MOVIE - The Accountant

R (2:08)

Wide 10.8.16

Viewed 10.17.16 at Park Place

RT Critic:  49  Audience:  87
Critic's Consensus:  The Accountant writes off a committed performance from Ben Affleck, leaving viewers with a scattershot action thriller beset by an array of ill-advised deductions.

Cag:  5/Loved it

Directed by Gavin O'Connor

Warner Brothers Pictures

Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J. T. Simmons, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor

My comments:  I loved this movie.  Some of the critics didn't...probably because it was all wrapped up in a neat little bow, which is what I really loved about it.  Bill Dubuque, who wrote the screenplay, was brilliant.  He took a number of seemingly different vignettes and wove them together to make one story.  He must have needed a wall to map it out!  Spectacular storytelling!   Yup, violence, and killing...but sweetness and humor and a grand mystery as well. And Asberger's.  And love, although it definitely wasn't a love story per se.  Top it off with small roles for both John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor (and fantastic parts for Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, and J. T. Simmons) and this became a real winner for me...one of my favorites so far this year!

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Christian Wolff is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department's Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King, starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise.

MOVIE - Gone Girl

R (2:25)

Wide release 10/3/2014

Viewed 10/6/2014 at ElCon with Sheila, Connie, & Gwen

RT Critic:  87  Audience:  91

Cag:  5/It was a really well-done movie

Directed by David Fincher

20th Century Fox

Based on the book by Gillian Flynn.  My review here.

Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, 

My comments: I liked the movie more than I liked the book (a bit unusual....). I considered Nick Dunne a jerk-of-an-idiot in the book, and I considered Amy Dunne a psychopath.  I felt a little better...though not much....of Nick in the movie, and considered Amy even crazier than in the book.  You had to like Nick, because no matter how sleezy a character Ben Affleckk could ever play I'd HAVE to root for him.  So I wonder how I would have felt with another actor portraying Nick?  Both Affleck and Pike (as well as Perry, Harris, and Carrie Coon, who plays Nick's twin sister Margo) were terrific.

RT Summary:  GONE GIRL - directed by David Fincher and based upon the global bestseller by Gillian Flynn - unearths the secrets at the heart of a modern marriage. On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?

Movie- Argo

R (2:00)

Released widely 10-12-12

on dvd 2-19-13

Viewed:

RT Critic: 96    Audience: 94

cag: Wonderful movie, 5/Loved it

Directed by Ben Affleck

Warner Brothers

Ben Affleck, John Goodman

MOVIE INFO

Based on true events, Argo chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis-the truth of which was unknown by the public for decades. On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing it is only a matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed, a CIA "exfiltration" specialist named Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) comes up with a risky plan to get them safely out of the country. A plan so incredible, it could only happen in the movies

Thoughts:  Superb movie, and the whole time you're watching you're marveling that this is based on a true story.  Affleck's acting and directing are impressive.

MOVIE - The Town

Love the Boston/Charlestown setting - and the accents!
Realeased 0-17-2010
R (2:05)
10-7-10 at El Con with Ronnie
RT: 95 cag:87
Directed by Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm

This was a very entertaining movie. Throughout the whole thing you had no idea how it would end. The protagonist is also the bad guy...who wants to be a good guy. Apparently Charlestown, Mass. (site of Bunker Hill Monument, home of the U. S. S. Constitution) has a high number of bank robberies. Well, this movie is about a gang-of-four clever bank robbers, headed up by Ben Affleck and his trigger-happy-best-friend-since-childhood, played by Jeremy Renner.

Affleck becomes involved with the manager of the bank that he just held up. She was traumatized by the event, and of course you wonder what will happen when she discovers who he is - because you know that, of course, she will. And you watch his trigger-happy best friend easily kill and beat and maim. You see the hurt that Affleck has lived with since he was sick and his mother walked out on him, and sympathize when he visits his father (Chris Cooper) in Walpole State Prison. Edge of your seat suspense. Well woven together. Great casting. Fantastic (real) setting. Go Fenway Park! ! !

MOVIE - State of Play

Very good-suspenseful with a twist at the end
Viewed Thursday, 5/14/09 at El Con with Sheila
Drama 1:58 PG-13
Released 4-17-09
RT: 85% cag: 75%
Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams
Director: Kevin Macdonald
aslo: Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels

Russell Crowe plays a scruffy investigative reporter for the Washington Globe. Ben Affleck plays an up-and-coming congressman who is in charge of a committee questioning defense spending. When the married Afleck is discovered to be having an affair with an assistant, new Globe online reporter Rachel McAdams jumps in. We soon discovere that the journalist and politician were college roommates with a lot of baggage - the congressman's wife being one of them. The major plotline is about the shady insider dealings of more-or-less legal hitmen while a parallel plotline is about the intertwining lives and lies of the protagonists.

Rachel McAdams's part was sort of weird, she's not a major player, she's not a strong journalist, but a bond forms between her and Russell Crowe, which is kind of sweet, but somewhat out-of-character....a weak , somewhat questionable, link for me.