Movie Review: Sports 2011

            In an effort to keep myself funny I am going to try to write a movie review a day for the next 30 days.  This will be exhausting but I have done it before, so when I fail this time I really won't have the excuse of going beyond my means.  For the sake of simplicity I will just review all of the movies that came out in 2011 that I saw.

            Hello Sports fans, I am going to talk about the two sports movies I saw in 2011, "Warrior" and "Moneyball".

            I will say that in the end both movies were good, equal in whatever subconscious mathlympics I use to devise the scores I give.  That being said these movies are rather different animals.

            "Warrior" is a movie about brothers with a complicated history between them and their father.  Both have their personal drives and causes to fight for, and in the typical fashion a chance at riches, stardom, and dream fulfillment presents itself in the form of a gauntlet fighting tournament of martial arts.  the fights in this movie are excellent, the impacts look and sound great, and in a movie that is framed with fights that is important (I'm looking at you "Highlander").  If I have any issue with the movie it is the treatment of Joel Edgerton's character, who is the family man who retired from fighting but needs to win the big tournament to keep his house... You know, "Cinderella Man".  His day job is teacher and to make extra money he fights in local exhibitions, he is suspended from teaching for participating in one of these fights... BULL SHIT.  I'm sorry are there any other legal sporting events that can get you penalized from teaching?  Is weekend volleyball a no-no?  Whatever.  Tom "I'm Bane in the next Batman movie" Hardy is in this as the troubled war vet who needs to prove to himself he deserved to live by being a champion character... So, kinda "Raging Bull"... That had a war in it right?  He splits the demons with Nick Nolte who plays the father.

Nick Nolte with personal demons.  How will he pull that off?

            "Moneyball" is how baseball completely changed in the last 10 years because people started to properly game the system...  Or system work the game...  Something with economics and baseball.  The core of the movie is Brad Pitt who plays a really cool GM for the Oakland A's, and Jonah Hill who does the real revolutionizing as Brad's assistant, Brad being the pretty one takes all the credit.  The only weak point in this movie is it being so decompressed, I guess that is to simulate the feel of a baseball game, but movies written by Aaron Sorkin usually have quick popping dialogue and this movie has great dialogue scenes which are to far spaced and lose some of their cadence.  It is a good movie.

Why does Pitt look like a hipster in this?

            Neither of these films would be my pick for movie of the year though, even with their strong elements, but they are both worth watching.

Final Scores:

"Warrior": 3.5 out of 5

"Moneyball": 3.5 out of 5