Top 10 Baseball Films + Movie Review: Novocaine +  Trailer Park: Lilo & Stitch

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike. Today I want to share with you what I think are the top ten baseball movies in history. In the movie review, we'll be talking about Jack Quaid in a new action thriller comedy called Nova Kane, where he plays a man who can't feel pain. And in the trailer park, I am going to blind react to the new Lilo and Stitch trailer. It dropped last week. I hit record before I watched it because I wanted my true, raw, honest emotions because Lelo and Stitch is my favorite Disney movie of all time. Have all that for you coming up. If you want to subscribe to the YouTube channel, go to YouTube dot com slash Mike Distro. You can watch individual movie reviews there. For all my socials and links, you can always find them in the episode notes. Thank you for listening, Thank you for being subscribed. Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now let's talk movies from the Distro podcast network. And this is Movie Mike's Movie Podcasts. Baseball is you have games kicking off this week in Japan. Next week is the official opening day on Thursday, March twenty seventh. I love baseball, and when it comes to sports movies, baseball is my favorite genre of sports movie. I wanted to share with you what I think are the top ten baseball movies in history because I saw someone else put out a list that I'll get to towards the end of the episode. But I thought that list was an abomination. And I'll remind you if you're new here, I was a kid grew up in the nineties, so obviously it's gonna be heavily rooted then, So let's get right into the list. At number ten, I have Bad News Bears, and it is not the Bad News Bears from nineteen seventy six, the original. I went with the remake in two thousand and five, starring Billy Bob Thornton as butter Maker. He plays a burnt out minor league baseball player who loves to drink, he loves to curse, and he gets forced to manage a local little league team. I think why I enjoy this one over the original, Well, two thousand and five was a great year in movies, more importantly, a great year for Billy Bob Thornton and one of my favorite movies of his came out just two years before this. Bad Sanna, Bad Sanna, Bad News Bears. It all goes together. I just really enjoy Billy Bob Thornton being a degenerate. I think it's funny to see him drinking heavily, making bad decision cursing around kids. That is my favorite era of Billy Bob Thornton. And what I got in Bad Sanna, I got even more in Bad News Bears. I also just love baseball movies. We'll see a theme throughout this list about kids who are told they suck and aren't very good, have no athletic ability, but they go on to accomplish greatness, and that is what great sports movies are about. I think sometimes I struggle with enjoying sports movies because they are very formulaic, and it's always about taking a group of kids or a group of players that aren't very good. Can you have somebody come in clean him up and take him to greatness? And I think why I love this movie so much. It's very nostalgic for me. I just love that it's way more vulgar than the nineteen seventy six version. And this is an example from the movie of a scene that is incredibly vulgar so much I had to censor it a little bit, but I would quote this scene all the time. It's when he's doing some batting practice and Billy Bob Thoorton notices that the kid is eating a bunch of bacon. The hell is that a baggy full of bacon? Om On Atkins, what I have to eat all the time, keep my metabolism up, so my body comes a fat burning machine. So like, you don't give me all time the easy sport. And the other great thing about this movie is there's always that moment in a Billy Bob Thornton role like this where he just comes around where for the entire time he's not caring, he's not putting in any effort, he is doing everything in his ability to drive something straight into the ground. But there's always that moment where he flips and he starts caring about the kids. And it's always like that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where suddenly his heart grows and grows and grows and he starts to realize, Oh, I've actually started to care about these kids, and I want to coach them I want them to do a good job that and also when he gets to Bailbond's company to sponsor the team. So at number ten, I have Bad News Bears. At number eight, I have Basketball from nineteen ninety eight starring Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. And I know some people were going to say, you're cheating on this one, but I feel like this movie is a baseball movie to me, even though the sport they create is a hybrid sport combining baseball and basketball, and it was a big parody and poking fun at the state of professional sports at the time in the nineties, which it's even crazier now, where teams would move to different cities, where players would just move all the time and there was no consistency or loyalty because they would just go wherever the money was. They wanted to create their own wa league, and they primarily take the rules of baseball, but instead of hitting the ball, they are shooting it like a basket. But I think the actual game and the politics that go into basketball is more rooted in the game of baseball. So that is why I feel to me it is more of a baseball movie. The ball itself also looks like a giant baseball. My favorite part of this entire movie is the rule they add that you can psych out your opponent, and how hilarious would this be if a real professional sport added this as a way to have a colorful defense. Where what they do in the game is whenever somebody goes up to shoot, one player is allowed to psych out that player. You can basically say anything you want to the shooter to try to disrupt their concentration. So you're trying to say the gnarliest thing to get them to break, to get them to react to you, for whenever they take their shot, they end up missing it. Here's one of my favorite psychouts from the movie, which of course I have to censor it, but it's whenever Trey Parker goes up to psych somebody out and he goes into the Cartman voice, because not only is he one of the creators of South Park, he is also the voice of CARTMANK you losing weight? And that is a psych out that works. And I think the other reason I love this movie is it's because it's about two guys who aren't that athletic. They wanted to play a sport where they could drink beer and hang out and beat people who were more athletic and could probably beat them in any other sport, but this game levels the playing field. I think it's whatever. Whenever pickleball first got popular and everybody was saying that you could get good at it, really quickly you had senior citizens playing pickleball, and it really levels the playing field compared to tennis. That is what basketball does. So it was a sport for the working class American who just wanted to have fun, So it takes it back to the everyday person. It also brings back what the true heart and soul of baseball is. Just loving your team and showing your support for that team. That is what basketball is all about. And this movie is also hilarious. I really wish that they would have done more live action movies, but I think through this film in particular, they realize that they hate working with Hollywood actors. They hate that entire world. So that's why they decided to just do animated movies and puppet movies. And I can't wait to see the movie that supposedly is coming out later this year from them that they are working with Kendrick Lamar to make so at number nine Greatest Baseball movie of all time Basketball at number eight from nineteen eighty nine, I have Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner has done five big baseball movies in his career, and I decided on my list I would only pick one of them, and I think this one is the best one. It has the most memorable line in my opinion. The year before this, he did Bull Durham that came out in nineteen eighty eight, and I had to do some research that Kevin Costner was a baseball player and he had real life baseball aspirations. That is what influenced him to take many baseball movies and other sports movies in his career. To go from Bull Durham to Field of Dreams back to back and have them both be classics is a crazy accomplishment. Field of Dreams is all about him hearing the voice telling him to build a baseball It has great camaraderie, it has a great message. It has a lot of emotion that I feel comes across more than Bull Durham. He was also in for the Love of the Game in nineteen ninety nine. Chasing Dreams also in nineteen ninety nine, where he played a baseball player who had spent some time in jail, and then The Upside of Anger in two thousand and five, where he played a former pro baseball player. I think he's doing another baseball movie. And I know we just did Horizon that didn't really do what he wanted it to do in theaters. He's still shopping around Horizon too. That movie had no plot. I think he needs to go back to the classics. I think a post Yellowstone Kevin Kostner. He did the Passion Project thing, which I know he hates anybody who refers to Horizon as a passion project because to him, that lessens the product of it. But that's kind of what that was. Because he created a movie with no real plot, it was really hard to sell. I think he needs to go back and do another baseball movie. Bring on the Hits, Come on, Costner, you got it in You? That is at number eight, Field the Dreams at number seven from nineteen ninety three. I have Rookie of the Year. This is a fantastic, great nineties comedy that we just don't get anymore. It's about Henry. Henry, how do you say