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EEPHUS (2025) Like the pitch it's named after, Carson Lund's EEPHUS is a slow erratic curveball that sneaks up on you. Two baseball teams gather to play an organized pick-up game one afternoon. An old man sets up a card table to keep score. An even older gentleman takes his seat - pretty much alone with the sparse "crowd". A grumpy for-hire umpire reluctantly takes the field. A food vendor hawks pizza by the slice. The teams are made up by a motley crew of middle-aged townies and a few younger players some of whom may still harbor thoughts of semi-pro ball.

They are gathered in a rundown park, Soldiers Field, that has seen better days. The waning rays of the autumn sun fall on the colorful foliage as Halloween beckons in this small New England town. It's the last game to be played there as the stadium will be torn down to make way for a new school. The nearest similar playground is a half-hour drive away.

The narrator is legendary Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman who drops pithy quotes from the legends of the game such as Babe Ruth and Yogi Berra. Wiseman's participation is approapriate for Lund takes a semi-documentary approach, favoring observation over narrative. The film never leaves the park. One simply watches the twenty or so men go through their paces, dropping in for snatches of conversation here and there. Like the sport itself, the movie can be slow - and dare one say it? - a bit dull. Of course, as any true fan of the game will tell you, monotony is part of the game, too - as it is in life itself.

None of the actors are particularly famous, but a few such as Keith William Richards and Paul Kandarian may be somewhat recognizeable. They all feel genuine. Red Sox announcer Joe Castiglione plays the vendor. The best cameo is an extended one by Boston baseball legend Bill 'Spaceman' Lee who shows up and disappears like a ghost pitching one inning (Lee threw the most infamous Eephus pitch in history at the 1975 World Series giving up a homer to Tony Perez even though he'd been strenuosly warned not to do so).

As the game drags on, people start to go home. It gets dark, but the core men soldier on. It's the last game after all. Plus, the score is tied. There HAS to be a result. They NEED to see it through. At this point, they are literally playing for the Love Of The Game as the old saying goes. It ends not with a huge epiphany (would be inappriate for a low key production such as this) - although there is a fittingly puny fireworks display planned.

EEPHUS is an elegiac look at the true meaning of baseball. Perhaps not a 'Field of Dreams' as much as a way of life for the diehard faithful who may have little else they can still cling to.

DARK STAR (1975) One of the great cult sci-fi films. Famously begun as a USC student film in 1970 by filmmakers John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon, it was expanded into feature length with money from veteran producer Jack Harris in 1973.

Carpenter and O'Bannon collaborated on the screenplay with Carpenter directing and O'Bannon production designed, edited, supervised the SFX and played Pinback. Pinback and the crew of the spaceship are on a endless mission to blow up 'unstable planets' (would Earth today be on the hit list??). The creaky ship does the four man crew no favors, nor do their 'pet' aliens. Things come to a head when a sentient AI bomb threatens to blow THEM up.

Carpenter does an excellent job showing the tedium of such a long journey in space. 2001 was certainly a hallmark, and one can also see the influence of SILENT RUNNING. The script has some witty passages, in particular a discussion with their 'dead' commander and the superb set-piece trying to convince the bomb not to explode. O'Bannon's visuals are very solid on a non-existent budget and the grungy 16mm photography by Douglass Knapp perfectly captures the mood set by Carpenter's electronic score which is assured for an 'amateur' production. The ending is one of the most poetic in all of the science fiction film genre.

After a rousing premiere at L. A.'s film festival Filmex in early 1974, Jack Harris turned over the actual release to notorious distributor Bryanston (a mob front who laundered their DEEP THROAT earnings until being criminally charged and going bankrupt; the company screwed the TEXAS CHAINSAW filmmakers out of millions, too.) O'Bannon and Carpenter told stories of attending theatrical screenings in 1975 in nearly empty cinemas. It was only after ALIEN and HALLOWEEN that the film was pried from Bryanston and re-released to acclaim. It's cult only grew with revival screenings and home video.

I have to admit I wasn't overly impressed with the film when I saw it in early 1979, but a re-viewing in college a year or two later turned me around. It's an endearing triumph that proves the lie that bigger is always better. In many ways, it's still my favorite film that either Carpenter or O'Bannon were ever part of.

Witty adaptation of the famed Agatha Christie novel. The screenplay by Dudley Nichols carefully preserves the mystery while keeping it light and lively and Rene Clair's direction is quite deft keeping the audience on their toes while being confined to a house on an island.

The cast is marvelous with notable performances by Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, Dame Judith Anderson and June Duprez who should have had a more substantive career.

The storyline has continued to remain influential not only in the several direct adaptations, but also in films such as THE LAST OF SHEILA, CLUE, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (a Christie story too, of course) and right up to the KNIVES OUT series.