dad there.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Dad, I didn't know you were gonna be here. You
know the Angels are only one game for the pennant.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Can you believe it?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
It's just like you say, sorry, boy, yeah, hear what
I said?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
What are you going?
Speaker 3 (30:31):
He starts crying.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
How could you do that to Roger? You monster? You maniac?
This whole time, he just wants the Angels to win,
not because he loves the team, because he loves his dad.
And he's there crying in the courtroom on the bosom
of Maggie because he realizes that that's not coming back.
(30:55):
You just said that to dupe them. Then they go
on to win and everybody's happy again. Oh. One of
my favorite quotes is also here comes Nacho. But whenever
they keep messing with the supposed to keep them happy
by getting emmerched and getting them food.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I love this movie. It makes me emotional. It is heartwarming.
It for the first time now in a long time,
is available on Disney Plus. It was just like Lost
for the longest time, you had to have a VHS
to watch Angels in the outfield. But this movie is
the real representation of why I love baseball because of
that joy. It is a sport that is important for kids,
(31:32):
it's the most I feel the experience is probably the
best when you're a kid. I think that's why I
associate it with my first game. The idea of like
catching a foul ball now is fun to me, but
it's more fun to me to be able to find
and give it to a kid like that is why
I would do it now. So there's something special just
about being exposed to baseball when you're younger, because those
(31:53):
memories just go on forever. And that is what I
think about when I watch Angels in the Outfield. It
just makes me emotional. Has the most. So at number one,
I have Angels in the Outfield. My entire list was
inspired by a Hollywood reporter list that a lot of
people did not agree with, but I will add them
in as honorable mentions. They had at number ten Boiling Point,
(32:13):
which is a Japanese movie. At number nine from nineteen
forty two. They had The Pride of the Yankees at
number eight from two thousand and eight. They had Sugar
at number seven. They had banged the Drums Slowly from
nineteen seventy three. I believe that stars Robert de Niro
and number six. They had a League of their own,
so I feel like they got that one right, but
six it's a little low. At number five they had
(32:33):
The Natural, which is I know a lot of people's
favorites from nineteen eighty four. At number four they had
Fear Strikes Out from nineteen fifty seven, so they went
with a lot of classics. I felt like they were
being a little bit too cool here. At number three
they had Bull Durham from nineteen eighty eight, which I
feel is a little high for that movie. At number
two they had Moneyball. I love Moneyball. It made my list,
but number two is way too high for that movie.
(32:55):
And at number one they had Eight Men Out. The
other movie that all almost made my list was forty
two from twenty thirteen story about Jackie Robinson starring the
late Chadwick Boseman. That almost made my list. But those
are the honorable mentions. If you have a favorite that
you think I missed, hit me up on socials at
Mike Dshro or send me an email Moviemike D at
(33:16):
gmail dot com. Let's get into it now. A spoiler
free movie review of Nobakane The Man Who Can't Feel
Pain starring Jack Quad. This movie had a lot more
emotional depth that I was expecting. Given the trailer, given
the title, given the premise, I thought it was just
gonna be a lot of shoot him up action, putting
(33:37):
jack Quad's character in a lot of situations that were
fun for the viewer and gonna be pretty mindless. But
what I got was something that resonated with me a
lot more than I was expecting. Jack Quaid plays a
lonely guy works at a bank. Due to his condition
where he can't feel pain, he has to live a
pretty lonely and kind of sad life. Dude can't even
eat solid foods out of the field that he's going
(34:00):
to bite his tongue off because he can't feel it.
So where I thought it was just going to be
all the things associated with his life that would cause
him not to feel like a punch or to feel
somebody shooting him or stabbing him, it was all those
little side things that really humanized his character more because
out of this fear of not being able to feel
pain and not knowing if something is actually hurting him
(34:23):
to a degree that oh, this is really bad, where
you and I could tell like, oh, I'm bleeding right now,
and I'm feeling pain. I need to give to a hospital.
He doesn't have that. Dude can't even pee because he
doesn't even feel a sensation to need to pee, so
he has to set a timerund his watch. So he
spent his entire life living this really regulated life on
a regimen, working at this bank where he takes no risks,
(34:46):
and that has caused him to feel really lonely. And
we are introduced to his character at the very beginning
where he's trying to help somebody at the bank, somebody
who's been married for a long time, and he's just
thinking like, man, I just want to find that person.
I just want to feel love when I can't feel anything.
But then this new girl shows up named Sherry played
by Amber mid Thunder fantastic name. Everything's going great until
(35:07):
somebody decides to rob the bank and they take her hostage,
and he decides, this is gonna be my time to
step up. It's gonna be my time to be the hero,
using his nervous system disorder to his advantage. And I
have to say this movie is not for the squeamish.
And I can't do Broken Bones. Everything else I'm pretty
good with, but even just watching the trailer, which gives
(35:28):
you a kind of a glimpse into one scene in particular,
where he's being tortured by one of the criminals. If
you can't handle any kind of torturing devices prying on people,
there are gonna be some moments that are hard to watch,
probably that scene in particular. Everything else is more along
the lines of him getting into accidents and mishaps when
(35:50):
he's actually fighting. That stuff is still at times brutal,
but I think out of everything the most squeamish people
will have a problem with that scene. I found myself
even I wanted to look away at points because I
can't do broken bones. I can't do anything that harms
your eyes. I have this really weird thing. If anybody
gets close to my eyes, I just go into defense mode.
(36:11):
And maybe a good thing of me having glasses is
I always feel a little bit protected. But if I
take off my glasses that anybody needs to touch my eye.
Whenever I have to go do an eye examine, they
have to blow that puff of air in your eye.
I have to warn them beforehand, like, hey, I have
this weird eye thing. If I accidentally deck you in
the face, it's not my problem. I just don't like
people touching my eyes. So there are some situations where
(36:32):
he gets things very close to his eye. Everything else
I felt was pretty on par with as much destruction
as I was expecting. So while this movie is about
a guy who can't feel pain and the long journey
he goes on to save the girl of his dreams,
what this movie is really about is a guy who's
missed out on life, worried that he's going to die.
(36:53):
Where he's been too cautious of taking risks, been too
cautious of even putting himself in social situation is dude
doesn't even know what foods tastes like because he's so
worried and fearful of death that he's forgotten to live
his life. And this is his chance to finally push
all those things to the side. He's in his thirties
and he has to go out and prove to himself,
(37:15):
not even to anybody else, that he's not just this
sheltered bank executive. He is something more than that, and
it was cool seeing his evolution. At times this felt
like a superhero origin story, much like a superhero would
discover his powers. He's already been dealing with this, but
he didn't realize that he could use it to his
advantage in this way and really just finally throws caution
(37:36):
to the wind. You also have Jacob Battlon from the
Spider Man movies playing his best friend, and his role
I would say was pretty minimal. He almost plays with
the guy in the chair in this movie as well,
where we don't even get a whole lot of them
in the movie, despite the amount that he was used
in the trailer. I feel like movies do this all
the time with like the best Friend, where they make
(37:56):
it a big part of the marketing, but then they're
barely in the thing. I think think if there was
anybody I wanted more of, it was definitely his character,
but it would just kind of sprinkled in there. The
love story, I thought was pretty decent. I think you
have to consider what it's like to be a lonely
guy because I think the average person would watch this
and think, why is he so dead set on getting
(38:17):
this girl back? They haven't known each other that long?
Why is he going through these links to do this?
And I think if you understand the lonely guy mentality
of him having nothing throughout his entire life, and this
being his first chance to even have a remote sense
of normalcy. I think that's what allows him to go
to these links. If it was just a guy who
(38:38):
had already been using this power to his advantage, had
already been living a life where he was reckless and
not caring about what happened to his body, the story
wouldn't be the same. So it's the fact that he
has been sheltered, working in his office and not going
outside of his comfort zone whatsoever that makes him decide
I don't want to be lonely anymore. So if you've
ever experienced a level of loneliness this never been in
(39:01):
a serious relationship, you can understand why he decided that's it.
You pushed me to my tipping point. I'm gonna go
after these bad guys and prove them wrong and win
this girl back. So for the most part, I did
enjoy the movie. I thought it had a pretty good
amount of action. I just felt that it moved a
little bit too slow, especially in that first act where
(39:21):
I was like, all right, let's get going here. When
you actually look at what happens in the movie and
the fact that it's about an hour and fifty minutes.
