Bennett Miller
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
A sports drama in the same way that Aaron Sorkin’s Moneyball is a sports drama, Air uses the bones of an underdog comeback story and applies it to the macro world of sports.
This and other key moments play like classic Aaron Sorkin scenes, blending the inside-baseball insights of “Moneyball” with “The Social Network”-style power games.
If “Moneyball,” a spiritual cousin to “Air,” was baseball-adjacent, “Air” is about as far away from the game of basketball as one can get.
But there’s another, even more specific influence here in the form of Moneyball , itself a sort of Social Network clone, right down to the Aaron Sorkin script.
It feels like a scene lifted straight from Moneyball .
With echoes of Moneyball , which was also about the machinations that occur away from the game, the picture should enjoy glowing reviews and warm word of mouth.
As he gets older, Brad Pitt looks more and more like Robert Redford, and seeing the two-time People Magazine Sexiest Man Alive in a baseball movie can’t help but bring to mind memories of The Natural.
When Redford was the same age as Pitt is now, he played Roy Hobbs in The Natural (1984).
The unlikely tandem of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill helps drive what is arguably the most compelling and insightful baseball-themed film since Robert Redford launched a homerun into the stadium lights in "The Natural" (1984).
Unlike other inspirational sports stories (Hoosiers, The Blind Side, Miracle, The Natural), Moneyball is totally dependent on its audience's love for America's national pastime.
It starts with Pitt, currently the same age as Robert Redford was when he made The Natural, and filmed with some kind of Redfordian camera lens that, from certain angles, makes him look just like the guy.
It’s therefore disappointing but unsurprising to find Moneyball being analogised to baseball staples like Bang The Drum Slowly and The Natural rather than critics simply asking: is it a good movie?
The film, with a first credited feature script by Scott Rothman & Rajiv Joseph, plays a lot like "Moneyball" for football had that film tossed all the statistical machinations for old school gut.
Much like "Moneyball" did for baseball, "Draft Day" exposes the harsh realities and competitiveness of another major league sport.
Unfortunately, the chess references are the most subtle and smartest parts of "Draft Day," a wildly miscast, flaccidly directed, disappointingly dumbed-down drama that reminds us of the phenomenal greatness of Bennett Miller's 2011 release "Moneyball."
Director Ivan Reitman (2011's " No Strings Attached ") and writers Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph aren't always entirely eloquent in their approach to the material, but they are knowledgeable, crafting a behind-the-scenes look at the strategic politics of professional sports that could work as an apropos companion piece to 2011's " Moneyball ."
While it does mirror those follow-your-heart narratives employed by many sports flicks such as “Moneyball” and “Field of Dreams,” “Draft Day” demonstrates that shrewd business savvy trumps conviction and passion for the game.
With such a situation, there is the potential for a film to tell a suspenseful story of trying to get the best players for a team that’s desperate to get back on their feet, something along the lines of the recent and great sports film “Moneyball,” a film that showed us that the best sports films are about something beyond the game.
Bennet Miller’s Foxcatcher (2014)…
Every sad wrestling film (“Foxcatcher,” “The Iron Claw,” “Cassandro”) usually gives a sense of quotidian routine…
From its opening scenes, Safdie appears to be reaching for the harrowing psychological intensity of films like Raging Bull or Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher.
“Bull Durham” might still be No. 1 in baseball movies, but “Moneyball” gives “Bull Durham” a run for its money!
As " Bull Durham " and "The Bad News Bears " and many other films have already demonstrated, baseball movies are just fine being about just baseball.
From Pride of the Yankees (1942) to Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) to Bull Durham (1988) to Sugar (2008), dramas about baseball have always been steeped in romance, whether they follow a winner on his way up or a loser on his way out.
Thanks to sterling work by the odd-couple team of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, and a razor-sharp script by Oscar winners Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) and Steve Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) — as well as understated direction by Bennett Miller — this is probably the finest baseball movie since “Bull Durham” back in 1988.
From what may seem, on the surface, to be dry subject matter, director Bennett Miller delivers a wordy but well-paced and thrilling film, closer to co-writer Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network than previous baseball-themed big hitters Bull Durham or Field of Dreams.
Someone crammed "Major League"-style sports cliches into a more nuanced story about baseball and progress - and then tried to fit a Brad Pitt star vehicle inside of that.
So, the film fits nicely into the realm of The Bad News Bears or Major League, of underdogs who shock the world.
It combines Major League with the revenge-of-the nerds dynamic of The Social Network, which was also co-scripted by Sorkin.
For a moment the film looks like it is heading into Bad News Bears and Major League territory as it appears a bunch of unwanted misfits are to be the core of the new look team.
It seems absurd on its face to convert Lewis’ tale of front-office wrangling into a sports movie, but Bennett Miller’s shrewd adaptation, scripted by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, turns it into Major League for stats wonks.
Most baseball movies pursue the romance of the game – the romance of the flawed Adonis (The Natural), the romance of nostalgia (Field of Dreams), or simply the romance of the romcom (Bull Durham).
From what may seem, on the surface, to be dry subject matter, director Bennett Miller delivers a wordy but well-paced and thrilling film, closer to co-writer Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network than previous baseball-themed big hitters Bull Durham or Field of Dreams.
Moneyball brings these elements together in a manner that introduces that most romantic of baseball pictures, Field of Dreams, to that most 21st-century of films about technological and cultural transformation, The Social Network.
No jock schmaltzfest like “Field of Dreams,” the whip-smart “Moneyball” is a crowd-pleasing baseball movie for people — like me — who don’t like baseball movies.
The Natural made it mythical, Field of Dreams made it spiritual, and Bull Durham made it sexy.
