Moneyball (2011) - Miller makes compelling baseball movie history

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+ 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?

Fruitvale Station (2013) - Well-meaning issue drama heightened by stars Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer

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The brooding poster for Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station

QUICK REVIEW:

Oscar is a young Afro-American father in Oakland, California, who wants to stop selling drugs. On New Year's Eve he and his girlfriend leave his mother's birthday to go to San Francisco, as a dire situation arises.

If you know the basic skeleton of the 2009 true story that is the basis of Fruitvale Station, the feature debut of Oakland-born writer-director Ryan Coogler (The Sculptor (2011), short), a part of the film feels pretty manipulative: For us to grow a deep sense of sympathy for protagonist-lout Oscar, he is made out to be not only sweet to kids and strangers here but also just a great guy around animals, women and gay people.
This does not make the narrative awfully exciting. - Getting into the shoes of a young black man in America, who is trying to better his ways, is, however, and especially because Michael B. Jordan (The Wire (2002), TV-series) is very good in the part.
Fruitvale's other ace is Octavia Spencer (The Help (2011)), who play's Oscar's mother. Coogler has made a speedy rise to big business on top of the hugely successful release of this little independent film: His coming, second film is the 7th Rocky film, Creed (2015), coming out in December, again starring Jordan, here as the son of Apollo Creed, Rocky's opponent in the first two Rocky films.
Fruitvale Station is a good and very pertinent film that addresses a part of a tragic problem in US society. - It is not a party-starter.

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 0.9 mil. $
Box office: 17.3 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Coogler developed his script through the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and gained Forest Whitaker on board as one of the film's producers. Both Jordan and Spencer were also involved in getting the tiny budget to suffice. The film was shot in 20 days in Oakland. SPOILER The climax is shot at the actual location of Grant's death, and real amateur footage from the tragedy is, controversially, included in the film. The film premiered at Sundance, winning the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for Best US Drama. Its distribution rights were secured by The Weinstein Company in a bidding war for 2 mil. $. The film had a very successful run in the US and gained several nominations and awards, great reviews and was on many central Top 10 lists of the year. It grossed 16.1 mil. $ (93 % of the total gross) in North America.]

What do you think of Fruitvale Station?