his last name. Let's let's go to the club. I'm looking for Henry Rulin Furter, Ravin Booze, Brozenbager, Cotton Hozer. I never doubted him for a minute. Hey wait a go run a mocker going in what you call me? He suffers a freak accident, he's twelve years old, and then whenever that ball gets thrown into his section at that baseball game for the Cubs, he throws it back and they're like, bring me that arm, and he goes on to be a picture for the Cubs. I think why I love this movie so much as a kid, It just embodies the nineties of fun sports movies that we really don't get anymore. Obviously, I'm not a kid anymore, so I can't experience a movie like this anymore. These just great fun movies that remind me of when life was so joyful and fun and you could create a wild concept like this and have it be a hit. Sports movies right now becomes so few and far between that really we only get biopicks. It's hard to create a great sports movie that I haven't seen a movie with this much originality in ten to fifteen years. I think The other reason I love this movie is because growing up, I had no athletic ability, and it was that thought of man, if I just had a freak accident that could get me superpowers and make me play incredible, that is something we all dreamed about as kids, for those of us who were not gifted with athletic ability. Another show from the nineties that I loved that embody this as well was The Jersey, which was a Disney Channel show about this magical jersey that whenever you put it on, you were transported into the body of a professional athlete. I thought that was amazing. So there was just this theme in the nineties of man if you could convince the kid that there was something out there that could give them that ability. But this movie just feels like summer to me, and that is what I love about baseball, that spring and summertime where we all just come out of that seasonal depression and want to be outside. If you were to tell me to describe my perfect day, if I could create a just a dream day, that day would involve me and Kelsey go into a base ball game getting three or four beers, even though I don't really drink anymore. I would drink at a baseball game, eat some peanuts. I would say an afternoon game. A night game is great too, But there's something about being in a baseball park where the air feels crisp, you hear that sound of a bat hitting a ball like that is my favorite sound. If I could describe just one sound that's my favorite sound, it would be this sound right here. Give me perfect weather at a baseball game. That is my favorite day. And that is what I feel, and it instantly takes me back to when I watch Rookie of the Year. So at number seven, that is what I have. At number six. Speaking of rookies, I have the Rookie from two thousand and two, the real life story of Jim Morris, the high school science teacher who ended up making the big leagues at the age of thirty five. We all love a classic underdog story, and I think that's what the theme of a lot of baseball movies are, a lot of sports movies. It's all about the underdog. But of all the underdog stories, not just in baseball, but in all of film, this is one of the best because you think about what this says about life and you get to a point in life where you start comparing yourself to others as far as where you are in your life, at what age. I'm doing this right now at thirty three years old looking at Jim Morris thirty five years old when this movie takes place. He is played by the one and only Dennis Quaid. And you think about that when you start comparing yourself to other people, like, oh, at this age, like this other person has this type of job where they're making this amount of money and they have two kids. We have no kids. And you're always comparing yourself to other people and where they are in their life, and it makes you feel bad about your life. And I think something that I've learned is you got to stop comparing yourself because everybody's timeline is different. I would probably be described as a late bloomer in life, like I didn't have a first real relationship until I met Kelsey I was twenty seven years old. So it's having to tell yourself that it's never too late to start something new, never too late to go back to school, and in the rookies case, it is never too late to live out your dream of playing in the big leagues. You also have Jimmy Sun in the movie, played by Angus T. Jones, who went on to be in Two and a Half Men. Dennis Quaid is another person who has been in multiple baseball movies. Not only was he in this movie in two thousand and two, he was also recently in The Hill in twenty and twenty three. He looks great in a baseball uniform. I have the rookie at number six getting into the top five. Now I have from twenty eleven Moneyball. It is a movie about math and data and the love of the sport. You have Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. This movie changed my outlook on life because much like we were talking about last movie of how you have to not compare yourself to other people, this movie made me realize that just because I'm not the highest draft pick, I am not the most desirable. I am not the person that you're gonna pay a lot of money to do anything. It is about using your resources, playing the numbers in your favor, and learning how to manipulate the system to your advantage despite the cards you've been dealt, and that is what this movie is about. It is based on the true story of the Oakland A's two thousand and two season, where they were struggling with competing with larger teams. They lost a lot of their players. So they developed this method that they talk about in Moneyball, of how can we make the best team with the money we have by playing the numbers. We don't have our big star player, but instead we can bring in all these players that can do selective things really well, and if we place them just right and get all of our chips together in perfect order, we can have a shot by looking at this problem like a math problem. And I've used this in my life because you're not always going to have all the money at your disposal, whether you're like me, you're a podcaster working in your home studio, or you're trying to start a business, You're not always going to have the best machines or the best processors to get your product out there. But you have to learn to work with what you have, and that is what this movie is all about. The movie is pretty accurate to what happened in real life. They do leave out some key players who were on the two thousand and two A's team. Again, Hollywood is always going to Hollywood stories up to make them more emotional. I also believe the character of Jonah Hill was a fictionalized person. He was based on somebody real, but some of the details about his character were again hollywooded up, and some of the conflicts between Billy Bean, who was played by Brad Pitt, and the arguments he had with the coaching staff were a little bit exaggerated. But again, it's a movie. You have to include those things. But Moneyball is not just a great baseball movie. It also had a lot of critical acclaim was up for awards, So I think that's another important thing I factored in to my top five is not only how much does it resonate with me as a baseball movie, but how much of an impact it head on cinema. So at number five, I have Moneyball. At number four from nineteen eighty nine, I have Major League and every way this movie embodies what I love about baseball. You have the camaraderie of the team, you have the vulgarity, you have the drama, you have the butt, sweat and tears that is all in Major League. You have a ragtag group of individuals, and what the movie is about. You have somebody new take over the team and you think, oh, they're gonna turn this team around, take them all the way to the top. No, this person comes in and they want to tank the team in hopes of they can move the Cleveland Indians from there to Miami, which is another wild thing to think about. This team doesn't exist anymore, and the A's in this movie also are about to not exist anymore. So parts of this rewatching it just feels like a bit of a relic. There's a scene whenever one of the players gets out of a taxi going to the call where all the players are meeting for the first time and pays with cash. That would never happen anymore. Nobody's taking a taxi and paying with cash. But the person who takes over wants to tank the team. Finds the most ridiculous players. Charlie Sheen comes straight out of jail. You have people who don't look like baseball players whatsoever. You have a really old pitcher, just a very unique group of individuals who don't get along. Some people way past their prime, some people who never had a prime. And these people think that, oh, we finally have our chance to be back in the big leagues, not knowing that they were set up to fail and looking back on this movie and thinking forward to Ted Lasso, how much inspiration did they pull for Major League. My favorite character, of course, would be Charlie Sheen's character. His glasses are iconic when he realizes that he can't see and that's the reason that he's throwing all these wild pitches, and he puts those on like that final scene in the last game where he comes to close out the game in the ninth inning. That scene still gives me chills. Second would have to be Wesley Snipe's character as Willie Mays Hayes, who is just funny, great comedic relief. My favorite scene in the movie, though, is whenever they are first starting out in spring training and one of the players complains about having to do set ups, that those sit ups you want me to do? I got a write to hear my contract says, I don't have to do any calistenics. I don't feel unnecessary.

