Posts tagged talk
“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.”
“A Better Life” A Wonderful Film
Jul 21st
“A Wonderful Film”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
A Better Life is a terrific film that deserves as much publicity as it can get, because otherwise audiences will probably overlook it and not give it the attendance it deserves.
It also has a simple story that might not be popular, because it is about the relationship between an undocumented foreigner from Mexico and his teenage son, who live in Los Angeles.
Carlos Galindo has a steady job as a gardener working for another Mexican’s gardening business, and he sleeps on the couch in the living room at home so that his 14-year-old son, Luis, can sleep in the bedroom.
When Carlos finds out that Luis has missed 18 or 19 days of school so far this year, he asks him, “You want to end up like me?” to which Luis answers “No.”
Luis has some resentment toward his father, because he blames Carlos for his mother leaving them, whom Luis never wants to talk about.
Meanwhile, the man for whom Carlos works, Blasco Martinez, wants to retire, and he offers to sell Carlos his beat-up truck so that Carlos can have his own gardening business.
To Carlos, he wouldn’t just be buying a truck. He would be buying the American Dream.
However, not only doesn’t Carlos have the $12,000 that Blasco wants for his truck, but Carlos doesn’t even have a driver’s license, and if he ever gets stopped by the police, he could be deported back to Mexico. That is why Carlos wants to try to stay “invisible.”
Meanwhile, Luis gets suspended from school for fighting, and Carlos is concerned that Luis has a fascination with gangs and might even end up in a gang.
Carlos asks his sister, Anita, for a $12,000 loan, promising to pay the money back and telling her that if it works out, everything is going to change. He won’t have to work on Sunday anymore and can spend more time with Luis, if Luis wants.
Anita loans Carlos the money without telling her husband, who she says is the cheapest man in the world.
So, Carlos buys the truck from Blasco, but his life doesn’t change as he had imagined. Almost immediately, the truck is stolen, and Carlos and Luis have to try to get it back while staying invisible.
A Better Life is a wonderful film.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Beginners” Gimmickers
Jul 7th
“Gimmickers”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BEGINNERS is one of those movies whose trailer is intriguing and makes you want to see it, but then after you have seen it, you wish you hadn’t and conclude that it was a waste of time and money.
The reason isn’t just that the trailer gives away the whole story, even though it does, but the story still looks interesting, and it is based on the life of the writer and director, Mike Mills.
No, the reason is that the story is made gimmicky by the way it is told, the chronology is chopped up arbitrarily, and I lost interest in it about halfway through with all the back and forth and further back and further forth.
The story is about a man named Oliver Fields, who is played by Ewan McGregor. We see him cleaning out his father’s house after his father has died, and he says to a dog there, “Arthur, you’re coming with me now.”
The dog is a Jack Russell terrier, and we see subtitles that represent the cute thoughts of Arthur if he could talk and if he could understand what Oliver is saying to him.
We also see what are supposed to be clever graphic images from old advertisements as Oliver comments in voice-over narration about such topics as love, happiness, and homosexuality in society.
You see, Oliver’s father, who is named Hal and played by Christopher Plummer, announced six months after his wife and Oliver’s mother died that he was gay. And then four years after that, Hal died at 75 from cancer.
As if that weren’t enough turmoil in Oliver’s life, he meets a woman named Anna at a costume party, who is played by Melanie Laurent.
So, now we see scenes of the developing relationship between Oliver and Anna, flashbacks to scenes between Oliver and Hal, and even further-back flashbacks to scenes of Oliver as a young boy with his mother.
Some parallelisms are shown between scenes in the present and scenes in the past, but you might find yourself asking as I did, “What’s the story?”
Then, more like “What’s the point?”
In other words, what we have is a very simple story made intentionally and unnecessarily complicated with gimmicky visual comments.
BEGINNERS should have been called GIMMICKERS and it would have been more true to form.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”