Ron Shelton

The subject of Ron Shelton's brilliant new movie is Ty Cobb (played by Tommy Lee Jones), who was, by consensus, not only the greatest all-around baseball player who ever lived, but also the meanest, the dirtiest, the most arrogant, and the most unscrupulous. Shelton's screenplay focusses on Cobb in 1960 and 1961-seventy-three years old, dying of cancer, and writing his memoirs. There isn't a trace of sentimentality in the picture. Cobb never goes soft on us, even as he nears death; he's a monster of mythic proportions, bellowing and thrashing and belching fire right to the end.

An unreachable shot to the green. A hopeless romance. Driving-range pro Roy McAvoy can't resist an impossible challenge. Each is what he calls a defining moment. You define it. Or it defines you. With lady-killer charm and a game that can make par with garden tools, Kevin Costner rejoins Bull Durham filmmaker Ron Shelton for another funny tale of the games people play. For Costner's Roy, golf is a head - and - heart game. On both counts, that's where shrink Molly Griswold (Rene Russo) comes in.

Two of America's favorite pastimes - baseball and sex - team up in this winning comedy. Set in the bedrooms and ballfields of a minor league town, this love triangle leads off with Crash Davis (Costner), a seasoned catcher whose best years on the ballfield are behind him... but whose finest moments in the bedroom still lie ahead. Crash is assigned to prepare a cocky young pitcher, "Nuke" LaLoosh (Robbins), for the majors.