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The film Moneyball (2011), starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, ends with Beane listening to a recording of his daughter singing a song. It is a touching moment connected to an earlier scene in the film where she sang the song for him in a guitar store. What is the song?

I’m just a little bit caught in the middle;
Life is a maze and love is a riddle;
I don’t know where to go, can’t do it alone
I’ve tried, and I don’t know why.

I’m just a little girl lost in the moment;
I’m so scared but I don’t show it;
I can’t figure it out, it’s bringing me down
I know, I’ve got to let it go and just enjoy the show.

The song is “The Show” by Australian singer Lenka. The song originally appeared on her 2008 self-titled album, Lenka.

Moneyball bears rewatching if you have seen it already. When I saw it in the theater, I remember being disappointed at the ending. Unlike most sports movies, there is not a satisfying baseball action climax. While scenes of the game do play an important role, the movie is really about Beane. And “The Show” plays a key role in telling that story.

Below is a touching scene where Beane encourages his daughter to play the song. His daughter is played by Kerris Lilla Dorsey. When Dorsey auditioned for the part, she played “The Show,” feeling that one of her favorite songs suited the character. Director Bennett Miller loved the audition, hiring Dorsey and putting the song in the film (even though it had not been released at the time of events in the movie).

And below is part of one of the final scenes of Moneyball in a video where someone has intercut the movie’s earlier performance of the song. So while it is not exactly the ending, if you haven’t seen the movie, I would suggest you wait to watch the entire film to get the full impact.

Maybe that ending is just as good as a walk-off home run or a championship. It is certainly one of those times where I think Brad Pitt is underrated as a serious actor. The film also features wonderful performances by Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Check out the movie and enjoy the show.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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One sign that summer has ended is when we start seeing more movies that carry a little weight and stay with you. Moneyball (2011) has more drama and excitement than most of the action and superhero movies of the summer.

Moneyball, directed by Bennett Miller and based on Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, is the “true story” about how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics used a new way of looking at baseball players to rebuild the team after it lost several superstars after the 2001 season. The method used by the Athletics used statistics to analyze the value of players in a way that ran contrary to the intuition used by baseball scouts. The movie screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin takes some liberties with the facts, but it does a good job capturing a little-seen part of the National Pastime and reveals a major problem with the inequality of resources among Major League Baseball teams.

Brad Pitt is excellent as Beane, and Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, Beane’s sidekick in the film. The supporting roles, including one by Philip Seymour Hoffman as manager Art Howe, are all excellent too. For example, there is an excellent scene where Beane visits his ex-wife, played by Robin Wright, that shows a realistic uncomfortable situation that also reveals much about the personality and history of the characters. Throughout the film, Pitt makes us root for his character even as we see his unflattering personality traits.

Moneyball is a unique sports movie because it focuses on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to put a team on the field more than the team on the field. So you should not go to the film expecting to see exciting baseball, although there are moments showing the games, often with real footage. The baseball game that is probably the highlight of the on-the-field game occurs well before the end of the season and the end of the movie. But as we follow the entire baseball season we care about it because we care about Beane. The movie also acknowledges the history of baseball by occasionally showing clips of the game from the past, much in the way that Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999) occasionally inserted old football footage, connecting the past to the present.

Conclusion? Although you may need to be a baseball fan to love Moneyball, the film tells an intriguing story and is one of the best films of the year so far. On the Rotten Tomatoes website, the film currently has a 94% rating from critics and a 91% rating from audience members.

Bonus Song Information: If you are wondering about the song that Beane’s daughter sings, it is “The Show” by Australian singer-songwriter Lenka, off her self-titled CD from 2008 (yes, that is after the time period portrayed in the movie).

What did you think of Moneyball? Leave your two cents in the comments.