The desire for a commercial success, for critical accolades, to show-up your peers... ugh. I'm making them out to be total weasels! Hopefully, Raimi and Craven are above this B.S. and instead, have a burning desire to make meaningful films. I'm sure that both of them wished their first movie was something like Lawrence of Arabia instead of Last House On The Left or The Evil Dead, but they can't turn back the clocks now. They're not dead either. They may have some personally significant movies left in them yet.

The National Coalition on TV Violence found that 60% of children ages 10-13 could recognize Freddy Krueger while only 33% could recognize Abraham Lincoln. I wonder how Craven feels about this contribution to society. He could repent for this sad statistic by making Roberta Guaspari Dimitras' socially-conscious and inspirational story. Meanwhile, with a title like For Love of the Game, you'd expect to see a movie that will capture the pure passion, devotion and mania of America's favourite pastime. Sam Raimi, a self-proclaimed baseball fanatic now has his chance to make something from the heart.

For Love of the Game: Being a fan of baseball myself, the first thing that nagged me coming out of the theater was this -- the opposing team (the Yankees) is fighting for a spot in the playoffs in the final day of the season... and they decide to use a rookie who's never played in a major league game before to pinch-hit with two out in the ninth inning. I'm sorry, but no coach would ever try that! Ah well, that doesn't matter because this is not a drama about the love of baseball. It could have been but it's not. Why? Because we see maybe five balls thrown in the entire movie, and it's always strike after strike. These scenes look great, but there aren't enough of them. The real heart of this movie is about a deteriorating relationship and a man whose life is falling apart. Raimi tries his best to make an otherwise conventional conflict more meaningful, but I the movie is a little confused. I'm not sure if the more dominant romance story ever matches up to his sparse yet taunting baseball sequences.

Music of the Heart: Even if it's not nearly as emotionally inspiring as say, Dead Poet's Society or Mr. Holland's Opus, at least this film has a noble cause. It has a point to make and a message to give, one that I firmly believe in. When schools get grants, most of the time, the money always goes to computers. Well, that's great and all, but the world can only be filled with so many technicians. You gotta support the arts systems in public education. It's too bad that this movie doesn't drive this point home quite strongly enough. It never stirs you into action.

This completes my critique on non-genre movies made by genre moviemakers. (Say that three times fast!)

Final conclusion? At least they tried. I may not have loved either For Love of the Game or Music of the Heart, but I still urge you to go out and judge for yourselves. Shoot down my theories if you wish. I welcome feedback, I thrive on flames. Otherwise, go see these films in support of Wes Craven and Sam Raimi. These filmmakers were willing to take on a new challenge, even if they will never be taken seriously. (I mean, what does that say about the genre they represent?) Whatever reasons they may have had for going 'mainstream', they should continue to try to break the genre barrier until they're the ones laughing in their naysayer's faces.

Don't despair, cult fans. While we will never be seeing For Love of the Game or Music of the Heart as a double bill on the midnight movie circuit, they'll be back. Comfort yourselves with fact that Sam Raimi's new project is entitled Doomsday Man and that Wes Craven is busy shooting the third installment of Scream. These men were born and bred from of the B-horror movie and that will always be inherent in their blood, regardless of what genre project they may be experimenting with.

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