Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2022)

Jack and I were captivated. This is based on the true story of Roger Sharpe, a young writer who loves the game. Set in the mid 1970s, Mike Faist plays him in his twenties doing the work to end a New York City ban on the machines and Dennis Boutsikaris narrates as Sharpe in the future. Crystal Reed plays the love interest.

Directed and written by brothers Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg in their feature debut, it mixes time periods, the history of pinball, and the personal story of the guy with the big mustache. Not sure whether to credit the mustache to the makeup department head Doria Riker or the hair department head Aaron Saucier so I'll shout out to them both.

Rob Barbato is credited with the soundtrack, which has not been released, as far as I can tell. Six other songs of the era are played.

Barbato was last blogged for The Eyes of Tammy Faye (speaking of makeup). We saw Faist on Broadway playing Connor in Dear Evan Hansen and then he co-starred as Riff in the newest reboot of West Side Story, though I failed to mention him. Some highlights of Boutsikaris' fifty year career (he's 71) include *batteries not included (1987), Money Monster, and fifteen episodes of Better Call Saul. Reed was apparently in Crazy, Stupid Love, though I don't remember her, and I've seen none of her other credits, nor have I seen any of Riker's. Saucier has worked on dozens of features and TV episodes.

This movie hit the jackpot with Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences, averaging 95 and 92%. We rented it on iTunes/Apple TV on November 28 but it's now streaming on Hulu with a subscription.

*Fooled ya. The title of the movie has an asterisk in it.

Milestone alert! Technically, I missed the exact milestone when I got behind in my posting. American Fiction was the 1500th movie to be summarized on the blog since September 3, 2008 and this is 1502. There are currently five in draft mode and we're going to spend three hours watching Oppenheimer today.