Friday Film Noir
Moneyball (2011) is a fantastic and understated drama directed by Bennett Miller and written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, with a screen story by Stan Chervin. The film follows Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, as he attempts to build a competitive baseball team on a shoestring budget. Frustrated by his team's inability to retain star players who are lured away by wealthier franchises, Beane, with the help of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a Yale economics graduate, employs a radical analytical approach. They focus on undervalued statistics and sabermetrics to identify players overlooked by traditional scouting methods, challenging decades of baseball dogma. Moneyball explores the clash between tradition and innovation, the power of data-driven decision-making, and the pursuit of success against overwhelming odds. Both Pitt and Hill are uniquely exceptional in this film, and it’s worth watching for this reason alone. It received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brad Pitt, Best Supporting Actor for Jonah Hill, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.
2018 • R • 1h 53m
