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"Moneyball" is an underdog sports movie, but different than what we're used to seeing.
In telling the true story of the Oakland A's and it's General Manager Billy Beane, we see the business side of the the game. While the players on the field are playing a game with balls, strikes and hits, management plays a more brutal game, where people are bought, sold and traded like cattle. The big victories here don't happen on the field, but on the phone.
Brad Pitt is outstanding as Beane, a former player who's been chewed up and spit out by the game. He's just seen his team roster gutted by the wealthy Yankees organization, and he's working with a fraction of their budget.
He soon meets a young Ivy League economist played by an effectively understated Jonah Hill, who sees baseball as more of a numbers game.
Together they build a team on a budget based solely on their stats.
Writers Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zallian manage to make what could be a complex and dry business movie both palatable and engrossing, and never forgetting the romance of the game.
"The Ides of March," is a dark, cynical and often sad drama - which is just another way of saying it's about politics.
This is George Clooney's fourth movie to direct, and while he stars as a governor running for President, the focus of the film isn't on him, nor is it a place for him to get on a political soap box.
This is a film about the cogs of a campaign and the compromises people make to win.
Ryan Gosling is terrific as a whip-smart and idealistic press secretary, working for a candidate who espouses a new kind of politics - running on a message of change.
But he soon finds himself pulled down into the muck of campaigning where ethics and even morality are traded for a slight jump in the polls. Gosling takes his lessons from a perfectly-cast Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a world-wary campaign manager.
There are no good guys here, and that might be the movie's message. It's always compelling, though, with the stakes getting raised on these characters with each scene.
Moneyball: * * * *
Ides of March: * * * * .
Out of five stars.
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