A recommendation: Eephus - A Unique Baseball Film
“It’s getting late early out here.” An underrated indie gem is now available to watch on VOD at home any time. Eephus is one of the best baseball films of the modern era. But it’s also entirely different from any other baseball film that has come before. That’s what makes it such an entertaining and unforgettable film to watch! Eephus premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival (in the Directors’ Fortnight section) last year and opened in theaters earlier in 2025 already. I’ve been a big fan of it since first watching it in Cannes. I wrote in my review (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre): “Carson Lund's Eephus is a baseball movie we've never seen before. And it's genius. It's an ‘old dudes play ball’ indie comedy and it's hilarious. I laughed my ass off watching this, it's more fun than actually going to a ball game, and there's plenty to analyze about what's happening beyond the who's on first and who has the best pitch.” I still think about many of the one-liners, and still think about how exciting it was the first time I was watching the film, witnessing something great. Ready to go on & on about it and recommend it as soon as it was over. One thing that makes Eephus such a unique film is that it takes place over the course of one day, following this game into dusk and all the way into night, and the film shows us this. The field gets darker and darker until it’s too dark to play – but the game isn’t over and neither is the story yet. And where it leads wraps up the story in a very meaningful way. It turns out, Eephus isn’t just about baseball - it’s also a movie about growing old, how things change, how time keeps on marching, and everything else that comes with life as a human being on this beautiful planet.
(S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)A better intro: Two recreational baseball teams, the River Dogs and Adler’s Paint, have been meeting on their New England field on Sunday afternoons for longer than anyone can remember. These middle-aged sportsmen can’t run as fast as they used to or connect as reliably with a pitch, but their vigorous appetite for socializing, squabbling, and busting chops remains undiminished. After the know-nothing county board opts to raze the baseball diamond to make way for a school, the teams meet for one final game at their beloved Soldier’s Field, with girlfriends, kids, and local hooligans as intermittent spectators. As day turns to night and innings bleed together, the players face the uncertainty of a new era. Lovingly laid in a vanished Massachusetts of the mid-1990s, Carson Lund’s poignant feature debut plays like a lazy afternoon, perfectly attuned to the rhythms of America’s eternal pastime. Named for a rarely-deployed curveball, Eephus is both a ribald comedy for the baseball connoisseur and a movie for anyone who’s ever lamented their community slipping away. Eephus is directed by filmmaker Carson Lund from a screenplay written by Michael Basta, Nate Fisher, & Carson Lund. The cast is made up of mostly unknown actors - aside from the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman who appears in the film. In addition to being a superb film about baseball and about growing old in life, Eephus is also very much an East Coast film capturing the distinct vibe of the Massachusetts suburbs. I hope my recommendation to watch this film is meaningfully strong - because even though it may be a hard one to convince people to watch, I do hope some of you will take the time to click “play” on this one and enjoy it as much as I did.
Play ball! Eephus is available to watch on VOD and elsewhere - visit the film’s official site (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre).
