xavierpop's posterous http://xavierpop.posterous.com Most recent posts at xavierpop's posterous posterous.com Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:26:10 -0700 Melanie's Review of Moneyball http://xavierpop.posterous.com/melanies-review-of-moneyball http://xavierpop.posterous.com/melanies-review-of-moneyball


I can’t say enough about this film.

Moneyball is what movies are supposed to be. It is an exceptionally written, directed and acted piece of mastery.

The movie is based on the true story of how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, changed the way baseball recruits its players. Since half the North American population already knows something about what he did, I needn’t struggle to evade revealing too much.

The synopsis for this film alone would have put me to sleep normally but positive buzz lead me to viewing what I now consider to be the front-runner in the “best film” category at this year’s Oscars. I would actually put money on it. I also think Brad Pitt might actually get his third Oscar nomination for playing Billy Beane the failed ball player, turned scout, turned general manager.

I believe Brad to be my generations Robert Redford and he proved it with his performance in this movie.  It was so subtle, so nuanced, and never over-done. I must admit that sometimes I forget how talented he is.

I must also admit that I was pretty shocked to hear that Jonah Hill was co-starring in this film. Having starred in the raunchy comedies Superbad, Get Him to the Greek, and The Sitter, I figured that he’d remain a ‘one-trick pony’ and that eventually people would get sick of him and move on. Moneyball seemed to be so far outside of his scope of ability, but I gotta say… this is also very much his movie as it is Pitt's. This is the movie that will change the course of his career. Jonah Hill can actually act. His portrayal of Peter Brand, the completely green, recent economics grad from Yale who invented the new system of creating a baseball team, was so spot-on.

Also headlining in Moneyball is Philip Seymour Hoffman. I’m not sure why his name is on all of the posters, given that he’s in the movie for all of five minutes… not that I’m complaining. I love Seymour Hoffman â€" the man is a genius. However, his role of Art Howe, the head coach for the Oakland A’s, was pretty small. I would have loved to have him in the movie more. He probably did the film as a favour to the director Bennett Miller, who also directed him in Capote (which coincidentally is the only other film that Miller has directed).

In order to avoid boring all of you with a list of other bit parts in the film, I will simply state that the actors that were chosen to play all of the team’s players and employees were excellent - they all brought heart and depth to the film.

The only area in Moneyball that lacked for me was Brad’s chemistry with his on-screen daughter played by Kerris Dorsey. Although she’s a lovely girl who is a TV veteran at the ripe old age of 13 - and possesses an almost angelic singing voice - she never seemed to connect with Brad as her dad. Not sure if it was her acting, or if it was the script. Their relationship just never worked for me.

Next to the main two actors, the best part of the film to me was the beautifully crafted script. As a West Wing addict, I can spot Aaron Sorkin’s work anywhere. Sorkin has an incredible gift with words and a knack for sculpting characters that you fall in love with. The script was co-written with Steven Zaillian, who happens to be the screenplay writer to some of my favourite movies (Awakenings, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and Schindler’s List). So for me it is a match made in heaven. And it worked very well, as the audience laughed out loud at so many points during the movie that I lost track of how many times. Sorkin and Zaillian took a potentially dull topic and breathed dazzling life into it.

Moneyball is one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. It is the kind of film that Hollywood should strive to make more often. Do yourself a favour… go see this film. I enjoyed it so much, that I’m planning on going to see it again as soon as I can â€" which is saying a lot since I don’t even know who Billy Beane is.

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Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:52:23 -0700 @MovieJay's Review of Moneyball http://xavierpop.posterous.com/moviejays-review-of-moneyball http://xavierpop.posterous.com/moviejays-review-of-moneyball

Heading into the 2002 season, Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics found themselves minus three star players from their previous season. One in which they cracked the elusive 100-win barrier but ended up losing a heartbreaking 5-game series to the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs to end their season early.

The A's had a payroll of just under $40 million, roughly three times less than that of the Yankees, in a sport where the big market teams essentially pilfer great players from the smaller market ones. Unlike the NBA or the NFL, where revenues are pooled and teams have an equal shot at being competitive, Major League Baseball still goes by the old formula of every-man-for-himself.

It is this challenge of lopsidedness and the frustration that comes from it that the movie is about. We see this very well illustrated early on through a sports-talk radio announcer as he laments how the A's are essentially a farm system for teams like the Yankees and Red Sox. It is this same tension that we see in Billy Beane, the A's General Manager and a former player himself as he is a man who simply hates, hates, hates losing.

Restless and lonely, Brad Pitt plays Beane as a man with constant dissatisfaction within himself. He wheels and deals, signs new players, works the phones with other GM's around the league, dotes on his daughter from his failed marriage, and drives around aimlessly during games while sporadically checking the radio to hear updates driven with an almost obsessive focus.

In the off-season heading into 2002, it is made clear to Beane by the A's owner that they'll have to try to compete again using imagination and creativity since the payroll simply won't budge from where it's at, which is in the basement. On a trip to Cleveland to meet with Indians management, we meet Peter Brand, an assistant in that organization who appears to be one of the key people in the room who shoots down a trade that Beane and the Indians GM are working out. This infuriates Beane and it leads to a scene between the two men in an underground parking lot where Brand explains the fallacies of the old scouting system. Beane appreciates Brand's honesty which results in him buying him from the Indians to work as his assistant-GM in Oakland.

