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Ben Affleck

Cotto’s Best of 2010

by Robert Cotto on January 3, 2011 · 1 comment

The first word out of my mouth after seeing a “great” movie is more often than not, an expletive. Followed by an exhale. I would’ve have thought with “The Social Network”, closing with The Beatles classic “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” would have evoked that emotion. It didn’t. It did however after Leo DiCaprio’s final line of “Shutter Island”. This “ten” list is about, more than anything, being moved.

1. Never Let Me Go

A haunting, sci-fi tale, set in a not so distant past, about a group of young adults whose sole purpose in life is donate organs for more privileged human beings, while struggling with experiencing profound emotion, knowing the fate of their impending demise. I couldn’t help but think of the Springsteen line from “Mary Queen of Arkansas”; “I was not born to live to die…” while sitting in the theater. That’s the entire point of these lives. Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield (who completely transforms himself here; which, if you see him in “The Social Network”, that same praise is lauded to him there, as well). This is the most overlooked film of the year. With any luck, the film will find its audience on DVD.

2. Blue Valentine

Two days in the life of a marriage that unfolds over flashbacks of a blossoming courtship. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams go to emotional depths that haven’t been explored as lovingly and as articulately since Cassavetes’ “Faces” & “A Woman Under the Influence”. Derek Cianfrance has made one of the most honest love stories in ages. What he’s able to achieve in his two leads is to be marveled.

3. 127 Hours

Danny Boyle traps James Franco in a hole. Do you know how many women dream about this? And yet, no one has seen this life affirming piece of work? Franco has arrived. More people need to come out and greet him.

4. Inception

Here are my initial thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s film. They still apply.

5. The Town

“Gone, Baby Gone” was no fluke. Taking references from “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” writer/director/star Ben Affleck updates the heist genre, with a stellar cast, notably with Jeremy Renner, who enters Pesci of “Goodfellas” territory.

6. The Kids Are All Right

The ensemble cast of the year. I recall “Terms of Endearment” in thinking about this film; not that there’s an overwhelmingly sad death at the end, but at it’s honest, and often humorous approach to the family unit, although not conventional. Annette Bening gives one of the best performances of the year. Completely nuanced, never over the top.

7. Black Swan

If you’ve seen Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes,” then it’s impossible to not draw comparisons to this film. Another story set in the ballet world about performance, passion, drive (like “Shoes”), and the depths one goes to get lost in the part. It’s a tour-de-force for Natalie Portman, and another milestone in Darren Aronosky’s filmography.

8. True Grit

The Coen Brothers remake evokes the spirit of John Ford while remaining definitively Coen. Jeff Bridges take on Rooster Cogburn is exceptional, but it’s the underrated and under praised work of Hattie Steinfeld that is the real reason to check out this gem.

9. The Ghost Writer

McKee says, “Wow them in the end, and you’ve got a hit.” With references to his own life and work, Roman Polanski’s modern day noir about a successful ghost writer who agrees to complete the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister exceeds all expectations. Career highs for Ewan McGregor’s ghost writer and Pierce Brosnan’s prime minister. Though it’s Olivia Williams performance as the prime minister’s better half that is most memorable, and least discussed.

10. Another Year

Mike Leigh’s funny and heartbreaking story that chronicles a year in the life of a blissfully happy couple in their golden years and their friends, who all seem to be lacking happiness in their own lives. Another great ensemble, led by Jim Broadbent, but it’s Leigh regular Lesley Manville’s performance that really keeps you glued.

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Ben Affleck Walks the Well Worn Path (Very Well)

by Tim Adkins on September 25, 2010 · 0 comments

Once upon a time, an English professor explained to me–and the rest of her class–the seven basic plots in literature. In addition to providing a working context for writers, she suggested, the prevalence of these themes relieves all creative people of the burden of avoiding cliché. If there are only seven stories any of us can tell, then why should any of us worry about drifting into hackneyed territory? There is freedom, she told us, along the well-worn path. Freedom to create our own work without fear of biting or stealing from anyone else. Theft, she argued, would be inevitable. Indeed, it should be embraced.

At some point in her monologue, she wrote on her dry erase board, “Know your influences. Know your competition. Be them if you must. But find a way to play them from inside the mask of yourself.”