00:19:45
Speaker 2: So what do you think about that?

00:19:54
Speaker 1: Manitor just peas on the contract. That is why I love this movie, a baseball movie where they act like probably real baseball players do in real life. They're cussing, their fighting. That is what makes this movie so impactful. It reminds me of me. Going to My first ever baseball game had to have been the year two thousand, maybe two thousand and one. I went with my church. It was the first professional sports game I had ever been to because grew up I just never thought me going to a professional game was in the cards for me because we didn't spend much money on extra things because we didn't have a whole lot. But by going with the church, I think we either got free tickets or really cheap tickets, or somebody paid my way to go to this game. But we went to a Texas Rangers game at the ballpark in Arlington, which they've since moved to Globely Field, and that is what made me fall in love with baseball. And I'll never forget how that game ended. Alex Rodriguez was playing on the team at the time, and he hit the game winning home run and I was probably ten eleven years old, and I lost my crap. He was at the time my favorite player pretty much only because he had my same last name. That was kind of a key role in me being such a fan of the Texas Rangers is Before that, my favorite player was Pudge Rodriguez also had my last name. There was a lot of Mexican influence in the nineties Rangers, so I think that's why I gravitated towards them so much. Obviously being from Dallas, them being right up the road, natural I was going to become a Texas Rangers fan. But seeing Alex Rodriguez hit that game winning home run, crowd went crazy, and then we tried to get our ball signed by Alex Rodriguez and they told us that he was going to come out and sign autographs after the game, which maybe somebody was lying to us. Again, I was ten eleven years old at the time. I'm not even sure who we asked, but I thought since we were part of the church youth group there, maybe they would come and sign autographs. But now looking back on it, they really only do that before the game. It's very rare that they come out after the game. But me sitting there with my church youth group wanting to get my ball signed, and he never came out. He ghosted us. Again. At the time, I held it against him because I thought, man, he never came out after winning the game, and they said he wasn't gonna come out because he was so hyped from that, I think somebody was just lying to us from every angle of that story. But nonetheless, it didn't stop me from continuing to be a fan. A couple of years ago twenty twenty three, that won the World Series was a fantastic experience for me and made up for everything I experienced that day at my first game, because now we can say we finally won a World Series, and I have high hopes this season that we're going back, well at least making the playoffs this year hopefully, but going back to Major League. I think it is a favorite among movie lovers, but also I feel if you asked every single MOLB player to name their favorite movie, I think since this is at least in what we think is an accurate depiction of what the lie of an MLB player is like, I feel like most athletes would pick this as their number one. And even though this movie came out in nineteen eighty nine, it feels very nineties to me. It is right there on the cusp of it. I would have loved for this movie to come out in the nineties just so I could add it to my list of favorite nineties movies. But nonetheless, It ranks pretty high on my list of favorite eighties movies at number four. I have Major League. Top three is strong at number three from nineteen ninety two, I Have a League of their Own. Not only is this one of the best baseball movies of all time, it is also the highest grossing baseball movie, with a lifetime gross of one hundred and seven million dollars. This has a fantastic cast. Everywhere you look in this cast, it's star star, star, star star, quote after quote. This movie also feels like a piece of history because it's rooted around World War Two, when all the men had to go and fight in the war, leaving behind avoid in the country. And you have the first ever all female professional baseball league in the Midwest. You have the relationship between Dottie and Kit fighting with each other. You have the grumpy coach and has been Tom Hanks, and you have one of the greatest quotes in sports movie history. He's no criting baseball classic right there. And outside of it being a good sports movie, it is also just a great drama, and that is hard to do on this list. I feel like there are only two movies that I would feel that same way about that if you rip apart all the elements of the sport at the core, they are just still great movies without it. I would say A League of their Own is that one, because not only is it a story about that first all female league, but it's also a story about two sisters. The older sister who has always been the favorite, always been the one people see as the pretty one, the one who feels at least in the eyes of the younger sister, who gets all the opportunities, has the perfect real life relationship. It's a story of the struggle of those two sisters and the younger one always being looked at as the kid and always being second stream, not only on the team but in life. And it's their relationship just coming to a head when she gets traded away blames it on her sister. You have the epic game to close it all out. And not only that, but it's also a big part of history when it comes to the rights of women to do anything that men can do getting paid the same amount. There's love and loss so much in this movie, so I feel out of every movie on this list, it would rank as also just the best drama. Next to that, I would put Moneyball, But I think out of all of the movies on this list, could quite possibly be the one I've seen the most, only because it would run so often on T and T and TBS that I feel like growing up, it was just on all the time, so maybe it was even later that I actually watched it from beginning. And it's a movie that you can really just pick up anywhere and enjoy it. So at number three from nineteen ninety two, I have A League of their Own. At number two from nineteen ninety three, I have The sand Lot. This movie is great because it embodies what it's like to be a kid, especially a kid who loves playing baseball. It has one of the best scenes of all time in any sports movie, The baseball scene at nine on the fourth of July with all the fireworks is a moment where all the wacky things kind of are pushed away to the side. You have the classic quotes of course you're killing me smalls with the whole smortest thing. You have all of the funny moments of like you play baseball like a girl, all those great things that make this movie great. For them taking the tobacco and all puking on the ride, you have all those things, but in this moment, the movie just slows down and has this very beautiful time to take in because throughout this entire movie they almost seem older than they are because they take playing baseball so serious. But in that scene in particular, you have them just being kids, just looking up at the fireworks because the reason they played on the fourth of July because all the fireworks light up the same lot enough for them to be able to get a night game in. When you have all the other kids watching and paying attention to those fireworks, you see Benny the Jet Rodriguez being so focused, still running the bases while they're all just standing there and looking up at the fireworks, because that's what you do when you're a kid. But that is the foreshadowing moment where you know that Benny of the Jet Rodriguez is going to be the only one who goes on to play in the big leagues because of how serious he took it. He didn't even allow himself to be a kid. He kept running the bases and eventually it led him to this moment, and there he goes he's stealing home. Don't believe he's stealing over.

00:27:49
Speaker 3: He's stealing. I don't believe in they don't be.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: I would also say rip to James Earl Jones whenever they finally go get the ball back from him and just go ask him like they should have done at the beginning, and then he's like, George signed this in reference to Babe Ruth oh Man. I also forgot about that quote. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. This movie is chucked full of great quotes. At number two, I have the Sandlot from nineteen ninety three. At number one from nineteen ninety four, my favorite baseball movie of all time, Angels in the Outfield. It's all about Roger goes into foster care because his dad's kind of a deadbeat. And he asked his dad this question at the start of the movie, going to be a family again.

00:28:49
Speaker 3: From where I'm sitting, I'd say, when the Angels win the Pennant, you stay out.

