Eight Men Out (1988) and Missing Brendan (2003)

I know that you might be confused by the two movie titles up there, and I don't want you to think that one of them is in some way the sequel to one another. I'll get to my point in a minute if you'll just bear with me.

Plot 1: A dramatized telling of the reasoning and actions behind the Chicago "Black" Sox scandal of 1919.

Plot 2: A family of men go back to Vietnam to try to locate a missing member or at least his body.

Some time ago, I decided that part of the mandate of Feria Films was to warn gentle readers about movies that suck and should be avoided for that reason alone. The problem, though, is that I sometimes feel like I watch a lot of movies that such, and I don't want to write about them after.

I actually watched Eight Men Out on December 20 or 21, and I've been trying to work up a review for it between now and then. I couldn't even come up with a complete plot description. While I sat through the exceptionally long feeling 119 minutes of this ode to not the actual game of baseball, I spend more time wondering when I will ever wise-up and stop renting movies just because a given actor is in it (in this case John Cusack, and the answer is probably never) then caring what happened to anyone in the movie.

Except David Strathairn's down-and-out pitcher, Eddie Cicotte. Even then, I mostly thought about how I sure do like that David Strathairn.

In the second case, I was moronically lured into Missing Brendan by Adam Brody's first season charm, which has promptly evaporated, I assure you. I spent the only twenty minutes I watched of this movie wondering how to tell the person I was watching it with that I wanted to stop watching the movie. By consequence, you know I can't actually review the movie, but I sure can tell you to steer clear. So steer that way.

So, if I ever felt like handing out Fs, this might have been a good place to start. But I won't go that far today.