Short version: they took source material that I thought would be completely unwatchable as a movie, and turned it into a movie.

Seriously. A movie about how the Oakland A’s general manager used unconventional thinking and statistics to build a winning baseball team for the 2002 season. ‘Statistics’ and ‘Baseball’ are not words that you build a dramatic movie around. I enjoyed the movie, but I wasn’t captivated by it. I feel like I enjoyed it because I am nerd enough to have enjoyed the book, and I feel like it probably has some appeal to more casual baseball/sports fans.

I do also generally enjoy Brad Pitt.

The performances were fine. Pitt was good, Philip Seymour Hoffman actually looked quite a bit like Art Howe (although he just sounded like himself), and Jonah Hill was also good. And that’s pretty much it. It was well written, and it told the story of a baseball season.

wadE and I agreed on the word ‘underwhelmed’. It’s a nice, watchable movie. Great for Netflix/Redbox prices, and a good movie for baseball/sports fans and/or people who just want to watch Brad Pitt look good for 2 hours. I’m not sure how it got an Oscar nomination for anything, let alone Best Supporting Actor In a Role about a Nerd with barely 20 lines in the whole movie. (What? It was just Best Supporting Actor? Huh.)

So, yeah. Moneyball. I suspect you already have an idea about whether or not you’re interested in seeing it, and I’m here to tell you that whatever you’ve already decided, you’re right. Stick to your guns.

The short version: numerous good points don’t overcome a bad ending.

(But backing up, a quick intro. We’re gonna try this thing. I posted this on The Facebook this morning, that I want to make Thursday night “Movie Night”. Hopefully I’m either gonna see something in theater, or start working through my backlog of Netflixes. Even more hopefully, I’m gonna write up reviews. We’ll see how this goes…)

Layer Cake (2004), starring Daniel Craig, and featuring quite a good ensemble cast, including two members of The Order of the Phoenix (Dumbledore and Shacklebolt, if you must know). Jokes aside, Michael Gambon was good in his role, and Tom Hardy is the other ‘known’ name, although his role was smaller. And Sienna Miller was, of course, gorgeous (but that was pretty much all she had to do in this one, was look gorgeous).

Pretty straight forward Brit Crime/Gangster/Suspense movie. Well written for the most part, well paced, plenty of twists and turns in the plot, but not confusingly so. Fairly easy to keep everyone straight, which is good in an ensemble cast while characters are dying and you’re trying to keep factions and loyalties straight, etc, so on and so forth.

I enjoyed it, right up until the last 30 seconds, which were absolutely pointless. I didn’t see any of the original marketing for this film, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they teased it with the SHOCKING twist at the end. I thought it was uninspired, and honestly unnecessary.

I guess overall I do recommend seeing this if you’re in the mood for something in the Snatch/Lock Stock vein. Just keep your expectations low.

I haven’t done one of these in a long time, mostly because I stopped going to movies for a while there. I’m now back on the horse, so let’s roll through some mini-reviews for a few flicks I’ve been out to see lately.

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It’s apparently the 30th Anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back, a fact which Spike TV is using to run a Star Wars marathon all weekend. So that’s cool.

But here’s a fact I wasn’t aware of: George Lucas didn’t write the screenplay. He wrote the story, but two other writers did the screenplay.

Naturally, I will be using this fact to support my preference that Empire is the best movie of the six. I couldn’t put my finger totally on it before now, but could it be because the dialog is just a little bit better in Empire?

In any case. Happy Anniversary, Empire. You’re lookin’ pretty good for 30.

So I watched A Serious Man last night, fully expecting to like it. And I mean obviously it was well done, and clever, and it’s the Coen Brothers, and I usually like what they do, and you all know I like a good dark comedy. But it was seriously (pun intended) depressing, and the ending was both depressing and abrupt. And but so what I’m wondering is:

Am I just not Jewish enough to really get the movie?

Anyone out there want to chime in and help me out on this one? Kthx.