Anyone expecting an emotional “Field of Dreams” or mythical “The Natural” might be disappointed not to find anything that lodges a lump in the throat.
Football films used to do this (North Dallas Forty, Brian's Song), but now mostly stick closely to their inspirational clichés (Remember the Titans, The Blind Side).
From Pride of the Yankees (1942) to Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) to Bull Durham (1988) to Sugar (2008), dramas about baseball have always been steeped in romance, whether they follow a winner on his way up or a loser on his way out.
It’s therefore disappointing but unsurprising to find Moneyball being analogised to baseball staples like Bang The Drum Slowly and The Natural rather than critics simply asking: is it a good movie?
The plot suggests an intriguing triple play that combines the outside-of-box thinking of " Moneyball ," the can-do gumption of " Jerry Maguire " and the mass-of-humanity chaos of " Slumdog Millionaire " underscored with music by the Oscar-winning A.R. Rahman.
While these films have classically been about the coaches and the players, the last few years have shown us an interesting shift, with films like Bennett Miller’s Moneyball and Ivan Reitman’s Draft Day instead putting the spotlight on the men in suits who view sports more from a business perspective than an athletic one.
With a focus on the business end of things, Million Dollar Arm plays more like 2012?s Moneyball , but with half the budget and so better chance for a higher profit margin.
It’s not as if Hollywood executives fail to grasp that exceptions like “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side” were hits precisely because they didn’t feel like “sports movies,” because you didn’t have to know or care about on-base-plus-slugging or Texas high school football to follow the story.
This Disney attempt to put an international spin on “Moneyball” delivers only the basics in a plot that needs details.
I prefer sports movies with more sass and snap, like the films Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”) used to make, or even parts of “Moneyball.”
Like Cobb (the ex-ballplayer Ron Shelton's devastating movie portrait of the monstrous baseball star Ty Cobb), Moneyball has few scenes out on the field, none of them sustained.
Not since Cobb, the 1994 Ty Cobb drama that could have been called Sourball, has baseball had such adulthood on screen.
…his portrayal of a Formula One team owner leans heavily into the Moneyball-isms of contemporary sports…
Ruben pulling every resource he can find to get his team from worst place to first place (again, Moneyball style)…
Pressured on multiple sides to retire, he instead hooks up with a smarmy new sponsor (Nathan Fillion), whose high-tech training facility emphasizes Moneyball -style metrics—measured on a race simulator—over actual wheels-on-dirt driving.
Storm’s performance is explained to death by sports statistical analyst Natalie Certain, a more telegenic number-crunching counterpart to Jonah Hill’s character in Moneyball .
Adults will instantly notice that Cars 3 begs, borrows, and steals bits and pieces from everything from Moneyball to virtually the entire Rocky Balboa series to tell this iteration’s tale of aging hero race car Lightning McQueen (Wilson) coming to grips with the fact that he’s not the badass speed racer he used to be.
A tenacious scouting meeting between Stanley and Vince, in which they argue over the prowess of an international prospect who Stanley thinks lacks heart, is ripped from Moneyball .
In terms of sports movies, this one fits nicely as a cross between Jerry Maguire and Moneyball but one that marches to its own beat.
Underdog sports stories—think “Rocky” or “Creed” or “Jerry Maguire” or “Moneyball”— are hardly rare birds.
These narrative fallbacks coexist uneasily with the script’s occasional glances in the direction of inside-sports dramas like “Jerry Maguire,” “Moneyball” and especially “High Flying Bird,” which memorably turned a basketball draft story into a glassily cerebral anti-capitalist parable.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
influenced by Foxcatcher (2014)
Visuals
He stands in front of a mirror, like Channing Tatum did so wonderfully near the close of Foxcatcher .
McDonagh gets, even more, brownie points when he sprinkles in Abbie Cornish, looking like she was plucked out of “Foxcatcher” as Sienna Miller’s spirit animal; Lucas Hedges, as the wisecracking and mournful son, and John Hawkes, as the slithering and enigmatic ex-husband.
Avoiding the playing field almost entirely (as Beane himself was famous for), aside for some footage of the actual games, the screenplay approaches the behind-the-scenes material in a straightforward and unadorned manner reminiscent of such other true-life tales as "All the President's Men" and "Zodiac" (the former even gets a visual shout-out via a scene involving secret discussions being held in the bowels of a darkened parking lot) and fans of that approach (which sounds like what Soderbergh and Zaillian were attempting to achieve) will no doubt eat it up.
As " Bull Durham " and "The Bad News Bears " and many other films have already demonstrated, baseball movies are just fine being about just baseball.
It’s The Bad News Bears for M.B.A.’s.
It’s more like The Bad News Bears with an economics degree.
So, the film fits nicely into the realm of The Bad News Bears or Major League, of underdogs who shock the world.
Speed Levitch, the philosophical tour guide from "The Cruise," is on a bridge giving another tour talk about the poet Lorca and the author D. H. Lawrence, and Speed muses on his opinion that one can find reality through one's dreams.
Linklater shot Waking Life on digital video with real actors, including Wiggins, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (the stars of Linklater's Before Sunrise) and "Speed" Levitch (from the 1998 documentary The Cruise).
Wearing prosthetics and makeup so as to look more like the real-life du Pont -- one ugly sonofabitch -- Carrell's face in this film is an ungainly combination of sad eyes, a pointy nose (not unlike the Penguin's in Batman Returns ) and yellow-stained little teeth that will surely frighten children should he offer up even the slightest smile.
Football films used to do this (North Dallas Forty, Brian's Song), but now mostly stick closely to their inspirational clichés (Remember the Titans, The Blind Side).
Usually for that to happen, it has to be a movie that involves sports, but where sports are not the main thing the movie is about like The Blind Side or Remember the Titans.