Review of the Reviews

Positive Review:
     
            This review is a bit of a longer review, but has great things to say about the movie "Moneyball." The tone of this review seems very upbeat. What I would take away from this is that he had a great time watching this film and also learned a lot about the system the Oakland Athletics baseball organization tried to use in 2001. He starts off the review stating facts of the game where the Athletics played the Yankees for the division title. The A's sadly lost that game 5-3 as the review states in the second paragraph. Manohla Dargis, the writer of the review, focuses mostly on the plot and character of the film. He talks about the plot and how he loves the storyline. He also talks about how great the cast is. He feels that every person actor/actress was casted perfectly for their roles. He relates this film to "The Social Network" because of the number systems they use. "Moneyball" uses math equations to scout their players based on hits and on base percentage, while "The Social Network" uses math equations to create a website. He also touches on the fact of how similar the cinemetography is between the two films.


Negative Review:

           This review is a very bitter toned review. He starts off the review saying "'Moneyball' is a mess of a film..." The reason he is so bitter towards this film is because of the way it would show flashbacks at random times. Although I felt that those scenes were necessary to the film, the writer of this review feels they were worthless. The review is set up in about 6 paragraphs with nothing good about the movie. He uses phrases like "aimless plot" and "one-dimensional" all to describe either the characters or the film itself. He uses the word "one-dimensional" to describe basically every character and complains the whole rest of the review about how the film lacks "multi-dimensional" characters. As you can tell, he focuses on the cast mostly. Completely bashing the script and how the cast acted. I can see how he thinks that, but he kind of over-exaggerated the boringness of the characters I feel.

2. The scene where Brad Pitt is driving away from the stadium because he feels being there is bad luck, and he turns around to go to the stadium and the A's loose is a very significant part of the movie and I feel that it is a very good scene. It is a very good scene due to that being the falling action of the film. Once he went to the stadium everything falls down hill.

3. The positive review would be more convincing because of the vocabulary and tone of the review. Dargis really explains the plot and why it is good and also how it can seen as a bad movie. So he gives you both side of the movie in one review. I feel that knowing both sides of what can potentially be an argument is very helpful and wise.

4. I would want to include how much I like the cast. Despite what the negative review says, I feel that the cast was great. Jonah Hill played the stats guy perfect while Brad Pitt played his boss and friend very well. I would leave out some of the plot line because there are some scenes that don't contribute to the film at all, but apparently are very important to the plot and I just don't see it. In all, I really liked the film and had a great time watching it.