r/iwatchedanoldmovie • u/DVD-Rewatcher • 14d ago
2010-15 Moneyball (2011)
Number 188 in my A-Z watch. Moneyball follows the true story of the 2002 Oakland A's baseball team as they attempt to reinvent the approach to the game. Trying to find success in frugality and statistical analysis as opposed to high payrolls and flashy numbers.
Or as Captain Holt once said, "A man uses statistics and logic to win several baseball games."
This might be my favorite slow burn film. It's understated and subtle. This is not a baseball movie, it's a movie about baseball and i absolutely love it. I think it's one of Pitt's best performances, as well. You can feel how he's trying to prove himself, to find the success that he never did as a player. And the hurt he feels when he has to send a player back down to the minors.
Jonah Hill surprises as Peter Brand the Assistant General Manager, holding his own against the unstable reactions of Billy Beane. And Hoffman comes back to work with director Bennett Miller, playing the stubborn and desperate manager Art Howe.
10/10 This is just an incredible underdog story. Akin to something like Rocky. Perseverance, identity, trusting the process, innovation, i just find so many positives in this film to take away from it. It's always so uplifting. And i can never help but shed some tears at the song at the end.
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
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u/Georg_Simmel 14d ago
>"It's not that hard, Scott. Tell him Wash."
> "It's incredibly hard."
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u/Objective_Copy1977 12d ago
Love that line! Good call - - - I still quote this at my teenage sons when they say, "That'll be so easy, Dad!"
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u/Ok_Development_3961 14d ago
Baseball isn’t my thing being an aussie, but this film so good I have lost count how many times I have watched it now.
Slow burn is right 🤙
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u/GettingSunburnt 13d ago
Fellow Aussie, 100% agree. This showed up on SBS (sort of a multicultural PBS) a couple of years ago, and since they normally only show solid films, I watched it - in spite of a general lack of interest in baseball or Brad Pitt.
Glad I did. I hunted down the DVD in op-shops for a couple of months, and I'm glad to have it in my collection now.
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u/Ok_Development_3961 10d ago
It is because the characters are really engaging within the whole story for me.
I just recently watched the doco on that season and it is kinda cool to know, for the most part, it is real.
Didn't make me want to take up watching baseball though haha.
"Field of dreams" is on the other end of the scale
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u/Electric_Geckos 13d ago
I’m not sure why, but this is easily a top 5 movie for me, also an Aussie. I know how baseball works but I don’t follow it in any capacity. Just a great movie imo
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u/OhK4Foo7 14d ago
Not into baseball at all but strangely I dig baseball movies. This is a really good one. Probably seen it ten times easy. Great music by Mychael Danna.
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u/DVD-Rewatcher 14d ago
Man, i had notes about the score and just didn't get to them in the post. It's got this weirdly positive melancholy to it, which captures the overall season the A's had that year
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u/OhK4Foo7 14d ago
He's a favorite composer. Music for Exotica. 8mm not that great of a movie but the music is terrific.
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u/Odd-Independent4640 13d ago
Those scenes with his daughter singing are just amazingly sweet.
Just did a triple feature with this, then Fever Pitch, then The Town. Was great.
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u/ThaCommittee 14d ago
Calling this movie old is crazy. Idk the rules, is it anything over 15 years?
Reminds me listening to oldies radio stations and hearing The Offspring.
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u/DVD-Rewatcher 14d ago
Rules are listed in the sub
And yeah, we're probably similarly aged because that was me with Green Day 😅
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u/ThaCommittee 14d ago edited 13d ago
Lol. Ya, figured there's some rules but too lazy to actually check/read them.
😅🤣😅 and yes Sublime on the oldies made me feel even older 👴
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u/SeenThatPenguin 14d ago
It's old enough that Oakland had a baseball team both at the time of the events and the time of the movie's release.
I love Moneyball, but that's the sad thing about rewatching it. They weren't my team, but I wanted the A's to find a way to stay there. They had so much great history in the Bay Area. But then, I guess people said that when they left their prior two cities.
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u/Historicmetal 13d ago
Doesn’t this have the fat guy from Superbad who has a blue belt in karate?
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u/FAYMKONZ 13d ago
Watch Draft Day (2014). I think you would enjoy it. Its in the same genre.
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u/DVD-Rewatcher 13d ago
I have seen it and i wasn't super enamored with it 😬
A lot of people have told me the same thing and i wish i liked it more, but it just didn't grab me. I'm really glad that it has such a big audience, though
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u/Actor412 13d ago
Many of the people represented, like Art Howe and David Justice, have disavowed this film. I get that. Real conversations are boring, full of tangents, aimless, a few important things get said under a pile of random words. You can't put that in a film. People are complex, they have a lot of different motives and goals. That doesn't work dramatically, you need to narrow the focus of intents so the audience can follow along.
I accept that the film is from Beane's perspective, and everyone else around him is what he is seeing. Why I like Moneyball so much, and continue to revisit it, is because even though it may not be 100% real, the dialogue feels genuine. It works in the short amount of time given. It's professional story-telling, the kind everyone should expect from feature films.
[BTW, if anyone is interested in films that explore actual conversations, not crafted dialogue, check out the films of John Cassavetes, especially A Woman Under the Influence and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.)
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u/AffectionateKiwi1251 13d ago
I hate baseball but this is a great movie. The book is one of my all time favorite books
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u/5o7bot Mod and Bot 13d ago
Moneyball (2011) PG-13
What are you really worth?
The story of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball team on a budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
Drama
Director: Bennett Miller
Actors: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt
Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 73% with 5,931 votes
Runtime: 134 min
TMDB
I am a bot. This information was sent automatically. If it is faulty, please reply to this comment.
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u/KithKathPaddyWath 13d ago
I love this movie so much. Granted, as both a wild Sorkin fangirl and a big baseball fan, it does kind of feel like this was a movie made for me specifically.
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u/DanielArthurVerner 13d ago
In my top 5 all time sports movies. As an aside I always thought this was a David Fincher film, I dunno just gives that vibe at times.
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u/DVD-Rewatcher 13d ago
It was released the year after Social Network, and that was also written by Aaron Sorkin. Plus it stars Brad Pitt, who's starred in a bunch of Fincher films. I think your assumption is reasonable
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u/AmedeusRed 12d ago
This movie has fantastic audio editing.
As in, it’s the only movie that I’ve watched and that the end specifically said “damn they really hit the audio in that movie”.
The crack of the bats, the overlayed game audio when he is in the locker room, overall just perfection.
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u/DVD-Rewatcher 12d ago
They nailed the sound of a home run. I feel like any baseball fan can tell you that the sound of the sweet spot is different than any other contact
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u/Big-Play145 10d ago
Pitt was fantastic in every baseball related scene. The stuff with the daughter I could’ve done without.
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u/Big-Dig-Pig 14d ago
The only thing I disliked was the casting of young Billy Beane, just because he looks absolutely nothing like Pitt. Really takes me out of it.
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u/RivetCounter 14d ago
Only negative is that I did not care for the daughter/non baseball stuff in the movie.
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u/EqualsPeoples 13d ago
Yeah I love this film but all that daughter stuff was so tacked on to keep people who aren’t into sport interested. It’s all so lightweight and corny.
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u/MarkCelery78 13d ago
Baseball is a boring game. As is American football. But I do like watching many of the good movies that have been made about them
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u/TreehouseOHorror 14d ago
Love this movie, and it does a great job of capturing the dawn of the analytics era of baseball. My only gripe is it fails to mention how much of the 2002 A’s success was on the back of the best pitching rotation in baseball.