It almost feels like they stretched it out a little
bit further than they needed it to go. At times,
it just lacks that sense of urgency. And for a
movie that felt a little bit reminiscent of a John
Wick or a Monkey Man or a Nobody, those movies
(39:43):
move really quickly. I was kind of expecting a little
bit more. I just moved a little bit too slowly
for me, and I was waiting for more surprises. I
think when it came to the main three actors, they
were great. Jack Amber and Jacob had great chemistry. I
think Jack proved that he does have that lead actor
capability and bankability in this. I don't think this is
(40:04):
going to be a career defining movie for him, but
it definitely proved to me that outside of the Boys
and outside of the other movies he's done, that he
does have the ability to step into a role like
this and own it. It's also just hard to compare
him to his dad. Also, when you think about there's
another Neippo baby in this movie, Ray Nicholson, the son
of Jack Nicholson, you have two Nepo babies here, and
(40:24):
I think when it comes to Jack Quaid, who's been
so upfront and open about the fact that he has
two famous parents, that he has been given advantages in
his life and hasn't straight away from that. He hasn't
tried to hide his name. He is very upfront about
owning the fact that he is a NEPO baby, and
I can respect that. And it doesn't mean just because
you have one or two famous parents in the industry
(40:47):
that that's going to lead you to success. It does
open up those doors, it does build in those relationships
because you can go to people your parents knew and
get your foot in the door. But that doesn't mean
you're gonna earned the respect of the audience. Just because
he has Quaid in his name doesn't mean audiences are
good to go into this movie and think I'm gonna
(41:07):
love this because it's jack Quade's son. He still has
to earn that. I think he has been earning that
with his work that I am able to separate him
from his parents. I'm actually more of a fan of
Jack Quaid than I am of Dennis Quaid. I think
the roles he has taken on have spoke more to
me as of late Ray Nicholson is interesting though, because
he hasn't really sold me on his capabilities as an actor,
(41:27):
because when I compare Jack Quaid to Dennis Quaid, I
don't really put them on the same level. As far
as Jack Nicholson compared to Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson is
on an entirely different level, has so many more iconic
movies and awards compared to Dennis Quaid. Both great actors,
but a vast difference between those two. So I think
(41:49):
it's actually much harder for Ray Nicholson to be compared
to his dad, because that is a whole other level
of acting, especially when you consider where Jack Nicholson was
at the same age that Ray is now and Ray
is really just being introduced to us. And I was
thinking about his performance in this movie and when he
was in Smile Too last year. Is the thing that
(42:09):
really gives it a way that he's Jack Nicholson's son
is his facial expressions. I think of the shining I
see that smile that very just like zoned in look
where even on the Smile Too poster they put his
face on it, they put his sinister smile because it's
that Jack Nicholson look. That's hard living in the shadow
of your parent, of everybody associating you with him and saying,
(42:31):
you look so much like your dad, and you can't
help the fact that you look like them, But I
think you can help the fact that you don't act
like them. And I'm not really getting a different look
from him. It almost looks like somebody doing a Jack
Nicholson impression. And that could be being a little harsh
on him, because he's like, no, that's how I act,
same thing. How I probably have a lot of qualities
(42:52):
of my dad, but you don't know my dad. My
dad would probably be reviewing this movie in the same way.
A lot of weird things of how we pick up
mannerisms from our parents without learning them, just by growing
up and observing them. So maybe that's already just built
into him and he can't really change that. Or maybe
he watches the Shining before he goes on a set
and he's like, I gotta channel my dad. I gotta
pull off those facial expressions and sell that Nicholson name.
(43:15):
And I think the movie just kind of lost momentum
there Towards the end. It kind of struggled with finding
how to end this story and how to tie together
all these loose sins. Maybe that's because they were trying
to set up a sequel. They're trying to build an
action franchise out of this. It almost felt like they
ran out of ideas. But probably what it was is
they ran out of money. It's an eighteen million dollar movie,
(43:36):
so it doesn't have that same high production value or
budget that you would get from a John Wick movie.
But I think this movie does have some success at
the box office. They end up making a sequel, they
get add some more money to make the next one
a little bit more fast paced for me. So for Novacane,
I give it three point five out of five arrows
to the leg.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
It's time to head down to movie.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Oh trailer, Paul, all Right, I'm about to blind react
to the new Lilo and Stitch trailer. At the time
of recording this, it is Wednesday. The trailer dropped four
hours ago. It's sitting at about seven hundred thousand views
on YouTube. I reserved this right for really big movie trailers,
(44:20):
at least to me, like my personal favorite ones. Last
time I did this, and the only time I've done this,
was the Superman trailer. Leelo and Stitch is my favorite
Disney movie, and I've been very critical of the live
action quote unquote live action Disney movies, and the thing
I love about this movie so far, we haven't seen
(44:41):
a glimpse of what it's actually gonna look like. We've
seen the poster, we saw the trailer at the Super Bowl,
which wasn't really a trailer, it was just Stitch running
out on the field. And the marketing for this movie
has been fantastic, and that's something that's always been a
part of Leelo and Stitch. Whenever the first movie came out,
they did the whole marketing thing where they put Stitch
into a bunch of classic Disney scenes. This is all
(45:04):
marketing because Thisitch is such a great character. All you
have to do is make them do things, make them
mess with people, and make it funny. It is at
the time of recording this March twelfth. The movie comes
out on May twenty third, and this is the first
glimpse we're getting of it, and there's already anticipation building
just on the marketing. That is a fantastic thing for
(45:25):
this movie. And even though I've been critical of live
action Disney movies, when it comes to my favorite one.
I just want it to be good, and from what
I saw before this, of just the character art, I
thought it looked actually pretty good. I haven't seen anything
about what Leelo looks like, but I have a lot
of hope for this, so I wanted to do this real,
(45:47):
live and raw, unedited give you my full experience. The
movie trailer is about two minutes and twenty four seconds,
so bear with me here. I hope this is entertaining.
Are you getting my live reaction to this? Here is
the Leela would Stitch trailer from Disney. We are the
(46:09):
apprehended a dangerous experiment. Where is he?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
He escaped?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
He's trying to find the police cruisers. He took the
red one? What hidious planet is caught in your crosshairs?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Shooting star?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I am Austrian French, like the best French the hell.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Memorial Days.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Your responsibility got it me?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Promise?
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Look like an.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Control him?
Speaker 1 (47:04):
What are you doing? No dogs on the table? You
shoot us a dog? Mm hmm?
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, you are not keeping kind of means family. Family
means nobody gets must behind her forgotten.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That's that Sometimes family isn't perfect. That doesn't mean they
are good.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, I don't think you're abused to drink that.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
You're getting a lot of lamp.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Now serving.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Ancient cobra bubbles. We have a blue dog that.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Man.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Okay, remember I'm going to give into the top three Stitch.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Why so many thoughts on this.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Is when it's coming out. I am surprised how accurate
it is to the original animated movie scene for scene,
especially there in the beginning with him escaping line for line,
I think is what is the most surprising to me,
not only just the shots of it, but that straight
up just the animated movie made live action, which up
(48:52):
till now I feel like most of them have changed
it just a little bit. Most of them stay with
the beats of the story as far as the live
act remakes. But this is like scene for scene. What
I'm also seeing just from this trailer is it looks
like they're gonna have Stitch talking more. He didn't talk
a whole lot in the original movie. I talked to
(49:15):
Chris Anders on this podcast, who is the creator of
Lee Low and Stitch and the voice of Stitch, and
he said there was really only one scene where he
needed to have real acting abilities, and it's the best
scene in the entire movie, but you see it in
this trailer and hear it that they're making Stitch talk
a little bit more, and I think they want him
to be more of a mascot. They maybe realize that
(49:36):
him not talking a whole lot in the first movie
maybe didn't lead to some opportunities that other Disney characters
have because he doesn't say a whole lot, he doesn't
have a lot of conversations. Unlike other Disney movies where
the main character is the one probably talking the most.
Stitch with just talking like Dalk, but here he is
(49:57):
saying more things and running around acting more kind of
human ish. The part that is harder when you see
it live action is the whole thing of that illusion
of him even being described as a dog and then
confusing him with the dog. You could get away with
that more in the animated movie, because everybody looks animated,
(50:18):
you don't really think too much about it, but it's
really hard to believe that he's a dog. It looks
like a blue alien in this, and he does look
cute and cuddly. It is still Chris Sanders, the voice
of Stitch, doing the voice here, and I think that
is the big thing that is the main important thing
that makes this feel authentic is that it's still him there,
and all of his laps and all of his mannerisms
(50:41):
still feel like Stitch because Chris Sanders is still the voice.
