Moneyball

Like a long, boring game of chess, where hopeful baseball players are discarded as effortlessly as a pawn and a knight, Moneyball fails to provide the sentiment it needs to inspire audiences.

Moneyball is a winner, one of the freshest and smartest sports movies in years.

Brad Pitt is at the top of his own game as Beane. Cocky and often nonchalant, he is gnawed by doubts that he tries to cover by grabbing a snack or pitching a grin.

I couldn't take my eyes off of it, and as emotionally interior and as dialogue driven as much of it the whole thing ends up being as thrilling as a big budget action blockbuster and as compelling as your typical star-powered Hollywood melodrama.

It's an engaging, almost exotic film.

Brad Pitt in a dugout. Oh dear; oh dear. Here is baseball, reel upon reel and inning upon inning.

The trick of Moneyball is that while this analytics revolution has not made the sport any more enjoyable... watching the coup unfold via nonstop workplace arguments is a blast.

If The Big Short distilled Lewis’ prose to its most entertaining essence without sacrificing his scope and The Blind Side just favored the human interest portion of his story, then Moneyball fell somewhere in between.

How can you not be romantic about baseball and this film? A superb script by Aaron Sorkin, great performances by Pitt and Hill, and solid direction by Miller result in a phenomenal sports drama of how the sport evolved. [Full review in Spanish]

“Moneyball” is expertly constructed, so it should come as no surprise that it was penned by two of the best screenwriters of the last thirty years: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.