After I saw this the first time a friend asked about it and I said, after gushing a bit about I felt about it, that I thought it was “good, but probably not Oscar good”. But, y’know, now I’ve started watching some of the other Oscar crop, I may rethink that opinion. It really is a very tight, smartly written movie that offers both emotion and insight. And, true, I’m still not sure how easily someone who doesn’t know or care about baseball would digest it, but there’s definitely a lot of quality there. I’ll actually be surprised if, apart from Midnight in Paris, there are too many Best Picture nominees I think are as good as this.
Moreover, seeing it again convinced me that it’s a movie I’ll be able to watch again and again. It is, as an A’s fan, as good as it could have been, I think. Yes, the streak was before my time as a fan, but that probably helps me in terms of not recognising potential inaccuracies etc.. And as it is it stands as a brilliant portrait of the team I fell in love with just a couple of years later, so I reckon it will pretty much forever own a place on my shelf.
Grade: ****
