Sunday, January 15, 2012
Adapt or die
By Edward Copeland
Brad Pitt, as far as I'm concerned, always has received a bit of a bum rap as an actor. Granted, he doesn't have the breadth of abilities of others in his generation such as Edward Norton or Philip Seymour Hoffman (who actually co-stars with him here in Moneyball), but when Pitt gets a role that falls into his narrower range such as in Fight Club or The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, he truly excels. In fact, the older Pitt gets, the more his talent grows and there hasn't been a better example yet than his performance as Billy Beane in Moneyball where he delivers his best work yet. It also doesn't hurt that he's working from an incredibly strong script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.
Zaillian and Sorkin's screenplay, with a story by Stan Chervin, was adapted from Michael Lewis' book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. While there have been many films about baseball and several I've liked a lot, Moneyball may revolve around the game, but it doesn't resemble other baseball movies though it manages to be just as compelling — if not more so — than other sports movies where the climax involves a Big Game. Bennett Miller helms Moneyball, his first film since his feature debut, Capote, six years ago. While I liked Capote well enough, Moneyball represents a quantum leap forward in quality for Miller.
Billy Beane works as the general manager of the Oakland A's and the movie begins when the team faced off against the New York Yankees in the October 2011 American League Championship Series. At the time, the A's boasted some talented up-and-coming players such as Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi and Oakland almost pulls off the win, but the Yankees prevail. Figures on the screen put the disparity between the teams in very stark terms: It isn't really the Yankees vs. the A's, it's $114,457,768 vs. $39,722,689. Teams with smaller payrolls just can't compete (especially once the season ends and the Yankees poach Damon and Giambi from the A's). As one sports radio talk show host comments, "It's like we're a farm system for the New York Yankees." I don't follow baseball, but that is a ridiculous disparity. It's much like the political system has become following the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
Beane, once a promising player himself, pleads to the Athletics' owner for more money to try to level the playing field with the richer teams, but the owner balks. During a meeting with Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro (Reed Diamond) to obtain replacements for his lost stars, Beane gets shot down at every turn by what he can afford. While he's there, he notices a young man (Jonah Hill) whispering advice that appears to be taken. Beane zeroes in on the guy and learns his name is Peter Brand. Brand advocates a different approach to team building. Instead of chasing star players who cost a fortune and may or may not deliver championships, Brand proposes following a statistical formula based on which players get on base most often, usually at lower salaries.
Oakland's veteran baseball scouts and his manager Art Howe (Hoffman) resist this new system and it falls flat at first as Howe continues to use the players the way he always has, ignoring Beane's suggestions. Finally, Beane makes moves that force his Howe to give his new player acquisitions to get game time. Eventually, the new method reaps rewards and the A's go on an incredible and historic winning streak. Even if you aren't a baseball fan, it's difficult not to feel the excitement when a home run comes at a crucial time.
The only criticism I had with Moneyball is that it dips a bit too often into flashbacks to Beane's life as a promising baseball player coming out of high school (It doesn't help that the actor playing the younger Beane doesn't look that much like Pitt). They could have made all the same points they make in those scenes in less time and without so much repetition and shortened the film's 133-minute running time. However, that's a minor complaint against an otherwise solid film.
Pretty much from top to bottom, the cast excels, including brief appearances by Robin Wright as Beane's ex-wife and Arliss Howard as the head of the Boston Red Sox. Hoffman turns in a fine performance as always, but he lays back since this isn't his movie and makes no scene-stealing attempts. Hill gets to show he's capable of playing a role unlike anything he's played before. He's been fine in most of the comedies in which he's appeared, most from the Judd Apatow Factory such as Funny People, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Superbad and Knocked Up, even if the movies' quality varied, but it's nice to see him given the opportunity to portray a completely different type of character and do it well.
Combining the screenplay and Pitt's best-ever performance proves ultimately to be the winning formula that makes Moneyball so compelling. Pitt (who also was a producer) never strikes a false note and the film rarely does either. Even though Moneyball tells a true story, I didn't know what happened in 2002 so the ending came as a genuine surprise, yet one that felt wholly appropriate — and not the way a fictional script would choose to finish its tale. That's another reason Moneyball belongs on the list of 2011's best films.
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Labels: 10s, Apatow, Books, Brad Pitt, Capote, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, Nonfiction, P.S. Hoffman, Robin Wright, Sorkin
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Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Hell hath no fury like a nerd scorn
By J.D.