I am curious to see how this holds up throughout
the entire movie, because this looks fun to me, like
seeing Stitch and Leelo have this stand up where he's
about a sprayer in the face. You have some more
scenes where he acts more like a dog. There's a
(51:02):
scene where he's like rubbing his butt scratching it across
the floor, like that's funny. So I'm curious to see
how many new bits they bring in to amp up
the comedy a little bit, because I think that's kind
of what they're going for here, a little bit more slapstick,
which you can do in a live action movie that
you probably couldn't really do and have it have the
(51:25):
same effect in the animated version. So you have a
chase scene in here. I'm hoping it still has the
heart of lee Low and Stitch, because that's why I
love this movie. At the heart of that movie was
the story of a creature being somewhere where he didn't
fit in, and he felt like he didn't have family.
(51:46):
So he is an alien, not only with his physical attributes,
but he feels like an alien because he doesn't have
belong anywhere. When he comes to Earth, he tries to
fit in, he tries to do good, but all he
does is destroy things because that is how he was built.
That's in his DNA, is to destroy things and to
(52:06):
be a nuisance and to be destructive. But he has
to learn how to be a part of a family,
and that is hard to do when you're doing all
these funny, silly things in live action. To really bring
that heart of the movie home, and I think that
came across a lot because of that animation style, because
(52:26):
of that warm feeling at a time in Disney where
they were getting away from that, they were starting to
go more everything has to be three D. Balilo and
Stitch was one of the last still two D animated movies,
and it felt the most nostalgic to those nineties Renaissance
movies from Disney. So if it can bring that emotion
(52:48):
into this, I think this is the home run now
and I'm so glad how good it actually looks. The
fact that just Stitch himself looks good. That is all
you need. We didn't have a situation like with Sonic
whenever that first movie came out and they released that
trailer or I think maybe maybe with just a clip
of it, and he looked completely off. He had like
(53:10):
the little beady eyes, and everybody just revolted saying, this
is not Sonic and they had to go in and
change him. They haven't had to do that with Stitch.
Seems like they're sticking very close to the original movie,
which I am a fan of, and I wonder though,
if they're gonna do my favorite scene, the scene where
Stitch is about to be taken away by the aliens,
(53:32):
sent back and vanished to his planet, the most emotional scene,
or is this this is my family? I found that's
all on my own. It's a little I'm broken. But
stir goods, Yeah, stircruts, Like, can they replicate that? Chris
Anders said that took a lot of acting out of him,
(53:53):
the abilities. He didn't think he had to get that
emotion across. If they do that and don't do a justice,
that's gonna hurt me a little bit because the problem
I have with these remakes ultimately is that sometimes they
take away from the value and the overall just prestige
(54:14):
of the original movies. And if they don't do that
scene justice, if it doesn't hit right, I'm not gonna
feel great about this. It could be perfect all the
way up until that scene, but if they go for
it and don't nail it, I'm gonna hold that against them.
But again, that was my live reaction to the trailer
It's coming out in theaters on May twenty third. Head
(54:38):
that bar was this Link's edition of movie li Framer
par and that is gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta
give my listeners shout out of the week. How do
you get a listener shout out of the week. You
can comment on my Facebook page, Instagram, TikTok. You can
always find all those links in the episode notes, or
(54:59):
you can go over to my YouTube page YouTube dot
com slash Mike Distro. I put individual movie reviews there,
so if you ever miss one, or you see something
in theaters, or you see something come out on streaming
after it's been in theaters and you're like, I wonder
what Mike had to say about that one? Just go
to my YouTube page, search the movie and you can
find it there isolated in one individual clip. But this
(55:21):
week I am going over to the YouTube page and
I pulled a comment from my riff Raff movie review
which kind of popped off a little bit because I
was talking about mid movies, which has been a hot
topic of conversation here, and Mike nine to five one
two said, totally agree. I would say a recent exception
would be Brothers with Dinklage and Josh Brolin, but the
(55:43):
disappearance of them as a trend is real. There are
too many to name from the nineties, but that's kind
of the point. Mid budget, mid tier movies made with
care and competence was a regular thing then, and no,
it has zero percent to do with wokeness or culture.
It's purely money driven. And I don't know if I
made it seem like I thought it was because of
(56:05):
wokeness or anything like that. I don't think that's the
issue at all. I wanted to get the point across
that it is a business. It is about making money,
and studios don't invest in movies like this if they're
not going to make money back and seeing movies tank
time and time again when it comes to original ideas.
Because studios don't want to invest much in the marketing.
(56:26):
That is why this continues to happen. So I appreciate
you Mike for sharing your thoughts, Thank you for listening,
thank you for being subscribed, thank you for telling a friend.
And until next time, go out and watch good movies
and I will talk to you later.
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today I want to share
with you what I think are the top ten baseball
movies in history. In the movie review, we'll be talking
about Jack Quaid in a new action thriller comedy called
Nova Kane, where he plays a man who can't feel pain.
And in the trailer park, I am going to blind
(00:20):
react to the new Lilo and Stitch trailer. It dropped
last week. I hit record before I watched it because
I wanted my true, raw, honest emotions because Lelo and
Stitch is my favorite Disney movie of all time. Have
all that for you coming up. If you want to
subscribe to the YouTube channel, go to YouTube dot com
slash Mike Distro. You can watch individual movie reviews there.
(00:41):
For all my socials and links, you can always find
them in the episode notes. Thank you for listening, Thank
you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday Morning
Movie crew. And now let's talk movies from the Distro
podcast network. And this is Movie Mike's Movie Podcasts. Baseball
is you have games kicking off this week in Japan.
(01:03):
Next week is the official opening day on Thursday, March
twenty seventh. I love baseball, and when it comes to
sports movies, baseball is my favorite genre of sports movie.
I wanted to share with you what I think are
the top ten baseball movies in history because I saw
someone else put out a list that I'll get to
(01:23):
towards the end of the episode. But I thought that
list was an abomination. And I'll remind you if you're
new here, I was a kid grew up in the nineties,
so obviously it's gonna be heavily rooted then, So let's
get right into the list. At number ten, I have
Bad News Bears, and it is not the Bad News
Bears from nineteen seventy six, the original. I went with
(01:43):
the remake in two thousand and five, starring Billy Bob
Thornton as butter Maker. He plays a burnt out minor
league baseball player who loves to drink, he loves to curse,
and he gets forced to manage a local little league team.
I think why I enjoy this one over the original, Well,
two thousand and five was a great year in movies,
more importantly, a great year for Billy Bob Thornton and
(02:07):
one of my favorite movies of his came out just
two years before this. Bad Sanna, Bad Sanna, Bad News Bears.
It all goes together. I just really enjoy Billy Bob
Thornton being a degenerate. I think it's funny to see
him drinking heavily, making bad decision cursing around kids. That
is my favorite era of Billy Bob Thornton. And what
(02:29):
I got in Bad Sanna, I got even more in
Bad News Bears. I also just love baseball movies. We'll
see a theme throughout this list about kids who are
told they suck and aren't very good, have no athletic ability,
but they go on to accomplish greatness, and that is
what great sports movies are about. I think sometimes I
struggle with enjoying sports movies because they are very formulaic,
(02:52):
and it's always about taking a group of kids or
a group of players that aren't very good. Can you
have somebody come in clean him up and take him
to greatness? And I think why I love this movie
so much. It's very nostalgic for me. I just love
that it's way more vulgar than the nineteen seventy six version.
And this is an example from the movie of a
scene that is incredibly vulgar so much I had to
(03:14):
censor it a little bit, but I would quote this
scene all the time. It's when he's doing some batting
practice and Billy Bob Thoorton notices that the kid is
eating a bunch of bacon. The hell is that a
baggy full of bacon? Om On Atkins, what I have
to eat all the time, keep my metabolism up, so
my body comes a fat burning machine. So like, you
(03:36):
don't give me all time the easy sport. And the
other great thing about this movie is there's always that
moment in a Billy Bob Thornton role like this where
he just comes around where for the entire time he's
not caring, he's not putting in any effort, he is
doing everything in his ability to drive something straight into
the ground. But there's always that moment where he flips
(04:00):
and he starts caring about the kids. And it's always
like that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where
suddenly his heart grows and grows and grows and he
starts to realize, Oh, I've actually started to care about
these kids, and I want to coach them I want
them to do a good job that and also when
he gets to Bailbond's company to sponsor the team. So
(04:20):
at number ten, I have Bad News Bears. At number eight,
I have Basketball from nineteen ninety eight starring Trey Parker
and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. And I
know some people were going to say, you're cheating on
this one, but I feel like this movie is a
baseball movie to me, even though the sport they create
is a hybrid sport combining baseball and basketball, and it
(04:40):
was a big parody and poking fun at the state
of professional sports at the time in the nineties, which
it's even crazier now, where teams would move to different cities,
where players would just move all the time and there
was no consistency or loyalty because they would just go
wherever the money was. They wanted to create their own
wa league, and they primarily take the rules of baseball,
(05:04):
but instead of hitting the ball, they are shooting it
like a basket. But I think the actual game and
the politics that go into basketball is more rooted in
the game of baseball. So that is why I feel
to me it is more of a baseball movie. The
ball itself also looks like a giant baseball. My favorite
part of this entire movie is the rule they add
(05:26):
that you can psych out your opponent, and how hilarious
would this be if a real professional sport added this
as a way to have a colorful defense. Where what
they do in the game is whenever somebody goes up
to shoot, one player is allowed to psych out that player.