00:28:54
Speaker 1: Of trouble sign. So his dad tells him we can be a family again when the Angels win the Pennant. And he said that because the Angels were the worst team in baseball. What does Roger do? He starts believing that, starts going to every game, and by him being at games, he realizes that he can see angels in the field. And then the manager, George Knox realizes that this kid is seeing something and he's kind of a good luck charm. Hey, where in last place? What's the worst that could happen? He sets him up with tickets to every single home game with him and his friend JP, and anytime he sees an angel again, he's just humoring the kid. They come up with the signal because in baseball you have signals, and he starts waving his arms up and down like an angel would like angel wings going up and down. And anytime he does that, something crazy happens. You have Hammerling coming in, You have Matthew McConaughey out in the outfield making a crazy play. And then they all start believing in angels that build hype up around the team. And while that is great the team is winning, it's all coming back to Rodger, who just wants his dad back, just wants to be a family again, and gets to that point where the Angels are just a game away, I believe, and he goes to his court hearing and he sees his dad there.

00:30:13
Speaker 2: Dad, I didn't know you were gonna be here. You know the Angels are only one game for the pennant.

00:30:17
Speaker 1: Can you believe it?

00:30:17
Speaker 2: It's just like you say, sorry, boy, yeah, hear what I said?

00:30:27
Speaker 1: What are you going?

00:30:31
Speaker 3: He starts crying.

00:30:33
Speaker 1: How could you do that to Roger? You monster? You maniac? This whole time, he just wants the Angels to win, not because he loves the team, because he loves his dad. And he's there crying in the courtroom on the bosom of Maggie because he realizes that that's not coming back. You just said that to dupe them. Then they go on to win and everybody's happy again. Oh. One of my favorite quotes is also here comes Nacho. But whenever they keep messing with the supposed to keep them happy by getting emmerched and getting them food.

00:31:09
Speaker 3: Ah.