Once upon a time, Ben Affleck made a great movie set in Boston. Once upon a time, a great gangster movie was made about Boston. Today, which will surely be hailed as a once-upon-a-time of its own, Ben Affleck has made a great gangster movie set in Boston. The former has been accused of borrowing from both the latters–and from other films like Heat–but that doesn’t devalue its accomplishment. Derivatives–as long as they have nothing to do with Wall Street–are the sincerest form of flattery. And, one could argue, the only thing left to create.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet–or the film itself–here’s the executive summary of The Town: Ben Affleck plays a dude from Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood. He works with three of his friends to rob banks and other high-reward institutional targets. One of his friends, played by Jeremy Renner, is a brother by experience but not by blood. Together, they represent the brains (Affleck) and the heart (Renner) of the crew. During a bank job, they uncharacteristically take a hostage, played by Rebecca Hall, and immediately release her into the Boston wild as soon as the crew has found its way back to the friendly confines of Charlestown.

The conflict in our story occurs in three layers. The first concerns what the crew will do with the woman they briefly held as a hostage. The second concerns whether the FBI will finally unmask the costumed bandits who have thus far eluded capture. And the third, as you could guess, concerns what choices Affleck’s character will make about his own future.

As the conflicts weave together to create the fabric of The Town‘s story, the Affleck and the Renner characters wage a war between two classic villain archetypes: one side chooses a life of crime reluctantly because he is good at it while the other chooses it eagerly because it appears to be the only available choice. The reluctant one mourns his crimes. The eager one celebrates his. While they do compliment each other quite well with their mix of ability and ambition, death will invariably come for one or both because the two sides cannot coexist forever.

The Hall character–despite the more literal presence of a neighborhood dimepiece (played by Blake Lively) who doubles as flame/sister–serves the role of Helen of Troy in this drama. Here, Helen causes the brains and the heart of the bank-robbing crew to swap roles as each wrestles with a simple question: how smart is it to become emotionally entangled with the one reliable witness to your crime? That swapping of roles is what drives the battle between the two villain archetypes. You get a lot more Affleck than you do Renner in The Town, but their interpersonal conflict is ever present in the film.

In addition to that battle, the crew struggles to remain undetected by the FBI. Jon Hamm–more frequently known as Don Draper–plays a character who leads the FBI team pursuing the bank robbers. Ordinarily, Hamm’s team would be the guys wearing the white hats. But they don’t wear white hats. They don’t wear any hats at all. Affleck–in his other role as director of the film–doesn’t permit them to. We get to know very little of Hamm’s character other than that he thinks he is excellent at his job and he seems to enjoy the competitive pursuit of people who commit crimes. It’s a really smart decision by a clever filmmaker–one that suggests more of a style than a simple choice in how to handle one character in one story.

Hamm–or Don Draper if you prefer–can more or less own the frame. You may not have heard of him before Mad Men, but now it is hard to imagine him as anything other than a leading man. How do you relegate an actor like that to the background of your story? You define his character very narrowly and you limit the space he can explore. The result is that we kinda see Hamm’s agent as human, but we’re more likely to see him only as an unrelenting man on a mission. It’s as if director Affleck told Hamm to watch Tommy Lee Jones’ performance in The Fugitive and crib liberally from it.

Affleck made a similar decision with Lively’s character. Many of you may know her from Gossip Girl. I don’t. I still think of her as the hot blonde from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. And when I do, I think of the chick who kindasorta looks like a star. Given how early she is in her career, you would not be crazy to assume that Lively’s agent or publicist or someone else on her team might advise her to take on opportunities to topline. In The Town, Lively is almost an afterthought. Except for the fact that she isn’t. Like the decision in how to include Hamm’s character, Lively’s character is also pushed to the narrative’s periphery–but much moreso. She’s supposed to be hot. She’s supposed to be hot for Affleck’s character. And she’s not supposed to be able to stand on her own two feet. Lively could probably nail the first two on her own. And she does. The third one–which she may be capable of as well–seems to be borrowed in part from Emily Mortimer’s most nervous moments in Redbelt. Given how it parallels Hamm’s performance, you’re left to conclude that director Affleck had a strong hand in guiding it.

Some of the best directors treat the characters in their films as if they are individual shades of the human spectrum. Some characters represent multiple hues, but it’s perfectly okay for other characters to be limited to a single shade of a single color. There is freedom in that choice to limit. On one hand, the actors are free to play directly to the gut of their narrowly defined characters giving us a magnified view of that specific shade of the human experience. On the other hand, the audience doesn’t have to be distracted by how it feels about one supporting character or another. Instead, the audience can immediately acknowledge the simple purpose of the supporting shades and journey with the multiple-hued main players into some experience which may illuminate life as we all think we know it in a unique or fascinating way.

