In Eephus, a Charming, Small-Town Baseball Game Becomes the Game of Life
Eephus is a sweet, simple film, but its simplicity should not be taken for a lack of profundity. Carson Lund and co. have crafted more than a “baseball movie,” an elegy for these fleeting things in life that bring people together.
PASTE MAGAZINE, October 2, 2024
Movie Review (NYFF 2024): ‘Eephus’ is the Best Sports Movie In Years
Eephus pulls you through a range of emotions with ease, embedding you more and more into the emotional resonance at stake at Soldier’s Field on this random evening. A bittersweet ode to the institutions that provide us comfort, Eephus is one of the most emotionally rich films of the year, and an absolute joy from beginning to end.
IN SESSION FILM, September 30, 2024
Cannes Directors’ Fortnight comedy drama ‘Eephus’ sells across Asia (exclusive)
US filmmaker Carson Lund’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title Eephus has landed sales across Asia, ahead of its screenings at the New York Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival, for Film Constellation.
SCREEN DAILY, September 9, 2024
Music Box Acquires Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Baseball Comedy ‘Eephus’ by Carson Lund (EXCLUSIVE)
Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Carson Lund’s comedy drama “Eephus,” which premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. The film was recently announced as an Official Selection of New York Film Festival, where it will have its North American premiere.
VARIETY, August 7, 2024
‘Eephus’ Review: A Playful, Melancholic Ode to a Fading Universe and the Ties that Bind
Carson Lund treats the power of a shared interest with profound, elegiac empathy.
SLANT MAGAZINE, July 1, 2024
'Eephus' Review: A Laidback Ode to Third Spaces and Stolen Bases | Cannes 2024
Eephus delivers an experience that lingers, successfully capturing a deeper melancholy that can’t be shaken.
COLLIDER, June 11, 2024
Directors’ Fortnight comedy drama ‘Eephus’ acquired for French release (exclusive)
US filmmaker Carson Lund’s debut feature Eephus has been acquired for France by Capricci, with a theatrical release plotted for the first half of 2025.
SCREEN DAILY, June 6, 2024
Cannes 2024 Finale - The 8 Best Films to Watch Out For From the Fest
Who would've thought that a baseball movie from America would end up being one of my favorite films from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival this year?… It's a remarkable debut, boasting a super smart script full of wise cracks, jokes, and baseball lingo aplenty that will probably go over the heads of anyone who doesn't already know the game by heart….Hopefully ends up becoming an indie hit whenever it opens in theaters later this year.
FIRST SHOWING, June 4, 2024
Cannes 2024: Normal Normal or Cannes Normal?
If there’s one film that may find plenty of love away from the flashing of the cameras, it’s this quiet, late-summer, Linklaterian love letter to middle-aged meanderings, a home run hit with very few in the stands who were there to appreciate it, yet precisely the kind of effortless artistic fare one comes to Cannes to hope to discover.
ROGEREBERT.COM, May 29, 2024
The Toast of Cannes
From nine-digit budgets to nine-minute ovations, here are the fest’s buzziest titles.
VARIETY (Print Edition), May 29, 2024
Cannes 2024: 'Eephus' - A Baseball Film Like You've Never Seen Before
Lo and behold, we have another classic that has just come up to bat. Carson Lund's *Eephus* is a baseball movie we've never seen before. And it's genius. It's an "old dudes play ball" indie comedy and it's hilarious. I laughed my ass off watching this, it's more fun than actually going to a ball game… Lund's new film is one of the best discoveries in the Directors' Fortnight line-up at Cannes 2024.
FIRST SHOWING, May 27, 2024
The 15 Best Movies at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival
Disappointment hung in the air a few days into the 2024 Cannes Film Festival when no main competition films had universally wowed industry and press. But you have to know where to look, which often means going outside the official selection and into sidebars like Un Certain Regard and Directors’ Fortnight in search of gems.
INDIEWIRE, May 27, 2024
‘Eephus’ Review: A Wry and Lovely Baseball Movie That Pitches Slowballs of Quiet Wisdom
A small-town baseball game stretches on into the night in Carson Lund's adorably existential, off-kilter take on the sports movie…. Its pearls of practical wisdom and jewels of melancholic wit make “Eephus” a gem, which is fitting, for a movie about a game played on a diamond.
VARIETY, May 21, 2024
‘Eephus’ Review: Not Even Beer League Baseball Is Spared the Cruel Passage of Time (Indiewire Critic’s Pick)
The film’s only villain is the passage of time, and its protagonists are simply facing the unpleasant realization that their era is ending sooner than their lifespans. It’s the fate that awaits most of us in one capacity or another, but nobody wants to think about that. So we play those extra innings in pitch darkness, just to say that we did it.
INDIEWIRE, May 19, 2024
Cannes Review: Carson Lund’s Eephus is the Definitive Baseball Hangout Movie
If the perfect sports movie illuminates the fundamentals that make one fall in love with the game, there may be no better movie about baseball than Carson Lund’s Eephus.
THE FILM STAGE, May 19, 2024
‘Eephus’: Cannes Review
Eephus follows the final game played by two unexceptional recreational-adult-league teams before their beloved ballfield is torn down, and the result is a modest but poignant hangout film that resonates long after the last pitch.
SCREEN DAILY, May 19, 2024
15 Films Not to Miss at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival
For Filmmaker, Vadim Rizov and Blake Williams are both back with on-the-ground reports and Critics Notebooks, and we begin with this list of 15 films that might be sliding under your radar.
