Movie · 1989 · Drama, Fantasy · 1h 45m · PG · English
Curator score: 5.6/10 (269.8K ratings)
All his life, Ray Kinsella was searching for his dreams. Then one day, his dreams came looking for him.
Overview
Ray Kinsella is an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. He does, but the voice's directions don't stop -- even after the spirits of deceased ballplayers turn up to play.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.6/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.63/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Metacritic: 57
TMDB: 7.1/10
Director
Phil Alden Robinson
Production
Universal Pictures, Gordon Company, Carolco Pictures
Cast
Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Gaby Hoffmann, Ray Liotta, Timothy Busfield, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Frank Whaley, Dwier Brown, James Andelin, Mary Anne Kean, Fern Persons, Kelly Coffield Park, Michael Milhoan, Steve Eastin, Charles Hoyes, Art LaFleur, Lee Garlington, Mike Nussbaum, Larry Brandenburg
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A warmly sincere fantasy-drama that turns baseball into a story about regret, fatherhood, faith, and the longing to repair what time has broken. Its premise is whimsical, but the emotional payoff is real and enduring.
Best for
viewers who like sentimental but earned tearjerkers
fans of sports movies with a magical-realist twist
people drawn to stories about fathers, sons, and reconciliation
audiences who appreciate earnest 1980s studio dramas
Skip if
you want a hard-edged or ironic tone
you dislike overt sentimentality
you need the fantasy rules to be tightly explained
you are not interested in baseball as an emotional metaphor
Overview
Field of Dreams is one of the defining American movies about regret and reconciliation, using baseball as a doorway into memory, inheritance, and the hope that it is never too late to make peace with the past. The fantasy premise is simple and absurd on paper, but the film plays it with such calm conviction that it becomes moving rather than gimmicky.
Worth noting
What keeps it alive is the emotional specificity underneath the myth. It is really about fathers and sons, about the way adults discover their parents were once young and full of unrealized dreams, and about the strange courage required to follow a voice no one else can hear. The movie’s sincerity is its superpower.
Bottom line
It can feel unabashedly sentimental, and that will be a dealbreaker for some viewers. But for anyone open to a gentle, reflective, slightly uncanny drama, it remains a classic: comforting, wistful, and quietly profound.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Patrick Willems (4★) · 2581 likes
This movie is mostly about baseball but also it has Amy Madigan halting the spread of neo-fascism in America
FilmApe (5★) · 2110 likes
The moment when you realize and accept that your parent(s) aren't just authority figures or breadwinners but people who had unique hopes and dreams, some of which came true, and some of which did not, people who aren't perfect, who don't have the answer for everything, who have scars that they will carry their entire lives, that is what Field of Dreams is.
Karsten (3.5★) · 1618 likes
should win best picture but they’ll probably go with one of this year’s
kayla (3★) · 1389 likes
Men will literally build a baseball field for ghosts while going into debt instead of going to therapy
David Sims (4★) · 1268 likes
I dare Hollywood to make a movie this unabashedly sincere and good in 2018