Throwing Meatballs
Director CARSON LUND talks EEPHUS, the sublime slow-ball comedy that GQ calls "the best sports movie of the decade."
Not all American pastimes sit comfortably in the digital age. Moviegoing is one of them. Baseball is another.
Both demand a surrender to long, uncertain stretches, regulated not by game clocks or ad breaks, but by the fickle rhythms of streaks and slumps, or as moviegoers might call them, character arcs. Both movies and baseball have a way of warping time.
An “eephus” is a high-arching, slow-moving pitch used to throw off a batter’s timing. Rarely seen in the Major Leagues, it’s the prized showpiece of pitcher Merritt Nettles, one of a dozen or so lovable middle-aged schlubs in Eephus, Carson Lund’s shaggy elegy to beer-league baseball.
Over its limited-but-leggy theatrical run, Eephus has earned the affection of audiences and critics - GQ just called it “the best sports movie of the decade.” If you ask me, it’s one of the best movies of 2025 so far.
It’s a nippy October day in small-town Massachusetts, and two rival rec teams - Adler’s Paint and the Riverdogs - meet for one final game at their beloved Soldier’s Field before it’s demolished and turned into a school. Their kids and girlfriends watch impatiently from the stands as paunchy sluggers limp around the bases, trading playful jabs, tossing back beers, shooting the breeze, and trying not to think about the loss of their longtime Sunday ritual.
Eephus belongs to a genre we’ve celebrated before on Underexposed: “slow cinema,” known elsewhere as ecosystem filmmaking - unfolding in a fixed location, in real time, often chronicling the end of an era. It’s hardly shocking to learn that Lund, who got his start writing film criticism, drew inspiration from Tsai Ming-Liang’s 2003 meditation on moviegoing, Goodbye, Dragon Inn. There are notes of Altman and Linklater here as well. But the real guiding light, as Lund tells it, is Frederick Wiseman - whose voice makes a cameo appearance in the film, and whose patient, observational style is felt throughout.
Though set in the 1990s, Eephus strikes a chord today, echoing our quiet unease with the disintegration of community and public spaces. Warm, humorous, and steadfastly unsentimental, yet tinged with an understated poignancy, Eephus flickers and thumps like a lightning bug trapped in a jar - or like the last stubborn ember of a bonfire that refuses to burn out.
I had the pleasure of speaking with filmmaker Carson Lund earlier this week about the making of Eephus, the tradition of slow cinema, and more. Here’s the video:
Where to Watch Eephus
Now available on demand, and still playing in select theaters as well.
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News Reel
The Hollywood Reporter warns that Hollywood is at risk of becoming “the next Detroit” if productions don’t rebound. “As a new tally shows plummeting shoot days in Los Angeles, organizers gathered to strategize on ways to get postproduction and music incentives included in California's bill to boost the industry.”
- on the trap of closed-loop cinema: “I am not interested in seeing another film calling itself a ‘love letter to cinema.’ The more cinema talks to itself, the more that it becomes a niche interest for freaks like us… If movies are to recover their cultural relevance, they have to speak to something outside of themselves.”
- has a fascinating post on the 400-year-old ‘chintzy’ roots of AI slop in : “We use ‘chintzy’ to describe something that has a deliberate aesthetic dimension—floral curtains, for instance—but which is obviously mechanized, causing it to seem cheap. Often something perceived as chintzy strikes a false note not because the consumer is a snob who knows better, but because the cheapness is so easily discerned it’s impossible for anyone not to notice.”
White Lotus fans, have you seen Chuck and Buck?
has a guest post about the movie here in ’s : “Mike White’s newfound, unlikely celebrity status hopefully means more people will discover Chuck and Buck. Will it make them laugh or squirm? Probably both.”
Now in Theaters
I saw Warfare earlier this week, and I’m still waiting for my spine to fully unclench. A nerve-flaying real-time war thriller, Warfare (A24) was written and directed by Ray Mendoza (a former Navy SEAL) and Alex Garland (Civil War, Ex Machina). The film re-enacts a 2006 attack in the smoldering aftermath of the Battle of Ramadi, and it does so with a precision that feels brutally real - especially on a big screen.
That’s all for today’s free edition of Underexposed. Thank you for reading.
Paid subscribers, I have a bonus article for you, Slow Cinema, and a bonus video - Carson Lund’s Underexposed Guest Picks. If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, consider joining the cool kids.
Slow Cinema
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