You can basically say anything you want to the shooter
to try to disrupt their concentration. So you're trying to
(05:48):
say the gnarliest thing to get them to break, to
get them to react to you, for whenever they take
their shot, they end up missing it. Here's one of
my favorite psychouts from the movie, which of course I
have to censor it, but it's whenever Trey Parker goes
up to psych somebody out and he goes into the
Cartman voice, because not only is he one of the
(06:09):
creators of South Park, he is also the voice of
CARTMANK you losing weight? And that is a psych out
that works. And I think the other reason I love
this movie is it's because it's about two guys who
aren't that athletic. They wanted to play a sport where
(06:32):
they could drink beer and hang out and beat people
who were more athletic and could probably beat them in
any other sport, but this game levels the playing field.
I think it's whatever. Whenever pickleball first got popular and
everybody was saying that you could get good at it,
really quickly you had senior citizens playing pickleball, and it
(06:52):
really levels the playing field compared to tennis. That is
what basketball does. So it was a sport for the
working class American who just wanted to have fun, So
it takes it back to the everyday person. It also
brings back what the true heart and soul of baseball is.
Just loving your team and showing your support for that team.
(07:13):
That is what basketball is all about. And this movie
is also hilarious. I really wish that they would have
done more live action movies, but I think through this
film in particular, they realize that they hate working with
Hollywood actors. They hate that entire world. So that's why
they decided to just do animated movies and puppet movies.
And I can't wait to see the movie that supposedly
(07:34):
is coming out later this year from them that they
are working with Kendrick Lamar to make so at number
nine Greatest Baseball movie of all time Basketball at number
eight from nineteen eighty nine, I have Field of Dreams.
Kevin Costner has done five big baseball movies in his career,
and I decided on my list I would only pick
(07:56):
one of them, and I think this one is the
best one. It has the most memorable line in my opinion.
The year before this, he did Bull Durham that came
out in nineteen eighty eight, and I had to do
some research that Kevin Costner was a baseball player and
he had real life baseball aspirations. That is what influenced
(08:18):
him to take many baseball movies and other sports movies
in his career. To go from Bull Durham to Field
of Dreams back to back and have them both be
classics is a crazy accomplishment. Field of Dreams is all
about him hearing the voice telling him to build a
baseball It has great camaraderie, it has a great message.
It has a lot of emotion that I feel comes
(08:40):
across more than Bull Durham. He was also in for
the Love of the Game in nineteen ninety nine. Chasing
Dreams also in nineteen ninety nine, where he played a
baseball player who had spent some time in jail, and
then The Upside of Anger in two thousand and five,
where he played a former pro baseball player. I think
he's doing another baseball movie. And I know we just
did Horizon that didn't really do what he wanted it
(09:04):
to do in theaters. He's still shopping around Horizon too.
That movie had no plot. I think he needs to
go back to the classics. I think a post Yellowstone
Kevin Kostner. He did the Passion Project thing, which I
know he hates anybody who refers to Horizon as a
passion project because to him, that lessens the product of it.
But that's kind of what that was. Because he created
(09:26):
a movie with no real plot, it was really hard
to sell. I think he needs to go back and
do another baseball movie. Bring on the Hits, Come on, Costner,
you got it in You? That is at number eight,
Field the Dreams at number seven from nineteen ninety three.
I have Rookie of the Year. This is a fantastic,
great nineties comedy that we just don't get anymore. It's
(09:48):
about Henry. Henry, how do you say his last name.
Let's let's go to the club. I'm looking for Henry
Rulin Furter, Ravin Booze, Brozenbager, Cotton Hozer. I never doubted
him for a minute. Hey wait a go run a
mocker going in what you call me? He suffers a
(10:09):
freak accident, he's twelve years old, and then whenever that
ball gets thrown into his section at that baseball game
for the Cubs, he throws it back and they're like,
bring me that arm, and he goes on to be
a picture for the Cubs. I think why I love
this movie so much as a kid, It just embodies
the nineties of fun sports movies that we really don't
(10:31):
get anymore. Obviously, I'm not a kid anymore, so I
can't experience a movie like this anymore. These just great
fun movies that remind me of when life was so
joyful and fun and you could create a wild concept
like this and have it be a hit. Sports movies
right now becomes so few and far between that really
(10:51):
we only get biopicks. It's hard to create a great
sports movie that I haven't seen a movie with this
much originality in ten to fifteen years. I think The
other reason I love this movie is because growing up,
I had no athletic ability, and it was that thought
of man, if I just had a freak accident that
could get me superpowers and make me play incredible, that
(11:13):
is something we all dreamed about as kids, for those
of us who were not gifted with athletic ability. Another
show from the nineties that I loved that embody this
as well was The Jersey, which was a Disney Channel
show about this magical jersey that whenever you put it on,
you were transported into the body of a professional athlete.
I thought that was amazing. So there was just this
(11:34):
theme in the nineties of man if you could convince
the kid that there was something out there that could
give them that ability. But this movie just feels like
summer to me, and that is what I love about baseball,
that spring and summertime where we all just come out
of that seasonal depression and want to be outside. If
you were to tell me to describe my perfect day,
(11:54):
if I could create a just a dream day, that
day would involve me and Kelsey go into a base
ball game getting three or four beers, even though I
don't really drink anymore. I would drink at a baseball game,
eat some peanuts. I would say an afternoon game. A
night game is great too, But there's something about being
in a baseball park where the air feels crisp, you
hear that sound of a bat hitting a ball like
(12:19):
that is my favorite sound. If I could describe just
one sound that's my favorite sound, it would be this
sound right here. Give me perfect weather at a baseball game.
That is my favorite day. And that is what I feel,
and it instantly takes me back to when I watch
Rookie of the Year. So at number seven, that is
(12:40):
what I have. At number six. Speaking of rookies, I
have the Rookie from two thousand and two, the real
life story of Jim Morris, the high school science teacher
who ended up making the big leagues at the age
of thirty five. We all love a classic underdog story,
and I think that's what the theme of a lot
of baseball movies are, a lot of sports movies. It's
(13:01):
all about the underdog. But of all the underdog stories,
not just in baseball, but in all of film, this
is one of the best because you think about what
this says about life and you get to a point
in life where you start comparing yourself to others as
far as where you are in your life, at what age.
(13:21):
I'm doing this right now at thirty three years old
looking at Jim Morris thirty five years old when this
movie takes place. He is played by the one and
only Dennis Quaid. And you think about that when you
start comparing yourself to other people, like, oh, at this age,
like this other person has this type of job where
they're making this amount of money and they have two kids.
We have no kids. And you're always comparing yourself to
(13:43):
other people and where they are in their life, and
it makes you feel bad about your life. And I
think something that I've learned is you got to stop
comparing yourself because everybody's timeline is different. I would probably
be described as a late bloomer in life, like I
didn't have a first real relationship until I met Kelsey
I was twenty seven years old. So it's having to
(14:05):
tell yourself that it's never too late to start something new,
never too late to go back to school, and in
the rookies case, it is never too late to live
out your dream of playing in the big leagues. You
also have Jimmy Sun in the movie, played by Angus T. Jones,
who went on to be in Two and a Half Men.
Dennis Quaid is another person who has been in multiple
(14:26):
baseball movies. Not only was he in this movie in
two thousand and two, he was also recently in The
Hill in twenty and twenty three. He looks great in
a baseball uniform. I have the rookie at number six
getting into the top five. Now I have from twenty
eleven Moneyball. It is a movie about math and data
(14:46):
and the love of the sport. You have Brad Pitt
and Jonah Hill. This movie changed my outlook on life
because much like we were talking about last movie of
how you have to not compare yourself to other people,
this movie made me realize that just because I'm not
the highest draft pick, I am not the most desirable.
