Tag: The Town (Page 1 of 2)

5 Best Boston Movies

I spent three years in the Boston area (Cambridge to be precise) and got a decent feel of the city while I was there. These weren’t my favorite years, and frankly I had more fun in three months in New York City than I had in three years in Boston.

Boston is a provincial place, but you can’t deny it has character. Also, it’s such a beautiful city, and even the shitty parts have a vibe that comes across on the screen.

I recently watched “The Town” for the first time, and I wondered why we needed so many movies about Boston. Then, when listening to The Rewatchables podcast for this film, Bill Simmons asks the question about the best Boston movies. This isn’t a surprise, since Simmons loves lists almost as much as he loves Boston.

But, as usual, he comes up with pretty good lists . . . and he nailed it with his Boston list. And since I agree with it, here’s my take on those best Boston films in no particular order:

The Verdict

Screenshot The Verdict Paul Newman and Charlotte Rampling

This movie made a real impression on me when I was younger. I wanted to be a lawyer, and “The Verdict” captured the drama of arguing the ultimate case . . . perhaps too well, as the law in real life is much more boring and far less dramatic. But these are the types of cases lawyers live for. Paul Newman is brilliant in this film as the broken down lawyer who finds redemption. Meanwhile, the backdrop of Boston, with all its history and tradition, provides the perfect, romanticized setting for an epic David vs Goliath legal battle.

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Academy nominations stay truer to form even than usual

In a funny way, the most surprising thing about this year’s batch of Academy Award nominations was how strongly they stayed true to Oscar’s long-held habits — even a Film Drunk could see it this year. At least in terms of sheer numbers of nominations, the Academy was most generous to a historical/inspirational costume drama from England over a somewhat edgier and less traditionally fashioned tale ripped from today’s business headlines.

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The King’s Speech” led the nominations with 12, followed by “True Grit” with 10, and just eight for “The Social Network” — still very much the front-runner in my opinion — and “Inception.” Though Anne Thompson sees the momentum shifting in a more royal direction, I think it’s a big mistake this time around to read too much into sheer quantity. For example, I would be surprised to see a huge number of non-“technical” awards for “True Grit” or “Inception.” (Roger Deakins’ “True Grit” cinematography and the amazing effects of Christopher Nolan’s team being very likely winners).

Considering where most of the awards have gone so far, the only thing really going for “The King’s Speech” and against the previously prohibitive favorite, “The Social Network,” is aforementioned traditional Oscar genre prejudices and the inevitable backlash most highly acclaimed and award winnings films get. However, outside of infantile attention-hog critic Armond White, I actually haven’t noticed a huge anti-“Network” backlash though there were some off-target feminist complaints. (A movie about an almost literal boys’ club is going to depict a boys’ club atmosphere.) In any case, the rather enormous and still ongoing on- and off-line backlashes against “American Beauty,” “Crash” and “Titanic” clearly didn’t hurt those films’ Oscar prospects one bit.

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Weekend box office: greed is still pretty good

Things turned out at this weekend’s box office more or less as predicted on Thursday. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” came in on top at an estimated $19 million for Fox, according to the Box Office Mojo chart, about a million or two shy of the figures being bandied about, but close enough for an adult skewing film expected to have decent legs. Nikki Finke thinks it may have missed it’s moment in terms of being a topical must-see and also avoiding some bad press provided by the mouthy Oliver Stone. Maybe. She also points out that Fox hasn’t exactly been on a hot streak this summer. Still, this is actually a career high, raw cash wise, for Stone and not too bad a showing for the longest break between an original and a sequel since Martin Scorsese and Paul Newman dared to follow-up the genuine classic, “The Hustler,” with his underrated non-classic, “The Color of Money,” a quarter century after the fact.

Following not so far behind, really, is Warners’ “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” which earned an estimated $16.3 million. Anthony D’Allesandro is calling the film a “bomb” along the lines of the recent “Cats and Dogs” sequel. That may be accurate compared to what family films like this usually make and in light an as yet unspecified large budget but it’s still within a couple of million of this weekend’s $50-70 million live-action hit.

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While the books might have had an audience, something just seemed generally awry and the film lacked a clear premise for non-fans other than “owls fighting.” Whether or not Zack Snyder, whose early hits are receding in the memory of Hollywood, no doubt, gets to remain in the high end movie big leagues may now be largely dependent on what happens when his strange and zany looking action fantasy, “Sucker Punch,” comes out on 3/25/11.

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Weekend boxoffice: Ben Affleck steals the weekend, but “Easy A” hangs onto to its virtue

A surprise this week. A film that seemed to skew towards an older and more male audience actually grabbed more box office lucre than a high-concept comedy aimed largely — albeit on a weekend where no one made anything close to a cinematic mint.

