Joe Cuneo

I saw Angels in the Outfield only because I was in it. Well, in the crowd scenes anyway when it was being filmed at the Oakland Coliseum. As a movie, it has a certain charm, though more of a family film than a "baseball movie." It's a remake of the 1951 original, but doesn't have that gritty baseball feel to it. Good performances by Danny Glover and Tony Danza, though it was disconcerting to see the location keep switching from Anaheim Stadium to the Oakland Coliseum.

Dead Man has that surreal quality that pulls you in to its world, much like other atmospheric movies like Blade Runner, it exists in a world all its own. And it is filled with quirky, unusual characters. Johnny Depp is appropriate for the role of William Blake, a greenhorn from Cleveland who comes out west to fill an accounting position he believes is reserved for him. The train ride in the beginning sets the tone of the movie, which is a journey from civilization to the chaos that awaits him. With each sequence in that opening scene, the train ride becomes more surreal, as the passengers become more and more untamed. When he gets to the end-of-the-line, he discovers that his job has been filled, and in a nightmarish chain of events, he finds himself on the run for murder, with a bullet in him. He is found by an Indian named Nobody, who believes he is the poet William Blake. He becomes his guide in an hallucinating journey towards death. The ending of the movie can be seen as puzzling or unresolved, but it's not so much the conclusion as the point, but in the journey itself. Not everyone will get this movie, because it remains surreal throughout the journey, but it is filled with an enjoyable collection of characters, with lots of cameos by many good actors.

When I saw this as a kid, I thought it was cool, because it had creepy monsters and a theme song that sounded like Andy Williams in some lounge. A group of forlorn passengers on board an unseaworthy steamship, which happens to be carrying high explosives, set sail for South America. They get caught in a hurricane, the crew mutinies, they get in a lifeboat, man-eating seaweed tries to eat the captain, then they find their ship again and go back on board. that's when the fun begins. The evil seaweed pulls the ship into the Sargasso Sea, where it is chow-time for all the creepy sea creatures that attack and devour the ship's passengers. Also on hand are a bunch of Spaniards who think it's the 1500's. They have managed to peacefully co-exist with these slimy creatures. They are ruled by a petulant boy-king who tries to seize the ship and it's supplies. Our heroes must battle the Spaniards and the monsters and get home.