Big Screen, Small Screen (NEW SEGMENT!)

     This blog is getting boring, so I decided to add another segment - Big Screen, Small Screen.  Several times a month, whenever I get the chance to see a new movie in theaters (if I can afford a goddamn ticket anymore) and a new movie on DVD, I'll write a blurb on them both, review them, blah blah blah.  You know the drill.  

BIG SCREEN:  The Grey

      Liam Neeson plays a hard-headed, stoic bad-ass in this bleak and disheartening man vs. nature thriller drama.  After a devastating plane crash in the Alaska wilderness leaves oil rig workers stranded and wounded in the unforgiving cold, Irishman Ottway (Neeson) takes the reins in hopes of leading the survivors away from a unrelenting and vicious pack of wolves that pursue them at every turn.  This movie should've been called The Black.  It was terrifying and sorrowful almost the entire way through.  Not without some plot holes and stretched story lines, the brutalness of the film renders you a little speechless.  An impressive survival movie comparable to the likes of Alive, director Joe Carnahan and writer Ian Mackenzie Jeffers did a fantastic job utilizing every actor to their full potential, and as unsettling as the movie is, it is well worth the money to see it on the big screen.

SMALL SCREEN:  Moneyball 

      Director Bennett Miller appears to be King Midas when it comes to Oscar gold - the last movie he directed besides this years Moneyball was Capote nearly six years ago, rendering two more acting nominations (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener).  Certainly not the most enthralling movie I've seen the last 12 months, Moneyball holds its own as a great sports movie that kind of isn't about sports.  Brad Pitt plays general manager Billy Beane, whose  strict budget and stingy ball club only work against him as he tries to bring his team, the Oakland A's, into a championship.  It isn't until he meets an economics graduate from Yale (Jonah Hill) that he begins to see the game of baseball differently - causing him to make some very strange decisions that drive his coaches, bosses, and family crazy.  You don't have to even like baseball to like this movie.  The writing, acting and score (similiar to the Explosions in the Sky score of Friday Night Lights) are all superb.  Emotional and inspiring, Moneyball brings back, as Pitt would say, "the romance of baseball".  

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