Our second favorite film of the year is The Descendants. BOP oftentimes celebrates our love of smallish indie films that the rest of the world has yet to experience. We see a kindred spirit to such productions in The Descendants. The reason why is simple. If we remove George Clooney from the equation, The Descendants has one of the least famous casts in recent memory. If you do not want to take my word for it, go pull up the cast list and make an argument regarding who the most famous person is after Clooney. Is it Shaggy from the live action Scooby Doo? Beau “The Less Famous” Bridges? Judy “The flasher from Arrested Development” Greer? Robert “Relevant Once a Decade” Forster? This is a small scale film with an unpretentious cast that mitigates its negatives with the single inclusion of George Clooney at the top. And this is why the project works masterfully.

We have certain expectations for George Clooney movies. We expect him to be calm, cool and collected, totally in control of the proceedings. The Descendants strips away all of Clooney’s entitlements and takes him back to the days when he was a bit player on The Facts of Life and Sisters. The most popular actor in Hollywood is gone, replaced by a cuckolded man dealing with twin deaths. The first is his wife’s physical failing and the second is the emotional bombshell that she loved another man after him. Director Alexander Payne sends George Clooney to paradise, gives his character all the money he could ever need, and proceeds to strip his soul of all positives. What is left is an angry, frustrated man who must decide how to do what is right by his wife, his people and his lands as he deals with an unprecedented type of heartbreak.

The Descendants is the type of movie that could just as easily star Peter Dinklage (like The Station Agent) or Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count on Me) and lose absolutely none of its appeal. That is the genius of the project. It structured to make anyone in the lead role seem fallible and largely inept. That point gets lost too much since George Clooney stars. At its base, however, The Descendants is exactly the sort of small scale triumph that BOP has been championing since The Calvins began. It is a film daring enough to take George Clooney and hide him in plain sight in a manner that makes us root for him to find his peace, forcing us to forget that the actor playing the role is among the most popular in the history of the industry. The Descendants is a marvelous character study that explores the nature of confidence, trust and respect and BOP is lost in admiration for what it accomplishes.

Moneyball is our third selection for Best Picture. This is a project that appeared dead in the water when original director Steven Soderbergh dropped out. Unheralded helmer Bennett Miller stepped in as the replacement, but the movie largely fell off our radar in Soderbergh’s absence. The BOP staff’s collective surprise was total when we started watching Moneyball, a smart and savvy film that tethers together a pair of masterful acting performance (our favorite Supporting Actor and our third favorite Lead Actor). Moneyball is a snappy quip machine of a movie that hides its math and statistics in plain sight, thereby taking the focus away from the professorial aspects and putting the focus on baseball results.

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