Moneyball

In 2001 the Oakland A’s baseball team lost to the New York Yankees in the divisional playoffs. This wasn’t surprising considering the payroll of the Yankees was triple that of the A’s. It’s a situation that isn’t going to change either and the A’s are set to lose three of their star players to teams who can afford to pay more for their services.

The general manager of the A’s, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), and his scouts start debating who they can recruit to replace them.

Beane is not impressed with any of the options and realises that in order to compete, they need to totally re-think the way they recruit players. Then, by chance, he stumbles across Pete Brand (Jonah Hill), an economics graduate working for another team who believes he has a better system. A system purely based on statistics. A system that didn’t care if a player was too old, spent all his time in strip clubs or if his girlfriend wasn’t photogenic enough, provided he got the runs.

Beane recruits Brand to be his assistant and then much to the annoyance of his scouts, they go about recruiting new players based on data not scouting, even the ones who frequent strip clubs and have ugly girlfriends.

Another person who was unimpressed by this was Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) the team's head coach and he refuses to pick the players that Beane and Brand have bought for him. When the club embark on a disastrous start to the season, everyone blames Beane’s purchases but the two of them refuse to be diverted from their strategy. Instead Beane sells a couple of the players the coach is picking to force his hand. I don't quite understand why he didn't just fire his coach but selling the players has the correct effect and the team embark on an all-time major league record of 20 consecutive wins.

They top their division and again reach the playoffs, only to lose at the same stage again. The point though has been made and Beane is headhunted by another team, although ultimately he decides to stay in Oakland.

It’s an interesting film and a true story. I love all the statistical stuff, but it does uses jargon that only baseball fans would comprehend, so an understanding of the game would be useful. I feel a lot of the actual results were glossed over but as this is all factual, if you’re in America you probably know the details of what happened.

Pitt is good and I'm a bit of a Pitt convert over the last few years. Although I can't see anything in this that warranted his Oscar nomination but he is as good in this as has been in most of his recent work. Recommended.

The Fighter

You can't say that Marky Mark isn't diverse. From the ‘Funky Bunch’ to Calvin Klein underwear to ‘Boogie Nights’ and an acting career. Now Mark Wahlberg is even producing films and in the case of ‘The Fighter’ both starring in them as well as producing.

‘The Fighter’ is actually based on a true story. It is the tale of ‘Irish’ Micky Ward (Wahlberg) a fighter trying to make a go of it in the ring. One of his coaches is his half-brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Dicky was a boxer himself in the 1970’s and 80’s. His main claim to fame being his 1978 bout with Sugar Ray Leonard which made him somewhat of a local legend. Dicky still tells the tale of that fight, over and over again, where he knocked down Sugar Ray. Even though Sugar Ray may have tripped... and went on to win the fight.

Now years on, Eklund is being followed by a film crew, who he believes are making a documentary about his possible boxing comeback. In truth though, Dicky is now a shadow of his former self and the film crew are more interested in his drug addiction.

This habit makes Dicky an unreliable coach and he’s always late for training sessions. Micky’s manager would probably fire him; that is if his manager wasn’t his domineering mother Alice (Melissa Leo). Dicky and Alice organise all Micky’s fights for him but things have not gone well recently. Micky has become known simply as a stepping stone for other boxers on their way up to better fights.



The opening of the film is slightly annoying as we are introduced to the close knit but slightly dysfunctional family headed by the overbearing mother and with half a dozen or so even more annoying sisters. Once the film gets going though, it’s rather good.



After losing four consecutive bouts and being pushed, by Alice and Dicky because they all needed the money, into an unwinnable fight against a fighter from a higher weight division, Micky come to a realisation. He has tried to remain loyal to his family but it is costing him his career. They are holding him back and he knows it. If he wants to get anywhere in the boxing world, something needs to change.

When Micky hooks up with local barmaid Charlene (Amy Adams), she gives him the impetuous to do it and helps him pull free from his suffocating family. Which, of course, they don't thank her for. Adams is way out of her usual comfort zone in this film, this being a far more serious role than anything I’ve seen her do before and she does brilliantly.



When Dicky winds up in jail, both brothers eventually start to get their respective acts together. Dicky finally kicks the drug habit while Micky gets new management involved and starts boxing again. Mickey O'Keefe is now his sole coach. O'Keefe is a sergeant in the Police and in real life was the mentor of Micky Ward. O'Keefe plays himself, as in fact does Sugar Ray Leonard, who has a small part.

Micky moves up the ranks but still there in the background are his family, his brother still offering advice even from his prison cell. Then Micky gets a shot at the World Welterweight title against Shea Neary. Problem is, with Dicky now released from prison, can he reconcile his family with his girlfriend and his coach and get everyone on side for the biggest fight of his life?



Underneath it all Dicky turns out to be a nice guy, someone you'd actually want in your corner. Though, I’m still not sure about the mother. I didn't really know Melissa Leo before this. Her character is so annoying Leo must have done a really good job.



The cast are the real strength of this film, in which Bale is outstanding. It is much more than just a film about boxing and the main 'fighting’ take place not in the ring but outside it. Another good film, in a good year so far.

A Single Man

This is a treat for all the ladies who lust after Colin Firth... ‘A Single Man’. The directorial debut of fashion designer Tom Ford and based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood.

Firth plays George Falconer, fifty-something English man working in Los Angeles as a college lecturer during 1962, the period of the Cuban missile crisis. A role for which Firth has got an Oscar nomination. George is also gay.... but relax ladies, there may be kissing but there are no tongues involved and no steamy sex scenes.



George is a man wracked with grief and is struggling to come to terms with the death of his long term partner Jim (Matthew Goode) in a car accident. George lives life as if in a trance, slightly detached from everything, going through the motions of life.

The whole film takes place over a single day, eight months after Jim’s death and is replete with flashbacks that as usual truly addle my mind. This day is the day he decides that he cannot carry on as he is. We see him putting his affairs in order. Meticulously arranging his insurance policies for people to find, leaving money for his housekeeper and buying bullets for his gun. Today, he decides, the bullets will end his pain.

Meanwhile he is stalked by one of his students, Kenny (Nicholas Holt), as well as being picked up by a young Spaniard, Carlos, who's keen to jump into his car and beyond. He arranges to spend the evening with his close friend, and fellow English exile, Charley (Julianne Moore), yet still he is not distracted from his intended task.



Unfortunately he just can't get comfortable enough to kill himself or in a way that won’t prove troublesome for his housekeeper. This introduces a moment of humour into the film which lightens the tone slightly but also seems slightly unfitting.

It’s an enthralling film but the one thing that stops you really getting drawn in is that unlike with George, who you do get to know, you never really get to know his dead partner, Jim. This means you never really quite feel his pain but then Charley has the same feeling and she did know him. When it comes down to it, Charley, who is divorced and equally alone in LA, is simply miffed that he will never be the red blooded heterosexual male that she thinks she needs. She fails to grasp the magnitude of his relationship with Jim and her assertion that his sixteen years with Jim wasn't real love but was ‘just a substitute for the real thing’ doesn’t go down well with George. This is sixties America, not a good time to be gay. George wasn’t even invited to Jim’s funeral and only got told of the accident as an afterthought.



After a enjoyable but non-sexual evening with Kenny, George seems to decide that life might be worth continuing with after all. He puts away his gun and burns his letters of goodbye, only then to be struck down by a heart attack. Life’s a bitch.

A good film and one full of fine detail. Well crafted and well acted. They've obviously tried to make it Oscar worthy. Oooh I’m a cynic.