Short Take:"Moneyball" and "Tuesday After Christmas".

Moneyball is a good movie but its sensibility is unquestionably, perhaps exclusively, American given that it centers around the world of baseball. Screenwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian do a superb job of trying to sketch out the universal in the real-life story of Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) who single-handedly tried to revolutionize the sport by recurring to mathematics and statistics.

Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, the Yale graduate who was hired by Beane to scout players using a strange method that has them choose players who have been rejected by other teams based on their "on base percentage". The Athletics become the laughing stock of the baseball world until they suddenly begin to go on a winning streak the likes of which had never seen before in baseball history.

If you see past the baseball lingo and all the mathematics and numbers, you will discover a movie that's essentially an example of how we try our best to excel in the face of adversity. Pitt is exceptionally magnetic as Beane, finally showing some signs of rugged wisdom beyond his pretty boy looks. The rest of the cast does a wonderful job circling around him, Kerris Dorsey is particularly good as his daughter Casey, but the film can't tap into the universality to make it really work outside the American context. Sorkin and Zaillian try to make its outer layer become more accessible, but the end result is quite marred by one's own tolerance for sports, particularly because director Bennet Miller keeps everything under such precise control that you can't help but feel unwelcome. "How can you not get romantic about baseball?" asks Beane, if you agree with him, then this is the movie for you.

The Romanian New Wave might just be the singular, most exciting film current to have occurred in decades! Every film coming from the formerly troubled country, feels like a breath of fresh air in the midst of all these pre-produced, highly disposable works done all over the world. What results so strange about these movies is that they're essentially telling us stories we've heard a million times before; even the fact that they often seek to portray the social angle makes us wonder what makes them superior to similar schools of thought. Can it be maybe, that having been repressed for so long gave these young filmmakers the ability to see the world with fresh eyes? To find uniqueness in what's become so ordinary and unnoticeable to others?
Take Tuesday After Christmas for example, an exercise in Bergmanian restraint that's as dark and strangely humorous as the master's best works. The film opens with a naked couple engaging in post-coital conversation. Raluca (Maria Popistașu) teases her lover Paul (Mimi Brănescu) about his stamina, the size of his penis and then wonders when she will see him again. Paul it turns out, has a wife (Mirela Oprişor) waiting for him back home.
The film, which takes place in the days leading to Christmas Eve, has none of the usual twists we'd expect from plots in which infidelity is a major theme, perhaps precisely because the film isn't about cheating. It's a carefully constructed slice of life that gives us access to lives that could very well resemble ours. Watching Paul and his wife arguing about what to get their daughter for Christmas makes for a slightly disturbing nod to what we might see every day at the mall. These people, we are constantly told, are not special or unique, they are pieces of a larger universe.
Perhaps director Radu Muntean is emphasizing the blasé fascination with others' lives as a way to encourage us to empathize with others. The film isn't even "interesting" in strictly superficial terms; there are no insane plot twists, sudden shocks or scenes that alter the main landscape, yet somehow watching these parents take  their daughter to the dentist becomes more thrilling than watching alien-robots fight each other, watching the wife cut her husband's hair as he stands naked, rings with more urgent humanity than a dozen activist documentaries and the camera's stillness throughout the film is a perfect reminder that cinema might be the ultimate window to the soul.

Grades:
Moneyball **
Tuesday After Christmas ***½

How to Train Your Dragon **

Director: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders

Once again disregarding time accurate conceptions in favor of contemporary behavior and any trace of verisimilitude within the time and characters, Dreamworks Animation Studios delivers what might be one of their most successful attempts at maturing.
In How to Train Your Dragon we meet Hiccup (voiced somewhat annoyingly by Jay Baruchel) a young viking who's the shame of his town.
While everyone else in town-including other kids his age-indulge in the tradition of dragon slaying, Hiccup pretty much messes up every time he leaves the house.
His father Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler in an unimaginative 300 way) the village leader leaves for battle and expects his son to have achieved something when he returns.
Fortunately for Hiccup he meets Toothless, a young dragon (of a race nobody has seen before!) who befriends him and soon enough he's not only taming all the other dragons but becomes the village's favorite son.
For all the Oedipal and quasi-environmental issues at its center, there is really nothing in this movie you haven't seen before.
It indulges itself with cliché after cliché; from the characters' names to the things they do. Really what is it with Dreamworks insistence of disregarding everything in favor of contemporary personalities children will enjoy? Don't they have the slightest sense of historical conscience?
The film is somewhat entertaining though and visually it's beautiful to behold (Roger Deakins acted as visual consultant) but it puffs more often than it soars.

