On the couch

`Making films about obscure, even unfilmable ideas has become a popular one over the last few years. First it was books thought too big to make the leap (LA Confidential) then it was fairground rides (Pirates of the Caribbean).
Then Aaron Sorkin stepped everything up a notch and made a website into one of the most gripping dramas of the last five years. What’s your next trick, we asked. A musical based on Google? A sci-fi buddy comedy about condiments? Out of all the myriad possibilities, I bet nobody saw “making statistical analysis sexy” coming.
Moneyball is the product – the story of how an Yale-educated economist and the headstrong manager of a lousy baseball team changed the very foundation of the sport forever.
Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the GM of  the Oakland As, a side whose best days are a far and distant memory. Frustrated by how broke the team is and how his best players always slip away to pastures greener, he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and has his eyes opened to Sabremetrics and a world of underappreciated players whose poor reputations belied their potential worth to a correctly managed team.
Sound like fun? Probably not, but the list of things Moneyball does right is long. Most impressive is how Sorkin made a story about statistical analysis that lacks any real dramatic arc so bloody watchable.
Traditionally a rich source of material for cinematic magic, baseball movies typically centre on the players, Moneyball, however,  focuses on the backroom travails of Beane as he flies in the face of every scrap of advice spouted at him by tobaccy-chewin’ auld fellas and armchair experts alike. If the team does well he’ll get none of the credit but keep his job. If it crashes and burns, he’s out on his ear.
Central to all this being even slightly palatable are the performances of Pitt and Hill. While Hill is surprisingly good as the awkward Brand, it is Pitt who steals the show as bullish former jock, Beane.
The only thing that lets Moneyball down is reality. Admirably faithful to the true story of the Oakland A’s first year under Sabremetrics, the course of the flick may leave you wishing, for once, That everything could just end happily ever after.
There are a lot of things to criticise about the Twilight series. A lot. Most of them, have, up ’til now, been unavoidable flaws. Problems that could only have been fixed by throwing out the source material.
Imagine trying to make a delicious meal if all you have in the kitchen are a can of Irn-Bru, a radish and some out of date cornflakes. It’s not going to happen. Of course having three lead actors with all the emotional depth of Snow White’s sand box hasn’t helped but the Harry Potter kids couldn’t act their way out of wet paper bags either and those films turned out alright.
However loathsome the previous three flicks have been, they at least exhibited a certain level of filmmaking competence. Not so Breaking Dawn Part 1. This latest box office bovine is more mad cow than cash cow.
In this penultimate episode, the story of Bella and Edward’s whiny relationship culminates in them getting married. Pale and paler’s honeymoon is interrupted when Bella gets pregnant and the rest of the film involves vampires brooding about the supposedly impossible baby, werewolves growling about the sprog-to-be and Jacob growling and brooding depending on who he’s been talking to.
To say it’s a horribly written, badly edited, tiresome mess would do a disservice to a fine tradition of horribly written, badly edited, tiresome messes everywhere but it doesn’t matter, bitter grownups aren’t the target audience. Tweens are. And this damn thing has already made more money than a sliced pan that could butter itself and make you tea.