Tuesday 28 July 2015
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Money ball
Do the math!
Moneyball
Rating:
February 24, 2012
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt
Director: Bennett Miller
The best sports films are the ones that can appeal to people who don’t like sports. Moneyball, based on a true story, stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the manager of the failing Oakland Athletics baseball team, who is unable to afford star players on his limited financial resources. Beane befriends Jonah Hill’s character, Peter Brand, a just-out-of-college stats-wiz who’s devised a system of rating players using mathematics. It allows Beane and Brand to build a team of players who are undervalued by everyone else, and therefore available on Oakland’s meager budget.
Despite its theme, this is really a film about people rather than baseball. The players are a bunch of underdogs, who just might come together and win the day. Beane, meanwhile, is a worried father, recovering from a failed marriage, and Brand is a nerdy number-cruncher with a passion for the sport. The film’s best scenes are the ones in which Beane and Brand’s crazy idea ruffles the feathers of the game’s old guard, which includes Philip Seymour Hoffman as the team’s petulant coach.
Moneyball isn’t perfect, though. The uneven pacing is a problem, and you never really know what the film is building towards. For viewers unfamiliar with the game, the constant use of baseball jargon and the hard-to-follow statistics conversations, render chunks of this film incomprehensible. Still, there’s some crackling dialogue from The Social Network’s Aaron Sorkin, and two winning performances from its leads that make this film consistently watchable, despite its bumps.
Brad Pitt is charming as Beane, but also plays the character a little weary and weathered. Jonah Hill brings a quiet confidence to the part of Brand, making a big impression in his first dramatic role.
I’m going with three out of five for Moneyball. It’s the thinking man’s sports film, with more layers than your classic inspirational story.
(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)
kicking and screaming
Kicking and screaming
Carnage
Rating:
February 24, 2012
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C Reilly, Christoph Waltz
Director: Roman Polanski
The idea of watching four people arguing in a room for eighty minutes hardly sounds like fun. But this is a film by Roman Polanski, and the acting’s top notch.
Brimming with sharp, witty dialogue, and unfolding in a slightly cramped upscale New York apartment, Carnage is a wickedly funny chamber piece in which the Longstreets (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly) invite the Cowans (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) over for a hopefully civilized chat, when their son is assaulted by the Cowans’ boy in a nearby park. Fueled by alcohol and their own prejudices, what starts off as a well-mannered affair quickly descends into an all-out war, where words become weapons.
All four actors are in solid form, but it’s Christoph Waltz who deserves special mention here as a cynical corporate lawyer, who’s invariably interrupted by calls on his Blackberry during the most heated moments of argument. Over the course of the row, that offending mobile phone is flung into a flower vase, a purse is hurled across the room, and someone vomits all over a stack of fancy art books.
It’s all extremely funny, and Polanski enjoys stripping his characters off their dignity, to show us that good manners after all are only skin-deep.
I’m going with three-and-a-half out of five for Carnage. In the end your sympathy is reserved for the children of these obnoxious folks; the only thing those kids need to be protected against are their dangerous parents. Don’t miss this film if you’re a fan of good acting and delicious dialogue.
(This review first aired on CNN-IBN)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)