Review: Moneyball

I had fairly low expectations for Moneyball when the trailer was first released.  The buzz on the film was that the source material – Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis – would not lend itself to compelling theater and that the only reason this film was greenlit was because it became Brad Pitt’s pet project. As an avid baseball fan with a recollection of the season that the film centers on, I found the film entertaining and fairly accurate albeit with the typical Hollywood spin.  Brad Pitt does a nice job of blending into the role of Billy Beane and while it is a stretch at times to view Jonah Hill as a Peter Brand (who those in the know really know is Paul DePodesta), the chemistry between the two as mentor/prodigy works very well.

One of the key strengths of the movie is that it is grounded firmly in baseball reality and director Bennett Miller pays careful attention to maintain authenticity.  It is nice to see familiar names of players who played and then disappeared into retirement obscurity flash across the screen one more time in MLB licensed attire.  A pet peeve of mine in sports movies is when filmmakers fail to strike deals with league and players associations and end up using cheap facsimiles of professional sports franchises (As was the case in “The Game Plan”).

As for the cast, their collective performance was fair.  Besides Pitt and Hill, very few were asked to do much in this film.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman for one does a great job of disappearing into the role of the cantankerous Art Howe and while Kerris Dorsey does a nice job of bringing the family element into the proceedings, I have to admit it was the scenes that were not baseball-centric that were amongst my least favorite in the film.

My one significant issue with the film is that in the interest of dramatic license, the talent on the Oakland team is drastically downplayed.  Even with the departure of Damon, Giambi, and Isrinhausen, the Oakland club was loaded with three front-line starting pitchers, a dynamic left side of the infield, and some good complimentary parts.  But those names and faces fade to the background in order to convince us that Beane and Brand are not only radical thinkers, but geniuses as well.  To the casual baseball fan or one who isn’t a fan at all, this point becomes completely moot.

I absolutely recommend this film for those who like sports movies.  Seeing it on the big screen will provide some great visuals of the ballparks.  For those who are not sports enthusiasts, this movie plays more as a rental.  Even if you’re a baseball novice, the pace of the movie is brisk, the storytelling is sound, and Brad Pitt brings his usual film presence.  All this adds up to two highly entertaining hours.

Standout Performance: In limited screen time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman shines with his complexity and authenticity.

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Review: The Ides of March

With a cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, George Clooney, and current it-boy Ryan Gosling, it isn’t hard to figure out why the buzz for Clooney’s latest directorial effort was so positive.  But I have to go against the grain here and echo what Shakespeare (or not if you believe the nonsense in Emmerich’s forthcoming film) once wrote in Julius Caesar,  “beware the Ides of March.”  It may be the result of expectations, but I walked out of the film feeling completely unimpressed by the dumbing down of political machinations that may occur on the campaign trail.  The most egregious mistake Clooney makes as writer and director is that his film finishes with the message that politics leave its participants cynical and jaded – not exactly an earth-shattering revelation - when in fact it should start with this as a premise and then build out a compelling story.

In a lot of ways, the movie plays out like the Bill Clinton pseudo-biopic “Primary Colors” minus the camp, humor, and overacting.  In its place you get a robust helping of George Clooney’s much publicized political ideologies and as you watch him on screen you can’t help but feel like he is playing out his fantasy of running for office.   As for Gosling, he wilts as the lead of the film and firmly cements himself in the same category as Chris Evans and Ryan Reynolds as actors who excel at playing sharp-witted characters in comedic settings, but come off as drab and pedestrian in roles that demand more gravitas.  Case in point: can one believe that Gosling is a sharp political consultant jousting with grizzled veterans Giamatti and Hoffman?  Maybe.  But the important question is…should one even care?  The resounding answer is no.

Not even an ensemble littered with actors recognized by the Academy can save this film from becoming utterly mundane.  For the most part, all the players are solid within the context of what the source materials ask them to do – which is bring their respective B-games.  As you watch these fantastic actors spend far too little time onscreen as mere foils to advance Gosling’s plotline, one can’t help but wonder if the film would have been significantly better had the proceedings centered on someone else.  Surely the blend of paranoia and narcissism that marks Hoffman’s character could have made for a more riveting narrative, or watching Tomei’s journalist meddle and scour for the next headline could have made for better theater.  Ultimately though we are left to watch the least accomplished individual of the principle cast play the least compelling individual of the principle characters.  And that is where the film fails its audience.

This is not a film to be seen in the cinema, but it works as a midweek rental.  You’ll watch it; be moderately entertained for about half of the film, and when it is over shrug your shoulders, turn out the lights, and go to sleep all the while wondering if you missed something in the proceedings that made this film better.  This is probably the last Gosling movie I’ll watch for a while which is no easy fete since he has opted for Nicolas Cage cash grab and take on every film that comes across his plate.  

Notable Performance: Phillip Seymour Hoffman delivers a genuine performance and stands out in limited screen time.

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