MONEYBALL

This is an atypical baseball movie.  For one thing, there's not very much baseball in it.  It's about using superior statistical analysis to build a better team.  But there's actually not a whole lot of statistics in the movie either.  It's more about the riskiness and culture clash that comes from attempting to reinvent the game.  One of the best scenes is just Brad Pitt and some old dude arguing 'politely' in a hallway, with unbearable and hateful tension bubbling to the surface so palpably that the viewer is almost certain that the two will tear into each other at any moment.  But they don't.  This isn't that kind of movie.  Sure, Brad Pitt throws lots of chairs when he's mad, but this movie isn't about the triumph of violence; it's about the triumph of numbers.

MADAGASCAR

BBC Earth Presents Madagascar: The Land Where Evolution Ran Wild.

That's one helluva title, isn't it?

Check out my first Blu-ray review for CHUD.com.

There's plenty of lemurs!

DRIVE

This film is a genre mash-up, a hybrid of an art house film and an action movie.  I think the ideal audience is anyone in the small overlap of fans of both those types of films; in other words, great for me, your mileage may vary.  You get the best of both worlds, unless you are not a fan of one or more of those genres, in which case you get the worst of at least one world and possibly two.  Since it's an art film, you get long takes, deep focus, and meaningful gestures substituting for dialogue; but because it's also an action movie, you get car chases, car crashes, gun fights, knife fights, and at least four scenes that cause the audience to quickly get very loud before they fall very silent.  You could call it an inter-textual/meta-textual minimalist neo-noir, but why not just call it a good time?  Hell, I'd call it a great time.

WIRED (2008)

Check out this review at CHUD.

What's it about?  Stealing Pounds.  That means money in England.

Bloody Hell!

TARAS BUBLA (2009)

Check out my first review for CHUD.

What's it about?

Vladimir Putin presents Braveheart except the Scots are the Ukranians, and the English are the Polish; also the hero is a pot-bellied 68 year old.

Sign me up!