FILMMAKER, May 15, 2024
Our 20-Most Anticipated 2024 Cannes Film Festival Premieres
By subverting the tropes of the standard sports movie, which often capture peak physical performance in front of legions of adoring fans, Lund has crafted something far more singularly compelling in capturing this group of weathered yet passionate misfits.
THE FILM STAGE, May 9, 2024
Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Unveils 2024 Line-Up
This year’s line-up features a quartet of films by emerging U.S. directors: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Ryan J. Sloan’s Gazer…. Eephus, revolving around the final game of a small-town baseball team, is the feature directorial debut of Lund, who also takes a cinematography credit on Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point.
DEADLINE, April 16, 2024
Meyer Shwarzstein’s Another Brainy Idea reveals development projects
In development as a drama series is an adaptation of The Talented Ribkins, a prize-winning 2017 novel by Ladee Hubbard. The series, about a man who helps his niece harness her superpowers during a trip across Florida, is being produced by Reuben Cannon, Michael Richter, Jon Shestack and Shwarzstein.
SCREEN DAILY, February 13, 2024
Michael Richter: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Content Creator
As a part of our series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker,” I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Michael Richter.
AUTHORITY MAGAZINE, April 23, 2023
Sci-Fi Author Philip K. Dick Getting Biopic Treatment With ‘Only Apparently Real’
Philip K. Dick the author whose works have been translated into popular movies such as Blade Runner and Total Recall, as well as the series The Man in the High Castle, is getting the biopic treatment.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, June 29, 2022
Sci-Fi Author Philip K. Dick to Get Biopic from Jon Shestack and Michael Richter
Between alternate realties, mysterious break-ins and government surveillance Philip K. Dick's biopic is going to be wild.
COLLIDER, June 29, 2022
Jan Wahl Movie Review: 'All Is Lost' & 'Torn'
Shot in the East Bay ... two of our fine local filmmakers, Jeremiah Birnbaum and Michael Richter, illuminate a timely story about two mothers forming a bond when their sons are killed in a terrorist attack.... This is brave filmmaking with an excellent acting ensemble.
CBS SF BAY AREA, October 25, 2013
Movie review, "Torn": aftermath of an attack
"Torn" is a succinct and emotionally truthful drama about the aftermath of a terrorist attack, as experienced by two families. It's a portrait of grief and devastation, and also of the ways in which the police and media can jump to conclusions and feed off of the public's anger and confusion...
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, October 24, 2013
Review: 'Torn' tackles post-9/11 values
“Torn” capitalizes on a gripping and emotional storyline to deliver a terrific ending.... [W]ith its focus on ordinary, realistic people dealing with an event that is all too possible, it does something a lot of better-financed Hollywood movies don’t: It makes you think.
THE MERCURY NEWS, October 23, 2013
Two Mothers, Divided by Their Sons
Slowly uncovering the prejudices that calamity can unleash, Michael Richter’s screenplay lays bare the damage wrought by Sept. 11 while deftly dodging hysteria, wondering how we differentiate between innocent teenage behaviors and dangerous red flags. Most of all, it wonders if we can ever fully know the people we live with, leaving the question to resonate as deeply as the two women’s grief...
THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2013
Film Review: Torn
From a terse, wonderfully observant and unsentimental screenplay by Michael Richter, director Jeremiah Birnbaum has made a refreshingly low-key, unhysterical account of a modern tragedy and the very specific ways it affects people, long after horrific incidents happen.... Richter tells the tale with admirable economy—the film runs 80 minutes—as well as an unstressed but devastating emotional authenticity. He could have ended his film with the question of the boys' culpability unanswered and that ambiguity would have been sufficient, but instead he reveals the truth, and the revelation is breathtakingly poignant...
FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, October 17, 2013
Specialty B.O. Preview: 'All Is Lost', '12 Years A Slave', 'Torn'
“About a year ago, I saw the final cut of the film and fell in love with it.” The film won the Grand Prize at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, but kept its festival run to a minimum. “We didn’t do the festival circuit...We wanted to take the film out in the fall, though we were too late for Toronto"...
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD, October 17, 2013
Torn: Film Review
Michael Richter’s screenplay weaves together its various themes and such subplots as Lea’s tentatively resuming a relationship with her long estranged ex-husband (Patrick St. Esprit) with intelligence and sensitivity, not to mention an uncommon succinctness (the film runs a scant 80 min). The relationships between the complex characters are well drawn, and the ironic ending manages to touchingly upend our expectations...
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, October 16, 2013
A Tender, Well-Performed Narrative on Multicultural Intricacies Amid Tragedy in Torn
Michael Richter’s intimate script traverses this mercurial territory without veering into hysterics—a great accomplishment. When the women tearfully confront one another, you’re on the journey toward acceptance with them. Made for less than $500,000, Torn is proof that a little can go a long way. In fact, the microscale perfectly lends itself to the story’s quiet revelations...
THE VILLAGE VOICE, October 16, 2013
Torn
A genuinely unsettling microcosm of modern terrorism... Torn rings with the sound of quiet truth. “I have a bomb and a Pakistani kid, so I’m sure you can appreciate where we’ll have to go with this,” a detective (John Heard) says early on. The welcome surprise of Birnbaum’s film is that where it has to go is so unexpected.
THE DISSOLVE, October 16, 2013
Exclusive: Trailer & Poster For Post-9/11 Drama ‘Torn’
If there is anything we have learned post-9/11 is that the spectre of threat and the presence of fear can arrive from completely unexpected places.... This exclusive trailer gives you a taste of what's to come with this film that won the Grand Prize at the Rode Island Film Festival. "Torn" opens in limited release on October 18th.
INDIEWIRE, September 3, 2013