Moneyball review

 Number 720 on the top 1000 films of all time is the biographical sports drama 'Moneyball.'

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. After a disappointing season, and with a minimal budget, he is on a mission to rebuild a bigger and better team. He enlists the help of Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) who uses special formulae to determine the best players to buy. This puts Beane in conflict with the other scouts and head coach Art Howe (Philipp Seymour Hoffman.)

Some critics have said that Moneyball is an enjoyable film even if you're not a baseball fan. I am a Brit, so I am most definitely not a baseball fan. Yet, I didn't enjoy Moneyball at all. But, of course, that's because I wasn't interested in the content rather than any fault of director Bennett Miller. The film held no importance or meaning to me. I didn't really understand what the characters were talking about.

Billy Beane used to be a baseball player himself. But after years of under-performing, he goes into management. He is haunted by his past failures which is revisited in odd flashbacks. This was supposed to flesh out his character, but I don't think enough time was spent on it to be effective.

I much preferred the quieter scenes where we see Billy trying to establish a connection with his estranged daughter Casey particularly when they're in a guitar shop and she sings The Show. This was very touching. I wish we had more scenes like this.

The actual performances weren't anything special either. Philip Seymour Hoffman was highly underused. While Jonah Hill's performance earned him a best supporting actor nod, I'm not sure whether his performance really merited it.

If you're a baseball fan, you'll probably love this film. And if you're not like me, you'll think it's a 153 minute snoozefest.

How to Train your Dragon review

 Number 168 on top 1000 films of all time is the animated film How to Train your Dragon.

  Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is not your typical Viking. Scrawny and small, he is next to useless at defending his village from dragon attacks. His father Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) has all but given up hope. Determined to prove him and everybody else wrong, Hiccup erupts in dragon-slaying classes but when he meets a Night Fury dragon that he names Toothless, he soon discovers that everything he knew about dragons was wrong.

This film franchise has always passed me by and if it hadn't been for this challenge, I probably wouldn't have watched it. Having seen it, I can understand why. It was released in 2010, so perhaps if I had seen it when I was sixteen instead of twenty-six, I would have liked it more.

That's not to say the animation wasn't cute and the design of the dragons creative, but the film did leave a lot to be desired. For one, the storyline was very predictable. It was obvious that Hiccup would go from the scrawny runt to the unlikely hero who saves the day, which is exactly what happened. All because he has been the first character ever to have taken the time to understand the dragons.

It was also obvious that Stoick would go from the badass warrior dragon-slayer determined to wipe out every single dragon to the soft-hearted father who saves Toothless' life. Both were predictable character arcs.

Apart from Hiccup, the characters were all very vaguely drawn. Hiccup trains with a supporting cast who were all generic and blended into one another. Although voiced by famous comedy actors like Jonah Hill, T.J Miller, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Kristen Wiig, this did not make the characters anymore distinctive.

Even Hiccup's supposed love interest Astrid (America Ferrera) was more of an archetype, dare I say, cliche of the strong, independent woman with a softer side, than an actual character. The humour was also very immature and juvenile with an over-reliance on fart jokes that did little to make me laugh. And I was very confused by the weird mixture of Scottish and American accents. All of the adults were Scottish and the teenagers American. Why not make them all Scottish or all American?

For kids, I can definitely see why this movie would appeal but to a grumpy old-fogey like me, it was nothing special.