Moneyball

My View:  Moneyball (2011)   Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team, who, after losing in the playoffs, sees his team lose their biggest stars to the Red Sox and Yankees.   In a small Oakland market, Beane knows he can’t spend money like a New York team can and decides, with the help of a freshly graduated Economics major (played by Jonah Hill), to re-write the way a baseball team is put together.  Pitt is sound as the former major league player, now GM, but it’s the supporting cast of Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman (plays the A’s manager Art Howe) who make this a movie to watch.  Hill (before his recent weight loss) is brilliant as the man who seemingly has every baseball player’s stats in his head and develops computer programs to evaluate talent better than the A’s aging scouting staff.  My rating:  Full Price   Moneyball Website

Indyfest (A Look at a Small, Indie or Foreign Film): The Way  (2011)  Martin Sheen plays a father whose son has unexpectedly died in France while hiking.  Sheen travels to France to claim the body and discovers that his son, whom he had a strained relationship with, was in the process of walking the “Camino de Santiago,” a pilgrimage that has gone on for centuries - a trek that starts in France and ends near the coast in Spain.  Sheen decides to take his son’s ashes (Emilio Estevez, Sheen’s son in real life, plays the son in flashbacks) and deposit them at different stops along the way.  He encounters a number of fellow travelers and re-examines his life and his father/son relationship.  This is a picturesque film that, while not religious, does explore the spirituality of man.   My Rating:  Full Price   The Way Website

The 50 (a Movie From My Best/Worst Films of All Time)

#34 Best Film

Roxanne  (1987)   Steve Martin wrote and stars in this modern version of Cyrano de Bergerac.  Martin plays C.D., the local Fire Chief whose nose is so big that “when he wakes up in the morning, he smells the coffee…in Brazil.”  A new, very handsome firefighter (Rich Rossovich) is hired and is extremely shy around women.  A woman in town (Daryl Hannah) catches the new firefighter’s eye, and he enlists C.D. to help him court Roxanne.  The problem is that C.D. is also attracted to Roxanne but feels that no woman could ever fall for a man that looks like him.  Martin wrote this movie that has an incredible amount of creativity and charm.  Hannah is beautiful, as always, and Rossovich is splendid as a tongued-tied firefighter.   Roxanne Info

Forgotten Film:  The Cider House Rules  (1999)  This Academy Award winning film (Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor) was directed by Lasse Hallstrom (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Chocolat).  Tobey Maguire plays Homer, an orphan who grows up in an orphanage run by a doctor (played by Michael Caine).  The doctor trains Homer to be an Obstetrician who helps him with the clandestine abortions that the doctor performs on the side.  Homer encounters Candy (played by Charlize Theron) who works nearby and comes to the orphanage for an abortion.  Though Homer tries several times to escape his life at the orphanage, it seems that he always returns.  The writing in this film is first-rate, and Michael Caine as the flawed doctor gives one of his better performances. The Cider House Rules Info 

In Case You Missed It (A Film Just Released on DVD):  Transformers:  Dark of the Moon  (2011) 

I didn’t really like this film. I thought it was too long in length, and it took so much time just to get to the action sequences, the movie wasn’t worth seeing all the way through.  Just skip to that last thirty minutes of the film to see the final battle sequence, and you won’t have missed anything. And I'll say it, I kind of missed Megan Fox. My Rating:  Cable   Transformers Website

In Memory of Ed Wood (A Movie I’ve Only Seen in Trailers but Just Looks Like a Bad Idea):  In Time  I don’t know what the heck it’s about, other than people in the future will be working for and paying with how long they will live.  Confused?  Me too.  Justin Timberlake stars with Amanda Seyfried and a lot of people I don’t recognize.  Never a good sign.   In Time Website

Weird Credits:  From the credits of The Way:  Handclaps

Flictionary (a Definition of a Film Term):  Leadman:  A person who is part of the Set Decoration department and who is responsible for the props.  A Leadman makes sure that the set is dressed properly, especially for continuity.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You:  The Three Musketeers   The legendary swordsmen must reunite to defeat a beautiful double agent from seizing the French throne.  Milla Jovovich and Christoph Waltz make up some of this cast in what looks like a rip-roaring time.   The Three Musketeers Website

Until Next Time!