The Natural

Dir: Barry Levinson, 1984 (8.1*)
One of those "mythic" sports stories, starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs, a terrific pitching prospect whose career is cut short by a shooting (Barbara Hershey). He emerges later as a slugger, with a bat made from a tree struck by lightning (somehow it never gets broken), and with Glenn Close as his inspiration. Kinda Hollywoodish, but also purely enjoyable Americana, as "baseball is the national pastime". From the novel by Bernard Malamud.