Every spring, about the time baseball is going to start, I watch a baseball movie. Usually it's Major League, the perfect cliche' comedy-sports film, but it had been a few years since I'd seen Field of Dreams.

Writer/Director Phil Alden Robinson caught lightning in a bottle with Field of Dreams. Never again did he create a film nearly as good or popular. (Although I've always had a soft spot for Sneakers.) It's one of those amazing films that is inexplicably good, the acting is solid, the story doesn't blow you away, it sneaks up on you instead, the film-making is typical Hollywood style, with nothing that particularly stand out, but the overall effect is wonderful. No matter how many times you've seen it, it leaves you with a better perspective on life. It's a beautiful film for men or women, anybody with a heart is touched by it's magic.

Kevin Costner is at his charismatic every-man best. James Earl Jones gets a chance to use that wonderful voice of his, in his best scene, he gets to talk about the beauty of baseball. I love every single shot of the baseball field in the middle of all that corn, it's Americana at it's most perfect. The story of Shoeless Joe Jackson getting another chance to play the thing he loves most is heartwarming. Each scene builds perfectly on the one before it, and when you've seen as many film's as I have, you begin to realize, just how tough that really is. At it's heart, the film is about redemption, showing those you love who you really are, and how far you'll go for them. So by the time Ray gets to "have a catch" with his estranged father, it starts to get a bit dusty in the room.

The Osterman Weekend was legendary director Sam Peckinpah's last film; and sadly it shows. It's messy and underwhelming, and most unfortunate of all, boring; with none of the action-fireworks or visceral-punch of his classic films: The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs or The Getaway.

The film is about a CIA agent played by John Hurt, convincing Rutger Hauer's character, a journalist, that his group of long-time friends are in fact traitors, selling secrets to the Russians. And that he can best capture them by getting them all together at Rutger's house for a weekend.

But everything isn't as it seems; with characters playing each other with all kinds of double crosses, everyone has their own agenda. I honestly lost track of what all was going on; only because I was so bored that my mind didn't want to do the work of connecting everything. I tried to enjoy it for the few action scenes, but none of them were very exciting, so I truly lost all interest before the twists started revealing themselves.

That's about all I have to say about this film, it doesn't deserve a full review; I'll let the two film clips below speak for me. - Grade: C-

___________________

A very underwhelming car chase, as Rutger goes after his family's station wagon, the kind with the fake wood paneling on the side, in a beat up old F-150. I guess Peckinpah was going for an everyday kind of car feel, but it's honestly just boring. There is one good crash, as some pipes impale another driver's car.

It's Rutger Hauer vs. Craig T. Nelson (and his ultra-sweet mustache) in a slow-motion fight, featuring all kinds of breaking glass, a theme that runs deep in The Osterman Weekend.