moneyball

Bennett Miller’s Moneyball (Sony, 9.23) is my idea of a triumph. A triumph of surprise and deception, I should add. It’s an emotionally low-key, thinking man’s Field of Dreams — a smart, true-to-life, business-of-baseball movie with a touch of the mystical and the sublime, and propelled along by a highly pleasurable lead performance by Brad Pitt. It’s not just the emotional and spiritual currents that makes it great, but the subtlety of them.

Earlier this year someone called it “the Social Network of baseball movies,” and that’s a close enough description except for the fact that Pitt’s lead performance is highly likable. Moneyball is definitely a nominee for Best Picture, Best Actor (Pitt), Best Director (Miller), Best Adapted Screenplay and so on.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Gabriella.

As is the case with most memorable sports films, Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” engages, amuses and educates us with moments that happen off the field of play, rather than with what happens on it.

It’s a baseball movie that’s far more focused on the behind-the-scenes process of building a team (through admittedly revolutionary techniques) than it is on the actual performance of said squad. But it has a broad knowledge of the game, and a deep love of baseball’s strange, antiquated traditions. Miller manages to be both romantically nostalgic about America’s former pastime and excited by the innovative ways baseball executives need to think in order to survive and thrive in this current age of imbalanced spending and hard-and-fast salary ceilings for small-market teams.

Beyond all that, “Moneyball” punches Brad Pitt’s ticket into this year’s Best Actor Oscar race. Welcome to the party. So long as Sony campaigns properly, Pitt has an excellent shot at making the field of five for his charismatic, bulldog performance as Billy Beane.

Read more/discuss. Spoiler alert.

When Brad Pitt optioned ‘Moneyball,’ the book’s author, Michael Lewis, famously told him, “I don’t know how you’re going to make it into a movie, but feel free to give it a try.” It was a fair point. The book, one of the most beloved non-fiction titles of the past 20 years, is ostensibly about baseball, but its real subjects — money and math — don’t exactly lend themselves to big-screen drama.

After a false start by Steven Soderbergh that cast the movie as a quasi-documentary, Pitt turned to Oscar-nominated director Bennett Miller, best known for 2005’s ‘Capote.’ That film, like this one, managed to locate plenty of screen-worthy drama in the character of a single man and the content of his work.

That man is Billy Beane (Pitt), the charismatic general manager of baseball’s Oakland A’s, a small-market team that, in the early 2000s, made a pair of unlikely playoff runs. Beane, in the film as in life, is a former “five-tool player” (he could run, throw, field, hit for average and hit for power) whose athleticism and good looks turned major-league scouts into panting suitors, resulting in a first-round draft selection by the New York Mets.

Read more/discuss. Spoiler alert.

Best Actor this year feels to be more of the hopeful variety, less dark, more optimistic and heroic. This is certainly true of the category’s frontrunner of the moment, George Clooney, who takes things to a different level with his portrayal of a newly single dad trying to keep his family together in the wake of a tragedy in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. It is most certainly true of The Artist’s Jean Dujardin, who may finish out as the year’s most endearing. Ryan Gosling in Drive, Tom Hardy in Warrior are also heroic but they are more complex.

Brad Pitt, Moneyball – Jeff Wells says of Moneyball, “a smart, true-to-life, business-of-baseball movie with a touch of the mystical and the sublime, and propelled along by a killer lead performance by [Pitt]. It’s not just the emotional and spiritual currents that makes it great, but the subtlety of them.” According to some who’ve seen it, Pitt finally realizes his promise as a complex, mature lead.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Gabriella.

Ever wanted to ask Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill a question? Well, here’s your chance.

On September 13, Moviefone is hosting an Unscripted session for the upcoming ‘Moneyball,’ in which Pitt stars as Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane. Pitt, along with co-star Hill, will choose from questions that readers like you submit in the Ask! box below. Be sure to include your name and location by 6PM, September 7. Once your question pops up on the screen, other users can vote on it. Simple, right? You can also vote on questions submitted by others.

Read more/discuss. Thanks Anu.