Think back to some of Stanley Kramer’s films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? or Inherit the Wind. His supporting characters tended to be present in very deliberate ways. As if they were tasked with bringing to life the atmosphere within which the primary characters were challenged to make the big choices around which the film would be built. The characters played by Hamm and Lively in The Town appear to be directed in such a way. Maybe director Affleck is a fan of Kramer’s. Maybe not. But there’s certainly no harm in saying that the work of one emerging filmmaker compares favorably with the work of an old master. At least, there is no harm done to Affleck, the director.

It’s worth noting that The Town is an adaptation of Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t speak to how faithful the film is to the spirit of the novel. There is certainly a patience in the film that calls to mind the pacing of a good novel. We get dumped directly into the conflict between the two villain archetypes, but the way the romance between the Affleck character and the Hall character unfolds gives us some space to feel sympathy for the human being who reluctantly robs banks for a living. So much so that it is reasonable to root for the guy-who-is-technically-bad-but-kinda-seems-good.

The Town is a film that we’ve all seen before. And we’ll all probably see again. It is a story that has been worn out. And then worn out some more. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is something of an inevitability. And, in director Ben Affleck’s case, it works out pretty well. Very well, I’d say.

DYL MAG SCORE: An 8 that thinks its a 9.

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Movie Review: The Book of Eli — Thank God I’m an Agnostic

by Dustin Freeley on February 26, 2010 · 0 comments

The power of disasters and the potential of an apocalypse fascinate movie goers, usually during times of strife or near the end of a decade.  In the eighties, forty-six movies were released that focused on the dissolution of society as we know it, and most dealt with the threat or the consequence of nuclear war – alluding to the potential consequences of the newly born Strategic Defense Initiative, a space-based anti-ballistic missile defense system – and for this site, appropriately dubbed as “Star Wars” by its critics (this time without an English-accented princess who sounds like she’s from Brooklyn by the end of the film). 

The nineties only produced a dozen apocalypse-centered films, but flooded the screens with natural disaster flicks – often in tandem – to fill the difference and portend the end of civilization implied by the digital clock that would read 11:59 on December 31, 1999.   Producers covered comets in Deep Impact (1998), Asteroids in Asteroid (1998), a bigger asteroid in Armageddon (1998), volcanoes in Dante’s Peak (1997), Volcano (1997), and Volcano: Fire on the Mountain (1997), flooding in Hard Rain (1998) and Waterworld (1995), and the perpetuation of Ben Affleck’s career with Armageddon and Reindeer Games, which, by all accounts, was a disaster in itself.

So, it should be no surprise that the first decade of the new millennium – which went surprisingly unnamed, so I’m going with the “aughts” – ends with a handful of apocalypse-centered films in The Road, 2012 (working title: The Mayan’s Revenge), and The Book of Eli. 

Full disclosure: Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite novelists, so I didn’t see The Road for fear that I would compare each scene to the book and predestine myself to obviate any enjoyment before entering the film, though I hear it’s pretty good. The previews for 2012 scared me away when they showed John Cusack driving a car, screaming into a cell phone, and fleeing an earthquake — an earthquake that appears to be chasing his car.  Sounds more like an HBO, I’m a bit too lazy to change the channel movie.  The Book of Eli fell conveniently in a two hour block that I had to kill before heading to a meeting.

Directed by The Hughes Brothers (From Hell), The Book of Eli marries conventional end-of civilization tropes by citing a giant hole in the atmosphere (global warming) as the cause of the burned, desiccated landscape that surrounds the dilapidated buildings and shanty towns that house the remaining survivors; in addition, the hole is exacerbated by nuclear activity (yay humanity’s love for nuclear holocausts!).  The dash of seasoning to this apocalyptic petit four is the hand of God — or rather the question of whether God is a fictional character created for the purpose of control, or the divine who breathed into our nostrils the breath of life and allows those spared from the apocalypse to regenerate humanity.

