1988 Directed by Ron Shelton
Veteran catcher Crash Davis is brought to the minor league Durham Bulls to help their up and coming pitching prospect, "Nuke" Laloosh. Their relationship gets off to a rocky start and is further complicated when baseball groupie Annie Savoy sets her sights on the two men.
Susan Sarandon is never not in charge. One of my favorite genres now is movies where you think she plays a supporting role but really dictates exactly what happens by everyone’s accounts. Lovely lady.
has all the relaxed wit and charm of the best romcoms of this era that i went in expecting (the off-kilter love triangle at its center and focus on a specific professional/subcultural milieu certainly puts it up there with broadcast news, anyway) but the bizarre blend of open, casual sexiness with cosmic sports movie poetry/spiritualism was truly unique and surprising. sarandon is beautiful and mesmerizing as some sort of mix between mrs. robinson in the graduate and a religious baseball shaman, herself caught between the macho slapstick antics of the vaguely star-is-born-esque relationship between costner's aging, lonely, intelligent minor league lifer and robbins' cocky, inexperienced hotshot that he's been asked to coach towards a dream he’ll never attain for himself.…
Ok I’m gonna be honest, this started off with Susan Sarandon talking about baseball over gospel vocalisations. Hopes were low.
But this movie was so charming and cute and I loved these performances. Susan Sarandon is electric and has chemistry with everyone and brings so much intelligence and heart to a character that might not necessarily exude that on paper. Tim Robbins is a genius at playing The Fool. Kevin Costner is hot. These are all things I enjoy in a movie!
I watched this on a plane (shout out the Delta movie selection btw…..) and I fast forwarded through all of the sex scenes because my neighbor kept looking at my screen and I got nervous ❤️ Do we think this made the problem better or worse?
I think I want a baseball movie revival? Or at the very least another movie with a character named “Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh”
That’s all from me!
God gave Tim Robbins a thunder bolt for an arm and Susan Sarandon a magical baseball player improving pussy. He made Kevin Costner a regular guy. We lost something when they stopped making movies like this
"it's a movie about baseball players..."
😕
"...having sex with susan sarandon"
🙂
four stars!
"You did not get lured. Women do not get lured. They are too strong and powerful for that."
Susan Sarandon wearing high heels at the ballpark, suggesting that men fist fighting is latent homosexuality, and putting on "La Vie en Rose" before hooking up with Tim Robbins....what a queen.
I can forgive the “I believe” speech, which always makes my eyes roll (you believe in softcore pornography?) and sticks out like a sore thumb as the most writerly moment in an extremely written movie, and I can forgive the two very brief scenes of Costner and Sarandon dancing like the dorkiest suburban parents at the block party, mostly because every other frame is near-perfect. Definitely the greatest baseball movie, but even awarding it that title feels equivalent to a second-place trophy. It’s one of the great American films in the waning years of the 20th Century, one whose roots are firmly in Classical Hollywood (no wonder Wilder loved it) and whose light screwball energy masks a moving portrait of…
Kevin Costner saying things like "i believe in the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball," and "i never told him to stay out of your bed, i told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak" is pure love of the game. Ron Shelton, the athletic romantic, understands that the high horse speechifying side of sports can be just as cinematic as The Big Game, or a clown dancing under the lights at a minor league game.
A multitude of baseball movies have been strewn around the film ballpark since the release of Hugh Reticker’s Right Off The Bat in 1915, but Bull Durham is one of the sassiest. Writer and director Ron Shelton (White Men Can't Jump) grounds the tale with an apathetic and perspicacious vantage point as it observes the promising young pitcher Ebby Calvin Laloosh, played by Tim Robbins.
However, the film, on the whole, is more affiliated and interested in moralistic matters of the heart as minor league baseball old-timer Lawrence Davis (Kevin Costner) and baseball fanatic Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) quarrel while exploring philosophic concerns of self-assurance and of pursuing passions. Sarandon demonstrates she was the masterful choice for the well-educated yet…
Criterion Collection Spine #936
For the love of America's favorite past time and sex!
"The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."
Bull Durham and 'Field of Dreams' are two of the classic baseball movies that I have just never gotten around to seeing. So Bull Durham's inclusion into the Criterion Collection finally encouraged me to check it out, and it makes for a light/enjoyable sports romantic comedy. In the story, Susan Sarandon plays Annie whose two biggest passions in life are for her favorite minor league baseball team The Durham North Carolina Bulls, and hooking up with a different player each season. But things get a little more complicated when raw up and coming pitching prospect…