(15:08):
I am not the person that you're gonna pay a
lot of money to do anything. It is about using
your resources, playing the numbers in your favor, and learning
how to manipulate the system to your advantage despite the
cards you've been dealt, and that is what this movie
is about. It is based on the true story of
the Oakland A's two thousand and two season, where they
(15:29):
were struggling with competing with larger teams. They lost a
lot of their players. So they developed this method that
they talk about in Moneyball, of how can we make
the best team with the money we have by playing
the numbers. We don't have our big star player, but
instead we can bring in all these players that can
do selective things really well, and if we place them
(15:51):
just right and get all of our chips together in
perfect order, we can have a shot by looking at
this problem like a math problem. And I've used this
in my life because you're not always going to have
all the money at your disposal, whether you're like me,
you're a podcaster working in your home studio, or you're
trying to start a business, You're not always going to
(16:12):
have the best machines or the best processors to get
your product out there. But you have to learn to
work with what you have, and that is what this
movie is all about. The movie is pretty accurate to
what happened in real life. They do leave out some
key players who were on the two thousand and two
A's team. Again, Hollywood is always going to Hollywood stories
(16:33):
up to make them more emotional. I also believe the
character of Jonah Hill was a fictionalized person. He was
based on somebody real, but some of the details about
his character were again hollywooded up, and some of the
conflicts between Billy Bean, who was played by Brad Pitt,
and the arguments he had with the coaching staff were
(16:54):
a little bit exaggerated. But again, it's a movie. You
have to include those things. But Moneyball is not just
a great baseball movie. It also had a lot of
critical acclaim was up for awards, So I think that's
another important thing I factored in to my top five
is not only how much does it resonate with me
as a baseball movie, but how much of an impact
(17:15):
it head on cinema. So at number five, I have Moneyball.
At number four from nineteen eighty nine, I have Major
League and every way this movie embodies what I love
about baseball. You have the camaraderie of the team, you
have the vulgarity, you have the drama, you have the butt,
(17:36):
sweat and tears that is all in Major League. You
have a ragtag group of individuals, and what the movie
is about. You have somebody new take over the team
and you think, oh, they're gonna turn this team around,
take them all the way to the top. No, this
person comes in and they want to tank the team
in hopes of they can move the Cleveland Indians from
(17:58):
there to Miami, which is another wild thing to think about.
This team doesn't exist anymore, and the A's in this
movie also are about to not exist anymore. So parts
of this rewatching it just feels like a bit of
a relic. There's a scene whenever one of the players
gets out of a taxi going to the call where
(18:18):
all the players are meeting for the first time and
pays with cash. That would never happen anymore. Nobody's taking
a taxi and paying with cash. But the person who
takes over wants to tank the team. Finds the most
ridiculous players. Charlie Sheen comes straight out of jail. You
have people who don't look like baseball players whatsoever. You
(18:40):
have a really old pitcher, just a very unique group
of individuals who don't get along. Some people way past
their prime, some people who never had a prime. And
these people think that, oh, we finally have our chance
to be back in the big leagues, not knowing that
they were set up to fail and looking back on
this movie and thinking forward to Ted Lasso, how much
(19:00):
inspiration did they pull for Major League. My favorite character,
of course, would be Charlie Sheen's character. His glasses are
iconic when he realizes that he can't see and that's
the reason that he's throwing all these wild pitches, and
he puts those on like that final scene in the
last game where he comes to close out the game
in the ninth inning. That scene still gives me chills.
(19:22):
Second would have to be Wesley Snipe's character as Willie
Mays Hayes, who is just funny, great comedic relief. My
favorite scene in the movie, though, is whenever they are
first starting out in spring training and one of the
players complains about having to do set ups, that those
sit ups you want me to do? I got a
write to hear my contract says, I don't have to
(19:43):
do any calistenics. I don't feel unnecessary.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
So what do you think about that?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Manitor just peas on the contract. That is why I
love this movie, a baseball movie where they act like
probably real baseball players do in real life. They're cussing,
their fighting. That is what makes this movie so impactful.
It reminds me of me. Going to My first ever
baseball game had to have been the year two thousand,
(20:15):
maybe two thousand and one. I went with my church.
It was the first professional sports game I had ever
been to because grew up I just never thought me
going to a professional game was in the cards for
me because we didn't spend much money on extra things
because we didn't have a whole lot. But by going
with the church, I think we either got free tickets
(20:37):
or really cheap tickets, or somebody paid my way to
go to this game. But we went to a Texas
Rangers game at the ballpark in Arlington, which they've since
moved to Globely Field, and that is what made me
fall in love with baseball. And I'll never forget how
that game ended. Alex Rodriguez was playing on the team
at the time, and he hit the game winning home
(20:58):
run and I was probably ten eleven years old, and
I lost my crap. He was at the time my
favorite player pretty much only because he had my same
last name. That was kind of a key role in
me being such a fan of the Texas Rangers is
Before that, my favorite player was Pudge Rodriguez also had
my last name. There was a lot of Mexican influence
(21:20):
in the nineties Rangers, so I think that's why I
gravitated towards them so much. Obviously being from Dallas, them
being right up the road, natural I was going to
become a Texas Rangers fan. But seeing Alex Rodriguez hit
that game winning home run, crowd went crazy, and then
we tried to get our ball signed by Alex Rodriguez
and they told us that he was going to come
(21:41):
out and sign autographs after the game, which maybe somebody
was lying to us. Again, I was ten eleven years
old at the time. I'm not even sure who we asked,
but I thought since we were part of the church
youth group there, maybe they would come and sign autographs.
But now looking back on it, they really only do
that before the game. It's very rare that they come
out after the game. But me sitting there with my
(22:02):
church youth group wanting to get my ball signed, and
he never came out. He ghosted us. Again. At the time,
I held it against him because I thought, man, he
never came out after winning the game, and they said
he wasn't gonna come out because he was so hyped
from that, I think somebody was just lying to us
from every angle of that story. But nonetheless, it didn't
(22:23):
stop me from continuing to be a fan. A couple
of years ago twenty twenty three, that won the World
Series was a fantastic experience for me and made up
for everything I experienced that day at my first game,
because now we can say we finally won a World Series,
and I have high hopes this season that we're going back,
well at least making the playoffs this year hopefully, but
going back to Major League. I think it is a
(22:46):
favorite among movie lovers, but also I feel if you
asked every single MOLB player to name their favorite movie,
I think since this is at least in what we
think is an accurate depiction of what the lie of
an MLB player is like, I feel like most athletes
would pick this as their number one. And even though
this movie came out in nineteen eighty nine, it feels
(23:08):
very nineties to me. It is right there on the
cusp of it. I would have loved for this movie
to come out in the nineties just so I could
add it to my list of favorite nineties movies. But nonetheless,
It ranks pretty high on my list of favorite eighties
movies at number four. I have Major League. Top three
is strong at number three from nineteen ninety two, I
Have a League of their Own. Not only is this
(23:29):
one of the best baseball movies of all time, it
is also the highest grossing baseball movie, with a lifetime
gross of one hundred and seven million dollars. This has
a fantastic cast. Everywhere you look in this cast, it's
star star, star, star star, quote after quote. This movie
also feels like a piece of history because it's rooted
(23:50):
around World War Two, when all the men had to
go and fight in the war, leaving behind avoid in
the country. And you have the first ever all female
professional baseball league in the Midwest. You have the relationship
between Dottie and Kit fighting with each other. You have
the grumpy coach and has been Tom Hanks, and you
have one of the greatest quotes in sports movie history.
(24:13):
He's no criting baseball classic right there. And outside of
it being a good sports movie, it is also just
a great drama, and that is hard to do on
this list. I feel like there are only two movies
that I would feel that same way about that if
you rip apart all the elements of the sport at
(24:34):
the core, they are just still great movies without it.
I would say A League of their Own is that one,
because not only is it a story about that first
all female league, but it's also a story about two sisters.