00:31:09
Speaker 1: I love this movie. It makes me emotional. It is heartwarming. It for the first time now in a long time, is available on Disney Plus. It was just like Lost for the longest time, you had to have a VHS to watch Angels in the outfield. But this movie is the real representation of why I love baseball because of that joy. It is a sport that is important for kids, it's the most I feel the experience is probably the best when you're a kid. I think that's why I associate it with my first game. The idea of like catching a foul ball now is fun to me, but it's more fun to me to be able to find and give it to a kid like that is why I would do it now. So there's something special just about being exposed to baseball when you're younger, because those memories just go on forever. And that is what I think about when I watch Angels in the Outfield. It just makes me emotional. Has the most. So at number one, I have Angels in the Outfield. My entire list was inspired by a Hollywood reporter list that a lot of people did not agree with, but I will add them in as honorable mentions. They had at number ten Boiling Point, which is a Japanese movie. At number nine from nineteen forty two. They had The Pride of the Yankees at number eight from two thousand and eight. They had Sugar at number seven. They had banged the Drums Slowly from nineteen seventy three. I believe that stars Robert de Niro and number six. They had a League of their own, so I feel like they got that one right, but six it's a little low. At number five they had The Natural, which is I know a lot of people's favorites from nineteen eighty four. At number four they had Fear Strikes Out from nineteen fifty seven, so they went with a lot of classics. I felt like they were being a little bit too cool here. At number three they had Bull Durham from nineteen eighty eight, which I feel is a little high for that movie. At number two they had Moneyball. I love Moneyball. It made my list, but number two is way too high for that movie. And at number one they had Eight Men Out. The other movie that all almost made my list was forty two from twenty thirteen story about Jackie Robinson starring the late Chadwick Boseman. That almost made my list. But those are the honorable mentions. If you have a favorite that you think I missed, hit me up on socials at Mike Dshro or send me an email Moviemike D at gmail dot com. Let's get into it now. A spoiler free movie review of Nobakane The Man Who Can't Feel Pain starring Jack Quad. This movie had a lot more emotional depth that I was expecting. Given the trailer, given the title, given the premise, I thought it was just gonna be a lot of shoot him up action, putting jack Quad's character in a lot of situations that were fun for the viewer and gonna be pretty mindless. But what I got was something that resonated with me a lot more than I was expecting. Jack Quaid plays a lonely guy works at a bank. Due to his condition where he can't feel pain, he has to live a pretty lonely and kind of sad life. Dude can't even eat solid foods out of the field that he's going to bite his tongue off because he can't feel it. So where I thought it was just going to be all the things associated with his life that would cause him not to feel like a punch or to feel somebody shooting him or stabbing him, it was all those little side things that really humanized his character more because out of this fear of not being able to feel pain and not knowing if something is actually hurting him to a degree that oh, this is really bad, where you and I could tell like, oh, I'm bleeding right now, and I'm feeling pain. I need to give to a hospital. He doesn't have that. Dude can't even pee because he doesn't even feel a sensation to need to pee, so he has to set a timerund his watch. So he spent his entire life living this really regulated life on a regimen, working at this bank where he takes no risks, and that has caused him to feel really lonely. And we are introduced to his character at the very beginning where he's trying to help somebody at the bank, somebody who's been married for a long time, and he's just thinking like, man, I just want to find that person. I just want to feel love when I can't feel anything. But then this new girl shows up named Sherry played by Amber mid Thunder fantastic name. Everything's going great until somebody decides to rob the bank and they take her hostage, and he decides, this is gonna be my time to step up. It's gonna be my time to be the hero, using his nervous system disorder to his advantage. And I have to say this movie is not for the squeamish. And I can't do Broken Bones. Everything else I'm pretty good with, but even just watching the trailer, which gives you a kind of a glimpse into one scene in particular, where he's being tortured by one of the criminals. If you can't handle any kind of torturing devices prying on people, there are gonna be some moments that are hard to watch, probably that scene in particular. Everything else is more along the lines of him getting into accidents and mishaps when he's actually fighting. That stuff is still at times brutal, but I think out of everything the most squeamish people will have a problem with that scene. I found myself even I wanted to look away at points because I can't do broken bones. I can't do anything that harms your eyes. I have this really weird thing. If anybody gets close to my eyes, I just go into defense mode. And maybe a good thing of me having glasses is I always feel a little bit protected. But if I take off my glasses that anybody needs to touch my eye. Whenever I have to go do an eye examine, they have to blow that puff of air in your eye. I have to warn them beforehand, like, hey, I have this weird eye thing. If I accidentally deck you in the face, it's not my problem. I just don't like people touching my eyes. So there are some situations where he gets things very close to his eye. Everything else I felt was pretty on par with as much destruction as I was expecting. So while this movie is about a guy who can't feel pain and the long journey he goes on to save the girl of his dreams, what this movie is really about is a guy who's missed out on life, worried that he's going to die. Where he's been too cautious of taking risks, been too cautious of even putting himself in social situation is dude doesn't even know what foods tastes like because he's so worried and fearful of death that he's forgotten to live his life. And this is his chance to finally push all those things to the side. He's in his thirties and he has to go out and prove to himself, not even to anybody else, that he's not just this sheltered bank executive. He is something more than that, and it was cool seeing his evolution. At times this felt like a superhero origin story, much like a superhero would discover his powers. He's already been dealing with this, but he didn't realize that he could use it to his advantage in this way and really just finally throws caution to the wind. You also