Blu-ray Review: Excellent ‘Moneyball’ With Brad Pitt Rewards Repeat Viewing

CHICAGO – Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” is one of those films that was circling around my top ten when it came time to write it in December. Honestly I had about fifteen films that could have fallen anywhere between 6-20 (my top five was pretty set as I saw those films). I rewatched many of those movies to determine where they should be and one of the most rewarding second viewings in there was the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. This is a great movie that only gets deeper the second and even third time (and ended up #7 on my list [14] and #5 on Patrick McDonald’s [15] before winning the CFCA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Don’t miss it.

Blu-ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Giving the best performance of his career (and an amazing uppercut after the left hook of Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”), Brad Pitt stars as Beane, the man who knew he had to do something drastic if he wanted to compete with teams with much higher payrolls like the New York Yankees. Based on the book by Michael Lewis, “Moneyball” is a film that may, on the surface, seem to be about baseball but it’s about something much deeper. It’s about appreciating the daily effort instead of just the end result. Miller said at a press conference that his film was about this wonderful statement, one that I’ve tried to take heart personally — “It’s about the journey, not the grail.” What a daring thing to try to represent in a major motion picture. And he pulled it off. Maybe even more impressively than you thought the first time.

Moneyball was released on Blu-ray and DVD on January 10th, 2012
Photo credit: Sony

Synopsis: Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) challenges the system and defies conventional wisdom when his is forced to rebuild his small-market team on a limited budget. Despite opposition from the old guard, the media, fans and their own field manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Beane - with the help of a young, number-crunching, Yale-educated economist (Jonah Hill) - develops a roster of misfits… and along the way, forever changes the way the game is played. Special Features: o Deleted Scenes o Billy Beane: Re-Inventing The Game o Blooper with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill o Moneyball: Playing the Game o Drafting the Team o Adapting Moneyball o BD Live Enabled

[16]	By BRIAN TALLERICO [17] Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com [16]