Moneyball isn't so much a baseball movie as it is a movie about the business of baseball. What we learn about sabermetrics, a computer-generated analysis that is used to target undervalued players who are perhaps better than their overall numbers might suggest, is not as important as the fact that it is now commonly used by all professional sports teams. Indeed, the best the movie can do is give us entertaining cross-cuts and pans of a multitude of stats, figures and player names, but what is important is how the characters feel about the technology.

The great success of Moneyball, a drama that is surprisingly touching and funny, lies in the screenplay by Steve Zailian (Schindler's List, Searching For Bobby Fischer) and Aaron Sorkin (the West Wing, the Social Network). They use observation and character to thrust the action forward instead of artificial plot requirements we have become used to in sports movies that too often depend on the "big game" or the "tournament" for tension. We meet a few of the players on the A's squad, but the focus is almost entirely on the backroom dealings, although there is one sequence in the second half of the pic detailing the American League record the A's set by winning 20 games in a row that is among the best and purely entertaining sequences of it's kind in sports movies as it splices real footage together with action from the movie. There are also a couple of quiet and sad scenes involving players who are traded or sent down to the minors that are written very well and make the athletes into human commodities who we actually feel for.

Moneyball is smarter and ultimately more engaging than most other sports films because it does a wonderful job at bringing empathy to all sides. From the GM and his assistant, (played with dry understatement by Jonah Hill, in his best performance to date), to the old-time scouts who fear the new system, to the uncompromising and stalwart A's manager Art Howe, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman as a guy who will manage his team the best way he sees fit. The empathy given to Hoffman and the scouts elevates this movie as one of the year's best because they aren't made out to be foils but are real people with real concerns and doubts about an unproven system based on computer technology.

Brad Pitt does a great job of suggesting restlessness in almost every scene as he moves forward with uncertainty about how things will turn out for the team and for himself. The movie ends perfectly with an interplay between him and Hill in some of their more private moments which are existential and melancholy and are truly refreshing to behold in a movie about sports.

Thoughtful, funny, and an excellent entertainment, Moneyball is the best movie of it's kind since Friday Night Lights.

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Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:26:30 -0700 Mel's Review of the Debt http://xavierpop.posterous.com/mels-review-of-the-debt http://xavierpop.posterous.com/mels-review-of-the-debt

I had to give myself a day before writing the review for The Debt. I couldn’t think straight right afterwards. I had a hard time assimilating what I had just experienced.

The Debt wasn’t just a movie, it was an experience. I spent the entire movie tense and breathless. John Madden should be given major props for creating a film that keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire two hours. It’s definitely not a movie where everything is wrapped up in a little bow by the end.

Although Madden has mainly directed television programs, he has a strong track record with the movies he has directed (Shakespeare in Love, Proof). He is definitely a master at story telling and creating characters that you care about.

I’m quite impressed and surprised that there were three screenplay writers (Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, Peter Straughan), as I would normally think that the end product would be all over the place. The dialogue had such beautiful flow. I haven’t seen the original version of The Debt (Ha-Hov) from 2007, but I think it’s safe to assume that they did the original justice.

The story, taking place mainly in 1966, focuses around three Mossad agents who have been given the task of finding and capturing a Nazi war criminal in order to have him tried for horrible atrocities committed during World War II. The story jumps around a bit timing-wise, which at the very beginning was a little confusing â€" they jumped from 1997 back to 1966 and back again â€" however, things become clear as soon as they go back to 1966 where the main story takes place.

The three main characters, played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas, did a stellar job portraying the young Mossad agents. I particularly enjoyed Chastain’s performance of young Rachel Singer. Her “It” girl hype she is garnering is totally deserved. She stole every scene in The Help, and definitely held her own against Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.

Sam Worthington is also a huge star on the rise at the moment. He brings such depth to his characters, more so than most actors out there right now. The Debt is my personal favourite of all of Sam’s films (Avatar, Terminator: Salvation, Clash of the Titans), and his portrayal of young David Peretz was riveting. I believe that we’ll be seeing him in many more excellent roles in the future..

The last of the three agents is young Stephan Gold, played by Marton Csokas. Csokas did an excellent job playing the older more experienced agent. I must admit though, I had to look him up, because I know I’ve seen him before, but couldn’t recall where. He’s been in “bit part” land - standing out just enough to get noticed, but not enough for people to remember where. I’m thrilled to see him step into a lead role, as it really showcased his acting chops.

Out of the three older versions of the three agents, Helen Mirren (The Queen, Red) is really the only one worth mentioning. She really was the focal point of the 1997 storyline. To me, Mirren is a close second to Meryl Streep. She gave the older Rachel such nuance and depth, and she was only a supporting actor.

The other two agents, played by Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins, The Full Monty) and Ciarán Hinds (Road to Perdition, There Will be Blood), were in the film so little that I barely noticed them. I like both actors, but didn’t get much from them in this one. All I got out of them was what my main complaint about this movie was - the accents. They were terrible.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the good doctor, or should I say, herr Doktor Bernhardt. The doctor was very aptly played by Jesper Christensen (2006 Casino Royale, The Interpreter), who showed both sides to this evil man. The doctor was to be tried for the torture of countless people, yet he was also a fertility doctor, showing great compassion for his patients and helping to bring new life into this world. This role must have been so difficult to play. The character definitely had a dual personality.

I’m going to give this movie a very big compliment, if The Help hadn’t already come out, this would be my favourite movie of this year. You can’t get a better cast, or a more intense storyline. I definitely give the film 4 stars out of 5.

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