Moneyball (2011)

rating: ****

the story: Billy Beane starts a revolution in baseball by putting the hard focus on stats.

the review: I was always going to watch Moneyball, but I also put it off for years.  The reason for both is the same, and that's Brad Pitt.  Pitt's one of the best actors working today, but his best work is retreating into the past, and I always thought Moneyball was the start of that.  I mean, what does Moneyball have to say about his talent, his unique charisma?  It's a movie about baseball stats!

As it turns out, plenty.  It's one of those quintessential Pitt roles.  It's a lot like his Jesse James (as in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, one of my all-time favorites).  In fact, that's the best reason to watch it.  I've got and will go into plenty of others, too, but that's the main reason, and it's the big thrust of the movie itself.  It conforms real history into a showcase performance.  You can't appreciate the art of filmmaking if you watch a movie like Moneyball and don't understand that.  I'm not talking "showcase performance" in that Pitt makes it flashy, but that it's a role that boils down the essence of a Brad Pitt performance and gives it another context.  That's a movie star.  And maybe that's why Pitt doesn't get a lot of great roles these days, because the focus had shifted far away from movie stars and onto blockbuster franchises (actual and would-be).  So far the closest Pitt's come to work like that is the unexpected success of World War Z (which I also got around to watching recently, and enjoyed to a lesser extent).

Billy Beane was the general manager of the Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season the movie covers.  The A's were struggling to recover from the loss of three key players from a great 2001 campaign, mostly because of, well, money.  In fact, Moneyball is less about baseball than it is about money.  It's a Great Recession movie.  It's about a small market team struggling to remain competitive against big market teams.  The movie uses a graphic that explains the huge disparity between the payroll of the A's and the most successful franchise in MLB history, the New York Yankees.  Basically it's about the haves and the have-nots, the 1% and the lower class.  (It may be worth remembering that although athletes are paid handsomely today, more in some sports than others, and more with greater visibility, they used to do this as a side hobby back in the day, as in, for no pay.  Jim Thorpe got screwed out of Olympic glory because he played baseball for money, but these guys used to struggle on this life.  In other words, this isn't to note the irony of people playing baseball complaining about money.  Relatively speaking, Moneyball is talking about all the players making minimum wage.) 

Moneyball, in effect, is the predecessor of later movies like The Big Short (2015).  In that sense it's also relevant to speak of co-writer Aaron Sorkin's involvement.  It may not be known as an Aaron Sorkin project, but it's got Sorkin all over it.  Above all else, Sorkin is always interested in trying to riddle out why something's happened.  That's The West Wing, trying to figure out why politics remained popular despite how divisive they had become and were going to remain long after the TV series ended.  That's The Social Network, trying to figure out how Facebook became so big despite its humbling origins.  That's Jobs, trying to explain the rise of new technology against a backdrop of a classic cult of personality.  That's even Molly's Game, trying to explain gambling being as relevant as ever.  And that's Moneyball, trying to explain how the Great Recession wasn't going to change anything.  The story ends with Beane failing to achieve his goal of leveling the playing field.  Red Sox fans know another big market team used his tactics to succeed, and now everyone uses them, and so small market teams like the A's are right back where they started.  Like any attempt to fix the economy so it works for everyone, apparently.

But you needn't worry about politics or economics to enjoy Moneyball.  Like all great movies, you've got a great cast, one that continually rewards you.  You've got the always-underrated Robin Wright there in another thankless supporting role.  You've got Philip Seymour Hoffman in his classic Patch Adams mode, the mainstream naysayer standing in Beane's way as A's manager.  You've got Jonah Hill reinventing his career as a dramatic actor, inspiring and encouraging Beane to look beyond the standard.  And you've got...Chris Pratt?

In 2011, Pratt was two years into his career-making turn in the sitcom Parks & Recreation, three away from his breakout role in Guardians of the Galaxy.  In Moneyball he plays one of three key small-salary players Beane scoops up to replace superstars.  I can't be sure that this isn't hindsight speaking, but he easily stands out from the pack, acting-wise, and even in a small role stands out in the film, without hamming it up, as he does in Guardians.  (In Parks he was cast in the John Krasinski Office role, and not unsurprisingly both have since taken the classic lovable everyman role to cinematic success.)  Anyway, it's clear he stands out, that he's destined for greater things, and so it's a fun way to experience Pratt before he hit big.  For all I know, Moneyball played a role in helping him get there. 

As a lifelong fan of the A's, I always wanted to see the movie just on that front alone, and I wanted to know whether it acknowledged Beane's legacy with the 2004 Red Sox win in the World Series, and whether or not it referenced the "Greek God of Walks," Kevin Youkilis (items two and three? check and check).  (Of course Beane usurper Theo Epstein, who helped engineer Boston's 2004 curse reversal, did it again with the Cubs after the film was released.)