Regardless of how America became a wasteland, Eli (Denzel Washington) must trek to the West in order to deliver his book. Standing in his way is the aforementioned landscape as well as cannibals, a lack of water, a lack of food, and a group of rogue bikers who are sent out repeatedly to locate a single book that intrigues Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the despotic ruler of a small civilization in which he claims to “own” most of the people, particularly his blind love interest Claudia (Jennifer Beals) and her daughter Solara (Mila Kunis), who serves as both Carnegie’s concubine and prostitute-for-hire.

Clearly, the book that Carnegie wants is the book that Eli possesses, and without giving too much away, the book is The Bible, which begins the discourse between the power hungry Carnegie and those that need the word of God as salvation. 

The idea for The Book of Eli isn’t terrible, and the oft-used Divine-discourse allegory isn’t so heavy handed that it repels a viewer looking for some apocalyptic carnage, but the film disappoints when it forgets the scope of the film it has set forth.  For instance, in the first scene, the audience is placed in a leafless forest of gray, desiccated trees that serve as the backdrop for snow-white ashes falling from the sky. At the same time, the innocence of winter flakes is juxtaposed with the glaring sun that shines atop the screen, but implies a creepiness because these “flakes” never melt, prompting the question: What has been burning? Or, who?

This scene perfectly sets the audience up for a film of desolation and destruction. 

However, shortly after, this image of isolation is wiped away when the camera spends more time on Denzel Washington’s face. While Washington is a fine actor, shooting him closely does not add to the theme of desperation and survival. Instead, it asks him to be the vehicle for a film that should be driven by its isolation-steeped genre.  Likewise, the silence of the film is often broken by interjections of music. If the music were part of the scene, perhaps some that a character listens to, it could symbolize the last resource that a man or woman has to connect to the previous humanity. Instead, it often serves as a narrator or comic relief. 

I hear that Apocalypses are unpleasant, and moments are needed to break tension, but in The Book of Eli, these moments are trite and, most often, just campy. Aside from the music, there are strategically – yet obviously – placed markers that dance on the gray line of metaphor and silliness. As Washington makes his way West, he enters a path that is littered with road signs that read “Dead End,” “Do Not Enter,” and “U-Turn.”  These signs are eventually trumped in the third act of the film that finds an argument brewing between Claudia and Carnegie. As Carnegie sits disheveled and bamboozled behind his desk, Claudia triumphantly moves toward the door as the camera draws back to reveal a white piece of paper that hangs from the center of a closed book. Sharply written in black marker is the word “Ocean.”

Admittedly, some of the action scenes are rather cool, and Eli proves himself to be the ultimate machete-wielding badass, but there are some glaring holes in storytelling. And by glaring, I mean you could take every plot-problem from The Day After Tomorrow (except the damn wolves) and place them inside the ground zero-size hole of a twist at the end – which won’t please a single Atheist – but it whole-heartedly takes advantage of the aforementioned Divine Intervention angle.

DYL MAG Score: 6

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reboot (v): 1. to start a system again after a crash 2. to kick shit again, hoping this time it doesn’t stick to your shoe

by Dustin Freeley on February 10, 2010 · 0 comments

As if the unoriginality of Hollywood needed further attesting to, they have decided to reboot the Spiderman franchise as well as—wait for it—Daredevil.  Yes. Daredevil.  For those of you who can’t, or choose not to remember, Daredevil was anchored by Ben Affleck, who might possibly be the worst person to cast in the role of superhero.  I don’t dislike Ben Affleck (the devil slips me twenty dollars), but his face is a bit too genuine looking to be considered badass or ominous.

Even in Mallrats, his role as Shannon, who is persistently trying to screw Rene (Shannen Doherty) in an uncomfortable place—think the back of a Volkswagon, but when it’s filled with feces—is a more douchebaggy GAP worker than badass.

I think it’s the rounded jaw—and by rounded I mean cartoonishly turgid.  He was fine as Will Hunting’s sidekick Chuckie, but with the exception of Good Will Hunting and the Kevin Smith-owned portion of his resume, Affleck hasn’t done much in the last decade worth watching or re-watching (except Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Garner from her Alias days).

So, in a way, I understand Hollywood’s desire to start Daredevil over. He isn’t a terrible character; he was created by Stan Lee, and his story is okay: Matt Murdock is a Hell’s Kitchen native (Wohoo! New York!) who is blinded by a radioactive substance that falls from an oncoming vehicle—which I guess makes more sense that a substance that simply falls from a parked vehicle.  Damn you gravity!

Subsequently, Murdock’s blindness—combined with an exposure to radiation—results in a heightening of his other senses, making him more ninja-like in regard to their preternatural ability to judge and acclimate to their surroundings.

