+ Best Sports Movie of the Year
 |
| Brad Pitt portrays Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane in Bennett Miller's Moneyball |
Billy Beane is the man tasked with getting the free-falling Oakland Athetics baseball team back in winning shape without more money in a sport that has acquired ballooned monster budgets. Together with an economist, Beane finds a new way to play - and win - ball.
Even if you don't understand baseball, (which I can't profess that I do), Moneyball works. Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List (1993)) and Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing (1999-06)) wrote the Oscar-nominated script, based on Michael Lewis' (The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006)) non-fiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), and great New York-director Bennett Miller (Capote (2005)) has made a great film out of it.
Beane's struggle and his gamble is staged with high stakes, and, of course, the core story of getting a team of outcasts to start winning, against all odds, is gripping material. Solid work marks Moneyball's production, led by a perfectly cast, Oscar-nominated Brad Pitt (Troy (2004)). The cast also includes fine turns from Oscar-nominated Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)), Chris Pratt (Jurassic World (2015)) as an unsure player, Spike Jonze (Three Kings (1999)), and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt (2008)), who is good as usual, as the team's dissatisfied coach.
Related posts:
Bennett Miller: 2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Capote (2005) - The writing of one of the 20th century's finest non-fiction crime novels comes to life
Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 110.2 mil. $
= Flop
[Columbia Pictures bought the rights to Lewis' book in 2004. Pitt committed to the film in 2007, and Steven Soderbergh was about to direct the film in 2009, when, days before shooting was scheduled to start, Sony put production on hold and got Miller in instead of Soderbergh for a summer 2010 shoot. Moneyball premiered at Toronto and was warmly reviewed, making many especially American Top 10 lists of the year and 6 Oscar nominations: For Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing and Sound Mixing. - It won none. The film followed its 19.5 mil. $ domestic opening weekend to a 75.6 mil. $ gross (68.6 % of the total gross.) Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan (11.4 mil. $/10.3 %) and Australia (5.3 mil. $/4.8 %). Moneyball is certified fresh at 94 % with an 8 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Moneyball?
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