SUCK MY DISC

DVD releases for the week of January 10th, 2012

MONEYBALL

***1/2 (out of ****)

The idea to turn Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book Moneyball into a movie is batshit insane. There’s almost no narrative, save for an unsatisfying conclusion. The main character, Billy Beane, is kind of a dick. And it is so “Inside Baseball” that it’s the perfect example of why the term for too much inside information is “inside baseball.” There’s an entire chapter that’s just dedicated to the stats that are looked at before the amateur draft, stats that no one could care about regarding players no one will ever hear of. I loved it, and Michael Lewis is pretty good writer, but I would never think to recommend the book to a non-baseball fan, much less think a movie should be made. And no one else did either, at least at first. No one, except for a young name Bradley Pittley.

This movie has been in development since the book came out a decade ago. This happens all of the time, and we usually don’t hear about it. But typically when this happens, everyone involved gets switched in and out. It’s with one producer/director/star team at one studio, and then it moves to an entirely different team, maybe even to a different studio. But the one constant that has always been there is Brad Pitt. Why? Why, Brad Pitt? Do you love baseball that much? Do you love the A’s, a team that literally no one has ever loved? Were you double-dog dared to film the most unfilmable book of all time, and Steve Coogan already had the rights to Tristram Shandy? Pitt even stayed on when his boy, Steven Soderbergh, left the project for creative reasons, something that stars rarely do. Explain yourself, Brad, if you’re reading this, which we all know you are.

What Pitt did, after Soderbergh left, was go out and get Bennett Miller, whose movies win their leading men the Best Actor Oscar one hundred percent of the time. Selfish? Maybe. It’s hard to imagine very many people thinking that Bennett Miller could make an unfilmable novel more interesting than Steven Soderbergh. Or maybe Brad Pitt was tired of his directors telling him he can do whatever he wants. Maybe he knew, just like we all did, that he needed to be reined in. And maybe, just maybe, he knew this would be the role of a lifetime, a role that could turn him from Brad Pitt: Star to Brad Pitt: Actor, and he couldn’t roll the dice on hiring McG to guide him through it. (I would have figured out a way to get Terrence Malick, but that’s a story for another day.)

I have no idea how Brad Pitt knew that Billy Beane was the part he was born to play. I have no idea if any of what I have written on this subject, or am about to write, is true. What I do know is that it probably isn’t. If I had to guess, in order to — I don’t know — fill up a word requirement, I think it’s because there was a lot for him to relate to in this role. I know what you’re thinking: “Brad Pitt was the general manager of the A’s for, what, two months? Two months at the most? How can he relate to Billy Beane, who has been the GM of the A’s for 13 years?” It’s a valid argument, but let me proffer to you the fact that there is more to the Billy Beane character than just the fact that he works for a professional baseball club. Hear me out.

Moneyball has a lot to do in its two hour and fifteen minute runtime. We need to meet an entire baseball team, and we need to meet a young man named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, who has figured out a couple of stats that people aren’t paying attention to. We need to learn what these stats are, and we need to learn what it means to be a GM of a baseball team, from working with scouts to working with other GMs, so you can make trades. It’s a lot of information and, more importantly, the vast majority of America couldn’t give two fat flying shits. How are we going to deliver all of this useless nonsense to a mainstream audience in a big-budgeted, mainstream movie? We have Brad Pitt, but that might not be enough. We need Billy Beane.

Billy Beane is kind of an asshole. That’s a bad start. He’s a complex guy, but we don’t have time to explain that to people. We have a few minutes for flashbacks, in which we show how much potential he had getting drafted out of college, but tanked as a major league star, which shows some motivation, but that’s it. We’re going to need Brad Pitt to act his nuts off, and that’s the scariest thing anyone could ever need. Brad Pitt has always had two modes: “Brad Pitt”, and “Actor Acting His Balls Off”. I’m fine with “Brad Pitt”. I always have been. He’s likable. He’s kind of cool. And I don’t think the Ocean’s trilogy needs much more from him than what he gives, which is nothing more than “Brad Pitt”. It starts to get scary when he becomes “Actor Acting His Balls Off”, and if you need an example of that, look no further than 12 Monkeys, a performance that people still inexplicably praise. It’s a memorable performance, but so is Adam Sandler’s in Jack and Jill. Memorable is not always good. In a performance like his in 12 Monkeys, and every actor, whether they be an Actor or Star, has at least one under their belt, he is acting so hard that you never forget he’s acting. He refuses to let you. You never forget that you are watching Brad Pitt Acting like a crazy person. This might be a conscious choice on the part of the actor, but if it is, it’s because he’s a little bit hack. Things like subtlety and nuance may get lost on audiences, and the actor fears he can’t afford that right now. Or he’s not natural enough to come up with the subtlety or nuance on his own. That’s how I pegged Brad Pitt.

