Moneyball

This is one of the best baseball movies ever made, and it actually has very little of the physical game being played within it. It’s the story of Billy Beane and how he used computers instead of money to build a championship level baseball team while bigger markets outspent him. Brad Pitt plays Beane in a funny, understated and savvy performance. Couple his work here with his excellent performance in this year’s The Tree of Life, and you are possibly looking at the best year of this guy’s career. Jonah Hill is also very good playing a statistician that helps Beane paste together a team that essentially changed the way baseball teams are built throughout all markets. Sure, director Bennett Miller and his screenwriters cut a few corners and Hollywood-ize this already crazy story, but history does tell us that the A’s, under Beane, have had put some pretty amazing teams on the field with paltry budgets, contending with the likes of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.