BASEBALL AND MAGIC TRICKS
Jan. 26th, 2012 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogAnd the 2012 amateur movie reviews begin here.
Moneyball
This is not the kind of film I usually watch, as it is (1) a sports film and (2) based on a true story – two things that usually send up red flags. On the other hand, (1) it’s baseball, which is a sport I like and one that’s easy to romanticize in film, and (2) it’s not really about the game itself so much as the truism that the teams with the biggest budgets can afford to buy the best players (and therefore have the best chance at making it to the World Series).
Which is a great set-up for the story of how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane – with one of the lowest budgets in MLB – and an accountant from Yale came up with a new system for recruiting players they could afford that went completely against talent-scout logic, and which no one believed would ever work.
The ending isn't a mystery if you’ve read the non-fiction book it’s based on, or follow baseball closely enough (or if yr an Oakland A’s fan). But despite a few cheesy moments and the occasional sports cliché, it’s a very well written script with great performances from Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman in particular. I will say you do probably have to know a little about baseball to follow it.
The Great Magician
Hong Kong film set in 1920s Beijing, in which stage magician Chang Hsien comes to town as part of a secret plot to kidnap local warlord Bully Lei and rescue both his mentor (held captive by Lei) and win back his fiancée, who just happens to now be Lei’s unwilling seventh wife.
It’s a comedy, as it turns out, with Michael Lau’s Lei lovelorn and daft, and Tony Leung’s Chang charming and cool, and neither actually being quite what they seem. It mostly works well, thanks to Lau and Leung making a good comic duo, and Zhou Xun is great as the headstrong woman they’re both trying to win over.
It’s flawed in that, after a strong first half, the story starts to unravel and makes less sense as it goes along, but it more or less comes together in the end. Anyway, it’s a fun movie, especially the stage magic scenes. And bonus points to director Derek Yee for taking the premise in directions I wasn’t expecting (although to be fair, a lot of that has to do with the marketing – based on the trailer, you’d never know this was a comedy).
Nothing up my sleeve,
This is dF
Moneyball
This is not the kind of film I usually watch, as it is (1) a sports film and (2) based on a true story – two things that usually send up red flags. On the other hand, (1) it’s baseball, which is a sport I like and one that’s easy to romanticize in film, and (2) it’s not really about the game itself so much as the truism that the teams with the biggest budgets can afford to buy the best players (and therefore have the best chance at making it to the World Series).
Which is a great set-up for the story of how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane – with one of the lowest budgets in MLB – and an accountant from Yale came up with a new system for recruiting players they could afford that went completely against talent-scout logic, and which no one believed would ever work.
The ending isn't a mystery if you’ve read the non-fiction book it’s based on, or follow baseball closely enough (or if yr an Oakland A’s fan). But despite a few cheesy moments and the occasional sports cliché, it’s a very well written script with great performances from Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman in particular. I will say you do probably have to know a little about baseball to follow it.
The Great Magician
Hong Kong film set in 1920s Beijing, in which stage magician Chang Hsien comes to town as part of a secret plot to kidnap local warlord Bully Lei and rescue both his mentor (held captive by Lei) and win back his fiancée, who just happens to now be Lei’s unwilling seventh wife.
It’s a comedy, as it turns out, with Michael Lau’s Lei lovelorn and daft, and Tony Leung’s Chang charming and cool, and neither actually being quite what they seem. It mostly works well, thanks to Lau and Leung making a good comic duo, and Zhou Xun is great as the headstrong woman they’re both trying to win over.
It’s flawed in that, after a strong first half, the story starts to unravel and makes less sense as it goes along, but it more or less comes together in the end. Anyway, it’s a fun movie, especially the stage magic scenes. And bonus points to director Derek Yee for taking the premise in directions I wasn’t expecting (although to be fair, a lot of that has to do with the marketing – based on the trailer, you’d never know this was a comedy).
Nothing up my sleeve,
This is dF
