Moneyball (2011) How Can You Not Be Romantic About Baseball

Moneyball (2011) Columbia Pictures

To start this review I should mention that I am already biased toward the A's because they are my favorite baseball teams along with the Dodgers. 

My friends are not big fans of baseball because they think it's slow and boring. I can agree with that assessment when watching it on the television. The in-game experience is much better to give baseball their credit. They will need to figure out something in the future to increase the viewership on TV. 

Moneyball is the tale of what it's like for the smaller market teams to compete professionally with the bigger market teams. Baseball has been hard to watch over the years because of the salary rules. They have a salary tax system where the teams that spend over a certain amount of money have to pay a percentage of that salary extra. It hurts the smaller teams because the bigger teams can pay top dollar for players that would otherwise be paid much less by smaller market teams.

Its an unfair system and the film exploits the fact that these smaller teams have fan bases that are let down every time a good player leaves to a bigger market for more money. The difference is that one man named Billy Beane is trying to change the way he looks at the game. He highers Peter Brand who studied economics. He believes he can help Billy Beane find a team of guys that no one wants by finding value in their statistics. They project what numbers they need in order to make the playoffs so that they can get another shot at the title. 

The movie itself features great performances from Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. The script writing for the film was phenomenal and it provided the perfect foreground for the story of how they compile the team and the reaction they get from the fans and media.

I guess the film does what you expect, but the frustration was real and it was based on a real struggle as a general manager. Most films would not be able to transfer these types of feeling through film and you got a front row seat for greatness while seeing Brad Pitt.

Although the frustration continues for the A's, each year they are getting closer and closer to the championship based off the model that they started using in this film.

Baseball may not be the most entertaining sport, but this film highlights why baseball is still a great sport to be apart of as a fan. 

Pacific Rim (2013) Your Inner 7 Year Old Will Cheer. In Fact, YAYYYYYY!

Pacific Rim (2013) Legendary Pictures

Go big or go extinct! You may already be thinking that this movie did not appear to be watchable from the trailers, but you are dead wrong. Pacific Rim gets the joke that it is a part of. No matter what anyone tells you about this film, you should know that there is no joke someone can make to take away the integrity of this film. It doesn’t pretend to be anything that it isn’t and lives up to more than you can divine from a single trailer. I loved this film because of these facts and because it was incredibly interactive. Characters were easy to follow and although the script was overt in trying to explain drift compatibility and dimensional gateways, you cared genuinely about Mako and Raleigh. I found that each character had a purpose and all of them were fun to watch during at least one part of the film.

One of the best things about Pacific Rim is that it was properly labeled as its own movie. This isn’t Transformers 5, it wasn’t a Power Rangers remake, and it wasn’t an updated film version of Mecha Godzilla (and thank God they weren’t). It is a movie about new characters facing a threat we have wanted to see on film since we were children. It wasn’t animated, it wasn’t dramatized, it was just a movie about robots punching alien sea monsters in the face and it was great. Who cares about all the science that was mostly unbelievable? I don’t expect all that much science in a film anyway although some plots depend on the science (see my star trek review). Pacific Rim didn’t need to be weighed down into a lengthy physics lessons and one-liners of dialogue that explain some mystical science device in the future. It was what you expect and it did a great job of it. What more can you ask for as a movie viewer?

I review movies every day and can tell you that many of them diverge from their original plot lines in order to develop too many characters, or find too many new sub plots. Pacific Rim never really does this (other than one time that I can think of) and you get what you need from the film. The only think I wanted more from the entire movie was more Kaiju and Jeager fights and wish that there was a larger montage scene that showed every single one. They are impressive at scale and a feat of CGI genius. Luckily I will get my wish because Pacific Rim 2 has already been announced! Whhhatttttt?

Now I feel like some of you are already saying “BUT ADAM THIS MOVIE LOOKS SO DUMB” and I understand that. Granted I am a man that grew up in the 90s and I understand that not all people will enjoy this film, but it’s not like this idea was new or groundbreaking (see any anime TV series ever). When I was a kid I loved power rangers and even the girls loved power rangers. The idea that you got a robot you could use to fight evil in the streets of downtown somewhere was a great fantasy. I remember it was a fight to choose your ranger at recess and the red and green rangers were always the first taken while there were always girls that wanted the pink and yellow rangers. The show was awful, but it has sown the seeds of robots fighting alien creatures long ago. It was still a good idea today and thankfully they made this film and it wasn’t done horribly like the transformers series (I seriously don’t know how it could get worse, but I am sure they will find a way).

Also, I kind of enjoy seeing American films start using terms to explain things in other languages. If you speak another language then you probably already know that English has some major flaws that can’t be ignored. In Latin it is difficult to come up with new phrases if there is not a base to explain the word. Usually people would call the Jaegers ‘giant robots’ or ‘mechs’ and the Kaiju ‘alien sea monsters’ because that is the only base we can derive it from. In the past year, we have seen two phrases from Japanese that already exist for things in movies. The two phrases I can remember are Kaiju and Kuzuri (used in The Wolverine). Kaiju means “strange beast” and Kuzuri just means “wolverine” although in the movie Mariko defines it as “an animal with long claws and sharp teeth that fears nothing.” I enjoy this vernacular because it explains words in a single word that would take a Latin or Greek base a sentence to explain without creating a new word. It’s entertaining and gives us a language lesson about other cultures, which in my opinion is desperately needed.

Many people have told me that because this film didn’t make any money in the U.S. they will not create another like it. The truth is that it did not do very well in the U.S., but it did extremely well in the rest of the world. The movie cost 190 million to make and only made around 100 million in the box offices in the U.S. The great thing is that the movie made 305 million internationally and even broke records in China. I am guessing that the sequel to this movie will do even better in the box office because many people (including myself) didn’t even see the movie in theaters.

I also thought that Charlie Hunnam was a great lead actor in this role. I can only remember seeing him in Greet Street Hooligans in 2005 and to this day it is still one of my favorite movies. Ron Pearlman and Charlie Day both had decent roles as well, but the star of the show was Idris Elba who did a great job at being a leader/father character. He is great at delivering one-liners and even his monologue wasn’t horrible. I can’t wait to see him as Mandela.

To say the least, I thought this was a great film and was absolutely worth watching. I would consider it to be family friendly (there is no nudity and if you don’t mind blue goo for blood then it should be fine). I felt like a little kid at a carnival when I was watching this film and I will probably see it again before the end of the year.