Moneyball - Film Review
Feb. 18th, 2012 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJust finished watching Moneyball the film based on the best-selling non-fiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning and Unfair Game by Michael Lewis and it is a brilliant film. By the end of it, I was sitting hands on knees, forward in the armchair in rapt attention. At the beginning was knitting, and then suddenly, I was enraptured.
It's a story about how Bill Beane the General Manager of the Oakland A's used an economics whiz to help him figure out how to build a winning team without going broke. He didn't have the money the Yankees did. And in the process they changed how the game is played - not the game on field, the game behind the walls - in the head. Not sure any one has played Fantasy Baseball? It's basically a game in which you trade players, and watch the baseball games, track their scores, how they play, and the winner, is the one who has the best overall average. It's a complicated game.
My Dad played it briefly in the 1980s, and I sort of played it with him - briefly. Neither of us like games very much, so it was brief. You only have so much money. Can trade so many players. If one isn't doing well, you might be able to trade again and it based closely on the actual game.
Baseball fascinates me because there is a science to it, it has layers, it's a thinking man's game.
A game of bluff. Of patience. And miracles.
I started disliking the game when the free agents took over and caused the price to sky-rocket. During that period the Yankees constantly won - because they could afford to spend 1.4 billion for
the game. Teams like the A's, Red Sox, and KC Royals couldn't. But Moneyball changed that. It looked at how you can find different strengths, how each player's strengths and weaknesses build on other players. And how you can do it at much smaller price.
The film is also about Billy Beane, a failed baseball player who became a scout and now is a 44 year old GM struggling to win that big game, and his journey. Brad Pitt is marvelous in this role. The last scene, he doesn't say a word, few lines, but his face, his eyes speak volumns. He's listening to a song his daughter has written and is singing for him on a CD while he attempts to make a major decision...and you know his decision, you know what he is feeling based on his eyes as he drives. In this role, you forget it is Brad Pitt, you see Billy Beane.
And then there is Jonah Hill who plays Peter, the 25 ...who is everything Billy or Pitt is not, 25, overweight, a numbers cruncher. But he understands the game. He has the ivy league degree.
The two have a buddy partnership that is layered. And while we know little about Peter outside of the working relationship, for the pov is mainly Billy's...it doesn't matter. Jonah tells us everything we need to know.
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zallian do the script, and it is Sorkin's bullet dialogue. Witty. And on target. If you want to know how to write good dialogue immerse yourself in Aaron Sorkin and Elmore Leonard, both are masters. And Zallian is a good antidote for Sorkin, he softens Sorkin. Zallian wrote Schindler's List. Sorkin adds the humor. In some respects this is a far better script than last year's the Social Network. More grounded.
The film is mainly about professional baseball though, the business of it, the edge, the grit. We watch Billy sweat, Billy who fears going to his own games and never watches them certain he'll jinx it. It takes us inside Billy's world, gives us a bird's eye view of what the General Manager of a baseball team really does. What it is like to be a scout, to trade and build a team. What is involved. Realized halfway through the film, that being a General Manager of a major league baseball team is a thankless and almost impossible job - which is why these guys make millions each year.
Why the film is brilliant is it takes a potentially dull topic, actually a dry topic for most, and makes it fascinating - holding your interest and is actually oddly suspenseful. That is hard to do. Somewhat similar to what The Social Network did. You get inside Billy Beane's head and it in part becomes a character piece...as well, much like the Social Network became one for Mark Zuckerburg. Although I find this film less choppy and cleaner. Also the subject matter in this film was drier.
Highly recommended. Deserves the nominations it achieved.
It's a story about how Bill Beane the General Manager of the Oakland A's used an economics whiz to help him figure out how to build a winning team without going broke. He didn't have the money the Yankees did. And in the process they changed how the game is played - not the game on field, the game behind the walls - in the head. Not sure any one has played Fantasy Baseball? It's basically a game in which you trade players, and watch the baseball games, track their scores, how they play, and the winner, is the one who has the best overall average. It's a complicated game.
My Dad played it briefly in the 1980s, and I sort of played it with him - briefly. Neither of us like games very much, so it was brief. You only have so much money. Can trade so many players. If one isn't doing well, you might be able to trade again and it based closely on the actual game.
Baseball fascinates me because there is a science to it, it has layers, it's a thinking man's game.
A game of bluff. Of patience. And miracles.
I started disliking the game when the free agents took over and caused the price to sky-rocket. During that period the Yankees constantly won - because they could afford to spend 1.4 billion for
the game. Teams like the A's, Red Sox, and KC Royals couldn't. But Moneyball changed that. It looked at how you can find different strengths, how each player's strengths and weaknesses build on other players. And how you can do it at much smaller price.
The film is also about Billy Beane, a failed baseball player who became a scout and now is a 44 year old GM struggling to win that big game, and his journey. Brad Pitt is marvelous in this role. The last scene, he doesn't say a word, few lines, but his face, his eyes speak volumns. He's listening to a song his daughter has written and is singing for him on a CD while he attempts to make a major decision...and you know his decision, you know what he is feeling based on his eyes as he drives. In this role, you forget it is Brad Pitt, you see Billy Beane.
And then there is Jonah Hill who plays Peter, the 25 ...who is everything Billy or Pitt is not, 25, overweight, a numbers cruncher. But he understands the game. He has the ivy league degree.
The two have a buddy partnership that is layered. And while we know little about Peter outside of the working relationship, for the pov is mainly Billy's...it doesn't matter. Jonah tells us everything we need to know.
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zallian do the script, and it is Sorkin's bullet dialogue. Witty. And on target. If you want to know how to write good dialogue immerse yourself in Aaron Sorkin and Elmore Leonard, both are masters. And Zallian is a good antidote for Sorkin, he softens Sorkin. Zallian wrote Schindler's List. Sorkin adds the humor. In some respects this is a far better script than last year's the Social Network. More grounded.
The film is mainly about professional baseball though, the business of it, the edge, the grit. We watch Billy sweat, Billy who fears going to his own games and never watches them certain he'll jinx it. It takes us inside Billy's world, gives us a bird's eye view of what the General Manager of a baseball team really does. What it is like to be a scout, to trade and build a team. What is involved. Realized halfway through the film, that being a General Manager of a major league baseball team is a thankless and almost impossible job - which is why these guys make millions each year.
Why the film is brilliant is it takes a potentially dull topic, actually a dry topic for most, and makes it fascinating - holding your interest and is actually oddly suspenseful. That is hard to do. Somewhat similar to what The Social Network did. You get inside Billy Beane's head and it in part becomes a character piece...as well, much like the Social Network became one for Mark Zuckerburg. Although I find this film less choppy and cleaner. Also the subject matter in this film was drier.
Highly recommended. Deserves the nominations it achieved.
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-19 03:17 pm (UTC)Terrence Malik's films are sort of like esoteric abstract visual stream-of-conscious poems. Watching them feels like reading James Joyce's Ulysses or Faulkner's Sound and the Fury or going to an art exhibit of Jackson Pollack paintings.
I've tried to watch his films...they put me to asleep every time. It's like looking at a lot of pretty pictures...and great themes, but I'm so bored.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-19 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-19 09:53 pm (UTC)and I kept falling asleep during it or my mind would wander.
The Thin Red Line is the same way.
He always gets nominated for an Oscar, he never wins. I think people are afraid to admit that they went to sleep during his movie.