foxcatcher (2014). directed bennett miller.

it's always a pleasure seeing steve carell and mark ruffalo in action, and i think channing tatum is pretty good too in this movie. but i find the movie flat despite tensions between the central characters which could have been more dramatic, apart from the defeat that tatum's character suffered in one of the wresting trials and then getting straightened up by his brother, the conflicts were not exploited for effects. perhaps this is done on purpose to portray life at john du pont's farm, where du pont's unstable behaviours and its impact on others are insignificant due to du pont's role as the patron of the wrestling academy. the like the story, but i dislike the people i see on screen, especially is john du pont. steve carell did a good job, but it is also a testament of athletes at that time having to rely on patronage even from someone as deranged as du pont. 

moneyball (2011). directed by bennett miller.

i am just done reading a technical paper on shale gas petrophysics so now i am going to splurge my opinions on moneyball that i caught at amc katy mills 20 today.  

i am a big fan of sports movie. and this film is very well done. the script is written by the formidable steven zaillian and aaron sorkin, cinematography by wally pfister who have done great work in the dark knight (2008) and inception (2010). i like watching movies, apart from suspending time for two hours, is that i get to see beautiful moving pictures taken at all sorts of angles and perspectives and moods imaginable. while this movie doesn't call for camera tricks like the dark knight, i enjoyed seeing close ups that brings bokeh to the foreground. things like that, you know. 

while watching the movie, i thought of arsene wenger a lot. yeah, the arsenal manager. the movie asks this question - how does one win the league when one does not have a lot of money? billy beane (brad pitt), the oakland athletics manager turned to statistics and mathematics for some guidance after losing yet another season and finding himself unable to compete monetarily with the big boys when it comes to getting the best players. his unorthodox method (i don't find it unusual, he's just optimizing...we have a subject on that) of tracking players' performance and optimizing them mathematically shunned him from his own team, but he is a desperate man trying to win with whatever amount of money he could spare. they managed to go unbeaten for 19 straight games during the 2002 season, but it was not enough for them to win. the method works - it could help to value players to a more reasonable number, but money is all it takes in getting the best players a team needs.

i haven't seen pitt in a while and it's always a pleasure to see him. he always has this cool dude thing going, but not so much in this movie. it's good that he plays a different kind of character - a guy under pressure to win, not so much from the boss, but from himself. somehow he is trying to atone for his failure as a player that started out with so much promise that didn't turned out to be so. it is also refreshing to see jonah hill as peter brand, the young yale economics grad brought in by beane to be the in-house player statistician who is playing against his usual comic role. 

i must have seen too much of gosling lately, that pitt is a sight to a sore eye. not that i am sore from watching gosling, on the contrary. i think pitt's voice have changed a little, it sounded deeper. which is all good with me.