Funny People **1/2

Director: Judd Apatow
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann
Jason Schwartzman, Jonah Hill, Aubrey Plaza, Eric Bana

"Comedy usually is for funny people" says George Simmons (Sandler) and the usually in that quote is the keyword to best describe the mood of this film.
Judd Apatow's third film as a director takes an inside look at Hollywood, filtered through a comedian's eyes.
Simmons is a comedy superstar, in the vein of Sandler, who made a name for himself starring in raunchy adolescent oriented comedies and crass stand up routines.
He's a millionaire but lives a pretty lonely life. Things change for him when he learns he has a terminal disease and he tries to make things right.
Not in a Frank Capra way, but right by his own standards; therefore he hires a down on his luck comedian named Ira (Rogen) to be his assistant and also tries to rekindle his love with old flame Laura (Mann) who has a husband (Bana) and children.
Sandler, who rarely gets enough credit as an actor (because of his career choices mostly) makes George someone we have a hard time liking.
He's the kind of conceited superstar who thinks the world asks too much of him-he even sings it-and only reaches down from his Olympus when he needs something.
But Sandler also gives him a soul. He doesn't turn him into a fable character ready for a big change; even when the screenplay tries to make us see him with both pity and disdain, the actor makes George someone who won't give a damn about how we perceive him, until he needs an audience to turn his next movie into a blockbuster.
It's a brave performance because he's never afraid of showing his ugly side, which is most of it.
Apatow as usual gives the supporting cast great moments and Mann once again shines as the complicated Laura. Her kind of down to earth sexiness is incredibly appealing and this time around she plays someone we'd have no trouble believing existed.
Some of her choices are ridiculous, but Mann plays them out like a grown up (perhaps the only real adult in the movie). Rogen once again plays the sweet, slightly awkward sidekick and he's good at it, while Hill bores with his umpteenth take on the potty mouthed nerd.
Bana was a real surprise, he plays an Australian and when the movie wants us to hate him (he's the only character who isn't in show business and has a corporate job) we simply can't, because the actor makes us realize that even something a Hollywood star can find boring, can be dignified.
His comedic timing is ace and the dislikeability factor the screenplay attributes him comes only looking as a manifestation of how he represents people like Simmon's worst nightmares, both in and outside the movie.
He's very handsome, while the other guys often make jokes about their average looks, he's successful and he gets the girl they wanted.
And as an actor Bana is proving that you don't have to say "fart" and "cock" to make people laugh; his sarcasm might just steal more laughs than Sandler's funny voice shticks.
With him the movie reveals its weakest link because Apatow never stops to ask what it means to be funny, he has forgotten that comedy isn't a universal language.
He takes for granted that by thinking of funny we must be the kind of people who laugh at his' and Sandler's jokes.
With this unintentionally arrogant move he assumes that he is a fine comedian.
And he can be; but his kind of comedy has only gained importance during this decade and "Funny People" is an egocentric-slightly self critical- ode to himself and his newly founded reign.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall ***

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand
Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, Jack McBrayer, Paul Rudd

Peter Bretter (Segel) is an average looking, music composer who happens to be dating hot TV star Sarah Marshall (Bell).
Sarah works in Crime Scene, a CSI type of show where she plays a sexy investigator who must deal with Billy Baldwin's smarmy one liners and later having her life commented by Billy Bush.
Peter watches all this from a distance knowing that despite the fact that he's the guy always hiding behind the spotlights and flashes, when the day is over, he has that woman in his house. Things change when Sarah breaks up with him after she falls in love with British rockstar Aldous Snow (Brand).
Shattered by the breakup, Peter goes on a one night stand frenzy, only to be left feeling emptier. Then, by the suggestion of his stepbrother Bryan (Hader) he takes a vacation to Hawaii, only to realize Sarah is staying in the same resort with her new man.
Following his male pride he decides to stay and face her, seeing the events as a sign from God he has to get over her.
During his stay he meets a colorful array of characters, including stoner surfer Chuck (the reliably scene stealeing Rudd), obsessive waiter Matthew (Hill), southern virgin Darald (a hilarious McBrayer) who's having a hard time satisfying his new wife's sexual needs and beautiful hotel receptionist Rachel (Kunis), with whom Peter sees the opoortunity of falling in love again.
Mixing raunchy humor with more emotional moments this film successfully continues the style that has made Judd Apatow (a producer here) and company so popular.
It seems as if these men are compiling pages of wisdom to aid men in future generations, as they deal with issues most hetreosexual males will go through at one point or another.
What makes their movies work in a way chick flicks never have, is that the things they put in practice are drawn from real life experiences.
While other romantic comedies always seem to rely on the need to blame someone for what goes wrong and assume its characters always need to be with someone else, Apatow's take on relationships infuses them with just about the same amount of romance and cuteness as of pain and melancholy.
Take for example the characters here: in some other movie the fact that this man, who is certainly not the most attractive specimen out there, is dating what is conventionally described as a hot girl, is never the issue they deal with.
We never know why and how they got together and when the time comes for them to break up, the very smart screenplay makes us empathize with both their sides.
Even when Peter calls Sarah "the devil" we know better than to just throw judgment around.
The ensemble makes the film work wonderfully; Segel has just the charisma to pull off some difficult moments and overcome them making us root for him, while Bell is simply delicious, showing us a side of stardom that few actresses would have gone for.
Brand's kind of careless, self parody humor that mocks European values fits perfectly with the rest of the cast's "all American goodness".
But the film's real treasure might lie in its painfully honest, too real to be completely funny screenplay, that even masters the tough art of creating uncomfortable silences in movies.
Some lines coming out of the characters might sound as lines you've said before in the exact same situations, or some, for that matter that you will start using from now on.
And the film only fails when it tries too hard to make its poinst, like a scene where Segel bares it all physically, assuming it will do the same emotionally.
A film that contains such wise words along with hilarious heartbreak should know better than to go and do that.