A couple of issues with this reboot are that—comicbookically speaking—Daredevil doesn’t have that many villains, or at least not enough to foster interest in a franchise.  A mortal sin in the superhero genre is to flood the film with too many villains—see Joel Schumacher’s choice to include Robin, Bat Girl, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and Bane in the obviously titled, desiccated corpse Batman and Robin.    For the most part, Daredevil’s enemies are either muscular badasses or, eventually, drug dealers.  That said, the 2003 Daredevil already used Bullseye, the incomparable Colin Farrell (that’s $50) and The Kingpin (Michael Clark Duncan).  The writers also threw in Elektra (Jennifer Gardner) for good measure, which spawned an equally unwatchable movie of her own and two kids that carry the ass-chin chromosome.

Therefore, the producers at Regency have little left to reboot with.  I suppose that the new Daredevil could be a straight origin tale, but the upbringing of a blind lawyer whose father is murdered doesn’t scream intrigue.  Besides, two of the more recent superhero-origin movies (Batman Begins and Iron Man) found critical acclaim and have become the bar for origin stories.

Another issue is that the screenplay for this reboot was taken from the hands of Mark Steven Johnson (who also directed) and has been placed into David Scarpa’s hands—whom you might know as the guy who penned the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Oh. You don’t? Well, neither does anyone else, but it was so compelling that I chose to avoid watching it on a flight in favor of counting each bead of sweat that dripped down the undulating flesh of 16F’s neck.

That aside, the idea of rebooting a franchise is to restore interest in a franchise that has been led astray a la Casino Royale and Batman Begins. Overall, it doesn’t seem people clambered for the first installment of a Daredevil franchise, and the decision to reboot—or let’s be honest, simply remake—Daredevil is more like Ed Norton’s recent The Incredible Hulk, which, while better that Ang Lee’s Hulk, it probably won’t further a franchise or add anything new.

In other “let’s forget about that last installment and start from the ground up news,” Sony has decided to reboot Spiderman.  Now, I wasn’t a huge fan of the Spiderman movies; they were fun, but the first one masturbated cheesy CGI all over the screen which disconnected me from anything happening within the movie, and the third one shot itself in the foot by wasting a true Spiderman villain in Sandman and diluting it with a quick introduction and rapid demise of Venom—possibly the most popular Spiderman villain to cross the pages.

Venom is like Spiderman’s Joker.  You don’t split screen time with another villain, and if you do, then Venom should have been introduced at the end to preface a sequel.  Admittedly, Spiderman 2 was decent, but I credit that to Alfred Molina’s turn as Doctor Octopus, not to Seabiscuit’s jockey or a dentist’s wet dream.

Likewise, it seems the reboot is already shooting itself in the foot. As the Hollywood Reporter suggests:

The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns (so you can quash those Rob Pattinson or Gordon-Levitt rumors at this point). And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it. THR

First, I’m unsure how this is different from the first Spiderman, with the exception that a big name actor won’t don the costume.  In the same vein, Peter Parker isn’t interesting.  He’s a near-sighted shut-in who is socially inadequate; it’s not until the radioactive spider bites him that he becomes anything, so will his discovery of superpowers emerge through teenage angst like spraying graffiti over the bathroom walls with webs?

Angst is fine; it worked for Batman Begins, though before Bruce Wayne goes on his journey and decides to become a vigilante, he’s still unhinged and threatens to assassinate his parents’ killer and Carmine Falcone. Bruce Wayne is also a grown man who isn’t toiling in high school, so I kind of wonder who this franchise is aimed at.  Since Iron Man, X-Men, and Batman have the adult-fan market nailed, is this new Spiderman gunning for the prepubescent meets young adult market?

If so, that’s fine, and marketing-wise it’s intelligent because your audience will age as your young Peter Parker ages—which is quite similar to the genius behind the Harry Potter franchise.  The risk Sony takes is alienating anyone who might have read the Spiderman comic and wants reparations for Spiderman 3—I don’t have room for a mule, but I could probably hide a ferret.

Strangely enough, Spiderman also seems to be investing in the Harry Potter method of directing, namely selecting a different director for each film.  Right now, Marc Webb of 500 Days of Summer fame is only slated to do the initial film and expects to be replaced for the second.  Hey. Who isn’t looking for a teenage-focused, whimsical superhero movie?

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