I was totally fine with that. He keeps making Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and sometimes I’ll watch it, but mostly I won’t, and everything will be fine. It’s not because I didn’t think he wasn’t talented, but if he ever decided to get an Academy Award, he would hedge his bets and find another role like 12 Monkeys, and the results would be exactly the same. Instead he took a leading role (and I mean leading. Mother fucker is in every scene) starring as a real person, but not someone every would recognize your impression of, as so many award hungry actors are so prone to do. It’s also someone who wouldn’t receive a ton of time in which he could reveal his motivations. He would have to do it not with bug eyes and a penchant for putting fingers in his mouth, but instead through subtlety and nuance. It’s partly because, as I said before, Billy and Brad are in similar situations. They both want to change the world. They don’t think they have received the respect they deserve. And they are both at the point in their lives when they are concerned about their legacy. Every decision they make could make or break that legacy. You can feel it when Brad Pitt throws a chair, when he stares out the window, when he tries to crack a joke. These little things are the little things that actors blow all of the time. The little things that Brad Pitt blows all of the time.  The harder he tries, the harder he blows it. As Beane, however, he’s throwing that chair for all the same reasons Beane would. He wants his legitimacy, and if he doesn’t get it now, he may never have the chance.

The idea to turn Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book Moneyball into a movie is batshit insane. We’ve had enough schmaltzy baseball movies. We’ve had enough attempts to make Brad Pitt an Actor. We’ve had enough feel-good dad dramas. None of this made me any less excited to see the movie, but it was almost strictly because of my love for the book and the sport, neither of which had anything to do with my love of the movie. What I got instead was the knowledge that this Miller kid might not be a one hit wonder, and, between this and The Tree of Life, Brad Pitt’s career might have actually started in 2011.

-Ryan Haley

 

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BILLY ELLIOT

*** (out of ****)

Ahh, the late nineties/early aughts, where foreigners everywhere were in trouble, and the only way they could get out of it was to dance! Dance! DANCE! Billy Elliot is one of those movies that everyone loves when it comes out, but becomes dangerous throughout the years, as we don’t know if we were tricked by it’s charms, and it’s actually a stupid movie. In Billy Elliot‘s case? Sort of. Ten years later, you can’t get swept up completely with the rest of the population, but you’ll get swept up a little bit, which is important, because that sweeping will carry you through some pretty dumb stuff. This comes with the DVD version and a digital copy, and a making-of doc called Breaking Free.  – RH

FEVER PITCH/NEVER BEEN KISSED

** (out of ****) FOR BOTH

We’ve gone through  a lot of phases with Drew: the kid phase of ET and Firestarter, the “I’m not a kid anymore” phase of Poison Ivy and Bad Girls, the “schmaltzy drama” phase of Boys on the Side and Mad Love. But the phase she is probably most known for, and always seemed most suited for, is a romantic comedy phase that she is sometimes still in, even though it’s been going on for a decade now. The difference between these and other romantic comedies is that she finds away to be the lead. It’s all about her. This is great if you really like Drew Barrymore, but I’m not sure who actually does. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t imagine how bad these movies would have been if they starred Kate Hudson. But most of them definitely set a low bar, just to make sure they can hit it. Never Been Kissed takes three or four absurd premises and jams them together for almost no comedic effect, and Fever Pitch is even worse than that. They both do feature Barrymore at her…Drewiest, and that’s what will keep them Saturday afternoon staples for the foreseeable future. – RH

TVD

BOARDWALK EMPIRE: THE FIRST SEASON

***1/2 (out of ****)

In the interest of full disclosure, I had to restart this first season of couple of times to get in to it. I don’t know if the first episode starts off slow, or if my expectations were too large. It’s hard to remember now, because by the time I got to the end, any problems I had with the beginning had magically floated away. That’s not to say the show doesn’t have its problems. It loses focus from to time to time, and occasionally some characters and plotlines don’t go anywhere, but that can be said for all but the very, very best of these “soap operas boys can watch”. For the most part, though, you don’t realize that you’re watching a dead end plotline while you’re watching it, making it an engaging watch the whole time. And whatever frustrations you have with it when you’re done, just calm down and wait a year. Season 2 solves almost all of them. Boardwalk Empire has the potential to one day rank among HBO’s best, which means one of TV’s best. – RH

G.I. JOE SERIES 2 SEASON 1

Not so fast, Joe fans, however many there are left. This is not necessarily the cartoon that you loved when you grew up, especially if you’re my age or older. The cartoon that most people fondly remember is from the mid-eighties. This second series was created in the late-eighties to cash in on whatever juice this franchise had left, and it’s straightz fucking garbage. It’s a different production company, one that children of the eighties might remember as DiC, pronounced DICK!, and that’s exactly how this show plays. I’m not one of those people that freaks out when you do not pay enough respect to the heroes of my youth – this is just a shitty pile of shitty shit. – RH