Brad Pitt occupies the same sort of rare territory as his longtime close friend George Clooney, in that they’re two of the biggest and most recognizable stars in Hollywood, but both look for material that will challenge them as either actors or filmmakers instead of picking the easiest roles that pay the most money and are thus guaranteed the biggest box office business.
Admittedly, they did co-star in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Trilogy, but since the series concluded, both A-listers have focused almost exclusively on quality. World War Z is the only big budget movie that Pitt’s appeared in over the last decade, but in that same time period he’s racked up five Academy Award nominations and two wins, one for producing 12 Years a Slave and the other in the Best Supporting Actor category thanks to his turn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The only time the 56 year-old landed two Oscar nods for the same movie, though, came with Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, which saw him up for Best Actor and Best Picture. The engaging and insightful sports drama is nowhere near as dry as the statistics-heavy synopsis would suggest, and the entire cast is phenomenal across the board as they deliver exactly the sort of crisp dialogue that audiences have come to expect from co-writer Aaron Sorkin.
Moneyball was only added to the Netflix library last week, but has already cracked the streaming service’s Top 10 most-watched list, where it currently ranks as the ninth most popular title in the United States. Horror movies might be all the rage as we get closer to Halloween, but subscribers clearly aren’t above enjoying a solid awards season prestige drama, either.
