Carly at the Movies: Show me the money(ball)
Arise, Computer Geeks! Your movie is here! After years of gradually replacing second bananas with Chubby Little Nerds, you’ve finally lured Brad Pitt to the cool side. From now on, the sky’s the limit in the new movie “Moneyball,” currently playing in neighborhood stadiums everywhere.
Considering how many times baseball has come to bat in Hollywood, there are really only a few solid hits in the genre. The Pitt-produced “Moneyball” is surely going to rank among the top five or six, right up there with “Pride of the Yankees” and “Bull Durham.”
Although the film is sometimes as long as a real baseball game (i.e. seemingly endless), the power and charm of Brad and his buddy fighting the powers-that-be carries the day. Jonah Hill, that “Superbad” guy, are the unlikely heroes in this movie based on the real story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics unlikely season.
Brad plays real-life Billy Beane in a Robert Redford Lite performance, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as real-life grumpola manager Art Howe.
The fascinating story – as penned for the screen by heavyweights Steven Zaillian (“Schindler’s List”) and Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”) – concerns how the Oakland General Manager, Beane, changed baseball thinking by putting together a bargain basement ballclub through relying on statistics instead of the judgement of his scouts. He hired a Harvard economics grad (in the movie Jonah Hill says he went to Yale) and they used statistical data to pick their players. In a peanut shell, that’s it.
It’s basically the Bad News Bears. Except it really happened. And the stories of their various cut-rate players are sprinkled throughout the movie, always moving it forward. Beane had 40 million dollars to spend on the salaries for his team. The Yankees, by contrast, had 126 million, and could afford the “best” players.
Baseball fans will undoubtedly remember what happened. Not being one myself, I didn’t. But both groups will enjoy this film, including the brief cameos by 13-year-old Kerris Dorsey, playing Beane’s daughter, who virtually stole the off-the-field goings-on.
Computer Geeks, Statistic-Keepers and Numerical Nerds have been waiting for this movie to come along since the invention of the Abacus met the founding of baseball. Surprisingly enough, it’s interesting and charming and uplifting – basically everything you’d want in a movie about real life.
Brad Pitt should probably stick to roles like this, based on actual down-to-earth characters. He’s quite likeable, and a long ways from his “Troy” fiasco.
I’d hate to call this film “cerebral,” a tag that usually dooms a movie to oblivion, but it is so well written and directed and acted that you’ll find yourself siding with the brainiacs who, at least in this happy instance, turn out to be right.
Carly at the Movies column by Carl Larsen
Carly at the Movies: ‘Horrible Bosses’
It’s a shame that Shakespeare never hooked up with the Three Stooges, because together they might have come up with something like “Horrible Bosses,” a snart and funny new comedy that proves the head that wears a crrown sometimes gets bopped with a rolling pin.
Your grandma (well, mine, anyway) will probably tsk-tsk-tsk at all the smarmy, outright raunchy, dialogue. But those of us who can still giggle at the battle of the sexes will enjoy this light comedy. It stars Jason Bateman, Kevin Spacey, and a star-studded supporting cast that’s obviously having a ball, including Jennifer Anniston as a hot and horny dentist.
Bateman, as he did in the TV classic series “Arrested Development,” plays a suck-up stooge for C.E.O. Kevin Spacey in one of his patented Evil Overseer roles. Bateman meets the other two stooges, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, at a local tavern and finds they are both also suffering Horrible Boss syndrome. It’s an ailment that many of us blue collar guys live with, but theirs are collectively – well, Horrible.
As they stand around guzzling beer and complaining, it isn’t long before you’ll be remembering “Strangers on a Train,” and following our friends in search of a hit man at a sleazy joint downtown. Enter Jamie Foxx as a cool combo con man and “murder consultant.”
Meanwhile, the other two horrid bosses, Colin Farrell and Ms. Anniston. are busy being bad – Colin attempting to destroy his old man’s company and sex-starved Jennifer contriving to deprive mild-mannered, squeaky-voiced Charlie Day of his pantaloons.
Donald Sutherland appears briefly as Farrell’s dad, and later in the film we find Julie Bowen and in a late cameo, the great Bob Newhart. Everyone is having a great time as the time-worn plot careens along its merry way. Despite the nagging sense of familiarity, you are dragged happily along by Seth Gordon’s smooth direction and a script that often becomes hilarious.
Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis (from SNL) share a frenetic sense of timing, spewing out funny lines hither and yon (as Shakespeare might say). This dark black comedy gives Kevin Spacey one of the funniest brief scenes in recent film history:
His reaction is triggered when he learns that Bateman’s grandmother has passed away.
That’s why he’s such a horrible boss.
Movie review by Carl Larsen
Bourne Again Christian invades the ‘Green Zone’
Column by Carl Larsen
Submit guest columns: freepress2@ntelos.net
Nothing gets my dander up quicker than a healthy dose of good old American Righteous Indignation. And believe me, Matt Damon is so full of it in “Green Zone,” currently playing at the Regal Staunton Mall Cinema, that this erstwhile star of “The Bourne Identity,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” could easily be known as The Bourne Again Christian.
