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

Short Takes: "The Ides of March" and "Rampart".

Oren Moverman was clever enough to cast his The Messenger star Woody Harrelson in Rampart: a character study that seems more obsessed with turning Woody's character into an iconic movie villain, than to actually study his character...

Set in 1999, just after the Rampart controversy sent the LAPD down a hole, the film has Harrelson play Dave Brown; a corrupt cop who has his way regardless of who he has to step on. This makes him a true movie monster and presents Harrelson with the difficult task of adding a human layer to a character that could easily become caricature. This he does beautifully; whether he's sucking on a woman's foot, beating a handicapped man or stealing from thieves, he adds a certain something that gives us a better idea of who this man might be and why he's struggling so much to preserve his decadent lifestyle.

What he doesn't give us, and this might be the screenplay's fault, is a look at what might've turned him into such a despicable creature. It's obviously not necessary to have something like this spelled out to you in a movie, but every character in Rampart feels like it was created specifically for the scenes they're in.

Woody does his best to elevate the movie from being a scenery-chewing fest but the truth is that all the rage in Dave results more frustrating than compelling.

One has to wonder why did George Clooney decide to direct and star in The Ides of March when he could've easily just ran for office. This film adaptation of Beau Willimon's Farragut North (which itself had been loosely inspired by Howard Dean's 200a campaign) works on an almost superficial level because it has a clear agenda, which doesn't allow its viewers to "think".
Clooney stars as Mike Morris, a Democratic candidate in the middle of a primary election that could have him become the next presidential candidate. Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Meyers, his loyal and cinematically idealistic junior campaign manager. When Meyers learns that Morris has a dark secret involving - of all things - an intern (played by Evan Rachel Wood) he has to decide whether to be loyal to his employer or to his morality. Which one wins isn't really important as much as it is to see Clooney execute a fine campaign ad for himself by reminding us that he will be the kind of man who, as his character says, believes in the religion of the US constitution.
By making his "villain" a Democrat, Clooney reassures us that no political affiliations will stand in the way of the common good and it's obvious that he feels best identified with Meyers (if he'd been younger he probably would've played him). Even if the film is extremely dull, Clooney has some truly inspired directorial moments (stylistic bookends, clever visual tricks, superb casting, you must see Marisa Tomei giving a delicious star turn here!) but more often than not he foregoes them to chase clichés that would work best in the insipid All the King's Men remake from a few years back, too bad he let his political interest come between him and the religion of filmmaking.

Grades:
Rampart **
The Ides of March **

While Watching "Synechdoche, New York"...

I came up with two movie related realizations.
Movie character I'd least like to become:

Movie character I'm most likely to become:

Doubt **1/2

Director: John Patrick Shanley
Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

Perhaps not all theater was meant to be adapted into cinema. Even if the notion that both mediums share a fraternal link has existed since movies began, the truth is that they are completely different experiences and the same screenplay performed in each of the mediums will create a distinct effect in the audience.
"Doubt" probably plays better on the stage, with its small cast limited to a reduced space and the omnipresence of the audience whose eyes add weight to the characters' burdens.
As a movie it lacks a certain punch and urgency which ultimately affects its entire purpose.
Meryl Streep plays Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a nun serving as principal for a Catholic school in 1964 Bronx. Conservative in every aspect she commands respect and fear from the students and her fellow nuns including the naive Sister James (Adams).
Intent on maintaining a certain order she sets her eyes on Father Flynn (Hoffman) a revolutionary priest who people like even if he suggests they use a "secular" song for the school's Christmas pageant.
After alerting Sister James to watch out for the priest, she receives notice that Father Flynn has had a private meeting with Donald Miller (Joseph Foster), the only African American student in the school who has become victim to pranks and isolation, convinced that the priest molested the child Sister Aloysius goes on a campaign to destroy him.
Based on his own play Shanley's adaptation offers some moral, spiritual and ethical questions that make for a fascinating piece. "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty" affirms Father Flynn during one of his sermons and after a too obvious shot of Sister Aloysius and Sister James, Shanley makes it obvious that this is entirely an actor's showcase.
Adams gives an effective portrayal of innocence; she suggests maliciousness when interacting with Sister Aloysius, but ends up being a naive girl torn apart between right, wrong and her commitment to her profession.
Davis has two scenes as David's mother Mrs. Miller, but in just one makes an absolutely indelible impression; as she walks with Sister Aloysius listening to what might be happening to her son she walks through a whole life, Davis' face contains the entire history of this woman who might be the only character in the film who really knows who she is.
Hoffman has the face to pull off both a pedophile and a saint and does so portraying Father Flynn like a man who can only give love, in whatever way the audience chooses to conceive it.
His character could've ended up being a villain or a martyr and Hoffman avoids both making his character completely human.
The film is ambiguous about what really happened and watching Hoffman you have to become judge and decide for yourself.
Then there's Streep who makes sure she commands all the attention as Sister Aloysius, the brilliant actress seems to have trouble getting into character; known for her subtle immersion into her roles, during her first scenes in the film she still seems to be adjusting to the character.
She twitches, purses her lips and provides more affecting mannerisms than a mime but just as you're about to condemn the actress for showing the tactics of her craft you realize that this has been Sister Aloysius all along.
Like a diva, she is so sure about her ability to cause fear, her self imposed superiority and her overall power that she lets us know she can do whatever she wants to do with it.
Those who know people raised in Catholic schools will recognize Sister Aloysius in stories they've heard or people they know.
If she wants to offer grandiose displays of histrionics who among her congregation will dare to tell her she's wrong? Streep finds a certain vulnerability in Sister Aloysius because more than the other characters she is the one with the crisis of faith, more precisely who or what to have faith in.
Should it be her pride, her position, her God or her need to do good even if she must hurt others?
She proclaims herself as the one to "outshine the fox in cleverness", but Streep knows better than to reduce this woman to a psychopath, a woman with penis envy looking for gender equality or a villain.
It's a shame then that Shanley doesn't seem to know his characters the way his ensemble does. While it seems he's putting his faith in them, his directorial skills prove otherwise as he uses every trick in the book to convey ideas and emotions.
He directs with the insecure eagerness of someone who landed a movie star for the high school theater production.
Big scenes are done with tilted Hitchcokian angles and moments of revelation are accompanied by storms and wind.
While it's understandable that the director would want to highlight dramatic moments, truth is all along you feel almost as if Shanley was hovering above the screen with little puppet strings, then running off to bang the metal for the thunder effects, then run again once more to play the wicked organ music and so on.
For a subject which deals so much with our own power to choose, and a last scene that relies heavily on this, it's a shame that for his film Shanley has no belief in free will.