The film puts a hard focus on some things and a soft one on others.  It glosses over the ace pitching staff the A's had that season, all of whom were later poached (I've long called the A's the farm system of the rest of the league, which made it funny when Beane laments the same thing in the movie) by other teams.  Clearly it has a narrative it wants to tell.  I'm not going to quibble over stuff like that.  As I said, it's really an excuse to let Pitt be Brad Pitt.  I'll take that.  Yeah...

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

rating: ****

the story: Thanos collects the Infinity Gems and plows through superheroes left and right.

what it's all about: This is it!  This is what these movies have been working toward since Iron Man (2008) when Nick Fury strolls into the movie and talks about an "Avengers initiative."  And "these movies" includes...three Iron Man movies, three Captain America, three Thor, two previous Avengers, two Guardians of the Galaxy, a Doctor Strange, technically one of the Hulk movies, a third cinematic Spider-Man, Black Panther, and an Ant-Man...!  So, lots of material.  And aside from Captain America: Civil War, this is the first time since Avengers that there's been a real sense of momentum, and this is the most momentum these movies could possibly have built up.

And the movie delivers.  It's a perfect summation and justification of the whole thing.  I mean, not perfect.  Where Empire Strikes Back has its big moment at the end people will always point to as reason enough to declare it a classic even though it ends with a cliffhanger...ultimately Infinity War is all cliffhanger.  It's all big moments and clever quips and selling the concept of Thanos as the ultimate threat.  But it features no moment comparable to learning the truth about Vader.  The closest it comes is suggesting Thanos suffers at having to sacrifice his daughter, Gamora, a relationship we already knew about from Guardians of the Galaxy.  And that's ultimately a weakness.  If it were true masterful storytelling, Gamora would stand obviously at the center of Infinity War, but I can tell you the early response is that it's Thanos who does, and that is a weakness.  Thanos is not sympathetic.  He is a villain.  Black Panther introduced the concept of the supposed sympathetic villain.  That's one of the reasons I'm not eager to watch Black Panther, regardless of its rabid popularity, because it trades on responses that manipulate more than tell a credible story.  Infinity War itself sells Black Panther short.  Wakanda is just another in a series of weak superhero defenses.  In order to make Thanos look strong, everyone else has to look weak.  Actually, including Thanos himself.

So I am impressed with the results, and disappointed, too.  The best thing about the movie, because Gamora is held back, is watching all the various aspects of the Avengers movie landscape come together.  All the classic heroes are here, and nearly everyone else, too.  Since I still haven't seen Doctor Strange, this is my first opportunity to see Benedict Cumberbatch as Strange (a brief look from Thor: Ragnarok didn't impress me, and neither did the movie around it).  He comes off well.  I don't tend to like Cumberbatch's American accent, as he seems to be inclined to rob himself of his greatest asset, that deep boom in his voice, when he uses it.  Thankfully he pulls out the boom every now and then.  Zoe Saldana, robbed or not in the story, is the best actor in the movie, as Gamora.  She didn't really have such opportunities in the two Guardians movies to date.  Josh Brolin has been a favorite of mine since he started breaking out in 2007, and while some of his dialogue is clumsy he of course sells Thanos well.  Chris Pratt leads the rest of the Guardians as Star-Lord in typically Star-Lord material.  Chris Hemsworth has the biggest opportunity of the original set to stand out, and maybe because his work in Ragnarok was so recent the movie is inclined to give Thor useful material.  Robert Downey Jr, who has throughout the franchise been at its center, is strangely downplayed, for the first time ever, as Iron Man, despite having some fairly important things to do.  Chris Evans as Captain America has less than both of them but he still comes off as more immediately impactful.  Mark Ruffalo as Hulk (sort of) has strong character material.  Tom Holland's Spider-Man is about as good here as he was in Civil War, and better than he was in his own movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming.  I know Black Panther has been insanely popular, but I remain unmoved by Chadwick Boseman.  Of the many other actors in smaller roles, Peter Dinklage stands out (heh) as a dwarf (heh).  It's about time someone truly looks beyond his size.  And this movie, which like Justice League draws on the 21st century blockbuster legacies of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, was probably his best bet for such an opportunity.

For the first time, I find the results of an Avengers movie appropriately cinematic.  It's not ultimately just goofing around, but it's also not barreling toward seriousness like Civil War and its predecessor, Captain America: Winter Soldier.  Not that barreling toward seriousness is bad, but that it's always an awkward contrast.  So at least there's material that wants to be taken seriously that doesn't revolve entirely around Captain America. 

The other biggest problem?  The next Avengers movie really has to stick the landing.  If it doesn't, it makes everything else look weak.  Which, as Infinity War points out, is a bad thing.