The older sister who has always been the favorite, always
been the one people see as the pretty one, the
one who feels at least in the eyes of the
(24:56):
younger sister, who gets all the opportunities, has the perfect
real life relationship. It's a story of the struggle of
those two sisters and the younger one always being looked
at as the kid and always being second stream, not
only on the team but in life. And it's their
relationship just coming to a head when she gets traded
away blames it on her sister. You have the epic
game to close it all out. And not only that,
(25:19):
but it's also a big part of history when it
comes to the rights of women to do anything that
men can do getting paid the same amount. There's love
and loss so much in this movie, so I feel
out of every movie on this list, it would rank
as also just the best drama. Next to that, I
would put Moneyball, But I think out of all of
(25:41):
the movies on this list, could quite possibly be the
one I've seen the most, only because it would run
so often on T and T and TBS that I
feel like growing up, it was just on all the time,
so maybe it was even later that I actually watched
it from beginning. And it's a movie that you can
really just pick up anywhere and enjoy it. So at
number three from nineteen ninety two, I have A League
(26:04):
of their Own. At number two from nineteen ninety three,
I have The sand Lot. This movie is great because
it embodies what it's like to be a kid, especially
a kid who loves playing baseball. It has one of
the best scenes of all time in any sports movie,
The baseball scene at nine on the fourth of July
with all the fireworks is a moment where all the
(26:25):
wacky things kind of are pushed away to the side.
You have the classic quotes of course you're killing me
smalls with the whole smortest thing. You have all of
the funny moments of like you play baseball like a girl,
all those great things that make this movie great. For
them taking the tobacco and all puking on the ride,
you have all those things, but in this moment, the
(26:45):
movie just slows down and has this very beautiful time
to take in because throughout this entire movie they almost
seem older than they are because they take playing baseball
so serious. But in that scene in particular, you have
them just being kids, just looking up at the fireworks
because the reason they played on the fourth of July
(27:07):
because all the fireworks light up the same lot enough
for them to be able to get a night game in.
When you have all the other kids watching and paying
attention to those fireworks, you see Benny the Jet Rodriguez
being so focused, still running the bases while they're all
just standing there and looking up at the fireworks, because
that's what you do when you're a kid. But that
is the foreshadowing moment where you know that Benny of
(27:29):
the Jet Rodriguez is going to be the only one
who goes on to play in the big leagues because
of how serious he took it. He didn't even allow
himself to be a kid. He kept running the bases
and eventually it led him to this moment, and there
he goes he's stealing home. Don't believe he's stealing over.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
He's stealing. I don't believe in they don't be.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I would also say rip to James Earl Jones whenever
they finally go get the ball back from him and
just go ask him like they should have done at
the beginning, and then he's like, George signed this in
reference to Babe Ruth oh Man. I also forgot about
that quote. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. This
movie is chucked full of great quotes. At number two,
(28:24):
I have the Sandlot from nineteen ninety three. At number
one from nineteen ninety four, my favorite baseball movie of
all time, Angels in the Outfield. It's all about Roger
goes into foster care because his dad's kind of a deadbeat.
And he asked his dad this question at the start
(28:44):
of the movie, going to be a family again.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
From where I'm sitting, I'd say, when the Angels win
the Pennant, you stay out.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Of trouble sign. So his dad tells him we can
be a family again when the Angels win the Pennant.
And he said that because the Angels were the worst
team in baseball. What does Roger do? He starts believing that,
starts going to every game, and by him being at games,
he realizes that he can see angels in the field.
(29:15):
And then the manager, George Knox realizes that this kid
is seeing something and he's kind of a good luck charm. Hey,
where in last place? What's the worst that could happen?
He sets him up with tickets to every single home
game with him and his friend JP, and anytime he
sees an angel again, he's just humoring the kid. They
come up with the signal because in baseball you have signals,
(29:36):
and he starts waving his arms up and down like
an angel would like angel wings going up and down.
And anytime he does that, something crazy happens. You have
Hammerling coming in, You have Matthew McConaughey out in the
outfield making a crazy play. And then they all start
believing in angels that build hype up around the team.
And while that is great the team is winning, it's
(29:58):
all coming back to Rodger, who just wants his dad back,
just wants to be a family again, and gets to
that point where the Angels are just a game away,
I believe, and he goes to his court hearing and
he sees his dad there.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Dad, I didn't know you were gonna be here. You
know the Angels are only one game for the pennant.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Can you believe it?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
It's just like you say, sorry, boy, yeah, hear what
I said?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
What are you going?
Speaker 3 (30:31):
He starts crying.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
How could you do that to Roger? You monster? You maniac?
This whole time, he just wants the Angels to win,
not because he loves the team, because he loves his dad.
And he's there crying in the courtroom on the bosom
of Maggie because he realizes that that's not coming back.
(30:55):
You just said that to dupe them. Then they go
on to win and everybody's happy again. Oh. One of
my favorite quotes is also here comes Nacho. But whenever
they keep messing with the supposed to keep them happy
by getting emmerched and getting them food.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
I love this movie. It makes me emotional. It is heartwarming.
It for the first time now in a long time,
is available on Disney Plus. It was just like Lost
for the longest time, you had to have a VHS
to watch Angels in the outfield. But this movie is
the real representation of why I love baseball because of
that joy. It is a sport that is important for kids,
(31:32):
it's the most I feel the experience is probably the
best when you're a kid. I think that's why I
associate it with my first game. The idea of like
catching a foul ball now is fun to me, but
it's more fun to me to be able to find
and give it to a kid like that is why
I would do it now. So there's something special just
about being exposed to baseball when you're younger, because those
(31:53):
memories just go on forever. And that is what I
think about when I watch Angels in the Outfield. It
just makes me emotional. Has the most. So at number one,
I have Angels in the Outfield. My entire list was
inspired by a Hollywood reporter list that a lot of
people did not agree with, but I will add them
in as honorable mentions. They had at number ten Boiling Point,
(32:13):
which is a Japanese movie. At number nine from nineteen
forty two. They had The Pride of the Yankees at
number eight from two thousand and eight. They had Sugar
at number seven. They had banged the Drums Slowly from
nineteen seventy three. I believe that stars Robert de Niro
and number six. They had a League of their own,
so I feel like they got that one right, but
six it's a little low. At number five they had
(32:33):
The Natural, which is I know a lot of people's
favorites from nineteen eighty four. At number four they had
Fear Strikes Out from nineteen fifty seven, so they went
with a lot of classics. I felt like they were
being a little bit too cool here. At number three
they had Bull Durham from nineteen eighty eight, which I
feel is a little high for that movie. At number
two they had Moneyball. I love Moneyball. It made my list,
but number two is way too high for that movie.
(32:55):
And at number one they had Eight Men Out. The
other movie that all almost made my list was forty
two from twenty thirteen story about Jackie Robinson starring the
late Chadwick Boseman. That almost made my list. But those
are the honorable mentions. If you have a favorite that
you think I missed, hit me up on socials at
Mike Dshro or send me an email Moviemike D at
(33:16):
gmail dot com. Let's get into it now. A spoiler
free movie review of Nobakane The Man Who Can't Feel
Pain starring Jack Quad. This movie had a lot more
emotional depth that I was expecting. Given the trailer, given
the title, given the premise, I thought it was just
gonna be a lot of shoot him up action, putting
(33:37):
jack Quad's character in a lot of situations that were
fun for the viewer and gonna be pretty mindless. But
what I got was something that resonated with me a
lot more than I was expecting. Jack Quaid plays a
lonely guy works at a bank. Due to his condition
where he can't feel pain, he has to live a
pretty lonely and kind of sad life. Dude can't even
eat solid foods out of the field that he's going
(34:00):
to bite his tongue off because he can't feel it.
So where I thought it was just going to be
all the things associated with his life that would cause
him not to feel like a punch or to feel
somebody shooting him or stabbing him, it was all those
little side things that really humanized his character more because
out of this fear of not being able to feel
pain and not knowing if something is actually hurting him
(34:23):
to a degree that oh, this is really bad, where
you and I could tell like, oh, I'm bleeding right now,
and I'm feeling pain. I need to give to a hospital.
He doesn't have that. Dude can't even pee because he
doesn't even feel a sensation to need to pee, so
he has to set a timerund his watch. So he
spent his entire life living this really regulated life on
a regimen, working at this bank where he takes no risks,
(34:46):
and that has caused him to feel really lonely. And
we are introduced to his character at the very beginning
where he's trying to help somebody at the bank, somebody
who's been married for a long time, and he's just
thinking like, man, I just want to find that person.
I just want to feel love when I can't feel anything.
But then this new girl shows up named Sherry played
by Amber mid Thunder fantastic name. Everything's going great until
(35:07):
somebody decides to rob the bank and they take her hostage,
and he decides, this is gonna be my time to
step up. It's gonna be my time to be the hero,
using his nervous system disorder to his advantage. And I
have to say this movie is not for the squeamish.
