Moneyball (2011)
Directed by Bennett Miller
The story of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball team on a budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
30 connections found
View:
30 films that influenced Moneyball
What critics say influenced Moneyball
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?
“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.
Advertisement
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?
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.
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.
Advertisement
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.
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.