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.