have Jacob Battlon from the Spider Man movies playing his best friend, and his role I would say was pretty minimal. He almost plays with the guy in the chair in this movie as well, where we don't even get a whole lot of them in the movie, despite the amount that he was used in the trailer. I feel like movies do this all the time with like the best Friend, where they make it a big part of the marketing, but then they're barely in the thing. I think think if there was anybody I wanted more of, it was definitely his character, but it would just kind of sprinkled in there. The love story, I thought was pretty decent. I think you have to consider what it's like to be a lonely guy because I think the average person would watch this and think, why is he so dead set on getting this girl back? They haven't known each other that long? Why is he going through these links to do this? And I think if you understand the lonely guy mentality of him having nothing throughout his entire life, and this being his first chance to even have a remote sense of normalcy. I think that's what allows him to go to these links. If it was just a guy who had already been using this power to his advantage, had already been living a life where he was reckless and not caring about what happened to his body, the story wouldn't be the same. So it's the fact that he has been sheltered, working in his office and not going outside of his comfort zone whatsoever that makes him decide I don't want to be lonely anymore. So if you've ever experienced a level of loneliness this never been in a serious relationship, you can understand why he decided that's it. You pushed me to my tipping point. I'm gonna go after these bad guys and prove them wrong and win this girl back. So for the most part, I did enjoy the movie. I thought it had a pretty good amount of action. I just felt that it moved a little bit too slow, especially in that first act where I was like, all right, let's get going here. When you actually look at what happens in the movie and the fact that it's about an hour and fifty minutes. It almost feels like they stretched it out a little bit further than they needed it to go. At times, it just lacks that sense of urgency. And for a movie that felt a little bit reminiscent of a John Wick or a Monkey Man or a Nobody, those movies move really quickly. I was kind of expecting a little bit more. I just moved a little bit too slowly for me, and I was waiting for more surprises. I think when it came to the main three actors, they were great. Jack Amber and Jacob had great chemistry. I think Jack proved that he does have that lead actor capability and bankability in this. I don't think this is going to be a career defining movie for him, but it definitely proved to me that outside of the Boys and outside of the other movies he's done, that he does have the ability to step into a role like this and own it. It's also just hard to compare him to his dad. Also, when you think about there's another Neippo baby in this movie, Ray Nicholson, the son of Jack Nicholson, you have two Nepo babies here, and I think when it comes to Jack Quaid, who's been so upfront and open about the fact that he has two famous parents, that he has been given advantages in his life and hasn't straight away from that. He hasn't tried to hide his name. He is very upfront about owning the fact that he is a NEPO baby, and I can respect that. And it doesn't mean just because you have one or two famous parents in the industry that that's going to lead you to success. It does open up those doors, it does build in those relationships because you can go to people your parents knew and get your foot in the door. But that doesn't mean you're gonna earned the respect of the audience. Just because he has Quaid in his name doesn't mean audiences are good to go into this movie and think I'm gonna love this because it's jack Quade's son. He still has to earn that. I think he has been earning that with his work that I am able to separate him from his parents. I'm actually more of a fan of Jack Quaid than I am of Dennis Quaid. I think the roles he has taken on have spoke more to me as of late Ray Nicholson is interesting though, because he hasn't really sold me on his capabilities as an actor, because when I compare Jack Quaid to Dennis Quaid, I don't really put them on the same level. As far as Jack Nicholson compared to Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson is on an entirely different level, has so many more iconic movies and awards compared to Dennis Quaid. Both great actors, but a vast difference between those two. So I think it's actually much harder for Ray Nicholson to be compared to his dad, because that is a whole other level of acting, especially when you consider where Jack Nicholson was at the same age that Ray is now and Ray is really just being introduced to us. And I was thinking about his performance in this movie and when he was in Smile Too last year. Is the thing that really gives it a way that he's Jack Nicholson's son is his facial expressions. I think of the shining I see that smile that very just like zoned in look where even on the Smile Too poster they put his face on it, they put his sinister smile because it's that Jack Nicholson look. That's hard living in the shadow of your parent, of everybody associating you with him and saying, you look so much like your dad, and you can't help the fact that you look like them, But I think you can help the fact that you don't act like them. And I'm not really getting a different look from him. It almost looks like somebody doing a Jack Nicholson impression. And that could be being a little harsh on him, because he's like, no, that's how I act, same thing. How I probably have a lot of qualities of my dad, but you don't know my dad. My dad would probably be reviewing this movie in the same way. A lot of weird things of how we pick up mannerisms from our parents without learning them, just by growing up and observing them. So maybe that's already just built into him and he can't really change that. Or maybe he watches the Shining before he goes on a set and he's like, I gotta channel my dad. I gotta pull off those facial expressions and sell that Nicholson name. And I think the movie just kind of lost momentum there Towards the end. It kind of struggled with finding how to end this story and how to tie together all these loose sins. Maybe that's because they were trying to set up a sequel. They're trying to build an action franchise out of this. It almost felt like they ran out of ideas. But probably what it was is they ran out of money. It's an eighteen million dollar movie, so it doesn't have that same high production value or budget that you would get from a John Wick movie. But I think this movie does have some success at the box office. They end up making a sequel, they get add some more money to make the next one a little bit more fast paced for me. So for Novacane, I give it three point five out of five arrows to the leg.

