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Subscribe to weekly newsletter » times & tickets in theaters Fandango Search movie and . George Harrison: Living in the Material World showtimes and buy The Ides of March tickets. Puncture Moneyball Real Steel Special Treatment BY ROGER EBERT / September 21, 2011 Take Shelter about us Tucker and Dale vs. Evil In the 2002 season, the The Way About the site » nation's lowest-salaried cast & credits more current releases » Site FAQs » Major League Baseball team put together a 20- one-minute movie reviews Contact us » game winning streak, Brad Pitt setting a new American Peter Brand Jonah Hill still playing Email the Movie League record. The team Art Howe Answer Man » began that same season Sharon Robin Wright Dolphin Tale with 11 losses in row. What Scott Chris Pratt happened between is the Amigo David Justice Stephen Bishop Another Earth stuff of "Moneyball," a on sale now Casey Kerris Dorsey Attack the Block smart, intense and moving Bellflower film that isn't so much about Columbia Pictures presents a film sports as about the war directed by . Written Captain America: The First Avenger between intuition and The Change-Up by Steven Zaillian and Aaron statistics. Chasing Madoff Sorkin, based on the book Circumstance I walked in knowing what Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Conan the Barbarian the movie was about, but Unfair Game by . Contagion unprepared for its Running time: 133 minutes. Rated Cowboys & Aliens intelligence and depth. It PG-13 (for some strong language). Crazy, Stupid, Love Buy now » centers on the character of The Debt the ' Printer-friendly » Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame general manager Billy E-mail this to a friend » The Devil's Double Beane (Brad Pitt), who after Don't Be Afraid of the Dark Drive a bad start as a MLB 50/50 player, moved over to Final Destination 5 management and was 5 Days of War driven by his hatred of losing. In his previous season, he'd taken the with Benefits A's to the World Series, only to have them lose and see their best Fright Night Buy now » three players hired away by richer teams offering much bigger The Future salaries. George Harrison: Living in the Material World A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy Faced with rebuilding the team at bargain basement prices, Beane The Guard became persuaded by the theories of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 nerdy recent Yale graduate who crunched numbers to arrive at a The Hedgehog strict cost-benefit analysis of baseball players. The Help Higher Ground The Ides of March He persuaded Beane that he should hire based on key performance The Interrupters statistics that pointed to undervalued players. Together, they Buy now » Killer Elite assembled a team that seemed foolhardy at first, but during the Life, Above All course of an agonizing season, proved itself the biggest bargain in A Little Help baseball. littlerock A Love Affair of Sorts "Peter Brand" is based on people described in the 2003 book Love Crime Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Machine Gun Preacher Jonah Hill's performance is understated and fascinating; a pudgy kid The Man Who Fell to Earth who has never played a baseball game in his life, Peter has analyzed Moneyball decades of baseball stats to prove that game-winning qualities are Mozart's Sister Munger Road Buy now » not always the ones veteran scouts look for. He's shy and quiet, advancing his theories tentatively but with firm certainty; he's an My Afternoons With Marguerite Mysteries of Lisbon amusing contrast with the team's grizzled, tobacco-chewing scouts — One Day who are looking for all the wrong things, Brand argues. One Lucky Elephant Our Idiot Brother Pitt's Billy Beane is an inward and lonely man, recovering from a Phunny Business: A Black Comedy failed marriage and doting on his daughter, Casey (Kerris Dorsey). Point Blank He's so driven, he can't bear to watch a game in the stadium, and Puncture sometimes drives aimlessly while listening to it on the radio. He's fully Rapt aware that if he follows his theories for the full season and they fail, Real Steel Buy now » that will make him unemployable. He faces fierce opposition from his Restless bullet-headed team manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Resurrect Dead: Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles who feels his experience is being insulted by a manager mesmerized Rise of the Planet of the Apes by some half-baked Ivy League theorist. Road to Nowhere The Robber Sarah's Key The director is Bennett Miller, who also directed Hoffman in the title Senna role of the radically different "Capote." "Moneyball" is not a traditional Seven Days in Utopia sports movie, and indeed should be just as gripping for non-sports Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness fans. It's not a series of Big Games. When it goes to the field, it's for Sleep Furiously Buy now » well-chosen crucial moments. Its essence is in terse, brainy dialogue Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by the two accomplished screenwriters ("The Social Special Treatment Network") and Steven Zaillian ("Gangs of New York"). As in "The Straw Dogs Social Network," abstract discussions reflect deep emotional Tabloid conflicts. There are a lot of laughs, but only one or two are inspired Take Shelter by lines intended to be funny. Instead, our laughter comes from Terri recognition, an awareness of irony, an appreciation of perfect zingers 30 Minutes or Less — and, best of all, insights into human nature. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil The Undefeated Viva Riva! This is really a movie about business. None of the individual players Buy now» Warrior have major roles. The drama all happens in the mind of a general The Way manager and his numbers guy. They bet against tradition and in favor Weekend of numerical analysis. That goes against a century of baseball The Whistleblower history, although for all of those years, fans have thumbed through Winnie the Pooh their baseball almanacs and issued mind-numbing statistical theories on talk shows. What the numbers crunchers demonstrated is that a more current releases » computer can assemble a team better than human instinct. on dvd That's melancholy, but then this is a melancholy movie. Pitt has some Buy now» soul-baring scenes with Jonah Hill in which he wonders what it all new on dvd means, anyway. It doesn't matter if you have a 20-game winning streak. All that matters is that you win the last game of the season. Even the players are merely inventory, and there are dramatic more new on dvd » moments here of players being traded or moved down to the minors. Baseball is a business. Only we fans love it as a game. coming on dvd

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