Moneyball Review

Moneyball Review

I am a huge fan of the Oakland A's. I am also a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin. So it would reason that, like peanut butter and chocolate (two great tastes, that taste great together) a movie about my favorite team coupled with a writer that I am also fond of would be nothing short of brilliant. Unfortunately, Moneyball falls short of brilliance and while it is a good movie it is not as entertaining or as factual as I would have liked.

In plain and simple terms, the success of last year's The Social Network

allowed this movie to be made. For those of you who are unfamiliar The Social Network was the "Facebook" movie. While partially about the creation of Facebook, the movie is really about one man's ego and search for power and the people he hurts along the way.

Moneyball is essentially the same film but replaces Facebook with baseball. Specifically it deals with behind the scenes baseball politics. It is a movie less about baseball and more about how owners put together a product. Some baseball teams are wealthy and put together fantastic teams with all star players. Some baseball teams put together modest clubs for modest funds. And then there is everyone else who put together teams with the leftovers. Moneyball is the system Beane created to get the most bang for his buck.

Whether you believe in the system or not doesn't matter to the movie, all you need to know is that he did it and this movie is about his struggles to get it accepted by those who refused to let go of the old ways. Personally I feel like Moneyball was a fabrication of the "steroid era." That most of his successful teams were juiced beyond compare, and that Beane was a "genius" at finding players who were desperate enough to cheat. But you don't read my blog to read about sports, so let's discuss the movie.

The movie is in a word uneven. It is smart, well written and clever. It is also dull and lifeless. The performances are really the only reason to see the movie. Every actor in their role is brilliant, each member of the cast does really become that character. Director Bennet Miller gets one of Brad Pitts most mature and interesting performances as Beane. He also does a brilliant job of coaxing a unique performance out of Jonah Hill. Hill was in danger of being typecast as the slacker character, and hopefully this opens new doors to him.

Basically, Moneyball is a movie about baseball that has absolutely nothing to do with baseball. What the movie really is about is the ego and "genius" of Billy Beane, the man who claims to have changed baseball. The movie is a good drama, with lots of brilliant performances by top notch actors like Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. However, just like the Social Network these performances lift an otherwise lifeless story with not much happening.

The Tree of Life Review

The Tree Of Life Review

A four year old boy sits on a park bench, next to an elderly man.  The elderly man is a well respected and brilliant physicist. The boy is just a boy. The physicist, seeing he has an audience, begins to explain all the secrets of life, the universe, and everything to the four year old boy. The four year old boy sits mesmerized by the old man's tale, listening carefully, focused on every detail. When the elderly man finishes, he looks down at the four year old boy, and says "Do you understand?" To which the four year old boy says, "No sir, but can I hear it again?"

After sitting through the Tree of Life, I believe that within it must be all the secrets of life, the universe, and everything. Terence Malick has laid out his philosophy on the meaning of life quite beautifully. But I also, like the four year old boy, I cannot process it. I guess am not as smart, or wise, or as experienced as I thought.  Perhaps there is an obvious meaning to the movie that I couldn't see it. Maybe I couldn't see the forrest for the trees. I don't know, but what I do know is that I couldn't see any real narrative structure to the movie.  It's timeline is incomprehensible, and when it does begin to form some linear structure, about one third into the movie, it becomes just a series of disjointed events, like memories that you can't quite place in time.

It is in this section of the movie that the story of a boy and his loss of innocence is told.  Raised by a nurturing mother, and a strict father, the boy undergoes a transformation. He lets go of his youth, filled with grace instilled in him by his mother, and embraces a jaded hard edge, drilled into him by his father.  Brad Pitt plays the father quite well.  He is a man who once had a grace of his own, a great musician, who was beaten down by the world and who doesn't want his son to repeat his mistakes.  He is loving, but hard, and moments of tenderness are almost immediately followed by moments of intense severity.

The movie consists very little of plot, or story. It exists more like an impressionist painting set to music and poetry, than a film.  There is an elegance to the movie that is both delightful, and frustrating.  Throughout the movie I was constantly reminded of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The Tree of Life, just like a Space Odyssey, sometimes lets go of its story in favor of beautiful artistic visuals that bring added depth and emotion to the film. Unlike 2001, The Tree of Life tends to lose focus on the story, and get lost in it's art. I appreciate art, I think many films can be artistic, but I also think that movies are stories, and without focus a movie can become messy and chaotic.  The Tree of Life is just that, blissful chaos.

There is no real easy way to explain what The Tree of Life is about. It defies definition, and it is as beautiful as it is unexplainable. I still can't wrap my head around what this movie was about. The best way, the only way to know what this movie is about is to experience it for yourself. Maybe if I see it again I will understand.