EEPHUS
Starring: Keith William Richards, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Wayne Diamond, Joe Castiglione, Cliff Blake, and Frederick Wiseman
Director: Carson Lund
QUENTIN
Given its low-budget appearance and lack of recognizable stars, I’m not sure Eephus will work for everyone. However, if you’re a middle-aged man that grew up playing little league baseball before graduating to beer league softball, this movie will speak to you like sentimental poetry. I saw versions of myself in nearly every character, and while it’s funny like a Yogi Berra quote — more dryly amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious — there is such an authenticity to the dialogue that you feel like part of the team. In Moneyball, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) rhetorically asks, “how can you not be romantic about baseball?” Eephus doubles down on that ideal.
KATIE
Eephus is a cozy film that I enjoyed more than I anticipated. There’s something comforting about the time it takes to appreciate the effect of autumn on the colour of the trees and the warm evening light as the ball game carries on late into the night. The cast of interesting characters give naturalistic performances, and it often feels like these are real people. There are, however, some artificially constructed scenes that attempt to be quirky but are realistically annoying. Overall, like the elusive pitch that the title refers to, Eephus was slowly paced but took me by surprise.
