Perfect film moment

I love the way the dad says "I'd like that."

I just looked because it made me curious. The actor who played John Kinsella is named Dwier Brown. He's still working, and has appeared in dozens of TV movies and shows, but always in small, forgettable parts. He appeared for a few minutes at the end of Field of Dreams—and he's perfect in it—and that's the defining work of his career. He's like Moonlight Graham, but for actors.

 

There have always been disagreements among many people watching FOD whether John Kinsella really knows who Ray is.

In the scene immediately preceding, when Ray introduces him to Annie and Karin, Ray is careful not to explain the relationship out loud. I guessed there
was some metaphysical/baseball magic reason he wasn't supposed to say it.

But then, at the end, Ray addresses him as, "Hey, Dad," and then there's John's little throat-catch on "I'd like that."

So he knows.

 

I always took it as Ray's fear of acknowledging all that happened between them and John going along with it. Remember, they never got to work out their issues before John's death. That all melts away when Ray calls John dad.

Of course, it isn't supposed to be 100 percent clear. That is an underlying theme throughout the movie. We don't have to understand every little thing to do the right thing. Ray doesn't understand why he is building the field, but he does it anyway. The same is true of everything the voice asks him to do. He is even denied the information he wants, what is out in the field, but accepting that leads him to the reward, that moment of reconciliation and connection with his father.

 

The puny god scene is great for a fun moment. The T'Challa-Killmonger scene with Killmonger's mini-speech is solid acting. The Quicksilver kitchen scene in Days of Future Past was really well done. The Battle of New York in the first Avengers films is one of the best continuous action sequences of all time. The best acting in any comic book movie scene would probably be the interrogation scene in The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight has a lot of great moments, really.

 

I forgot about the Quicksilver scene. That really is beautifully done.

I thought the Battle of New York was a bit long for this discussion.

The interrogation scene was great, but no scene with Bale's Batman voice can qualify as perfect.

 

Godfather where Michael explains how he will kill Sollozzo. The entire scene. Sonny and Hagan. Sal and Clemenza laughing.
Godfather where Hyman Roth tells the story of Moe Green.

Clerks:, Dante and Veronica, snowballing and 37 dicks.

The entire first half of Lawrence Of Arabia.

 

One of the really underrated things about The Dark Knight (if there is such a thing) was how they got solid, well-known character actors to fill in the tiny supporting roles. Looking at the "magic trick" scene, almost every one of the featured mobsters is a known "That Guy" (Michael Jai White, Eric Roberts, Ritchie Coster, Chin Han). Later on, you get Anthony Michael Hall in a small role. William Fichtner breezes in and out of the opening bank robbery scene. Tiny Lister pops up for the boat scene and is perfect as a menacing presence.
The roster on that movie goes about 10 deep, as far as great veteran character actors.
Not a lot of those guys could carry a movie like that on their own. Most of them are only in one or two scenes in this movie. But they all bring something to the table in whatever scene they're in and lift up the movie as a whole. Those table setting scenes are a lot better because of those guys.

 

They seemed to do that quite a bit in the final two movies. Even the football scene in The Dark Knight Rises, where you barely have a second to see anybody's face, had quite a few real coaches and players. One of the movie's executive producers, Thomas Tull, was also a part-owner of the Steelers. That was Hines Ward who returned the kickoff as the field imploded. The kicker? Luke Ravenstahl, a former high school player who was then the mayor of Pittsburgh.

 

The extended bank robbery/shoot out in the streets at the end of "Heat," another movie that goes deep on characters with cameos. Like Jeremy Piven as the doctor who patches up Chris, or Tone Loc as the car thief who drops the dime on Tom Sizemore and gives Pacino the break they need. Even Natalie Portman, who is a bit more central to the movie, as the young stepdaughter who tries to commit suicide.

 

I’m angry. I'm very angry, Ralph.

You know, you can ball my wife if she wants you to. You can lounge around here on her sofa, in her ex-husband's dead-tech, post-modernistic bullshit house if you want to.

But you do NOT GET TO WATCH MY TELEVISION SET!

 

There's a scene in Primary Colors (which has aged amazingly well) in which the Bill Clinton figure's advisors are in a hotel room discussing his latest scandal and the camera leaves the room, going out the window and zooming in across the hotel parking lot to a doughnut shop glowing neon green. Inside the Clinton-type is alone with the guy behind the counter, talking about the problems in his life. That moment is magically well executed.