You can tell right away this tale, set in the chaotic early days of the Baghdad invasion (when Weapons of Mass Destruction were more real than Bush’s fantasy) is chock-a-block with Righteous Indignation. All the characters – government guys, CIA peeps, only-following-orders soldiers, reporters and noble savages all speak in deadly serious clichés. Read more
Carly at the Movies: Heroes never wear Band-aids
Column by Carl Larsen
Submit a review: freepress2@ntelos.net
Why would Martin Scorsese, probably the world’s most-respected film director, give away the mystery to his latest movie in the very first scene?
If you pick up that clue to “Shutter Island,” currently playing at the Regal Staunton Mall Cinema, you’ll just sit there for the next two-and-a-half hours waiting for it to turn out just as you’d expected.
In the meantime, you can enjoy the standard Scorsese cinematic touches and revel in a plot that seems straight out of the beloved old WWII radio adventure series called “I Love a Mystery” by Carlton E. Morse.
Yep, there’s Master Martin’s patented 360-degree camera turn and, oh yes, there’s his gorgeous, shadowy photography, set to wonderful use on the bleak and mysterious island that’s the setting for this tale of weird goings-on in an isolated hospital for the criminally insane. Read more
Singing Cowboys are win/win for new movies
Column by Carl Larsen
Submit a review: freepress2@ntelos.net
It’s been a long time since Gene Autry and Roy Rogers tumbled their tumbleweeds across the Western skies. Dressed in their immaculate spangled cowboy outfits, they rode and sang their hearts out until the 1950’s brought TV along to end their songs.
For over 30 years they remained, ghost riders in the skies of our memories. But you can’t keep a good galoot down, and into town rode the sons of those pioneers, headed by Joaquin Phoenix Walking the Line in 2005, Robert Duval winning a Best Actor Oscar in 1983’s “Tender Mercies,” and the even more disheveled Jeff Brides, riding “Crazy Heart” and tying up at the Visulite Corral in Staunton on Feb. 5.
Robert Duval and Maggie Gyllenhaal co-star, making this a win/win movie double bill no matter how you deal your tender hearts or crazy mercies. Both films sport superlative acting performances and both have already won impressive awards, including the recent Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild. Read more
Carly at the Movies | Public enemies bite the dust
Ah, Johnny, we hardly knew ye!
In “Public Enemies,” currently playing everywhere in the universe, Johnny Depp does an adequate job as old timey bank robber John Dillinger, but any nuances the script had were drowned out by the incessant chatter of Tommy guns. Read more
Carly at the Movies: Crazy, Stupid, Love
Posted by afp on August 8, 2011 · Leave a Comment
At first it seems like just another middle-aged-couple-bored-with-each-other-and-going-through-a-divorce movie. Gee, we’ve seen a zillion of those in the past few years. They usually star a few slightly older actors who can still draw a decent crowd, like Jack Nicholson or Jessica Lange or Harrison Ford.
But unlike those creaky old formula romances, this bright new film suddenly it takes off, following what seems like several different story lines about several different generations of people, each one as charming and courageously goofy as the last. And as the intricate tale tightens, the surprises begin to happen left and right, and the climax is simply brilliant, full of tenderness and recognition.
This romantic comedy drama has an ensemble cast that seems to have been put together in Casting Heaven. The leads are adorably cuckolded Steve Carell, smokey cuckolder Julianne Moore, and suave wingman Ryan Gosling, but everyone – absolutely everyone – adds depth to the story and delight to the beholder.
Three semi-newcomers stand out: old beyond his young years Jonah Bobo, starry-eyed teenager Analeigh Tipton, and healthy hottie Emma Stone. Toss in a pinch of Marisa Tomei (her funniest bit since “My Cousin Vinnie”), some watery-eyed Kevin Bacon, and stir with that naughty “Bad Santa” directing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa and you’ve got something to stew about.
The script was written (by Dan Fogelman) with real people wit instead of bathroom humor, and comes together so beautifully that you leave the theater with that glow of satisfaction you used to feel before most movies became nothing but dumbed-down vehicles for special effects.
This peachy hunk of cinema works on several levels, like the old Ron Howard classic “Parenthood” back in 1989. Young love and nearly-young love are explored hilariously, in a way I’ve never seen before. Middle-aged love with all its aches and pains is only heightened by Carell’s guy-next-doorness. And even the hip young dating scenes, full of twentysomethings too gorgeous to be alive even has a comic approach showcasing Gosling’s impressive talents. This guy is slicker than snot on a glass doorknob.
It is just so refreshing to see a film that is not about shallow and incredibly beautiful young girls who somehow fall desperately in love with ordinary guys who are either too fat, too stupid, too childish, or too terrified of commitment to merit existence. (Obviously, movies are made nowadays for the exclusive enjoyment of teenage boys, no matter what their age.)
Given that, you can understand why I’m so enthusiastic about “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Gosh, if all movies were as good as this one, I’d quit working for a living and take up writing movie reviews.
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with carl larsen, carly at the movies, crazy stupid love, julianne moore, steve carell