Perhaps no other sport lends itself as well to cinema as baseball, and there have been some memorable ones over the years.
The Natural,
Moneyball,
42,
Field of Dreams and
Bull Durham spring to mind. Well, we have a funny, soul-soothing treat for you this week at our
Glendale and
Santa Monica theaters. "Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title." ~
Nick Schager, The Daily BeastThe filmmakers will participate in Q&A's in Glendale after the 7:10 PM screenings on 3/13 with writer-director Carson Lund and actor Keith William Richards and moderator Amber A'Lee Frost (Chapo Trap House) and 3/15 with writer Mike Basta, writer-actor Nate Fisher, and moderator Brandon Harris (writer, filmmaker, baseball fan). Lund is also featured on the latest episode of Greg Laemmle (huge Dodger fan and former youth baseball coach) and Raphael Sbarge's podcast
Inside the Arthouse.Film critics adore
Eephus. As of this writing, its Rotten Tomatoes score is 100% with 37 reviews.
"Its pearls of practical wisdom and jewels of melancholic wit make Eephusa gem, which is fitting, for a movie about a game played on a diamond." ~ Jessica Kiang, Variety
"Many a true devotee will tell you that part of the game’s charm lies in its ability to facilitate socialization... Eephusis a film that understands this, and the script shuffles along with the rhythm of a baseball game." ~ Christian Zilko, indieWire
"A modest but poignant hangout film that resonates long after the last pitch." ~ Tim Grierson Screen International
"
Eephus isn’t exactly a baseball movie — it’s something closer to movie-baseball, where characters endlessly jostle back and forth under no real time constraints, watching the day slowly pass them by, simply out of love for the sport." ~
Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter*
"Has about it a mournful, lightly absurd poetry of the mundane, a rapt attention to the intimacy of transience and the meanings we make from relics and rituals of a time we’re passing through." ~ Isaac Feldberg, RogerEbert.com
"Baseball is the star, the game is the story, and the only conflicts that matter are the ones that the athletes resolve in play. Nonetheless, in Lund’s keenly discerning view, the game is inseparable from the human element." ~
Richard Brody, The New Yorker*
"Something about Eephus reminds me of Wiseman’s long, slow, methodical probing of institutions and of human behavior more broadly." ~ Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times