Calling all Disruptors

Good morning Consumers. This is Please Consume, the Film newsletter that loves you more than Ben Affleck loves being from Boston.

This is what we’ve got for today 👇️

• Caleb kicks off this week, as we focus on the disrupters.

• The Nun II holds stong in a down box office week.

• All the latest news and notes from this weekend.

Let’s get rolling…

This week we’re focusing on Disruption Docudramas.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, we’re going to discuss movies that tell the true story of massive shake ups in certain fields.

This has been a big year for this type of movie with the release of films like Tetris, Flaming Hot, Blackberry, Air, and the impending Dumb Money.

So, we thought we’d take the opportunity to discuss just a couple of our favorites.

Moneyball (2011)

Written by Caleb Madden

When I heard that we were doing a week on Disruptive Docudramas I was over the moon because one of my favorite movies of all time is a biopic. That’s right, the one and only Moneyball!

It’s a movie that I think has the potential to be called perfect. Let’s jump in!

America’s Pastime

If you have grown up in America there is an almost 100% guarantee that you have encountered the sport of baseball at some point. One of the first recorded baseball games ever played in America was played in 1846, less than 100 years after the Declaration of Independence. Since that first game, baseball has grown and changed a lot but, in many ways, it remains central to American Culture.

Baseball, unlike its much more brutal and fast paced brother, football, is slow. This slowness makes for a perfect device to tell an emotionally riveting story. So much of baseball is based on the quiet conversations that happen across the field; the relationship between a pitcher and the player at the plate is like a complicated tango. It is exactly that ethos that allows Moneyball to stretch its legs and paint a beautiful and enthralling story of an underdog team and its management trying to run the table.

Poor Dad’s

Moneyball follows the Oakland A’s 2002 baseball season after their divisional loss to the New York Yankees in 2001. At the center of this story is Billy Beane (played by fan favorite Brad Pitt). Beane is tasked with rebuilding the team with minimal funds after many of their star players leave. Enter Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill) who claims that he has a better way of recruiting players with less money.

As the story surrounding the baseball team unfolds, we also watch flashbacks from Beane’s career as a pro player and we learn of his broken marriage and daughter. The relationships that are built and shown throughout the movie are, for me, the best parts of this film. We watch Pitt give an excellent performance (as usual) that allows the emotional stakes to really shine. Moneyball isn’t really about baseball, it's about a scorned man trying to redeem his own suffering by investing in others around him. Not to mention he is trying to love his daughter the best way he knows.

A Perfect Film

IThe plot is great and the acting top tier, but what makes this a perfect film is everything else. The script (written by Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian) is almost poetic. Every word is carefully chosen and rarely wasted. The cinematography (Wally Pfister) is gorgeous, perfectly conveying the suspense and thrill of the risky decisions being made by the team’s management. The entire supporting cast is also throwing heaters (pun intended). You really believe that these people work for the front office of a baseball team. Every decision made by director Bennet Miller comes together in a beautiful chorus that makes, in my opinion, one of the best films ever made.

All of this is captured in today’s clip. How can you not be romantic about Moneyball?

Today’s Scene

This Weekend’s Top 5

2023’s Top 5