Ben Affleck and Rebecca Miller in

He might look down in the pic above, but Ben Affleck — whose taken his share of sometimes deserved and sometimes not so deserved lumps as an actor over the years — has something to celebrate today. To be specific, the cowriter-director-star’s heist drama, “The Town,” swiped an estimated $23.8 million for Warner Brothers according to Box Office Mojo’s weekend chart. I’m guessing that the film got a boost from pent up demand for a the kind of plot-centric thriller we adult males seem to crave, as well as the budding  potential superstar presences of Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, and Blake Lively, not to mention female lead Rebecca Miller. Since older people usually pay a bit more attention to critics, it’s actually possible that the unusually good reviews helped here.

If Cinemascore means anything — and I’m not all that sure that it means all that much — “The Town” might have also gotten a boost from word of mouth, since Anne Thompson tell us it got a better than average B+ all around. Thompson also quotes Warner’s distribution chief Dan Fellman, saying that the studio is looking ahead to award season for the thriller. Moreover, Fellman also reminds us that the film is the largest September opening in Warner’s history (that is to say, September kind of sucks for box office). Though it’s not the kind of movie that usually wins Oscars, the loosened up Best Picture category certainly helps a well-reviewed and reasonably popular film’s chances.

Emma Stone in The PG-13 not-having-sex high school comedy with promising youngster Emma Stone,Easy A,” which was supposed to be #1 as of Thursday night, didn’t quite get there. However, seeing as its budget is reportedly $31 million less than the actually rather modestly budgeted “The Town,” it is by far the most profitable film of this frame with  respectable estimated receipts of $18.2  and an extremely respectable $8 million budget. It’s another fiscal win for Sony/Screen Gems, which has been on a sort of hot streak of late.

The M. Night Shymalan-produced “Devil” took the hindmost of the top 3 with a less than spectacular $12.58 million for Universal, which by now is used to disappointments. Though not directed by Shymalan, the PG-13 film was promoted as if it was and Uni and the man they call “Night” may finally be paying the price for all the almost universally disliked but oddly successful films that bore the once hugely promising filmmaker’s name. Anne Thompson wonders if the two other scheduled films drawn from stories by Shymalan to be directed by up-and-comers on low budgets, “The Night Chronicles,” will happen now. Mr. S., I grew up watching Rod Serling productions, I know Rod Serling’s work. You’re no Rod Serling.

The weekend’s other new release proved that audiences can spot a cheaply made 3D animated family film rather easily for something that is likely a far, far cry from Pixar or Dreamworks Animation. “Alpha and Omega” came in below the predictably sinking-like-a-stone-in-week #2 “Resident Evil: Afterlife” with an anemic $9.2 million.

A number of new films came out in limited release this week. The most impressive per-screen average of the week was $30,000 for the Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation, “Never Let Me Go.” The British science-fiction romantic drama earned $120,000 on four screens for Fox Searchlight, though it’s muted reviews may dim its Oscar hopes, which is really the only root to major success for a film like this at present. The highly buzzed, probable documentary (there are doubters, though everyone agrees it’s no “I’m Still Here“), “Catfish,” may have better Oscar hopes if it reassures the Academy that it really and truly is a documentary. It did well this weekend for Rogue with a $255,000 in only 12 theaters.

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Weekend box office preview: dissembling teens, bank robbers, cheap looking wolves and an elevator demon (update)

Folks, you  have no idea how tired I am as I write this. Therefore, while we have four new wide releases this weekend, all interesting in their own way, I’m be keeping it as short as possible tonight/this morning.

Emma Stone in

Jolly Carl DiOrio expects the weekend winner to be the Emma Stone comedy vehicle, “Easy A.” I, an adult male, personally found the trailer and premise for this movie about a girl using a false reputation for promiscuity to various ends, which is supposed to appeal primarily to female teens, pretty amusing. Moreover, it’s getting unusually good — if slightly muted — reviews for a teen film.

Though M. Night Shymalan’s name is hard-to-spell-and-pronounce version of “mud” with hardcore fans, the PG-13 scare-suspenser, “Devil” — which Shymalan did not direct but produced and wrote the story (with a twist, no doubt) — is expected to do relatively well. It is being carefully protected from bloodthirsty critics.

Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner in The movie I’m most looking forward to is actor-writer-director Ben Affleck’s crime thrilller, “The Town,” co-starring Jeremy Renner and marking the big-screen semi-starring debut of “Mad Men” star and Mercedes pitchman Jon Hamm. Never a critic’s darling as an actor, Affleck is turning into one critically liked auteur and the highly positive reviews are making me anxious to see this one.

The movie I doubt I’ll ever see — and which is expected to make a shockingly low amount for a 3-D animated family film is “Alpha and Omega.” The cheaply made and critically unloved animation should at least should help some kids learn what are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

UPDATE: One quick thought I meant to include last night. Jolly Carl said there might be a slightly depressive effect on the box office this weekend because  Friday night and Saturday until sundown is Yom Kippur, the holiest holiday on the Jewish calendar. The interesting part of this is that we Jews are only 2% of the population — though if you live in New York or L.A. you’d never know it and some of us almost completely ignore these things. Are we that overrepresented as moviegoers that our impact is felt beyond places like NYC, L.A., and Chicago?

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