And I can't do Broken Bones. Everything else I'm pretty
good with, but even just watching the trailer, which gives
(35:28):
you a kind of a glimpse into one scene in particular,
where he's being tortured by one of the criminals. If
you can't handle any kind of torturing devices prying on people,
there are gonna be some moments that are hard to watch,
probably that scene in particular. Everything else is more along
the lines of him getting into accidents and mishaps when
(35:50):
he's actually fighting. That stuff is still at times brutal,
but I think out of everything the most squeamish people
will have a problem with that scene. I found myself
even I wanted to look away at points because I
can't do broken bones. I can't do anything that harms
your eyes. I have this really weird thing. If anybody
gets close to my eyes, I just go into defense mode.
(36:11):
And maybe a good thing of me having glasses is
I always feel a little bit protected. But if I
take off my glasses that anybody needs to touch my eye.
Whenever I have to go do an eye examine, they
have to blow that puff of air in your eye.
I have to warn them beforehand, like, hey, I have
this weird eye thing. If I accidentally deck you in
the face, it's not my problem. I just don't like
people touching my eyes. So there are some situations where
(36:32):
he gets things very close to his eye. Everything else
I felt was pretty on par with as much destruction
as I was expecting. So while this movie is about
a guy who can't feel pain and the long journey
he goes on to save the girl of his dreams,
what this movie is really about is a guy who's
missed out on life, worried that he's going to die.
(36:53):
Where he's been too cautious of taking risks, been too
cautious of even putting himself in social situation is dude
doesn't even know what foods tastes like because he's so
worried and fearful of death that he's forgotten to live
his life. And this is his chance to finally push
all those things to the side. He's in his thirties
and he has to go out and prove to himself,
(37:15):
not even to anybody else, that he's not just this
sheltered bank executive. He is something more than that, and
it was cool seeing his evolution. At times this felt
like a superhero origin story, much like a superhero would
discover his powers. He's already been dealing with this, but
he didn't realize that he could use it to his
advantage in this way and really just finally throws caution
(37:36):
to the wind. You also have Jacob Battlon from the
Spider Man movies playing his best friend, and his role
I would say was pretty minimal. He almost plays with
the guy in the chair in this movie as well,
where we don't even get a whole lot of them
in the movie, despite the amount that he was used
in the trailer. I feel like movies do this all
the time with like the best Friend, where they make
(37:56):
it a big part of the marketing, but then they're
barely in the thing. I think think if there was
anybody I wanted more of, it was definitely his character,
but it would just kind of sprinkled in there. The
love story, I thought was pretty decent. I think you
have to consider what it's like to be a lonely
guy because I think the average person would watch this
and think, why is he so dead set on getting
(38:17):
this girl back? They haven't known each other that long?
Why is he going through these links to do this?
And I think if you understand the lonely guy mentality
of him having nothing throughout his entire life, and this
being his first chance to even have a remote sense
of normalcy. I think that's what allows him to go
to these links. If it was just a guy who
(38:38):
had already been using this power to his advantage, had
already been living a life where he was reckless and
not caring about what happened to his body, the story
wouldn't be the same. So it's the fact that he
has been sheltered, working in his office and not going
outside of his comfort zone whatsoever that makes him decide
I don't want to be lonely anymore. So if you've
ever experienced a level of loneliness this never been in
(39:01):
a serious relationship, you can understand why he decided that's it.
You pushed me to my tipping point. I'm gonna go
after these bad guys and prove them wrong and win
this girl back. So for the most part, I did
enjoy the movie. I thought it had a pretty good
amount of action. I just felt that it moved a
little bit too slow, especially in that first act where
(39:21):
I was like, all right, let's get going here. When
you actually look at what happens in the movie and
the fact that it's about an hour and fifty minutes.
It almost feels like they stretched it out a little
bit further than they needed it to go. At times,
it just lacks that sense of urgency. And for a
movie that felt a little bit reminiscent of a John
Wick or a Monkey Man or a Nobody, those movies
(39:43):
move really quickly. I was kind of expecting a little
bit more. I just moved a little bit too slowly
for me, and I was waiting for more surprises. I
think when it came to the main three actors, they
were great. Jack Amber and Jacob had great chemistry. I
think Jack proved that he does have that lead actor
capability and bankability in this. I don't think this is
(40:04):
going to be a career defining movie for him, but
it definitely proved to me that outside of the Boys
and outside of the other movies he's done, that he
does have the ability to step into a role like
this and own it. It's also just hard to compare
him to his dad. Also, when you think about there's
another Neippo baby in this movie, Ray Nicholson, the son
of Jack Nicholson, you have two Nepo babies here, and
(40:24):
I think when it comes to Jack Quaid, who's been
so upfront and open about the fact that he has
two famous parents, that he has been given advantages in
his life and hasn't straight away from that. He hasn't
tried to hide his name. He is very upfront about
owning the fact that he is a NEPO baby, and
I can respect that. And it doesn't mean just because
you have one or two famous parents in the industry
(40:47):
that that's going to lead you to success. It does
open up those doors, it does build in those relationships
because you can go to people your parents knew and
get your foot in the door. But that doesn't mean
you're gonna earned the respect of the audience. Just because
he has Quaid in his name doesn't mean audiences are
good to go into this movie and think I'm gonna
(41:07):
love this because it's jack Quade's son. He still has
to earn that. I think he has been earning that
with his work that I am able to separate him
from his parents. I'm actually more of a fan of
Jack Quaid than I am of Dennis Quaid. I think
the roles he has taken on have spoke more to
me as of late Ray Nicholson is interesting though, because
he hasn't really sold me on his capabilities as an actor,
(41:27):
because when I compare Jack Quaid to Dennis Quaid, I
don't really put them on the same level. As far
as Jack Nicholson compared to Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson is
on an entirely different level, has so many more iconic
movies and awards compared to Dennis Quaid. Both great actors,
but a vast difference between those two. So I think
(41:49):
it's actually much harder for Ray Nicholson to be compared
to his dad, because that is a whole other level
of acting, especially when you consider where Jack Nicholson was
at the same age that Ray is now and Ray
is really just being introduced to us. And I was
thinking about his performance in this movie and when he
was in Smile Too last year. Is the thing that
(42:09):
really gives it a way that he's Jack Nicholson's son
is his facial expressions. I think of the shining I
see that smile that very just like zoned in look
where even on the Smile Too poster they put his
face on it, they put his sinister smile because it's
that Jack Nicholson look. That's hard living in the shadow
of your parent, of everybody associating you with him and saying,
(42:31):
you look so much like your dad, and you can't
help the fact that you look like them, But I
think you can help the fact that you don't act
like them. And I'm not really getting a different look
from him. It almost looks like somebody doing a Jack
Nicholson impression. And that could be being a little harsh
on him, because he's like, no, that's how I act,
same thing. How I probably have a lot of qualities
(42:52):
of my dad, but you don't know my dad. My
dad would probably be reviewing this movie in the same way.
A lot of weird things of how we pick up
mannerisms from our parents without learning them, just by growing
up and observing them. So maybe that's already just built
into him and he can't really change that. Or maybe
he watches the Shining before he goes on a set
and he's like, I gotta channel my dad. I gotta
pull off those facial expressions and sell that Nicholson name.
(43:15):
And I think the movie just kind of lost momentum
there Towards the end. It kind of struggled with finding
how to end this story and how to tie together
all these loose sins. Maybe that's because they were trying
to set up a sequel. They're trying to build an
action franchise out of this. It almost felt like they
ran out of ideas. But probably what it was is
they ran out of money. It's an eighteen million dollar movie,
(43:36):
so it doesn't have that same high production value or
budget that you would get from a John Wick movie.
But I think this movie does have some success at
the box office. They end up making a sequel, they
get add some more money to make the next one
a little bit more fast paced for me. So for Novacane,
I give it three point five out of five arrows
to the leg.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
It's time to head down to movie.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Oh trailer, Paul, all Right, I'm about to blind react
to the new Lilo and Stitch trailer. At the time
of recording this, it is Wednesday. The trailer dropped four
hours ago. It's sitting at about seven hundred thousand views
on YouTube. I reserved this right for really big movie trailers,
(44:20):
at least to me, like my personal favorite ones. Last
time I did this, and the only time I've done this,
was the Superman trailer. Leelo and Stitch is my favorite
Disney movie, and I've been very critical of the live
action quote unquote live action Disney movies, and the thing
I love about this movie so far, we haven't seen
(44:41):
a glimpse of what it's actually gonna look like. We've
seen the poster, we saw the trailer at the Super Bowl,
which wasn't really a trailer, it was just Stitch running
out on the field. And the marketing for this movie
has been fantastic, and that's something that's always been a
part of Leelo and Stitch. Whenever the first movie came out,
they did the whole marketing thing where they put Stitch
into a bunch of classic Disney scenes. This is all
(45:04):
marketing because Thisitch is such a great character. All you
have to do is make them do things, make them
mess with people, and make it funny. It is at
the time of recording this March twelfth. The movie comes
out on May twenty third, and this is the first
glimpse we're getting of it, and there's already anticipation building
just on the marketing. That is a fantastic thing for
(45:25):
this movie. And even though I've been critical of live
action Disney movies, when it comes to my favorite one.
