Having Brad Pitt play a former athlete who now is the general manger for the Oakland A's was not the ideal pick in my mind. I was thinking that he should stick with playing the cool, mysterious guy that gets the girl in the end. But the promise that those four stars gave along with my love for baseball led me to choosing this as my second Movie in My Spare Time.
I am going to have to agree with the critics rating of four stars on this movie. I think that all elements were very well handled including cinematography, sound, lighting, directing, and acting.
The Cinematography does not need to be noticeable for this kind of movie, it just needs to show us what is happening. In a movie like gravity, on the other hand, is something that is very precise and very important. In a movie like this, there are just a lot of over the shoulder shots to show conversation. very simple. I must point out two job well dones though. One would be the cut away to the real season of the Oakland A's from the movie itself. This movie shows the magic season of the Oakland A's in 2002 when they won 20 games in a row. For the 20th game they won on a walk off home-run, they cut to the actual game footage of the team and them crowding home plate. It got very difficult to tell which was the movie and which was the footage... So cool!
The second strong showing of cinematography was the walk-off home-run. WOW! This was definitely the best shot of the entire movie and it truly encapsulated the magnitude of the moment. This was a cool clip I found:)
A cool sound effect that I heard was at the cutaway. They cut all sound out from the crowd and just showed the guys going nuts and the announcer from the actual game. There were also some moments when Brad Pitt was by himself and he was listening to the game because he didn't like watching the games. They had a shot of his face and even though the only sound being made in the room was the radio, it felt like it was secondary to his inner-thoughts. They did a good job of not making it too loud, as to not distract from what was really happening with the character.
The locker room of the Oakland A's was used a lot in this movie. But every time we entered it as an audience, the lighting was slightly different. This is because the lighting crew is trying to convey the connotation of the moment. When the players and the team were doing well, there was a bright lighting in the room. When they were down in the dumps or a tough decision was being made, there was a dim lighting.
I enjoyed the acting of both Jonah hill and Brad Pitt. I thought they played off each other very well. It was almost as if Pitt was the mentor to Hill and then it switched because Hill had so much to teach Pitt. They ended up learning so much from each other which really was just teaching us.
I would say that the directing had that much of a presence in this movie. There were not many moments where I thought to myself that I liked the choices that the director made. Sometimes when you have a crew and actors like the director had here, you have to just let it fly!
Overall this movie was very solid. The critics hit it on the nail. four stars out of 5 is more than fair. They told a simple story and created a spell that entrapped us all.
Here are some of my favorite scenes!
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