A film about the creation of Web site — really?! Have we finally run out of ideas for stories to tell? There must’ve been something deeper, more intriguing enough to attract the likes of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher as their involvement in The Social Network (2010) gives the film a lot of credibility. Based on the “nonfiction thriller,” The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, the film chronicles the origins of the immensely popular social networking Web site Facebook and turns out to be a familiar story about greed, jealousy and power — a study in class warfare: old money versus New Economy dotcom millionaires. What started as an idea shared among a small group of Harvard University students eventually became the domain of one person: Mark Zuckerberg. However, after Facebook became a legitimate global phenomenon and he became a billionaire, the others wanted in on the action (and the money) and lawsuits and court battles ensued. Because the notion of authorship is in question, Sorkin and Fincher apply the structure of Citizen Kane (1941), by telling the story via flashbacks from multiple points-of-view, while viewing it all through a detached journalistic viewpoint reminiscent of All the President’s Men (1976). The end result is an engrossing, intelligent look at young, ambitious men who made something that altered the popular culture landscape forever.
Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is supersmart but socially inept, saying all the wrong things and this is readily evident in the film’s prologue when his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) dumps him, and seals the deal by telling him that he’s an asshole. Motivated by being dumped in public, he vents his frustration on his blog with a vicious diatribe. To get his mind off it, Zuckerberg creates a Web site called “Face Mash” comparing all the girls at school with each other. He does this by hacking his way into other Web sites on campus. With the help of his friend and fellow classmate, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Face Mash becomes a hit — so much so that it crashes the school’s computer network. Fincher quickly establishes Zuckerberg as a computer programming genius and, along with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pulsating electronic soundtrack, actually makes the sequence where the proto-Facebook Web site is created look cool. Reznor and Ross’ dark, brooding score perfectly complements Fincher’s often gloomy, atmospheric imagery. The director juxtaposes this sequence with a party at the school’s most exclusive club, the Phoenix S-K Final Club, in order to show how they both end up objectifying women, reducing them to sex objects for horny, young men.
Zuckerberg is busted for invasion of privacy and is approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) who have created a crude prototype of Facebook and they ask him to merge his ideas with their own. In return, they’ll introduce him to the higher social strata of Harvard. However, Zuckerberg’s gateway to the big time is when he meets Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the inventor of Napster, an infamous and very popular music file sharing Web site. Parker is a persuasive speaker and his slick ways impresses Zuckerberg as he sells him on the potential of Facebook on a global scale. Parker introduces Zuckerberg to nightclubs and, more importantly, appeals to his antisocial tendencies. Timberlake does a fantastic job of playing Parker as a smooth-talking salesman cum New Millennium con man who is smart enough to recognize the Next Big Thing, latch onto it and ride it out to fame and fortune. He delivers a playful performance and there’s more than a whiff of a master manipulator as Parker comes across as someone who had an ethics bypass at birth. There is a delicious irony seeing a slick performer such as Timberlake playing a slick entrepreneur such as Parker. It’s like Parker is the Silicon Valley Tyler Durden from Fight Club (1999) to Zuckerberg’s socially awkward hacker. Parker is Zuckerberg’s unchecked id as he surreptitiously drives a wedge between the young programmer and his best friend Saverin.
Jesse Eisenberg is a revelation as he’s cast against type in The Social Network. Known for playing stuttering, lovable neurotic characters in films such as The Squid and the Whale (2005) and Adventureland (2009), he shifts gears to play an aggressively ambitious nerd. His take on Zuckerberg is that of an extremely logical person with loads of talent to burn and who is motivated by rejection. He comes across as an insensitive prick that doesn’t have the time for people who can’t keep up with him and his fast mind. The film posits that the main motivational factor for him doing what he did was to climb the social ladder, to make money and to be the head of an exclusive club where he has the power to accept or reject people instead of being the one on the outside looking in. However, when it gets down to it being spurned by Erica was the prime motivator for Zuckerberg creating Facebook.
After making the popular tear-jerker The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Fincher returns to the moody, journalistic approach he took with Zodiac (2007), but where the latter was a slow burn over almost three hours, The Social Network moves along at a very brisk two hours as the talented young cast delivers Sorkin’s wordy screenplay in his trademark rat-a-tat-tat style. This film is absolutely dense with dialogue, even topping Zodiac with all of its scenes of theorizing about the identity of a serial killer. Sorkin had just come off the high profile flop of his short-lived television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and this film sees him back on familiar turf with fast-talking cocky characters antagonizing each other. His dialogue is smart and funny as it gets to the heart of the matter — providing Zuckerberg’s motivation and doing a great job chronicling just how Facebook came to be in an engaging way. Fincher and Sorkin have pulled off quite an accomplishment with The Social Network by making an entertaining and engrossing film about the creation of a Web site. The irony is that Zuckerberg created Facebook as a way for people to acquire friends and connect with each other while he is a deeply antisocial person who doesn’t really care about having friends. Of course, he’s now a billionaire, which I’m sure cushions the blow but the film leaves the lingering impression that he still wants to be with Erica and that this is something that no amount of money will make go away.
