Field of DreamsThe 2014 Coca-Cola Summer Film Festival at the Fox Theatre kicks off tonight, June 19, with a 25th anniversary screening of Field of Dreams. Once you pick your jaw up off the floor and accept that it’s been 25 years since that movie came out, head over to foxtheatre.org to buy tickets. There will also be tours of the Fox, a sing-along with the Mighty Mo organ and a vintage cartoon. The tours begin at 5:10 p.m. and the film at 7:30 p.m.

If you’ve never seen Field of Dreams, it truly is a modern classic. Kevin Costner plays an Iowa farmer who hears a voice (“If you build it, he will come”) and has a vision of a baseball field in the middle of his cornfield. Once built, the spirit of disgraced baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson wanders out of the corn along with other players blacklisted in the 1919 World Series scandal. Another voice urges Costner’s bewildered Ray Kinsella to “ease his pain.” A dream leads Ray to believe that he must travel to Boston and find reclusive writer Terence Mann (James Earl Jones, who should have won an Oscar), whose unfilled wish was to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. A cross-country odyssey, more voices, a stirring soliloquy from Jones on how baseball has shaped America and a poignant finale make for a delightful night at the movies.

If Field of Dreams isn’t your thing, there’s plenty more films on the way including 75th anniversary screenings of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. You can see the full line-up of films, as well as a list of other summer movie festivals, at this link.

Collin KelleyEditor

Collin Kelley has been the editor of Atlanta Intown for two decades and has been a journalist and freelance writer for 35 years. He’s also an award-winning poet and novelist.