MONEYBALL (2011)

Cast

Plot

Lucy Fife Donaldson says: "Baseball recruitment and strategy used to be based on the intuition of managers and scouts. Moneyball is a biopic (based on a book by Michael Lewis) of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, and his attempt to counter tradition and build a competitive team with little money with the help of Yale Economics grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in 2002. The film dramatizes Beane’s struggle to keep the team going, interwoven with his own disappointment in failing to become a pro-player. While it perhaps overemphasizes the impact of their approach and is not as much fun as Bull Durham or A League of Their Own (the ultimate Baseball movies), this is a solid sports movie with good performances from Pitt, Hill (both nominated for Oscars), and support from the always good value Chris Pratt. The screenplay is typical of Aaron Sorkin’s style (think complex and lengthy dialogue delivered while walking) and well-suited to what is a fairly serious, high-stakes sports movie."