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Friday, December 21, 2007
A spoonful of sugar helps the history go down
By Edward Copeland
When I revisited Smiles of a Summer Night recently, I was reminded of the line by Desiree's mother that says to beware of good deeds, because they come with a high cost and leave a nasty smell. The phrase seems even more apt when considering the true story of Charlie Wilson's War, Mike Nichols' best feature film in decades. It manages to present history as entertainment and succeeds glowingly on both counts.
Tom Hanks stars as the former Texas representative and once again Hanks gives a performance much better than either of the two for which he won Oscars.
Charlie Wilson was a true product of the 1980s, a hard-drinking, hard-partying member of Congress with a penchant for the ladies, a staff full of big-haired beauties and a slim legislative track record. As he tells one character, he's fortunate enough to represent the one congressional district in the United States that doesn't want anything, so he's free to vote yes a lot and collect a lot of IOUs from other House members.
During a weekend of debauchery in Las Vegas, a 60 Minutes report on the struggles of Afghans in their fight against Soviet invaders catches Wilson's eye. As a member of an important subcommittee, Wilson, almost on a whim, doubles the amount of U.S. dollars being spent on covert activities in Afghanistan.
Wilson's action attracts the attention of a wealthy Houston socialite Joanna Herring (Julia Roberts), who is as right-wing and Republican as Wilson is not but has made the Afghan situation a cause aimed at winning the Cold War. She encourages Wilson to add a trip to Pakistan on to a planned junket to the Mideast so he can meet with Pakistani President Zia (Om Puri), the man who hanged the late Benazir Bhutto's father in a previous takeover in Pakistan.
After an awkward meeting with Zia and his advisers, who were under the false impression that Wilson was an official U.S. envoy, Zia asks Wilson to pay a visit to one of the Afghan refugee camps that have sprouted in his country. The visit is a true eye-opener for Wilson when he sees the plight of the Afghan refugees and meets with the CIA official in charge of the region, who makes it clear that his job is not to draw attention to any U.S. activities or risk making the Cold War into a hot one.
Angered by the station chief's attitude, Wilson flies back to D.C. on a mission, telling his faithful aide (Amy Adams) to get the deputy director of the CIA or higher in his office that morning. The man who arrives instead is a lower-level CIA agent named Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a blustery man with a history of making enemies within the agency.
It seems like a cliche to say that Hoffman gives a great performance since he does it so often, but Gust is another one and he and Hanks bring out the best in one another.
Despite Wilson's anger over not getting the CIA official he wants, he soon learns that he did get the right man and the two set out to increase the budget for covert ops in Afghanistan to help the mujahedeen. Their travels include making unlikely allies in their mission out of Israel and Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Further complicating religious matters, is the boisterous Christian sermonizing of Joanna.
As Gust warns Wilson when trying to downplay Joanna's religiosity, sooner or later, God will end up on both sides of the fight. Roberts' accent as Joanna is a little iffy, but her role is so small that it hardly matters.
The screenplay by Aaron Sorkin is sharp, smooth and never strays from its efficiently told story. Sorkin, whose dialogue grew so generic and predictable on The West Wing, seems to have rediscovered his voice and the ability to distinguish characters from one another.
Nichols, who has concentrated of late on directing on Broadway and in two great play adaptations for HBO (Angels in America and Wit), still has some great moves in his arsenal of tricks.
In addition to keeping the pace perfect, he also has some particularly nice shots, including a stunning pullback view of the refugee camp that's reminiscent of the scene of wounded Confederate troops in Gone With the Wind.
Of course, most people know that the rout of the Soviets that led to the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. had unintended consequences for the U.S., but Nichols and Sorkin still manage to land this denouement like a suckerpunch at the end. As Wilson notes when his pleas to help Afghanistan after the Soviets leave fall on deaf ears, the U.S. always seems to go in places with the highest ideals, but then leaves before the job is finished.
Charlie Wilson's War doesn't make that mistake. It teaches while making you laugh consistently and heartily, then sends you out of the theater to reflect on what was yet to come.
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Labels: 00s, Amy Adams, Hanks, Julia Roberts, Nichols, P.S. Hoffman, Sorkin
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