One sign that summer has ended is when we start seeing more movies that carry a little weight and stay with you. Moneyball (2011) has more drama and excitement than most of the action and superhero movies of the summer.
Moneyball, directed by Bennett Miller and based on Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Brad Pitt is excellent as Beane, and Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, Beane’s sidekick in the film. The supporting roles, including one by Philip Seymour Hoffman as manager Art Howe, are all excellent too. For example, there is an excellent scene where Beane visits his ex-wife, played by Robin Wright, that shows a realistic uncomfortable situation that also reveals much about the personality and history of the characters. Throughout the film, Pitt makes us root for his character even as we see his unflattering personality traits.
Moneyball is a unique sports movie because it focuses on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to put a team on the field more than the team on the field. So you should not go to the film expecting to see exciting baseball, although there are moments showing the games, often with real footage. The baseball game that is probably the highlight of the on-the-field game occurs well before the end of the season and the end of the movie. But as we follow the entire baseball season we care about it because we care about Beane. The movie also acknowledges the history of baseball by occasionally showing clips of the game from the past, much in the way that Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999) occasionally inserted old football footage, connecting the past to the present.
Conclusion? Although you may need to be a baseball fan to love Moneyball, the film tells an intriguing story and is one of the best films of the year so far. On the Rotten Tomatoes website, the film currently has a 94% rating from critics and a 91% rating from audience members.
Bonus Song Information: If you are wondering about the song that Beane’s daughter sings, it is “The Show” by Australian singer-songwriter Lenka, off her self-titled CD from 2008
What did you think of Moneyball? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Thanks, I didn’t know what the movie was about. I don’t think I’m a huge baseball fan but I do consider myself a Yankee fan. I was very interested in that A’s team that it seems the movie is about and though the Yankees beat them in the playoffs I felt like if they had kept that team together, they would have gone all the way the next year. That’s my opinion as an uneducated baseball watcher so I’ll be interested to see what the movie says.
On the movie front, I wonder what Artie Howe thinks of Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing him. Though one of the finest actors around, I wonder if he often gets named in the who-will-play-me-in-the-movies scenario.
It is interesting about how they put the team together. And, without ruining anything, at the end the movie states that another team was able to use Beane’s ideas to win a championship. But they did not mention that the team that was successful had a much bigger payroll than Oakland. Still, I’d like to see more teams with less money find a way to compete with the big money teams.
That’s an interesting question about Artie Howe. He was not played in a very flattering light, so I do wonder what he thinks about it. Thanks for the comment (and sorry about your Yankees last night).