Final Four: Field of Dreams vs. A Christmas Story

Off and on I'll ask myself, "What is my favorite movie of all time?" Some years it's one movie. Some years it's another. I'm going to try to settle this once and for all with the My Favorite Movie Tournament. It's a 64 movie double elimination tournament that will crown my favorite movie of all time.

To give sort of a blanket criteria for movies to succeed, the movie must have 3 criteria met:

1. Staying power. I can't just see a movie once and say it's my favorite all time. It has to be a movie I can sit and watch any time it's on or I can put in the DVD and watch it at any given time.

2. Memorable characters. The movie can't be filled with John and Jane Does. It has to be filled with characters I can never forget because it's the characters that draws me into a movie.

3. Quotable quotes. A movie cannot be proclaimed my all-time favorite if I can't continuously quote from it. The quotes help with staying power but they are a quick reminder to anyone around that you've seen the quoted movie.

Field of Dreams vs. A Christmas Story

>> "If you build it, he will come" has been one of the most quotable quotes in all of cinema, but is it enough to maintain Field of Dreams' run in the tournament to decide my favorite movie of all time? At one point in my life Field of Dreams was my favorite movie. It had a special bond with the audience that only a baseball movie could have. It took me a long time before I had finally bought this movie on DVD and occasionally I would watch it or when I found it on TV. And still to this day I can sit through and watch the movie and tear up at the end when Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) asks his father for a game of catch as cars start pulling into the parking lot.


As far as memorable characters, Field of Dreams is chocked full of them. You have Kinsella, the Iowa farmer who starts to hear voices telling him "If you build it, he will come" "Ease his pain" and "Go the distance." As a result of the voices, he builds a baseball field, kidnaps Terrence Mann and goes to find Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, respectively. Also in the movie are Mann played by James Earl Jones and Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta). Each character adds to the plot in his own certain way. Jones most memorably through his "baseball has remained the constant" speech towards the end of the movie and Liotta through his entire stint as Jackson.

Not only was "If you build it, he will come" an often used quote from this movie, but there are other gems throughout as well:

"Daddy, there's a man out there on your lawn."

"I told him I could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal."

"Get out of here! I'm not going to show you my gun!"

"Hey knuckles! Why'd you throw at the kid for?" "He winked at me." "Don't wink kid!"


>> On the other side of the equation is one of the most beloved Christmas movies of all time. Every holiday season TNT plays A Christmas Story marathon and every holiday season I sit in front of the TV for most of the day and watch the movie over and over. If that isn't staying power I don't know what is.

As far as memorable characters go, you have to start out with Ralphie. He's just a kid, like all of us at one point, who wants a certain thing for Christmas, in his case "an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and 'this thing' which tells time." There's also the neighborhood bully Scut Farcus, Flick, Schwartz, Grover Dill, Randy and Ralphie's parents.

Quotable quotes are abundant in this movie and oh there have been so many times when I've quoted this movie. So many times it's not funny anymore...actually it is still funny.

"Ohhhh fudggggggeeeee. Only id didn't come out 'fudge.' You know the one I'm talking about. It came out the big one. The mother of all dirty words. The F dash dash dash word!"

"You'll shoot your eye out kid!"

"Be...sure....to...drink...your...Ovaltine. Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Sonofabitch!"

"Meatloaf. Meatloaf. Double beatloaf. I hate meatloaf."

"You look like a deranged Easter Bunny."

"Fra...gille...must be Italian."

"Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense."

"The theme I have been waiting for all my life! Listen to this sentence...'A Red Ryder BB gun with this thing that tells time!' Poetry! Pure poetry! Ralph...an A+++++++..."

"I triple dog dare you!" "Schwartz created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going right for the throat!"

"Help me, help me. Don't leave me guys. Don't leave me..." "But the bell rang..."

And my personal favorite...

"Twas...it was...soap...poisoning."


And many many more...

>> Winner A Christmas Story