00:43:57
Speaker 3: It's time to head down to movie.

00:44:00
Speaker 1: Oh trailer, Paul, all Right, I'm about to blind react to the new Lilo and Stitch trailer. At the time of recording this, it is Wednesday. The trailer dropped four hours ago. It's sitting at about seven hundred thousand views on YouTube. I reserved this right for really big movie trailers, at least to me, like my personal favorite ones. Last time I did this, and the only time I've done this, was the Superman trailer. Leelo and Stitch is my favorite Disney movie, and I've been very critical of the live action quote unquote live action Disney movies, and the thing I love about this movie so far, we haven't seen a glimpse of what it's actually gonna look like. We've seen the poster, we saw the trailer at the Super Bowl, which wasn't really a trailer, it was just Stitch running out on the field. And the marketing for this movie has been fantastic, and that's something that's always been a part of Leelo and Stitch. Whenever the first movie came out, they did the whole marketing thing where they put Stitch into a bunch of classic Disney scenes. This is all marketing because Thisitch is such a great character. All you have to do is make them do things, make them mess with people, and make it funny. It is at the time of recording this March twelfth. The movie comes out on May twenty third, and this is the first glimpse we're getting of it, and there's already anticipation building just on the marketing. That is a fantastic thing for this movie. And even though I've been critical of live action Disney movies, when it comes to my favorite one. I just want it to be good, and from what I saw before this, of just the character art, I thought it looked actually pretty good. I haven't seen anything about what Leelo looks like, but I have a lot of hope for this, so I wanted to do this real, live and raw, unedited give you my full experience. The movie trailer is about two minutes and twenty four seconds, so bear with me here. I hope this is entertaining. Are you getting my live reaction to this? Here is the Leela would Stitch trailer from Disney. We are the apprehended a dangerous experiment. Where is he?

00:46:14
Speaker 2: He escaped?

00:46:15
Speaker 1: He's trying to find the police cruisers. He took the red one? What hidious planet is caught in your crosshairs?

00:46:27
Speaker 2: Shooting star?

00:46:31
Speaker 1: I am Austrian French, like the best French the hell.

00:46:44
Speaker 3: Memorial Days.

00:46:52
Speaker 1: Your responsibility got it me?

00:46:54
Speaker 2: Promise?

00:46:54
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:46:58
Speaker 1: Look like an.

00:47:03
Speaker 2: Control him?

00:47:04
Speaker 1: What are you doing? No dogs on the table? You shoot us a dog? Mm hmm?

00:47:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are not keeping kind of means family. Family means nobody gets must behind her forgotten.

00:47:35
Speaker 1: That's that Sometimes family isn't perfect. That doesn't mean they are good.

00:47:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think you're abused to drink that.

00:47:48
Speaker 1: You're getting a lot of lamp.

00:47:52
Speaker 3: Now serving.

00:47:57
Speaker 1: Ancient cobra bubbles. We have a blue dog that.

00:48:10
Speaker 3: Man.

00:48:12
Speaker 2: Okay, remember I'm going to give into the top three Stitch.

00:48:18
Speaker 3: Why so many thoughts on this.