I just want it to be good, and from what
I saw before this, of just the character art, I
thought it looked actually pretty good. I haven't seen anything
about what Leelo looks like, but I have a lot
of hope for this, so I wanted to do this real,
(45:47):
live and raw, unedited give you my full experience. The
movie trailer is about two minutes and twenty four seconds,
so bear with me here. I hope this is entertaining.
Are you getting my live reaction to this? Here is
the Leela would Stitch trailer from Disney. We are the
(46:09):
apprehended a dangerous experiment. Where is he?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
He escaped?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
He's trying to find the police cruisers. He took the
red one? What hidious planet is caught in your crosshairs?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Shooting star?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I am Austrian French, like the best French the hell.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Memorial Days.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Your responsibility got it me?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Promise?
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Look like an.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Control him?
Speaker 1 (47:04):
What are you doing? No dogs on the table? You
shoot us a dog? Mm hmm?
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, you are not keeping kind of means family. Family
means nobody gets must behind her forgotten.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
That's that Sometimes family isn't perfect. That doesn't mean they
are good.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, I don't think you're abused to drink that.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
You're getting a lot of lamp.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Now serving.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Ancient cobra bubbles. We have a blue dog that.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Man.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Okay, remember I'm going to give into the top three Stitch.
Speaker 3 (48:18):
Why so many thoughts on this.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Is when it's coming out. I am surprised how accurate
it is to the original animated movie scene for scene,
especially there in the beginning with him escaping line for line,
I think is what is the most surprising to me,
not only just the shots of it, but that straight
up just the animated movie made live action, which up
(48:52):
till now I feel like most of them have changed
it just a little bit. Most of them stay with
the beats of the story as far as the live
act remakes. But this is like scene for scene. What
I'm also seeing just from this trailer is it looks
like they're gonna have Stitch talking more. He didn't talk
a whole lot in the original movie. I talked to
(49:15):
Chris Anders on this podcast, who is the creator of
Lee Low and Stitch and the voice of Stitch, and
he said there was really only one scene where he
needed to have real acting abilities, and it's the best
scene in the entire movie, but you see it in
this trailer and hear it that they're making Stitch talk
a little bit more, and I think they want him
to be more of a mascot. They maybe realize that
(49:36):
him not talking a whole lot in the first movie
maybe didn't lead to some opportunities that other Disney characters
have because he doesn't say a whole lot, he doesn't
have a lot of conversations. Unlike other Disney movies where
the main character is the one probably talking the most.
Stitch with just talking like Dalk, but here he is
(49:57):
saying more things and running around acting more kind of
human ish. The part that is harder when you see
it live action is the whole thing of that illusion
of him even being described as a dog and then
confusing him with the dog. You could get away with
that more in the animated movie, because everybody looks animated,
(50:18):
you don't really think too much about it, but it's
really hard to believe that he's a dog. It looks
like a blue alien in this, and he does look
cute and cuddly. It is still Chris Sanders, the voice
of Stitch, doing the voice here, and I think that
is the big thing that is the main important thing
that makes this feel authentic is that it's still him there,
and all of his laps and all of his mannerisms
(50:41):
still feel like Stitch because Chris Sanders is still the voice.
I am curious to see how this holds up throughout
the entire movie, because this looks fun to me, like
seeing Stitch and Leelo have this stand up where he's
about a sprayer in the face. You have some more
scenes where he acts more like a dog. There's a
(51:02):
scene where he's like rubbing his butt scratching it across
the floor, like that's funny. So I'm curious to see
how many new bits they bring in to amp up
the comedy a little bit, because I think that's kind
of what they're going for here, a little bit more slapstick,
which you can do in a live action movie that
you probably couldn't really do and have it have the
(51:25):
same effect in the animated version. So you have a
chase scene in here. I'm hoping it still has the
heart of lee Low and Stitch, because that's why I
love this movie. At the heart of that movie was
the story of a creature being somewhere where he didn't
fit in, and he felt like he didn't have family.
(51:46):
So he is an alien, not only with his physical attributes,
but he feels like an alien because he doesn't have
belong anywhere. When he comes to Earth, he tries to
fit in, he tries to do good, but all he
does is destroy things because that is how he was built.
That's in his DNA, is to destroy things and to
(52:06):
be a nuisance and to be destructive. But he has
to learn how to be a part of a family,
and that is hard to do when you're doing all
these funny, silly things in live action. To really bring
that heart of the movie home, and I think that
came across a lot because of that animation style, because
(52:26):
of that warm feeling at a time in Disney where
they were getting away from that, they were starting to
go more everything has to be three D. Balilo and
Stitch was one of the last still two D animated movies,
and it felt the most nostalgic to those nineties Renaissance
movies from Disney. So if it can bring that emotion
(52:48):
into this, I think this is the home run now
and I'm so glad how good it actually looks. The
fact that just Stitch himself looks good. That is all
you need. We didn't have a situation like with Sonic
whenever that first movie came out and they released that
trailer or I think maybe maybe with just a clip
of it, and he looked completely off. He had like
(53:10):
the little beady eyes, and everybody just revolted saying, this
is not Sonic and they had to go in and
change him. They haven't had to do that with Stitch.
Seems like they're sticking very close to the original movie,
which I am a fan of, and I wonder though,
if they're gonna do my favorite scene, the scene where
Stitch is about to be taken away by the aliens,
(53:32):
sent back and vanished to his planet, the most emotional scene,
or is this this is my family? I found that's
all on my own. It's a little I'm broken. But
stir goods, Yeah, stircruts, Like, can they replicate that? Chris
Anders said that took a lot of acting out of him,
(53:53):
the abilities. He didn't think he had to get that
emotion across. If they do that and don't do a justice,
that's gonna hurt me a little bit because the problem
I have with these remakes ultimately is that sometimes they
take away from the value and the overall just prestige
(54:14):
of the original movies. And if they don't do that
scene justice, if it doesn't hit right, I'm not gonna
feel great about this. It could be perfect all the
way up until that scene, but if they go for
it and don't nail it, I'm gonna hold that against them.
But again, that was my live reaction to the trailer
It's coming out in theaters on May twenty third. Head
(54:38):
that bar was this Link's edition of movie li Framer
par and that is gonna do it for another episode
here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta
give my listeners shout out of the week. How do
you get a listener shout out of the week. You
can comment on my Facebook page, Instagram, TikTok. You can
always find all those links in the episode notes, or
(54:59):
you can go over to my YouTube page YouTube dot
com slash Mike Distro. I put individual movie reviews there,
so if you ever miss one, or you see something
in theaters, or you see something come out on streaming
after it's been in theaters and you're like, I wonder
what Mike had to say about that one? Just go
to my YouTube page, search the movie and you can
find it there isolated in one individual clip. But this
(55:21):
week I am going over to the YouTube page and
I pulled a comment from my riff Raff movie review
which kind of popped off a little bit because I
was talking about mid movies, which has been a hot
topic of conversation here, and Mike nine to five one
two said, totally agree. I would say a recent exception
would be Brothers with Dinklage and Josh Brolin, but the
(55:43):
disappearance of them as a trend is real. There are
too many to name from the nineties, but that's kind
of the point. Mid budget, mid tier movies made with
care and competence was a regular thing then, and no,
it has zero percent to do with wokeness or culture.
It's purely money driven. And I don't know if I
made it seem like I thought it was because of
(56:05):
wokeness or anything like that. I don't think that's the
issue at all. I wanted to get the point across
that it is a business. It is about making money,
and studios don't invest in movies like this if they're
not going to make money back and seeing movies tank
time and time again when it comes to original ideas.
Because studios don't want to invest much in the marketing.
(56:26):
That is why this continues to happen. So I appreciate
you Mike for sharing your thoughts, Thank you for listening,
thank you for being subscribed, thank you for telling a friend.
And until next time, go out and watch good movies
and I will talk to you later.
Host
Mike D
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Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!