Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
“Moneyball” No ‘Big Game’
Sep 30th
No ‘Big Game’
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Moneyball takes what some people believe to be the two most boring subjects possible–statistics and baseball–and combines them to make a movie that is disappointing in a way that most movies about a particular sport or team is not.
Starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who at the start of this century revolutionized the way the teams acquired new players, the movie follows him and his team for the 2002 season and shows the success of his revolutionary method, which has come to be known as “sabermetrics.”
As a matter of fact, that revolutionary method of using statistics to rate players for their effectiveness in the game is probably now being used by all the teams in Major League Baseball, as well as many other teams in the world of sports all over the planet.
According to the movie, Beane met a young employee of the Cleveland Indians named Pete Brand during a visit there to talk about trading players.
Pete is played by Jonah Hill, and Beane notices how during the negotiations the coaches in the room were conferring with Pete, who studied economics at Yale and his first job anywhere was with the Cleveland Indians.
So, recognizing and understanding a good thing when he sees it, Beane later calls Pete and tells him, “Pack your bags, Pete, I just bought you from the Cleveland Indians.”
Back in Oakland, Beane makes Pete the assistant general manager, and now he has to convince the owner and the coaches that this new method of evaluating players will be successful, which is compared with card counting in a gambling casino.
We also see some of Beane’s personal life, the fact that he is divorced and has a 12-year-old daughter, as well as some background on his own career as a baseball player, but these scenes are merely interesting and appear to be put in just to add more time to the movie.
During the course of the season, the A’s do something remarkable in winning 20 straight games, but if you aren’t familiar with recent baseball history and are expecting an emotional “Rocky” finish, you will be disappointed in the overall movie.
Moneyball ends with a “Big Season,” but no “Big Game,” and that leaves the audience with one “Big Disappointment.”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Straw Dogs” an Exercise in Violence
Sep 24th
“Another Unnecessary Remake”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Straw Dogs is a remake of the classic 1971 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George that was directed by acclaimed director Sam Peckinpah, who was known for the violence in his movies.
This 2011 version stars James Marsden and Kate Bosworth and was directed by Rod Lurie, and the location has been changed from a small town in western England to a small town in Southern Mississippi.
The title comes from the straw dogs that were used as ceremonial objects in ancient China. They were used as sacrifices, dressed up, put on the altar, and then when the ceremony was over, they were thrown into the street.
David and Amy are married, and when they drive into Blackwater, Mississippi, where Amy grew up, she mentions that the young good ol’ boys in town don’t have much to do anymore after their glory days of high-school football are over, and David compares them to the “straw dogs” of ancient China.
David is a Hollywood screenwriter, Amy recently starred in a television series, and they are in Blackwater because Amy’s father died and they are there to fix up his house and then sell it.
So, when they meet Charlie in town and find out that he has a small construction business, they hire Charlie to repair the roof on the barn.
Charlie says, “We take care of our own here,” and then he says to Amy, “Remember when I took care of you?”
And that is when David learns that Amy and Charlie had been high-school sweethearts.
Well, you can see where this is going, can’t you? Charlie and his construction team are rude and obnoxious, they ogle Amy because of the provocative way she dresses, and they belittle David almost every chance they get, because he doesn’t understand their small-town Southern culture, doesn’t fit in, and unknowingly insults them.
And then when Charlie and the boys invite David to go hunting with them, David feels obligated to go with them as a gesture of good will, but, of course, things don’t end well.
Things don’t end well at all, which can also be said about the whole movie.
There are some small subplots that attempt to flesh out the main plot, but basically the movie is an exercise in violence.
Straw Dogs is just another unnecessary remake.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Contagion” Deadly Entertainment
Sep 19th
“Deadly Entertainment”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Contagion is a terrific movie that will probably scare the pants off you and make you wash your hands more often.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, it stars a number of famous actors, some who have won Academy Awards and a few who will surprise you when they get sick and die.
Yes, the movie is about a virus that mutates, transfers from animals to humans, and then is spread around the world by casual contact, causing people to cough and then to die within days.
And it can happen all too easily today.
The movie tracks the progress of the spread starting from Day 2, which will be explained at the end of the movie, and when someone asks Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, “You okay?” when she starts coughing, and she answers, “Yeah, I’m just jet lagged,” you know that isn’t the reason and that she will infect more people, which will spread to more cities and more continents.
We watch the spread from day to day, see people who are affected as well as who are infected, and see how various organizations react and try to stop the spread and find a cure for the virus.
Matt Damon plays Gwyneth’s husband, and luckily he is immune from the virus.
Laurence Fishburne plays the doctor in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jude Law plays an investigative blogger in San Francisco who realizes that there is a pandemic before the other media do and is very suspicious of what the government is doing or not doing.
Marion Cotillard plays a doctor for the World Health Organization who is sent to Hong Kong to try to find where and how it all started.
Kate Winslet plays a doctor working at the CDC who is sent to Minneapolis to investigate the sudden death of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character.
And Elliott Gould plays a scientist in San Francisco who breaks government protocol while trying to isolate the virus.
So, if you are germaphobic to begin with, you might want to wait to see this movie in the comfort, safety, and cleanliness of your own home, but do see it, because we all might need to use the information contained in it.
And stay to the end to see what happened on Day 1.
Contagion is deadly entertainment.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