00:48:31
Speaker 1: Is when it's coming out. I am surprised how accurate it is to the original animated movie scene for scene, especially there in the beginning with him escaping line for line, I think is what is the most surprising to me, not only just the shots of it, but that straight up just the animated movie made live action, which up till now I feel like most of them have changed it just a little bit. Most of them stay with the beats of the story as far as the live act remakes. But this is like scene for scene. What I'm also seeing just from this trailer is it looks like they're gonna have Stitch talking more. He didn't talk a whole lot in the original movie. I talked to Chris Anders on this podcast, who is the creator of Lee Low and Stitch and the voice of Stitch, and he said there was really only one scene where he needed to have real acting abilities, and it's the best scene in the entire movie, but you see it in this trailer and hear it that they're making Stitch talk a little bit more, and I think they want him to be more of a mascot. They maybe realize that him not talking a whole lot in the first movie maybe didn't lead to some opportunities that other Disney characters have because he doesn't say a whole lot, he doesn't have a lot of conversations. Unlike other Disney movies where the main character is the one probably talking the most. Stitch with just talking like Dalk, but here he is saying more things and running around acting more kind of human ish. The part that is harder when you see it live action is the whole thing of that illusion of him even being described as a dog and then confusing him with the dog. You could get away with that more in the animated movie, because everybody looks animated, you don't really think too much about it, but it's really hard to believe that he's a dog. It looks like a blue alien in this, and he does look cute and cuddly. It is still Chris Sanders, the voice of Stitch, doing the voice here, and I think that is the big thing that is the main important thing that makes this feel authentic is that it's still him there, and all of his laps and all of his mannerisms still feel like Stitch because Chris Sanders is still the voice. I am curious to see how this holds up throughout the entire movie, because this looks fun to me, like seeing Stitch and Leelo have this stand up where he's about a sprayer in the face. You have some more scenes where he acts more like a dog. There's a scene where he's like rubbing his butt scratching it across the floor, like that's funny. So I'm curious to see how many new bits they bring in to amp up the comedy a little bit, because I think that's kind of what they're going for here, a little bit more slapstick, which you can do in a live action movie that you probably couldn't really do and have it have the same effect in the animated version. So you have a chase scene in here. I'm hoping it still has the heart of lee Low and Stitch, because that's why I love this movie. At the heart of that movie was the story of a creature being somewhere where he didn't fit in, and he felt like he didn't have family. So he is an alien, not only with his physical attributes, but he feels like an alien because he doesn't have belong anywhere. When he comes to Earth, he tries to fit in, he tries to do good, but all he does is destroy things because that is how he was built. That's in his DNA, is to destroy things and to be a nuisance and to be destructive. But he has to learn how to be a part of a family, and that is hard to do when you're doing all these funny, silly things in live action. To really bring that heart of the movie home, and I think that came across a lot because of that animation style, because of that warm feeling at a time in Disney where they were getting away from that, they were starting to go more everything has to be three D. Balilo and Stitch was one of the last still two D animated movies, and it felt the most nostalgic to those nineties Renaissance movies from Disney. So if it can bring that emotion into this, I think this is the home run now and I'm so glad how good it actually looks. The fact that just Stitch himself looks good. That is all you need. We didn't have a situation like with Sonic whenever that first movie came out and they released that trailer or I think maybe maybe with just a clip of it, and he looked completely off. He had like the little beady eyes, and everybody just revolted saying, this is not Sonic and they had to go in and change him. They haven't had to do that with Stitch. Seems like they're sticking very close to the original movie, which I am a fan of, and I wonder though, if they're gonna do my favorite scene, the scene where Stitch is about to be taken away by the aliens, sent back and vanished to his planet, the most emotional scene, or is this this is my family? I found that's all on my own. It's a little I'm broken. But stir goods, Yeah, stircruts, Like, can they replicate that? Chris Anders said that took a lot of acting out of him, the abilities. He didn't think he had to get that emotion across. If they do that and don't do a justice, that's gonna hurt me a little bit because the problem I have with these remakes ultimately is that sometimes they take away from the value and the overall just prestige of the original movies. And if they don't do that scene justice, if it doesn't hit right, I'm not gonna feel great about this. It could be perfect all the way up until that scene, but if they go for it and don't nail it, I'm gonna hold that against them. But again, that was my live reaction to the trailer It's coming out in theaters on May twenty third. Head that bar was this Link's edition of movie li Framer par and that is gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week. How do you get a listener shout out of the week. You can comment on my Facebook page, Instagram, TikTok. You can always find all those links in the episode notes, or you can go over to my YouTube page YouTube dot com slash Mike Distro. I put individual movie reviews there, so if you ever miss one, or you see something in theaters, or you see something come out on streaming after it's been in theaters and you're like, I wonder what Mike had to say about that one? Just go to my YouTube page, search the movie and you can find it there isolated in one individual clip. But this week I am going over to the YouTube page and I pulled a comment from my riff Raff movie review which kind of popped off a little bit because I was talking about mid movies, which has been a hot topic of conversation here, and Mike nine to five one two said, totally agree. I would say a recent exception would be Brothers with Dinklage and Josh Brolin, but the disappearance of them as a trend is real. There are too many to name from the nineties, but that's kind of the point. Mid budget, mid tier movies made with care and competence was a regular thing then, and no, it has zero percent to do with wokeness or culture. It's purely money driven. And I don't know if I made it seem like I thought it was because of wokeness or anything like that. I don't think that's the issue at all. I wanted to get the point across that it is a business. It is about making money, and studios don't invest in movies like this if they're not going to make money back and seeing movies tank time and time again when it comes to original ideas. Because studios don't want to invest much in the marketing. That is why this continues to happen. So I appreciate you Mike for sharing your thoughts, Thank you for listening, thank you for being subscribed, thank you for telling a friend. And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.