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 **

The Conspirator **½

Director: Robert Redford

Cast: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Justin Long

Evan Rachel Wood, Johnny Simmons, Toby Kebbell

Tom Wilkinson, Norman Reedus, Alexis Bledel

Kevin Kline, Danny Huston

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was undoubtedly one of the seminal events of the nineteenth century and history has made sure that we learn as much about Honest Abe as we can. His life has been the center of books, films and urban legends all of which culminate in the night where he was murdered by actor John Wilkes Booth.

Very few times have we been informed of what came to be afterwards and how one story in particular would shape the way of legal battles up to this very day. That story would be Mary Surratt's, played with fierce serenity by Robin Wright, a woman who was tried for conspiring in the assassination of President Lincoln.

While the story is supposed to concentrate on Surratt, director Robert Redford takes a more didactic approach and centers on her defending lawyer Fredrick Aiken (McAvoy), a Civil War veteran who's appointed by the army to defend someone everyone thinks is guilty.

The film deftly deals with the way in which public opinion can shape the outcome of a trial but more than that it leads us to wonder when and where is it right to bend the law, or if we even should consider doing it at all.

Redford, always the political instructor, makes the film about the way in which the army shattered the law in order to put on a charade to find themselves a scapegoat, Mary's guilt or innocence are never really on trial in the film (anyone watching the movie will think something entirely different) what the movie examines is the inconsistency with which governments provide so-called justice.

Unlike most of the films directed by Redford this one conceals its liberal agenda under a more restrained, almost theatrical style that might appeal those from dissenting political parties, as such it's a movie much more entertaining than say the disastrous Lions for Lambs however in delivering his essay Redofrd has once again forgotten to make his characters human.

He uses them to portray archetypes, we have the heroic Aiken, the villainous prosecutor (Huston) and he even gives Aiken a virginal love interest (Bledel of course) who juxtaposed with Surratt's more vamp-like daughter (none other than Wood) act like the angel and devil figures on the good lawyer's shoulders.

Props should be given to the always fascinating Wright who infuses Mary with a serene knowledge the rest of the film lacks. Redford doesn't give her character much to do but Wright taps into something primal and by the end of the film has evoked maternal love, demonic possession and manipulation with elegance and grace. Watch the way in which she can break your heart by remaining silent or the hatred she can invoke to her eyes. She makes us wish the rest of the movie lived up to her brilliant portrayal.