On 6.15 the great Scott Alexander (co-author of all the great Scott-and-Larry screenplays including Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, The People vs Larry Flynt and the miscast American Crime Story series about O.J. Simpson) posted the following on Facebook:
“I rewatched Moneyball last night. What a great movie!! So smart and hilarious and insightful. It’s one of those perfect grown-up films that we all wish studios still pumped out. I’m not even a sports guy, but I was howling through the whole thing. Bennett Miller, Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin [were] all batting a thousand. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are remarkable — understated yet engaging. And those crusty old scouts are a scream.
“Kudos to my pal Francine Maisler, who cast it, and producer Rachel Horovitz.
Rob McFarlane response: “I never knew how much I loved big, glossy, high-craft and character-driven Hollywood dramas until Hollywood stopped making them. Moneyball is a treasure.”
HE comment: The one thing I didn’t like qbout Moneyball was Billy Bean turning down the Boston Red Sox offer. He wants to pay for his daughter’s college education and he turns down a very fat and well-deserved check that will put him on easy street? Okay, so he’d be living in Boston, but his daughter was already air-commuting for visits. Would it have been THAT much of a problem to fly back and forth between LA and Boston? David Frost used to regularly commute between NYC and Londön, and he did that in his stride.
Posted on 9.7.11, “Moneyball is mystical, statistical, spooky, emotional and wonderfully original. And wonderfully ‘pure’ in a sense. The complexity mixed with the spirituality and the political reality of things…just brilliant.”
Moneyball opened close to a decade go, and it seems more like a century in terms of what’s getting made these days and where the Hollywood culture is at and who’s investing in what. I’m very, very afraid that American megaplex flicks like Moneyball (i.e., ones that might turn out just as well) are never even getting their chance at bat.
Posted on 11.28.11: “Moneyball is so much finer and smarter and more skillfully directed, written and performed than all the late-arriving Best Picture twirlybirds (especially and definitely including War Horse, The Artist and Hugo) that…I don’t want to get out the hammer but is there something in the water or what?
“The Artist, a bright shimmering bauble and a charming, silver-toned curio, is a hotter Best Picture contender than effing Moneyball? An almost comically schmaltzy, old-time manipulative Steven Spielberg horse film deserves more Best Picture love? Are we all living inside the Truman Show dome? If so, would it be okay if I become a heroin addict?
“I realize, of course, that Moneyball doesn’t deliver conventional satisfactions (no big win at the end, no Natural-style home run, no cute dog) but it’s so amazingly singular and patient and wise and masterful. The fact that Miller allows the soundtrack to go utterly silent on several occasions is awesome in itself. Unlike other sports films and their standard strategems, it probably takes a couple of viewings to really get what Moneyball is throwing.
“Plus it contains Pitt’s finest performance of his career and the best swaggering-movie-star performance in a long while. George Clooney doesn’t ‘swagger’ as Matt King in The Descendants — he’s playing an anxious, grief-struck dad who settles into a tough situation and comes out of it in a stronger, slightly less selfish, more father-like place. Pitt’s Billy Beane is also besieged and uncertain, but he’s a little more of a kick to hang with. So perhaps he’s a notch or two ahead of Clooney…maybe.
“And 28 year-old Hill slips into a new realm or membrane of some kind. His Peter Brand character is mostly about analytical brainpower, but he’s a guy who loves to stay out of things. His greatest comfort is blending in with the walls and the furniture. The pleasure of Hill’s performance is in the silences, the unspoken stuff, the stillnesses, the looks of terror and trepidation. It’s a major growth-spurt role, and absolutely deserving of Best Supporting Actor honors, partly because Hill’s decision not to do just raunchy comedies like Get Him To The Greek and The Sitter represents the best instinct or impulse that an actor can have, which is to move up the ladder by growing his or her game.”