Best movie of this year hands down!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to For Love Of The Game.Plot In A Paragraph: Before an unimportant last game of the season, Billy Chapel (KC) a 40-year-old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, is having a bad morning. He wakes up with a hangover and learns (a) the owner is selling the team, (b) he's being traded, and (c) his girlfriend Jane (Kelly Preston) is leaving him. As he pitches the game he thinks back on his relationship with Jane. This is two movies, it's a rubbish love story, with a good baseball movie trying to get out. I love all the baseball aspects of this movie. Everything is spot on, especially when KC zones out the crowd. But the love story leaves me cold, KC has next to zero chemistry with Kelly Preston. Both have been much better, with other actors in different movies, and they had better chemistry with other actors in the movie. As for their characters he is grumpy and self obsessed and she is moody and insecure, and to make it worse, both are selfish, and are pretty unlikeable at times.I still get chills when Chapel realises what he is about to achieve, and he admits to his catcher, he didn't think he had anything left, and I feel a lot of pleasure in seeing Chapel get "more than a little help from his friends". For a sports movie, it's surprisingly different, Chapel is not an under dog, he is a great athlete, who has had a wonderful career, who just happens to be in the twilight of his career and the game being played is "a throw away, that means nothing" as described by John C Reilly (who may just be my favourite character in the full movie) as catcher Gus Sinski. As for the rest of the supporting cast Jenna Malone is OK, whilst JK Simmons and Brian Cox also offers solid support as the teams coach. Before watching it today I would have rated this 9/10, but now it's reduced to an 8/10

I would have to say that I have seen very few sport movies better than For Love of the Game. This is a feel good movie. It was light drama and it was extremely well done. You can clearly see that every one who has worked on this film, had real passion for their job, the story and the overall quality of the filmCostner portrayed an aging baseball player with a romantic attachment to the game. The symbolism of the movie was the notion of ending a romance for the game and transferring that romance to a woman. For him, at least, there was room for only one at a time. And, fortunately for her, his career was at the very end. Fortunately for us, we got to see his last game interspersed with flashbacks.The movie was brilliantly done with respect to the actual game of baseball. I cannot recall having seen a sports movie that did such an excellent job of maintaining accuracy about the game. I honestly could have believed I was watching an actual game. The plays were realistic. The situations realistic. And, Vin Scully was sensational doing the play by play.This is a must watch for any Baseball, sports fan or general movie goers. Trust me when i say this, but you will not be disappointed.

****************** ATTENTION SPOILERS !!!!!!!!!!!!!! ***********************The movie is supposedly a baseball movie and simultaneously a romance. The lone protagonists are Costner and Preaston, but the movie is actually exclusively centered around Costner. Which could be criticized for poor character development, but at the same time, besides Costner, the rest of the cast delivers meaningless contributions. Well first because the story is cheesy, much too clichè, to the point where you can actually fill in the lines because you know anticipate the dialogue. Then, the movie is really bailing water: it's not a sports movie, it's a bad romance because the relationship is not believable, it's only centered around Costner's flashbacks in the middle of a game. Wow, seriously ? And he manages fine until his hand and his shoulder give up, which for x & y reasons, is weird. In reality he would take a PCR shot but it would not enable him to throw so consistently well at his age. Costner is a chameleon, and I get that he did this movie to cover up for his divorce lawsuit. But this script is too uninspired and incoherent for him to lift it up to a decent level. The whole green eyed blond mom at 16 with a job that seems to pay well yet her job is not clear, since she is part time but doesn't have her own car, the sudden interaction between her daughter and Costner out of nowhere, the goofy Sunuski who keeps calling Costner 'chappy' (so overdone), the manager who steps down to a player's orders, the owner who sells the team because he doesn't believe in baseball which actually would be because the team stinks fails to reach the playoffs and it leads to bankruptcy, there are so many elements that make it unwatchable. It takes a lot of poise not get irritated by them.

The producers were obviously trying to cash in on the popularity of Bull Durham, but this was a bad misfire. 5 percent baseball. 95 percent psychobabble, with Costner and Preston endlessly discussing their relationship, the rules of the game, etc, etc. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan without the humor. And what the Tiger's ace pitcher could see in this messed- up gal is a mystery. At 40 years old, he should have known better. Susan Sarandon was a much more convincing match for him.If you like juvenile dialog about love affairs, you may find this interesting. But if you're looking for a baseball movie like Bull Durham or Field of Dreams, forget this one. It's a love story, and not a very good one.