Moneyball

Directed by Bennett Miller

(PG-13)

****

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“Moneyball infuses improbable emotion” into what is basically a story about number-crunching, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. The result is a “movie of such loping, unforced ease and solid entertainment that it’s easy to take its gifts for granted.” Based on a nonfiction best seller by Michael Lewis, the film stars Brad Pitt as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who in 2002 eschewed traditional scouting and embraced such underappreciated statistics as on-base percentage to cobble together a winning team from an array of castoffs. Beane’s little-team-that-could story might’ve been “rendered dull or sappy,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. But director Bennett Miller (Capote) proves again to be a rare talent, “adept at making interpersonal dynamics and matters of workaday procedure come alive.” Pitt, meanwhile, “channels Robert Redford,” as he so often does, said David Edelstein in New York. This time, the part fits the tools he brings to the task—“the witty understatement, the mastery of the pause-and-stare to suggest the wheels turning in his head.” He’s “dazzlingly good.”